“...additional tools...”

Sure.  Whatever.

And now the debate commission stands exposed as just one more sclerotic American political institution daintily trying to sidestep the obvious problem that there are no "addition structures" which will civilize a contest when one of the participants is a lying, bomb-throwing sociopath.  

JUST IN - The Commission on Presidential Debates says it will adopt changes ahead of next debate pic.twitter.com/Ok6U1Yme2v

— Josh Lederman (@JoshNBCNews) September 30, 2020

Because without a shock-collar on President Stupid and a kill-switch on his microphone and an on-site team of fact-checkers who are given equal time to assign the appropriate level of "Pants on Fire" to every lie coming out of his mouth, there is no way on Earth to stop Trump from turning any "debate' into a shit-flinging madhouse.

No Half Measures

UPDATE: Megyn Kelly Is Unsure Whose Knob She Has To Polish To Get Back Into The Spotlight

So why not polish 'em all!

First it was Glenn Greenwald.

And now it's the Cyborg Sent From The Future To Destroy America.

Just taped a segment for ⁦@megynkelly⁩ podcast today. Both of us have moderated debates w/ ⁦@realDonaldTrump⁩. Both of us have “Trump tattoos” as a result, she more than me. We agreed Chris W failed last night, went full opposition to @POTUS. https://t.co/6olpXIA0e8

— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) September 30, 2020

This woman got paid a shit-ton of money to be the blonde Aryan fantasy object of every octogenarian bigot who watches Fox.

Then got paid another shit-ton to leave.

Then got paid another shit-ton to fail spectacularly on NBC.

Then got paid another shit-ton to leave there.

But despite her mountains of ill-gotten loot, she apparently has a "Pay!Attention!To!Me!" itch that only being in the limelight can scratch

So don't you worry, Jason Miller -- 

-- she'll get around to you sooner or later.

UPDATE:  Megyn "Quit squirming, open wide and take it like a woman" Kelly has not yet gotten around to buffing Jason Miller's trailer hitch, but she has come damn close.

Since I originally posted this on September 30,  guests on her godawful, "Please, please, please hire me back, Fox News!" podcast have included Dana Loesch, Adam Carolla (on cancel culture and his 'movie' "No Safe Spaces"), Ted Cruz and Ben Shapiro.

No Half Measures

Oldest Living Confederate Lesbian Tells All...To Bret Stephens

Into the night Bret Stephens raced.

The election was drawing nigh -- Where had the time gone! -- and he had yet to cash in on the Magic Ruralism (tm) fad that had fattened the wallets and resumes of so many other Beltway media hacks who had decamped from New York and D.C. to the godforsaken interior of the continent to root through godforsaken small town diners to find that perfect, weirdo Trump voter.  The One who could be amplified into a stand-in for the Many, and whose unguarded love of Donald Trump would seem to unlock the mystery behind what the fuck had just happened for those smartass, know-it-all Liberals in their decadent coastal enclaves.

Problem: Bret Stephens has no interest whatsoever in leaving the cozy confines of his own decadent coastal enclave to find such a weirdo. God, why does life have to be so hard for Bret Stephens!

Solution: Bret Stephens lives in New York City! Yay! And nearly eight and a half million people live in New York City, so surely, with absolutely minimal effort, Bret could find one freakish outlier around whom he could build a column full of Insightful Insights into our Parlous Times!

Quick, to the cab stand!

To the first cabbie he saw, Stephens said, "Cabbie, take me to the cab stand where Tom Friedman finds all those wonderful cab drivers who say just exactly what Tom Friedman wants them to say!"

The cabbie, replied, "Sorry, sir. It is well known among all cab drivers that such cab stands exist only in Davos and Egypt and Paris."

As was his right as a member of the upper class, Stephens beat the man severely for giving him an answer which displeased him and moved on down the line.

To the next cabbie he saw Stephens said, "Cabbie, take me to the cab stand where Peggy Noonan finds all those wonderful cab drivers who say just exactly what Peggy Noonan wants them to say!"

Seeing what had just happened to the first cabbie, the second cabbie said, "Right away, sir!" and off they sped. 

The cabbie radioed his dispatcher that they needed an "ID-Ten-T with Dijon" which is cabbie code for "I have a pundit in need of a quote. Looks like a cheap fucker.  Anyone up for it?" 

Several answered. The cabbie chose the nearest volunteer, and they arrived at that location moments later. 

Stephen's leaped from the cab. He could feel his time running out. 

Stephens said, "Is this the cab stand where Peggy Noonan finds all those wonderful cab drivers who say just exactly what Peggy Noonan wants them to say!" 

The leader of the cabbies, a tall, sharp-eyed woman dressed in the manner of her profession, stepped forward.  

"Obviously, in the interest of confidentiality we can neither confirm nor deny this," she said. "But we can get you where you are going, if you understand my meaning." 

Stephens said that he understood and explained his problem to the cabbie chieftain. 

"Yes," she answered, "I know of just such a person. A woman named Chris. She will give you what you seek. I will take you to her." 

Stephens practically wept at the news. He was so moved that he took out his change purse, unclasped it, and gave each of the cabbies a shiny, new quarter-dollar for their help, and hang the expense! 

 And the thing is, the cabbie actually did know such a person who, with minimal prompting, would definitely give Bret Stephens exactly what he was looking for. A woman named Chris who the cabbie chieftain knew because she had broken up with her in 2017 because Chris was a selfish asshole. 

You see, except for the fact that she is a lesbian... 

 Meet a Secret Trump Voter 

 ‘Being a lesbian who’s voting for Trump is like coming out of the closet again.’ 

 ...there is nothing remarkable about "Chris" at all. She's just another Trump voter who Bret Stephens desperately wants to embiggen into Something Of Importance:

 ...But if Trump defies current polling and wins again, it’ll be thanks to a discreet base of support from voters like Chris, who fit into none of the cultural or demographic stereotypes of the Trump base. 

 It’s worth understanding where she’s coming from. 

Chris claims to have:

...voted for candidates of both parties over the years and was enthusiastic for Bernie Sanders in 2016.

And yet Chris is only interested in the price of gas, that her health insurance is paid for by someone else and where her 401k is headed. 

Chris is also sick of homeless people cluttering up her neighborhood. 

 Also: 

 "I don’t care about Afghanistan and the Middle East. " 

Has Trump lied about the pandemic? 

“Yeah. But when this first started, the news media was saying that millions of people were going to die. And look at it: 200,000, compared to the population.” 

 Pussy grabbing? 

 “Didn’t bother me at all. For every cad out there, there’s equally a gold digger who will let you do it.”

 Going to war against the free press? 

 “These days, yeah. Whenever I read a front-page story and I get to a disparaging adjective, I stop reading.” 

 The Kavanaugh nomination?

“I didn’t believe Christine Blasey Ford for one second. Her lack of recollection; the fact that nobody could [contemporaneously] corroborate her account.” 

Trump being Putin's finger-puppet?

“The Clintons’ fingerprints are all over [Trump/Russia]. I’m really glad we have Bill Barr as A.G. to look into it.” 

 Trump being, y'know, crazy:

 “Everyone kowtows to Iran because they’re crazy. Now we have our own bit of crazy.”

Back in his own, private decadent enclave and with only moments to spare until the publishing deadline, Bret Stephens tries to end his deep dive into the mind of the Oldest Living Confederate Lesbian by sounding ominous:

If the Democratic Party and its allies can’t hold on to a voter like Chris, who else might they be losing?

But it doesn't sound ominous at all.  In fact, it sounds awesome.

Because if the Democratic Party and its allies can’t hold on to selfish assholes like Chris, they are definitely doing something right.  

No Half Measures

Don't Forget The Most Important Part of Early Voting

The Blessing o' the Ballot.

The best-laid schemes o' cats an' men

Often turn out just fine.

Three Words to Refute David French's Ludicrous Proposition: The Obama Administration

As readers of this weblog know, the whole Both Siderist worldview is driven by the myth of equal/reciprocal/reinforcing/accelerating intolerance from both sides of the political spectrum, which acts like some kind of a Newtonian law of political action/reaction: each side becoming more extreme in response to the other side's previous increased extremity.

And the entire thesis of David French's book is that the centripetal force from The Extremes on Both Sides acting on each other has made it impossible for the country's central government to function any longer. No choice left but to break apart, either in fact or in practice.

Last week, Mr. French sat down with both Ezra Klein and Charlie Sykes, and he and they amicably discussed without once mentioning that it is absurd on it's face based on the obvious fact of the existence of the Clinton and Obama administrations.  

Especially the Obama administrations.

You see, you and I remember to Obama Administration, but like virtually every other Conservative, Mr. French apparently does not.

To refresh your memory, it was a successful, scandal-free Democratic administration which historians will find sandwiched in between the two worst, most disastrously failed presidencies in American history.  Twin pillars of early 21st century failure which were both brought to you courtesy of the Republican Party.  

One of them, the Bush administration, lied us into the wrong war, fucked that war up, spent us broke, invented sweeping unitary executive powers, illegally wiretapped millions of American citizens, set up a torture regime and presided over the collapse of the global economy.  

And the next Republican administration, the Trump administration, has been worse.  

So far, the Trump administration has lied about everything, doubled the deficit, sold the country out to  foreign adversaries, fucked up the response to a pandemic so comprehensively that it has killed over 200,000 Americans and collapsed the global economy, and is making open war on the press, the constitution, his political enemies and, generally, the entire country. 

So for Mr. French's theory of accelerating/oscillating Extremes on Both Sides politics to prove out, Democratic presidents who governed prior to each of these Republican catastrophes must have been so proto-Bolshevik that Extreme that the Right felt justified in swinging the pendulum so far back that it touched Mussolini's chin.

But of course that wasn't even remotely the case.

Instead, as I wrote of Bill Clinton more than a decade ago ("Like a Virgin"):

Once upon a time, there was a President named Bill Clinton, who was, by most historical standards, a typical Centrist Republican, although by a fluke of geography and circumstances he ran for public office with a "(D)" after his name.

Under his Administration, many Conservative ideas which had long gathered dust on the shelf -- ideas such as welfare reform, a balanced budget, debt reduction, a strict “Pay as You Go” fiscal regime, jobs-jobs-jobs, budget surpluses, NAFTA, GATT, official bans on gay marriage, etc. -- were finally realized.

And for all of his good work on behalf of their ideology, Conservatives spent eight, long years treating Bill Clinton -- a Southern, White, Christian man -- as if he were a case of flesh eating nuclear syphilis.

Because he did not run for office with an "(R)" after his name.

And because he did not run for office with an "(R)" after his name, according to the leading voices in the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement, Bill Clinton was, in no particular order, Hitler, a Socialist, a rapist, a warmonger, a serial murderer, and a drug dealer, whose Presidency was somehow vaguely illegitimate...

The Republican base only came to believe that Clinton was History's Greatest Monster because the Republican Hate Machine spend eight years continuously cranking out an unending stream of wild, hair-on-fire propaganda, culminating in four years of Republican congressional witch hunts and impeachment.  

And Barack Obama?

Barack Obama was a perfect, eight year experiment in giving the Centrists and Both Siderists  exactly what they said they wanted.  What they said "the American people" were crying out for.  A Democrat who was ideologically an Eisenhower Republican and who was built from the ground up to be a compromise machine.   A Democrat who the nation hired to help  repair all that the Bush administration had wrecked.  

A Democrat who was treated like this by the Republican Hate Machine from Day One:

A Democrat who nonetheless patiently offered Republicans the hand of comity and accommodation over and over again only to pull back a charred stump every single time.  

And for all of Obama's truly superhuman efforts to find some way to bring Republicans to the table to collaborate on healing our nation's deepest wounds and solving our deepest problems, what we got in return was eight years of Republican sabotage, sedition, unhinged racism, Birtherism and, finally, Trump.  

So I guess this is my way of telling David French to take his Conservative Concern trolling -- 

David French warns of the potential dangers to the country―and the world―if we don’t summon the courage to reconcile our political differences.

Two decades into the 21st Century, the U.S. is less united than at any time in our history since the Civil War. We are more diverse in our beliefs and culture than ever before. But red and blue states, secular and religious groups, liberal and conservative idealists, and Republican and Democratic representatives all have one thing in common: each believes their distinct cultures and liberties are being threatened by an escalating violent opposition. This polarized tribalism, espoused by the loudest, angriest fringe extremists on both the left and the right, dismisses dialogue as appeasement; if left unchecked, it could very well lead to secession...

-- fold it until it's all pointy, and shove it were the sun don't shine.

And that goes double for anyone who interviews this goof about his book but conspicuously fails to mention the preceding decades of American political history which negate every word of what French is selling.

No Half Measures

Thomas Paprocki, Bishop of the COVID Co-Morbidity Diocese in Springfield Illinois...

 

...would like to see a lot more of his flock get sick and die.

From WMAY:

Paprocki: Stop ”Extraordinary” Pandemic Measures, Let Students Play Ball

Springfield’s Catholic bishop says it’s time for students to get back on the playing field… and for the state to end what he calls “extraordinary” measures against the coronavirus pandemic.

Appearing live on the WMAY Morning Newsfeed, Bishop Thomas John Paprocki said young people need to be active and take part in sports… and contends thay are at low risk of either catching the virus or spreading it to others. His statements, though, are contradicted by recent studies indicating children can catch and spread the virus to others.

Paprocki says there should be no more “lockdowns” that prevent people from going to church or earning a living...

On pretty much every social issue (denying funerals to gays, denying communion to anyone backing anything that whiffs of pro-choice and, of course, the country's terrible exorcist shortage), Paprocki is reliably 100% wingnut, so this is really no surprise.

Still, even by that standard, "pack the pews and fuck science" during a pandemic seems pretty hardcore nuts to my non-16th century ears.

But then again the pope never gave me one of those fancy red hats so what do I know?  Maybe Paprocki is a helluva guy who happens to have been possessed by the undead spirit of the diabolical Tomás de Torquemada for the past 60 years, in which case let me say that I deeply regret my previous smartass remark about the country's terrible exorcist shortage.  

No Half Measures

The Great Convergence Continues

My first podcast, very exciting! @GGreenwald sat down with me to discuss the election, the state of the media, & the revolt v. Joe Rogan at Spotify. He’s fascinating, check it out here: https://t.co/kRCgbwqZMk

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) September 28, 2020

When it comes to Mr. Spleenwald, it is just barely possible that your old jackbooted, O'bot, corporate lackey pal droneglass knew what he was talking about all along.

No Half Measures

The Forces That Wrecked Rod Serling's "The Arena" in 1956...

...are the same corrosive forces that killed the mainstream press and made it possible for legions of Both Siderist hacks to flourish on its grave. The imperative of Advertising and the terror of alienating a mass audience by even accidentally brushing up against something that is undeniably true but might make them uncomfortable. 

From the introduction to Serling's book, Patterns (excerpted here):

One of the edicts that comes down from the Mount Sinai of Advertisers Row is that at no time in a political drama must a speech or character be equated with an existing political party or current political problems... 

 

‘The Arena’ took place in 1956, and no juggling of events can alter that fact. So, on the floor of the United States Senate (at least on Studio One), I was not permitted to have my Senators discuss any current or pressing problem. To talk of tariff was to align oneself with the Republicans; to talk of labor was to suggest control by the Democrats. To say a single thing germane to the current political scene was absolutely prohibited. So on television in April 1956, several million viewers got a definitive picture of television’s concept of politics and the way government is run. They were treated to an incredible display on the floor of The United States Senate of groups of Senators shouting, gesticulating and talking in hieroglyphics about make-believe issues, using invented terminology, in a kind of prolonged, unbelievable double-talk… 

 

In retrospect, I probably would have had a much more adult play had I made it science fiction, put it in the year 2057, and peopled the Senate with robots. This would probably have been more reasonable and no less dramatically incisive.

There is no explanation for the ongoing failure of the American media to speak plainly and clearly about the long, public descent of the Republican Party into fascism and madness other than a fear of audience reaction.  A fear that not only would have Republicans making open warfare on the press (spoiler: they already do) but that the vast and cowardly Middle that believes everything is fucked because of The Extremes on Both Sides and depends on the media to feed them reassuring bromides about their moral superiority would cancel their subscriptions and changing their channels in droves.

This is a fear which, in a health democracy, would never be allowed to polluted the coverage of the collapse of the GOP by a free and fair press.

Sadly, in case you hadn't noticed, we do not live in a health democracy.  We live in a corporate oligarchy where pleasing the advertisers by not driving the audience away with scary truths they do not want to hear is the Prime Directive.  

 

No Half Measures

Breaking: Rare Footage of the Mainstream Media and the Never Trumpers...

...reacting to the rise of the fascist Right over the past 40 years. 

No Half Measures

Professional Left Podcast #565

Welcome to my neightborhood.

 "Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.”

-- Henry David Thoreau, writer

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:  

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The Professional Left is brought to you by our wholly imaginary "sponsors" and real listeners like you!

Matthew Dowd is a Fundamentally Ridiculous Person

Mattthew Dowd today

The media must do a better job on this race. For example, instead of asking why Biden isn’t doing rallies, they should be asking Trump why he is doing rallies in the midst of a deadly pandemic. Too many in the media are still operating upon old models of how campaigns work.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) September 25, 2020

Matthew Dowd four years ago during his "Both Sides Do It!  Destroy the K'rupt Duopoly!" salad days  (original Tweet since deleted because Mr. Dowd really, really does not like being reminded of his past) --

Either you care both about Trump being sexual predator & Clinton emails, or u care about neither. But don't talk about one without the other

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) November 1, 2016

Kinda wild to learn at this late date that the position of chief political analyst at ABC News was actually one of those just-hire-any-warm-body-and-have-'em-learn-about-politics-on-the-fly deals.  

Honestly if I'd have known I might have applied for the gig myself since I wouldn't have arrived on the job dragging behind me an entire caravan of fatuous opinions and asinine Tweets that I would eventually have to scrub once they started being used by disreputable Liberal bloggers to show that I never had the slightest fucking idea what I was talking about,  

Remember, Remember!

How Life in the Bill Kristol Household Has Changed

Now on his uppers and dependent on the largess of credulous Liberals (who he still clearly loathes), in his 67th year, Bloody Bill Kristol, friend to presidents and architect of wars, find himself reduced to doing piecework like some drudge in a 19th century garment factory, cranking out one "OMG, the GOP is dead-dead-dead and deserves it!" piece every few days just to keep himself in wine and electricity.

Meanwhile, Kristol's idiot son-in-law. Matthew Continetti finds himself in even worse shape, broke and living in his father-in-law's basement, where he and his increasingly estranged wife bed down each night among moldering copies of The War Over Iraq: Beyond Baghdad and The Project for a New American Century while a giant portrait of the founder of the Kristol Nepotism Dynasty, Irving Kristol, glowers down at him.  

The old man's will decreed that there be at least one such portrait in every room so he could keep a stern eye on his legacy even from beyond this vale of tears, and everywhere Continetti goes, Kristol the Elder's eyes seem to follow him accusingly.  He can almost hear him whispering "Failure!  Failure!" even into his fitful dreams.

Because "failure" is the right and proper word.  

Before Trump and COVID, Continetti's throwaway Conservative rag, The Washington Free Beacon, and his presence in the mainstream media were held aloft by his proximity to his father-in-law's media clout.  But once Bill Kristol was tossed out of his own magazine and forced to crash on Charlie Sykes' couch and dance for Liberal dimes, the value of that clout was drastically reduced.  

Suddenly fewer and fewer people felt obliged to listen to a professional-Palin-apologist wax tragic over the cruel treatment Conservatives suffer at the hands of those devil Liberals (who were now keeping daddy-in-law off the dole) or, really, what the founder of The Washington Free Beacon thought about much of anything at all.  Then, just as quickly, network executives discovered that casting someone other than the 39-year-old son-in-law of Bill Kristol in the role of "punchably-smarmy, young, pasty, privileged Conservative" was, in the words of the prophet, "Super easy; barely an inconvenience", and just like that Continetti found himself being market-corrected right out of his comfortable seat on cable news by the also-39-year-old Noah Rothman.

It seems like just yesterday that Continetti was an stripling, cosseted cipher on a rocket ride to the very top of the food-chain in the carefully curated and temperature-controlled terrarium of Elite Conservatism.  All of that now lay in ruins.  The Republican Party is now nothing but The Fourth Reich for Dummies.  Every wingnut with a keyboard is in a mad dogfight over what the word "Conservative" even mean anymore.  And Continetti's own father-in-law is upstairs every night selling off his birthright as the Kwisatz Haderach of American Right for a penny a word and a pat on the head from the dirty commie Left.  

Well screw the family and screw their legacy and screw living in the basement, filed away with everything else his father-in-law wants to forget.  Bill Kristol is old and all of his whining cronies are old and their ideas are old and stink of failure. Everyone with eyes to see knows that the future of the Right is fascist.  That the +90% of the GOP who adore Trump and revel in his overt racism and authoritarianism are never going back to Bill Kristol's milquetoast party of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio.  And that's a lot of wide-open real estate for a young man on the make to build on, provided he is willing to torch any shred of dignity he may have once had and use his fading mainstream media credentials to get himself in with the mob of bigots and imbeciles who now own the Right.

Which is why Matthew Continetti now has his own byline over at one of your Crazy Uncle Liberty's favorite fringe blogs. The Patriot Post. One of those hate-sites that caters to people who believe Fox News and Breitbart have gone all soft and leftie.  And there you will find Bill Kristol's idiot son-in-law pounding out a new column every week, excoriating the "Soviet Left" and praising the Dear Leader for "changing the world" (no link because fuck 'em):  

How Trump Changed the World

On Sept. 16 the editorial board of the New York Times did the impossible. It said something nice about President Trump. “The normalization of relations between Israel and two Arab states, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, is, on the face of it, a good and beneficial development,” the editors wrote. They even went so far as to say that the “Trump administration deserves credit for brokering it.” I had to read that sentence twice to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Perhaps the world really is ending...

It is in the realm of foreign policy that Trump’s deviations from political norms have had the most positive and irreversible consequences...

By establishing inescapable facts on the ground over the ceaseless objections of critics, President Trump overrides the often meaningless verbiage that constitutes international diplomacy and ends up changing the very terms of the foreign policy conversation...

...Whatever a President Biden might do about China—and he seems far more interested in repairing our alliances in “Old Europe” than in tackling this paramount challenge of the 21st century—he would operate within the constraints Trump established and on the intellectual terrain Trump landscaped.

There is no greater measure of presidential significance than a chief executive’s ability to transform not just his own but also the opposing party. When it comes to the Middle East and China, the Democrats are closer to Donald Trump today than they were at the outset of his term. That they find themselves in accordance with someone whom they despise is evidence of Trump’s ability to realign politics at home and abroad. This is no small feat.

Some might say it’s worthy of a prize.

Oh to be a fly on the wall at the Kristol household this Thanksgiving after the second scotch.   

No Half Measures

When Someone Spray Painted An Anarchy Symbol On His Driveway...

... Tucker Carlson, the host of Fox News' White Power Hour used his enormous media platform to pound away, night after night, on the "Radical Left".  

I was at the protest outside Tucker Carlson’s house. Here’s what actually happened.

Less than 15 people chanting in the dark, with a tambourine.

His fairy tale of Antifa mobs nearly storming his castle immediately got a big boost from Tucker's Dear Leader because that's how Republicans roll:

Trump, Daily Caller repeat Tucker Carlson’s unproven claim that protesters broke his door

But when a death squad under the color of law kicked in Breonna Taylor's door and murdered her in her own bed while she slept? 

Tucker Carlson, while claiming BLM "lied" about Breonna Taylor's death, falsely accuses Kenneth Walker -- Taylor's boyfriend -- of "supposedly [being] a drug dealer."

Walker doesn't have any drug offenses nor was a part of any warrant involved in the raid on Taylor's apartment. pic.twitter.com/Qg7SGgTAB0

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) September 24, 2020

No Half Measures

Once Again The Real Complaining Party at the Bar in This Courtroom Is Civilization

Senator Chuck Grassley, March 16, 2016:

“Today the President has exercised his constitutional authority.  A majority of the Senate has decided to fulfill its constitutional role of advice and consent by withholding support for the nomination during a presidential election year, with millions of votes having been cast in highly charged contests...

“A lifetime appointment that could dramatically impact individual freedoms and change the direction of the court for at least a generation is too important to get bogged down in politics.  The American people shouldn’t be denied a voice..."

Senator Lindsey Graham, 2018:

If this sounds like a repost of an earlier essay, well, it is.

And once again the coming elections are vitally important.  Critically important.

Period.  Full stop.

However over the longer term, one election will not be sufficient, because we are not faced with a dispute over policies or priorities.  Instead we are faced with the genuinely existential problem of political party which has become entirely corrupt, depraved and sadistic.

By choice and from top to bottom.

And the reason that this gang of Republican criminals and monsters feel so free to commit their atrocities so openly and proudly -- the reason that they boast about it -- is because so much time, money and effort was expended last time to make sure that the last gang of Republican criminals and monsters and their media enablers --

-- were never brought to book for a god damn thing.

That's why we at the Professional Left say "Burn Their Lifeboats".  Why we are extremely suspicious of Republican Never Trumpers who would have us believe that somehow, after a lifetime of professional service in he leadership of the Republican party, only noticed five minutes ago that their Republican party was full of Republicans.

Because if any of the architects of our present disaster or any of their media enablers are allowed to escape judgement this time and set up shop once again, before you can say "The Extremes on Both Sides!" they will have scurried through the Bush Off-Machine and be right back in business, rebuilding their same old monster factory with the backing of the same old plutocrats, promoted by the same old media corporations and staffed by the same old wingnut hobgoblins. 

Behold, a Tip Jar!

And Their Last Words Were, "But Romney Still Stands!"

Here lies the career of Mitt Romney 

Cratered at the age of seventy three. 

For fifteen minutes he faked some vitality; 

Not a bad record for this locality.

Pity the poor Never Trumpers.  

First to endure the shock of suddenly discovering at the tender age of [checks notes] somewhere between their late 50s and early 70s that their Republican Party has been full of Republicans all along.  Then to be political orphaned and thrown into the cruel world with nothing but the clothes on their backs, the many properties, privileges and amassed wealth which being loyal Republican lieutenants for decades had earned them, millions of dollars in free publicity gifted to them by a fawning mainstream media for their every utterance, immediate underwriting from wealthy backers for their every undertaking, book contracts, op-ed columns and so forth.   

And the worse of it?  Being forced to eke out this hardscrabble existence by laboring day and night  to [checks notes] rip off every searing, clear-eyed appraisal that Liberals have made of their party over the past 40 years (for which Liberals were made made outcasts from the mainstream media as cranks and alarmists for saying such horrible things out loud), filing off the serial numbers and then reselling them at a huge markup as edgy, new and brilliant Conservative epiphanies...all while continuing to hold in contempt the very same Liberals from whom they steal so freely every single day.  

As I said, it's a man's life in the British Dental Association it's a hard life out here in the cold, cold world for Never Trumpers, but at least they've always had the blazing hearth of Mitt Romney's True Conservatism to warm their fingers and fannies when the bitter winds blew.  

To-date I believe I have listened to pretty much every podcast on which Stuart Stevens has been a guest.  He has five or six stock anecdotes, and he always finds time to work a few of them into the conversation, almost verbatim.  And as he has moved from microphone to microphone clinically autopsying what has happened to his party over the past 50 years that has led it to this very dark place, Stevens always has a special carve-out for Romney.  

Stevens ran Romney's 2012 campaign so it's no surprise that he nearly always slips in a paeans to Romney as a pillar of pure, unalloyed Conservatives rectitude in every appearance, but praise for Romney is shot right through pretty much all Never Trump media 

Romney the Righteous.  

Romney the Just.

Romney the Sellout.

From Politico:

Romney supports holding a vote on next Supreme Court nominee

The announcement means Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has enough votes to move forward with Trump's pick.

As I pointed out last year as Never Trumpers were anointing Romney as their new Savior ("Hokum's Heroes") --

And unto them this day in the Beltway media, a Republican Savior was born.

Or, rather, assembled out of spare parts salvaged from their previous failures...

-- as long as they continue to look for salvation in a new paint job slapped on the same, old, monstrous ideas, you can never trust these people.

No Half Measures

Beltway Media Zombies Cannot Help Themselves: Chris Matthews Edition

They're hardwired to be this way -- 

Trump is right to show respect for RBG. True presidential behavior. Far too rare.

— Chris Matthews (@HardballChris) September 21, 2020

-- which is why it wouldn't shock me to see Matthews follow the Howard Kurtz career path of 1) cratering one's career on the slightly-more-reputable side of cable teevee news only to 2) bob back to the surface over at the Fox News propaganda abattoir like an unflushable turd . 

After all, Fox has a long record of hiring mainstream news has-beens, giving them a quick tuck-and-roll and then rolling them out to add a light dusting of respectability for an octogenarian audience who kinda sorta vaguely remembers them as being trusted and "newsish" back in the day.   

No Half Measures

Senate Majority Arsonist

No Half Measures

In Case You Were Still Wondering Why...

...many of your Never Trumper BFFs react very badly when you go poking around in their recent pasts:

3/ The Senate can and must deny Obama the chance to make an appointment to the Supreme Court. We have both the votes and the power to do so.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) February 13, 2016

@apkeaton48 @CheriJacobus Yawn.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) February 14, 2016

Kristol: "For me, the Supreme Court is a disqualifier for Hillary. Commander-in-Chief is a disqualifier for Trump." https://t.co/P587qXDSXT

— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) May 16, 2016

The Republican Senate Should Hold Firm on Supreme Court Nomination https://t.co/elP6GtlgtU via @NRO

— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) March 16, 2016

Sorry Merrick Garland, but America really doesn’t care about youhttps://t.co/03A4R3NFaz via @RightWisconsin

— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) April 25, 2016

Absolutely right. It's not personal. It's Constitutional. Senate must stop Obama from reshaping Court & Constitution https://t.co/DWI2sa1mem

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) February 18, 2016

No Half Measures

Professional Left Podcast #564

This is walking distance from our house.

 "Truth uttered before its time is always dangerous.”

-- Mencius

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:  

• On Believing Impossible Things 

The Professional Left is brought to you by our wholly imaginary "sponsors" and real listeners like you!

The New, New, New Fascist Party Line

By and large the American Fascist Party has given up trying to defend their racist madman leader in public.  So instead, while either tacitly or explicitly conceding that Trump may well be a corrupt, lying, brain-fried sexual predator and white supremacist and Russian stooge who is visibly disintegrating before your eyes, they are now trying to...well...the Alert Reader will notice the theme.

From Nikki Haley, as she slips into the blocks to prepare to run in 2024:

Approach the prospects of a Biden presidency with clear eyes & no illusions. Electing Biden would move the country pretty dramatically to the left in all but the most optimistic scenarios. A vote for Biden may well turn out to be a vote for Kamala Harrishttps://t.co/XuNFfXrcyU

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) September 18, 2020

From the odious Danielle Pletka in the Washington Post, who an innocent member of the general public may only know by her bio in the Washington Post as "a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute" (so respectable!) or as the creepy, robot-sounding lady in absurd glasses who for some reason has a reserved seat on Meet the Press, but the rest of us know as a former staffer to one of the most racist monsters in modern Senate history, the late Jesse Helms, and a former backer of Iraq War grifter Ahmed Chalabi and a huge fan of invading Iran and the co-host of a podcast with torture enthusiast Marc Thiessen.  Here is her (by now well-dragged) hot take on the 2020 race:

I can’t stand Trump. But Democrats may force me to vote for him.

...I fear that former vice president Joe Biden would be a figurehead president, incapable of focus or leadership, who would run a teleprompter presidency with the words drafted by his party’s hard-left ideologues. I fear that a Congress with Democrats controlling both houses — almost certainly ensured by a Biden victory in November — would begin an assault on the institutions of government that preserve the nation’s small “d” democracy. That could include the abolition of the filibuster, creating an executive-legislative monolith of unlimited political power; an increase in the number of Supreme Court seats to ensure a liberal supermajority; passage of devastating economic measures such as the Green New Deal; nationalized health care; the dismantling of U.S. borders and the introduction of socialist-inspired measures that will wreck an economy still recovering from the pandemic shutdown.

And here is The National Review delivering all the fear words -- Mexicans!  Deficits!  Late-Term Abortion!  Guns!  Karl Marx! -- that will reliably make wingnuts shit their britches. (no link because fuck 'em):

The Consequences of Biden

Whether he wants it or not, his election will move the country quite far to the left.

...Assuming Democrats keep control of the House — Republicans would need to pick up 20 seats, a tall order — and the Democrats control the Senate, a lot of sweeping, left-leaning legislation would be headed to the president’s desk. The Green New Deal. Taxpayer funding for late-term abortions. A shift away from school choice and charter schools. Certainly, an end to fracking on public lands, and perhaps a more sweeping set of restrictions, if not an outright nationwide ban...

...Biden told Beto O’Rourke during his endorsement ceremony, “You’re going to take care of the gun problem with me. You’re going to be the one who leads this effort” — which certainly suggests Biden has no serious qualms about gun confiscation...

It is likely that migrants in Mexico and Central America would perceive Biden’s moves as a de facto amnesty policy...

If Biden is elected, you will see a serious push for statehood for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia...

Finally, as the Trump administration has largely ignored the deficit and the debt for the past four years, Democrats have concluded that they won’t need to worry about them, either. But America is running out of “later” when it comes to entitlement programs...

Joe Biden may not be on the left wing of his party, but Biden’s election would strengthen and galvanize the left wing of his party and give them some control over some levers of real power in the federal government...The former vice president is ideologically, temperamentally, and politically not inclined to be a bulwark against his party’s left wing and those who openly embrace an overhaul of American life more in line with the socialism envisioned by Karl Marx.

Since running against the actual Joe Biden is pretty obviously a doomed strategy, the brain wizards of the American Fascist Party are mounting a last-ditch campaign against Imaginary Joe Biden who would will be a mere sockpuppet for the secret cabal of Soros-funded Bolsheviks just waiting to sweep to power and [checks notes] make sure all American's have access to decent health care and that something is done about gun violence, immigration and climate change.

As the song says, don't threaten me with a good time.

No Half Measures

On The Matter of "Undecided" Voters in 2020...

...I am as one with Butch and Sundance.

No Half Measures

The Republican Memory Hole Is Deep, The Republican Memory Hole Is Wide

Here is Mitch McConnell today vomiting out an abridged version of Danielle Pletka's loathsome "Dirty Commie Liberals Are Forcing Me To Vote For Donald Trump" drivel from earlier this week, and warning that democracy will die of a fatal overdose of democracy if Joe Biden is elected:

MCCONNELL: "After they change the filibuster, they're going to admit the District as a state. They're going to admit Puerto Rico as a state. That's four new Democratic senators in perpetuity. Once they get a hammerlock on the Senate, they're going to then pack the Supreme Court."

— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) September 18, 2020

Here is a brief excerpt from the 2016 Republican Party Platform:

The Territory of Puerto Rico

We support the right of the United States citizens of Puerto Rico to be admitted to the Union as a fully sovereign state. We further recognize the historic significance of the 2012 local referendum in which a 54 percent majority voted to end Puerto Rico’s current status as a U.S. territory, and 61 percent chose statehood over options for sovereign nationhood...

Short of marching down the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue in Klan robes screaming the "N" word -- 

-- the Republican Party could be any clearer about how deeply they hate and fear non-white American citizens.

No Half Measures

I Am The Book-Burning, Moron Left

Steve Schmidt:  Professional Indignantista

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't believe that I, personally, have ever been a topic of discussion on one of the Very Large Podcasts on one of the two Very Large Liberal Podcast Networks.  So let me say right up front that I have rarely felt more "seen" than I felt listening to Ana Marie Cox interview her friends Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson on an abbreviated episode of her podcast.

Because after letting them talk about how terrific their Lincoln Project is for  25 minutes or so, she got around to talking about me!

Or at least asking them my question.

The question.  You know the one.  The Question reserved for the fields of Trenzalore and the fall of the Eleventh.  The Question that must never be answered, hidden in plain sight. The question they have been been running from all their lives.

Anyway, here it is  (rush transcript, all typos are my own):

Ana Marie Cox:  ...Steve, I covered the McCain campaign so I know exactly what your...contribution to, um, the Republican Party has been.  But I know this is a subject of, like, constant discussion on the Left.  About the Never Trumpers.  And I'm curious just what you think of that?  The fact that there are people who really want to hold you responsible for, basically, because you helped create the modern Republican Party you set the stage for what's happening now.

Steve, I'd like to hear from you first, 'cause I...I've talked with Rick about this, but I haven't heard from you.

I'd like to be able to report that good ol' Steve took it in stride and answered it in the spirit in which it was asked.

I'd like to be able to say he replied thoughtfully and deliberately, like a pro, and not as a peevish, shouty denialist.

Now that it's clear the Republican Party it rotten with bigots and imbeciles and mad men all the way down to the floorboards, I'd like to be able say that good ol' Steve steered his remarks towards the Stuart Stevens' Middle Road: acknowledging, calmly and with some grace, that his Republican Party did, in fact, exist prior to 2016.  That it is a party built on racism, that it has been rocketing down the road to fascism for a long time, and that despite clear and ample warnings that this was the case, for whatever reason, he and people like him went right on building the GOP monster machine that birthed Trump. 

But of course, the Steve Schmidt that speaks with some humility -- who exhibits a modicum of Personal Responsibility -- does not exist anywhere except the imaginations of wishful thinkers.

Instead, the other Steve Schmidt showed up.  The real Steve Schmidt.  The guy who, just last year, ripped off his microphone, stormed off the set and burned down his own podcast at the effrontery of anyone even brushing lightly up against the subject of Howard Schultz.

You remember Howard Schultz, right?   He was the guy for whom Steve Schmidt was perfectly willing to toss his principles overboard, abandon the fight against Trump and lose his job at MSNBC once a sufficient quantity of Schultz's  cash was on the table.

That Steve Schmidt showed up...and unloaded on me with both barrels.

Schmidt:  I guess my reaction is to the smugness and the sanctimony of it.

Wow, smug and sanctimonious!  That is so "me".  Please continue!

Schmidt:   Makes me want to respond with a colorful colloquialism from my native New Jersey [Rick Wilson giggling in the background] that begins with "Go" and ends with "yourself".

Yeah, I get a lot of that.

Good ol' Steve then goes all the way in on the political coward's favorite, all-occasion area denial weapons -- Straw Men and Both Siderism -- with a little sermonette about how anyone who thinks one political party is 100% virtuous and the other party is 100% evil is a sign of "being a moron."

In fact, it turns out that it's people like me and not people like good ol' Steve who fucked everything up!

People like me are...

Schmidt: ...precisely the type of people that explain the reciprocal tribalism that's gotten us into this fucking disaster.

So just exactly how bad am I?  Well, according to good ol' Steve, I am somewhere between "Charlie Kirk" bad and "Nazi book burner" bad.

Schmidt: I have as much disdain for a Left Wing Nut as I do for a Right Wing Nut, and a book burner is a book burner.

Good ol' Steve continues:

Schmidt: I can't stand the illiberalism of the hard core Left.

Yeah, we're all pretty terrible, what with our promiscuous "remembering" of "stuff that happened in the past" and all.  Good ol' Steve continues:

Schmidt: I was a Jack Kemp Republican!  I come from the northeast of the country which was filled with Liberal Republicans...at one point in time.

Yes, and glaciers once extended all the way down to the Missouri and Ohio Rivers...at one point in time

Also it is shocking to learn that they didn't have radio or television or internet access or regular newspaper deliveries or any awareness of, say, Newt Gingrich or Wayne LaPierre or Tom Delay or Jerry Falwell or Karl Rove or Grover Norquist or Bill O'Reilly or Lee Atwater or Phyllis Schlafly in "the northeast of the country" until 2015.

Shocking and sad.

Good ol'  Steve continues:

Schmidt:  One of the things that I think is badly overdue in this country in something that, y'know, I have, y'know, tried to do over the recent years is to understand where other people are coming from.  What informs their point of view. 

OK, this cracked me up.

Here's a late-breaking newsflash for good ol' Steve.  I have no trouble understanding where Republicans have been coming from the last several decades because they never shut the fuck up about it.

Out here in the real world where I live what the Right thinks has been roaring out of Conservative Hate Radio all day, every day, for decades. 

What the Right thinks snarls at you from the televisions tuned to Fox News at the garage and the barber shop and the bar. 

What the Right thinks sneers at you on the op-ed page of our local paper -- a paper that syndicates ghouls like Ann Coulter and Mark Thiessen because they know damn well what Republicans want.

And what the Right thinks gets right up in your face at civic events and local eateries and at the grocery store and at the post office because out here in the real world local Republicans have never been the least bit shy when it comes to sharing their thoughts about "Killery" or "The Kenyan Usurper".

And speaking of The Kenyan Usurper, good ol'  Steve continues:

Schmidt:  ...the American political system is built on concepts including incrementalism and accommodation and compromise and we're gonna need some of that in this country.  We're gonna need some grace after this period.  

Once again, good ol' Steve's feigning ignorance of basic American political history is almost comical.

See, we had an eight year experiment in compromise with Republicans.  It was called the Clinton Administration:  Clinton actually delivered on lots of things Republicans had screeching about for years and they reacted by shutting down the government, launching a four year witch hunt and impeaching him over trivia.

Then we had another eight year experiment in trying to work with Republicans when Democrats elected an intelligent, humane, scandal-free constitutional law professor to fix the multiple, crippling catastrophes Steve Schmidt's Republican Party had left in their wake after eight years of George W. Bush.   Barack Obama was exactly the sort of incrementalist/accommodationist leader that Steve Schmidt now dreams of and Steve Schmidt's Republican Party reacted to his election with eight relentless years of sabotage, sedition, unhinged racism, Birtherism and, finally, Trump.

So fuck that, Steve, and if that makes me a zealot, well I can live with that.

And speaking of zealots...

Schmidt:  And we are in a bad, bad, bad place, and I think that the zealots -- and they exist across the spectrum in American politics, right? -- aren't going to be the answer to making anything better.  And I think that anybody who want's to assign blame, y'know, to people that, y'know, served in campaigns or in government really as political staffers I think is profoundly naive about, y'know, what happened over the course of, y'know, the last 20 years, y'know, at a...at a meaningful level with what they really disagree with. 

This right here is why you will almost never find a Never Trumper in any forum where a smug, sanctimonious, book-burning zealot like me might ask them questions about their inconvenient past.

And I refuse to trust any Republican -- especially ones hawking a book or taking up space on cable teevee -- who either runs away or lies or goes off like a human hand-grenade whenever the subject of the pre-2016 GOP comes up.

No Half Measures