This weekend The Bulwark held it's weekly staff meeting, called it the Very Big Important Conference on True Conservatism National Summit on Principled Conservatism and charged the rubes and rubberneckers $10 a throw to look at them in their natural habitat: sitting round a conference room table arguing about how many Reagans can dance on the head of a pin.
So what is "principled conservatism"?
Easy.
Principled conservatism is Alcoholic's Anonymous with an open bar.
To Conservatism!
The cause of... and solution to... all of life's problems.
I Want Just Enough Socialism To Make Charlie Sykes Weep Tears of Blood
“One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived."
-- Niccolo Machiavelli
Don't forget to visit our website -- http://www.proleftpod.com -- for all those sweet bells and whistles: there are links to donate to our podcast work at that site, as well as links to our swingin' Zazzle merch store, our respective blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Kittehs! and much more. Many thanks once again to @theologop for building it all for us! Links:
The Professional Left is brought to you by our wholly imaginary "sponsors" and real listeners like you!
With Tom Friedman and David Brooks slugging it out to see who can dominate "Stupidest Take By The Most Cartoonishly Terrible New York Times Pundit" contest, it sure feels like the high cotton days of Dubya Administration --
-- all over again.
Both men have had long, long careers which could be fairly summed up as a series of horrendously bad political takes interspersed with maudlin hand-wringing, but as beloved Sulzberger family house-pets, neither man ever has to worry about being market-corrected into obscurity and unemployment.
I Want Just Enough Socialism To Make The Sulzberger Family Weep Tears of Blood
Hey look! The goof who unstintingly supported George W. Bush as he pissed away the Clinton surplus because he swore that the economy had become a perpetual property machine that could easily support gargantuan tax cuts for the wealthy while fully funding all my Medicare, Meidcaid and Social Security ...
... and unstintingly supported George W. Bush as he dragged this country into the biggest foreign policy debacle in modern history ... ... and got himself promoted from The Weekly Standard wingnut goon squad to The New Times Times op-ed page on the strength of his relentless slandering of Liberals like you and me who stood against Dubya's catastrophic policies...
No, Not Sanders, Not Ever
He is not a liberal, he’s the end of liberalism.
By David Brooks
Opinion Columnist
Mr. Brooks then spends the bulk of his 800 contractually-obligated words condescending to explain to us po' stoopid Libtards what being a Liberal means.
Traditional liberalism traces its intellectual roots to... This liberalism believes in... This is why liberals like Hubert Humphrey, Ted Kennedy and Elizabeth Warren... Liberalism celebrates... Liberalism is horrified by... A liberal leader confronts... A liberal sees shades of gray... A liberal sees inequality and...
I grew up in Greenwich Village in the 1960s to somewhat left-wing parents. When I was five, they took me to a Be-In, where hippies would just go to be. One of the things they did at the Be-In was set a garbage can on fire and throw their wallets into it to demonstrate their liberation from money and material things. I saw a $5 bill on fire in the garbage can, so I broke from the crowd, reached into the fire, grabbed the money, and ran away.
And 50 years later, he's still running.
And now I'm just gonna put my big feet up and let the late Steve Gilliard take it home. Excerpted from The News Blog from 17 years ago...
I'm a fighting liberal
You know, I've studied history, I've read about America and you know something, if it weren't for liberals, we'd be living in a dark, evil country, far worse than anything Bush could conjure up. A world where children were told to piss on the side of the road because they weren't fit to pee in a white outhouse, where women had to get back alley abortions and where rape was a joke, unless the alleged criminal was black, whereupon he was hung from a tree and castrated. What has conservatism given America? A stable social order? A peaceful homelife? Respect for law and order? No. Hell, no. It hasn't given us anything we didn't have and it wants to take away our freedoms. ... It was the liberals who opposed the Nazis while the conservatives were plotting to get their brown shirts or fund Hitler. It was the liberals who warned about Spain and fought there, who joined the RAF to fight the Germans, who brought democracy to Germany and Japan. Let us not forget it was the conservatives who opposed defending America until the Germans sank our ships. They would have done nothing as Britain came under Nazi control. It was they who supported Joe McCarthy and his baseless, drink fueled claims. Without liberals, there would be no modern America, just a Nazi satellite state. Liberals weak on defense? Liberals created America's defense. The conservatives only need vets at election time. It is time to stop looking for an accommodation with the right. They want none for us. They want to win, at any price. So, you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?
And now, under Trump, American Conservatism has at last reached its apotheosis.
Now the Conservatives are the brownshirts. Proudly. Openly.
So if you were damnfool enough to actually believe that Never Trumpers would have your back when things got tough, consider making a generous contribution to a certain shitty little blogger in the middle of Middle America who tried very hard to warn you that you were being fleeced, greased and decreased.
I Want Just Enough Socialism To Make David Brooks Weep Tears of Blood
...is the The New York Times is still paying The Mustache of Understanding actual money to poop words out onto its op-ed page.
Dems, You Can Defeat Trump in a Landslide
You can promise voters something our narrow-minded president won’t.
Wow! That's great news Tom. How exactly will Democrats accomplish this impossible thing?
What would this super ticket look like? Well, I suggest Sanders — and Michael Bloomberg, who seems to be his most viable long-term challenger — lay it out this way: “I want people to know that if I am the Democratic nominee these will be my cabinet choices — my team of rivals. I want Amy Klobuchar as my vice president. Her decency, experience and moderation will be greatly appreciated across America and particularly in the Midwest. I want Mike Bloomberg (or Bernie Sanders) as my secretary of the Treasury. Our plans for addressing income inequality are actually not that far apart, and if we can blend them together it will be great for the country and reassure markets. I want Joe Biden as my secretary of state. No one in our party knows the world better or has more credibility with our allies than Joe. I will ask Elizabeth Warren to serve as health and human services secretary. No one could bring more energy and intellect to the task of expanding health care for more Americans than Senator Warren...
It goes on like that. And on. And on. And on. And just when you think this very bad acid flashback has peaked and you're coming in for a landing...
I am asking Mitt Romney to be my commerce secretary. He is the best person to promote American business and technology abroad — and it is vital that the public understands that my government will be representing all Americans, including Republicans.
On one beat or another, Tom Friedman has been drawing a paycheck from the Sulzberger family for 28 years.
28 years.
And for the last decade on that teat, he has returned over and over again to his creepy fetish for a Sensible Center Frankenparty stitched together out of his favorite bits of various humans who have momentarily captured his attention. This is from a Columbia Journalism Review's article from 2011:
Over the weekend, The New York Times op-ed page published one of Tom Friedman’s periodic columns about the need for a uprising of the “radical center.” It was, unsurprisingly, terrible. Though the details of these columns change with each iteration—this one relied heavily on a new initiative called Americans Elect, which brings together two of Friedman’s favorite things, wealthy people and the Internet—the basic wrongheadedness does not.
Friedman’s idea seems to be that if only we can find some reform that will allow us to “break the oligopoly of the two-party system,” it might, someday, be possible for someone who holds 90 percent of Barack Obama’s stated policy positions—plus support for a carbon tax—to assume a position of power. Then, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear—maybe because some fantasy vice president (Michael Bloomberg?) applies some of his “pragmatic independent” pixie dust?—political dysfunction disappears, and a magical new era of “superconsensus” to solve our “superhard” problems is ushered in. Startlingly, this consensus seems to closely reflect many of Friedman’s personal policy preferences.
Friedman has been engaged in third-party wishcasting for at least five years now; Brendan Nyhan’s excellent, running blog post on third-party media hype records that back in the 2006 election cycle, Friedman longed for a “Geo-Green Party.” His “radical center” phase, though, seems to be inspired by the Tea Party era. Friedman has devoted columns to this mythical middle at least three times since spring 2010. They’re as predictable as the tides, or a hackneyed lede about a conversation with a taxi driver or tech entrepreneur.
...
At this point, there is no reason to attribute anything other that the worst possible motives to the Sulzberger family for keeping hacks like Ffriedman on the payroll decades after they've rocketed past their sell-by day.
I Want Just Enough Socialism To Make Charlie Sykes Weep Tears of Blood
Over the Better Universe, last night's debate went something like this:
Moderator: Do you agree with Donald Trump's face-down-ass-up approach to North Korean 'diplomacy'?
Everyone: Are you fucking kidding me?
But we don't live in the Better Universe.
We live here. And if you watched any piece of last night's "debate", congratulations! You were a witness to history, because that was, hands down, the worst presidential debate I have ever seen. In fact I'm banking the time I spent watching it to apply it against any future community service obligations to which I may be sentenced.
The moderators were an embarrassment who seemed to realize early on that the ship was headed for the rocks and just shrugged and leaned into it. The questions were facile. The Bloomberg and "Medicare For All Will Kill Us All" commercials they ran during the breaks showed exactly what kind of crassly mercantile freak-show CBS knew it was running here. And once the candidates figured out they were on their own sans traffic cops or mediators, it turned into a Lord of the Flies scrum over whose got the conch.
Narrator: There was no conch.
I cannot imagine that the opinions of Democratic primary voters were changed very much by this mess, but there were a scattering of memorable moments, and here are a few of them...
Bloomberg really sucks at this. His awkward scripted ad-libs just lay there like dead trout. He was never more than two minutes away from a "Please clap"moment, but when you rent your own cheering section I guess that doesn't matter much. There was also this --
WOULD YOU EXPUNGE THE RECORDS OF THE BLACK & BROWN PEOPLE YOU HARRASSED INTO JAIL? #StopAndFrisk@MikeBloomberg
-- which was a big, fat, slow pitch which no one thought to belt out of the park.
Biden did...OK. Being this guy in answer to every question --
-- gets really old really fast, but his genial mention of his "Catholic school training" was a nice touch.
Mayor Pete name-checking his spouse as a teacher was a nice touch too. He also knows how to do scripted ad-libs in exactly the same way that Bloomberg does not. For example, asking Bernie how he expects to pull off a revolution if he can't support a rules change in the Senate.
How is that we got halfway through this thing and Tom Steyer was almost the only one going after Donald Trump with a sword in both hands?
Klobuchar's answer on the Corona virus was good. She and Mayor Pete fighting over who gets the hog the I-94 center lane didn't move the needle for either of them.
Warren did nothing to make me doubt that she would make a fine president. She's smart, has a confident command of the policy details, is very good public speaker, I would definitely watch a ten episode Netflix series of her verbally pistol-whipping Mike Bloomberg. Her pitch is simple: she has the chops to actually get her ideas drafted into legislation and passed into law.
Bernie was Bernie. For me, he is at his most effective when he uses humor or calmly explains why some stupid question that someone tossed his way was stupid and then pivots back to his central message. And his pitch remains the same: his revolution will sweep aside or overwhelm the creaky, slow and easily obstructed means by which a bill currently becomes a law.
For the record and the umpteenth time, I will be voting blue no matter who.
I Want Just Enough Socialism To Make Charlie Sykes Weep Tears of Blood
If you don’t actually have any core beliefs it is easy to go from parroting Bernie Sanders to parroting Marco Rubio in the same year. pic.twitter.com/9J6tcMyvXh
So, if someone doesn't line up with your beliefs 100% or believes another candidate has a better shot for actually getting shit done, they're a liar, a thief, a fraud, a dupe or Mitch McConnell in progressive clown-makeup?
And you're counting on their tireless and unstinting support in the fall?
And then this happened:
EXCLUSIVE: Ben Mora, a regional field director for Bernie Sanders’ campaign, used a private Twitter account to attack other Democratic contenders—as well as their family members, surrogates, journalists, and celebrities—in deeply personal terms https://t.co/aAZUyi1kcd
Ben Mora is one of the best organizers I’ve ever met and a true exemplar of the posting-to-praxis pipeline. He’s one of the many reasons why Bernie won Iowa. I hope the campaign ignores the bellyaching from the losing candidates and keeps Ben on to beat them again in Michigan. https://t.co/AgOESpVOQy
ben mora is fucking hilarious & brilliant & has been working hard to organize & inspire. we have a right to enjoy comedy & critique the ruling class with out being narc’d on & losing our jobs. liberalism is a plague on art, freedom of expression, & basic human decency
For the record, the Sanders campaign reacted quickly and correctly for that they deserve full credit. But maybe, just maybe, the corrosive "Fuck everyone who isn't us" coming from some quadrants of the Sanders campaign isn't just bots or infiltrators or some bullshit that the rest of us are imagining.
I Want Just Enough Socialism To Make Charlie Sykes Weep Tears of Blood
Next week's regular Bulwark staff meeting has been moved from the break-room to The Yard - Coworking Office Space a couple of miles down the road.
Also it will now be called the Very Big Important Conference on True ConservatismNational Summit on Principled Conservatism
Fun Fact: This Bulwark True Conservative staff meeting was relocated to counter-program against the CPAC True Conservative Hog Calling Contest, both of which are being counter-counter-programmed by Michelle Malkin's True Conservative “America First Political Action Conference" for those who prefer their racism cask-strength, no chaser and who think Charlie Kirk is an establishment sellout.
We now join the National Summit on Principled Conservatism "Dammit, We're The Real True Conservatives!" breakout session already in progress...
I Want Just Enough Socialism To Make Charlie Sykes Weep Tears of Blood
“Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair."
-- Elie Wiesel
Don't forget to visit our website -- http://www.proleftpod.com -- for all those sweet bells and whistles: there are links to donate to our podcast work at that site, as well as links to our swingin' Zazzle merch store, our respective blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Kittehs! and much more. Many thanks once again to @theologop for building it all for us! Links:
The Professional Left is brought to you by our wholly imaginary "sponsors" and real listeners like you!
After the obligatory round of mocking us fuzzy-headed, bleeding-heart Libtards for not understanding how anything works (and how they can kinda understand Trump disparaging "Parasite" for winning the Best Picture Oscar because it's a "super-Commie" movie that Hollywood chose over so many other, better American movies) Conservative Charlie Sykes and his guest got down to the real meat of the matter -- using his lil' conservative podcast (Episode entitled "The Bernie / Trump Death March") to flog this Urgent Warning For Democrats post on his lil' conservative website in which the Bulwarkians all but demand that Barack Obama and Bill Clinton step in right now and save them from Bernie Sanders:
... So let’s take a look at 2020 and which Democratic figures are on the sidelines: the Obamas, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke, Jimmy Carter, and Al Gore. Basically every major Democrat who a normal primary voter would know and whose endorsement could command a news cycle is sitting around to see how things shake out. And I promise you that every one of them who is right now weighing when to put their thumb on the scale will quickly decide after Super Tuesday that they don’t want to be fighting a lonely battle against an inevitable Bernie. Some of these individuals could shake up the race. Imagine the consolidation pressure if an Obama or Clinton came out for Pete or Joe or Amy in the way Ted Kennedy did for Obama in 2008. That would be the type of event that could legitimately change the balance of the race. If it happened soon.
So you want Bill Clinton to come out of retirement to take this situation in-hand?
Bill Clinton?
The guy who, as I have pointed out at great length elsewhere, was referred to during his tenure in the White House by the leading voices in Mr. Sykes' Republican Party and the Conservative Movement as (in no particular order) Hitler, a Socialist, a rapist, a warmonger, a serial murderer, and a drug dealer, whose Presidency was somehow vaguely illegitimate.
And you want him joined on your holy mission by Barack Obama?
Barack Hussein Obama?
The decent, honorable man upon your depraved Republican Party absolutely picnicked on for eight fucking years? The Kenyan Usurper? The Death Panelist? The secret Muslim who loved nothing more than "palling around with terrorists"? The dirty, gun-grabbing commie sleeper cell? The guy who Fox News and Hate Radio spent eight years bellowing was the greatest existential threat to the American republic in history? At 120 decibels? 24 hours a day?
The Barack Obama about whom Rick Perry said this on January 8, 2012:
I make a very proud statement and, in fact ,that we have a president that's a socialist. I don't think our founding fathers wanted America to be a socialist country. So I disagree with that premise that somehow or another that President Obama reflects our founding fathers. He doesn't. He talks about having a more powerful, more centralized, more consuming and costly federal government.
The Barack Obama castigated in Newt Gingrich's 2010 book:
"To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine"
That Barack Obama?
Your actual plan for saving yourself from Bernie Sanders is to urge the Infamous Socialist Barack Obama and his Infamous Socialist wife --
-- to team up with the Infamous Socialist Hillary Clinton and her Infamous Socialist husband so they can drag the Socialist Dimm-O-Crap Party back from the brink of...Socialism?
Well hey, good luck with that.
Meanwhile, I'll be over here in the cheap seats dying of laughter.
PS. Overall, the petulant-three-year-old-level of wailing and whining and self-righteous poutrage (tm) of Never Trumpers on this podcast is absolutely hilarious. On and on they go about how rudely Never Trumpers are treated by us Dirty Fucking Hippies, and how brutally unfair it is of us to nominate candidates without their approval and "shove that choice down their throat". What is it about wingnuts and hhaving things shoved don their throat?
Also how we are basically "putting a gun to their heads" and giving them a "binary choice" between two candidates they despise. How we can take our "Vote Blue No Matter Who" ideals and shove 'em because they are under NO moral obligation to vote for just any ol' candidate we nominate.
They are also deeeeeply resentful of all the shit we DFHs give them on the subject "Why don't you stay the hell out of our business and go clean up you own god damn party" (so, yay!, they are definitely listening to my podcast and reading my shitty blog :-) Anyway we Libtards have no fucking appreciation for how hard they have been working for the last three years to clean up their party!
No appreciation at all!
Which is true.
I Want Just Enough Socialism To Make Charlie Sykes Weep Tears of Blood
Trump names right-wing troll Richard Grenell to run national intelligence: What could go wrong?
Angered by more Russia revelations, Trump appoints unqualified hack to lead purge of intelligence agencies
The first years of the Obama Administration were an extended exercise in over-startled over-vigilant overreactions to any hint of a whiff of any behavior that might possibly be mistaken for inappropriate ... at a distance ... in the dark ... on a fog-bound night ... if you squinted real hard.
And you know what?
It didn't buy them one ounce of goodwill from the Party of Bigots and Imbeciles.
Not saying that Democrats should not have high ethical standards.
Just saying that, for the next generation or so, any criticism coming from the Party of Bigots and Imbeciles and their enablers in the media needs to be bum-rushed into the sea.
Never Trumpers are, to coin a phrase, to the media-manor born. They not only take it as their birthright to command the spotlight, they treat being paid to blab their stupid opinions in declarative sentences as a law of nature -- opinions validated by the only metrics the media respects: money and the approval of their peers.
Which is why, even after they reduced their own political party to toxic rubble -- a graveyard of their stupid ideas haunted by marauding bands of bigots, imbeciles, grifters and madmen -- they just cannot shut the fuck up. Reacting to their reduced circumstances exactly as you would expect entitled royalty to react.
Which, as I have mentioned once or twice before, is exactly what they are: the exiled aristocracy of an empire out of which they have been chased by the serfs they exploited.
Aristocrats who suddenly found themselves financially dependent on the largess of people they detested.
Aristocrats who, with that special, asshole-arrogance that comes with an inbred sense of entitlement, become indignant when their hosts don't snap to and do as they're told.
Democrats, this can happen to you. Make a good choice in the primary...don’t give up on all the things you stand for just to get Trump out. https://t.co/fyfNRvDWDe
Also if Bloomberg is still hurting from the absolutely brutal NDA beatdown Warren handed him (one of many), maybe dropping a few pfennigs in the tip jar would make him feel better.
Here's Bernie Sanders press secretary Briahna Joy Gray on CNN comparing demands for Sanders's medical records to birtherism and dismissing them as "a kind of smear campaign." pic.twitter.com/rZOm4a3Rg8
Bernie just hired Briahna Joy Gray to be the national press secretary for the 2020 campaign. The trouble: she voted for Jill Stein in 2016. Four days before the election she announced on Twitter that she would be voting for Stein, and long after the election she confirmed in a separate tweet that she did in fact end up voting for Stein. That’s far from her only troubling moment. On September 26th of 2016, she tweeted this: “Donald Trump is right. The dems pushed the ‘Russia did the hacking’ angle b/c it was politically advantageous for them.”
Once Blagojevich's name was changed to "Federal Prisoner Number 40892-424" I thought I would be just about done with my award-adjacent "Corrupt Ex-Governor" series.
Trump Grants Clemency to Rod Blagojevich, Bernard Kerik and Michael Milken
WASHINGTON — President Trump commuted the 14-year prison sentence of former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois, the Democrat who was convicted of trying to essentially sell Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat for personal gain, and pardoned the financier Michael R. Milken and Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, the president announced on Tuesday...
See, this sorta thing is why, in addition to impeaching and removing him, the Illinois senate also unanimously barred Blagojevich from ever holding office in the state again.
“In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?"
-- Saint Augustine
Don't forget to visit our website -- http://www.proleftpod.com -- for all those sweet bells and whistles: there are links to donate to our podcast work at that site, as well as links to our swingin' Zazzle merch store, our respective blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Kittehs! and much more. Many thanks once again to @theologop for building it all for us! Links:
Some people like to think of Jesus as a mischievous badger, while others may picture Him in a tuxedo T-Shirt because it says, "I want to be formal, but I'm here to party."
As for me, I prefer to imagine the Prince of Peace unlimbering his extra-wide, money-changers-in-the-temple flogging belt every time another Republican Christopath holds forth about their poisonous interpretation of scripture, and then heading down to our vale of tears to lay about said Christopath with vigor, as the kids say.
First on my list, Sean Hannity, who managed get the core concept of an entire philosophy ass-backwards wronger, faster than anyone I have ever seen outside of Otto from A Fish Called Wanda.
No, Sean, the central message of Christianity is not "Feed yourselves you lazy fucks!" any more than the central message of Buddhism is "Every man for himself." And the reason I know this is because the story of The Feeding Of The Multitude is one of those Very Big Miracles which is referenced in all four gospels and has been taught in every Sunday school class in Christendom for a couple of thousand years.
You stupid, stupid fuck.
For a kinder and more theologically-expert take on Mr. Hannity's Vermin on the Mount, I would refer you to my lovely wife writing in Crooks & Liars here.
So if you see anyone going after anyone in a personal way in Senator Sanders' name, you are now officially free to assume they are not Sanders supporters and treat them as the trolls and saboteurs which they obviously are.
...Nikki Haley is suddenly terribly concerned that Bernie Sanders might have failed to wash and dry his hands completely and correctly after using the lavatory.
It is amazing that a liberal socialist won in Iowa and New Hampshire. The idea that we would give up the freedoms our veterans fought and died for is unthinkable. Other countries have to be scratching their heads wondering what we are thinking.
No matter how thoroughly you humiliate yourself, Nikki -- no matter how much you willingly lawn-jockey yourself for the Party of Bigots and Imbeciles -- they are never gonna nominate you for president.
Abraham Lincoln, born February 12, 1809, Hodgenville, KY
Sorry about what happened to your party.
For decades a lot of us tried to stop it, but all the Very Serious Media People and Professional Conservative Public Intellectuals told us to sit down and shut up.
Hey, here's a fun fact! Those very same Very Serious Media People and Professional Conservative Public Intellectuals are all now selling books about how shocked they are that the Republican Party was full of Republicans all along. And those of us who tried over and over again to warn them are still being told to sit down and shut up.
Chief Judge Haywood:Did the judiciary protest these laws abridging their independence?
This is a horrible and very unfair situation. The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice! https://t.co/rHPfYX6Vbv
Is this the Judge that put Paul Manafort in SOLITARY CONFINEMENT, something that not even mobster Al Capone had to endure? How did she treat Crooked Hillary Clinton? Just asking! https://t.co/Fe7XkepJNN
Dr. Wieck:Those who did, resigned, or were forced to resign.
Who are the four prosecutors (Mueller people?) who cut and ran after being exposed for recommending a ridiculous 9 year prison sentence to a man that got caught up in an investigation that was illegal, the Mueller Scam, and shouldn’t ever even have started? 13 Angry Democrats?
Dr. Wieck: Others...adapted themselves to the new situation.
Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought. Evidence now clearly shows that the Mueller Scam was improperly brought & tainted. Even Bob Mueller lied to Congress!
-- out here in Real Murrica, it's clear that the last, few newspapers still extant believe their best chance for survival is to keep their heads down, give up any pretense of doing journalism, and hang on like grim death to their octogenarian Republican subscriber base by sticking to the Both Sides Do It style-book regardless of the facts.
For example, in this extended exercise in false equivalence, ahistoric doubletalk and outright lying, all carefully calibrated to not offend anyone or take an honest position on anything, the Editorial Board of my local, dying Gatehouse Media rag would like you to believe that, now that all this impeachment nonsense is behind us, Congress needs to get back to doing the people's business.
Editorial: Time for Congress to get back to the people’s business
You might not have liked the outcome or the process, or perhaps you thought the whole thing was a waste of time from the beginning. It doesn’t matter.
Yes, according to the State Journal-Register's editorial board, standing athwart the rising tide of out-and-proud Republican fascism and shouting "Stop!" is somehow not the people's business and does not matter. Instead...
The impeachment trial, for all its flaws, is over. Maybe impeachment was a necessary civics lesson that exposed voters to important arguments over the scope of presidential authority and the constitutional separation of powers. And it certainly lifted the curtain on the president’s behavior. In any case, it’s time to move on. Congress and the executive branch must now get back to the people’s business.
That beep-beep-beep you hear is the Both Sides Do It bullshit wagon backing up to dump a big, steaming load right in your lap.
In a more-normal election year you’d think you’d see politicians working party lines on important legislation that provided a platform to campaign on back home. However, the new normal is ... who the heck knows? The political landscape has changed, and the divide between elected officials has grown. We’ve reached the point that the two sides of our great political divide no longer assume the other side is capable of operating in good faith. When that happens, civility goes up in flames, compromise becomes impossible, and the people’s business is buried beneath an avalanche of mutual recriminations.
Fun Fact: Republicans spent eight straight years relentlessly obstructing and slandering Barack Obama, and telling him to go pound sand every time he reached out to them in the spirit of civility and compromise. Then they elected to King of the Birthers.
You can’t run a democracy that way.
This it true. However, what the SJ-R conspicuously leaves out is that wrecking our democracy is just fine with Republicans. In fact, it's been their plan all along
And that’s too bad because there are issues affecting just about every American that have been neglected for far too long. Health care, for instance... There appears to be little desire to do anything with the Affordable Care Act — Repeal? Replace? Amend? — or any other measure to increase access and lower the cost of health care for millions of Americans.
Wow.
Just let this sink in.
This is how my local rag sums up most titanic domestic public policy battle in decades. A battle defined by Democrats willing to losing seats and burn political capital to give more Americans affordable health care, and Republicans working ferociously to take health care away from millions of Americans -- and celebrating with a beer bust in the Rose Garden when they thought they had succeeded -- just because they hated the black guy.
Furthermore, my local rag is so desperate to toe the Both Siderist corporate line that they are willing to blithely ignore the fact that Donald Trump has been been openly lying through his teeth about health care since he began running for president in 2015. Promising over and over again that "soon" or in "two weeks" he would reveal some amazing plan that would cover everybody and cost a fraction of what health cares costs now.
For example, this:
Despite what you hear in the press, healthcare is coming along great. We are talking to many groups and it will end in a beautiful picture!
In an exclusive interview with ABC News, President Donald Trump declared he would be announcing a “phenomenal” new health care plan within the next two months, and said health care would be a priority leading up to his 2020 re-election campaign.
Trump Promised to Protect Medicare. That’s Not What He Said Two Weeks Ago.
I am not a newspaper. I have neither research department nor interns. And yet armed with only WiFi, Google, a beat-up laptop and the love of Jesus in my pretty blue eyes, it took less than an hour for your 'umbel scrivener to look up dozens of examples like these while no hint of the grotesque disparity between Democratic positions on this policy (actually helping people to not die and/or go medically bankrupt) and the Republican position on everything (do not care fuck all about anything except guns, federally-mandated childbearing, massive corporate tax cuts and packing the courts with prepubescent wingnut judges) managed to find its way into the the published opinions of the editors of my local Gatehouse rag.
Instead, we get this:
These are just two examples of issues that should have bipartisan solutions, yet both Democrats and Republicans are more interested in claiming political victories than they are coming up with practical solutions to Americans’ problems...
And this:
It’s clear most Americans are fed up. The most recent polling data from January 2020 puts the approval rating of Congress at 23%. That low number shouldn’t come as a surprise — after all, an awful lot of us fall somewhere in the great middle.
And this:
It’s up to us voters to demand more, and better, from the people we elect. Less partisanship and more production from the political class. Less showmanship and more substance. Less brass and more class. You know what we mean. Now, let’s show the politicians we’re serious.
All of which dutifully ignores the fact that (as one disreputable local wag pointed out) for two out of the last three years, the entire federal government was 100% in the hands of the Republican Party during which time they were free to pass an infrastructure bill or an early childhood education bill or a "Give Every MAGA Meathead a Free Pony" bill or any other bill they damn well pleased. They would've sailed through both houses and President Stupid would've signed it and showed it off on teevee like a two year old who has learned to go boom-boom in the potty like a big boy.
It also dutifully ignores the very dirty business the Republican Party has been up to since the Democrats took control of one half of one branch of the federal government just over one year ago:
House Democrats have passed nearly 400 bills. Trump and Republicans are ignoring them.
Legislative paralysis gripped Capitol Hill well before impeachment started.
... This has led to House Democrats decrying McConnell’s so-called “legislative graveyard,” a moniker the Senate majority leader has proudly adopted. McConnell calls himself the “grim reaper” of Democratic legislation he derides as socialist, but many of the bills that never see the Senate floor are bipartisan issues, like a universal background check bill, net neutrality, and reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. “From raising the minimum wage to ensuring equal pay, we have passed legislation to raise wages. And we have passed legislation to protect and expand health coverage and bring down prescription drug prices,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said in a statement to Vox. “We continue to urge Senator McConnell to take up our bills, many of which are bipartisan.” McConnell is focused on transforming the federal judiciary instead, with the Senate confirming over 150 of Trump’s nominees to the federal bench. And he has refused to bring Democratic bills to the Senate floor in part to protect vulnerable Republican senators from having to take tough votes that could divide the GOP ahead of the 2020 election. Still, some Senate Republicans fear inaction could make them just as vulnerable...
So why does my local newspaper choose to humiliate itself by conspicuously ignoring these sorts of widely-known and publicly available facts over and over again?
Because my local newspaper is dying. And everyone in town knows it. And instead of looking that fate in the eye and using what time they have left to report on the murder of American democracy by the GOP with brio and professionalism, they have elected cower in the closet, bartering away the last of their dignity to appease their vulture capitalist bosses and their decrepit fascist readers.
Which is, in sum, the tragedy of American journalism.
Because the fall has finally come.
And when the fall is all that's left, it matters a great deal how you face it.
Meet David French: the random dude off the street that Bill Kristol decided will save America from Trump
-- the wrongest man in American politics has now turned his non-existent electoral skills and his enduring and wildly outsized presence in the Beltway media (the MSNBC gang makes it a point to pimp his wretched podcast every time he draws up a chair) to the task of telling us Democrats how to run our party.
NeverTrump-Funded Phone Calls Push GOP-Leaning Independents to Vote in NH Dems Primary
... National #NeverTrump leader Bill Kristol, founder of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine, confirmed to NHJournal that he is part of the effort, which involves tens of thousands of New Hampshire voter contacts and a six-figure budget. “Yup. I’m happy to have joined with some others to help remind New Hampshire independents, who might be accustomed to voting in the Republican primary, that this year, they may be able to make more of a difference by voting for a responsible and electable candidate in the Democratic primary,” Kristol said.
You might dimly recall that Kristol spent his adult life helping to engineer the Republican Hate Machine to such a high degree of efficiency that it eventually shit him out like a wad of Bazooka Joe that Rush Limbaugh accidentally swallowed while visiting Oxy Town in 2003. So, like any other orphaned parasitic organism which can only survive in a very specialized environment, Kristol has come to the Democratic Party looking for another host.
Of course he promises that his motives are entirely benign:
[Kristol] denies that this effort is an attempt to game the Granite State primary.
And, of course --
Kristol believes that moderate Republican voters will appreciate having a choice in November, and that the first step is to keep alternatives to Sen. Bernie Sanders viable after New Hampshire votes.
-- they are not:
"We’re trying to save the nation from a choice between Trumpism and socialism.”
See, if Mr. Helper really wanted to get usefully involved with the discussion --
-- he would take his six-figure phone banking operation to Colorado or Maine or Arizona or, really, anywhere there's a congressional race with a Democrat within shouting distance of knocking off a Republican and burn up the phone lines there.
Hell, I was phone-banking for Betsy Dirksen-Londrigan just last week and there were only three of us in this big 'ol barn of a room.
So come to Illinois, Bloody Bill.
Come to Illinois, the final resting place of first Republican president.
