Alberto Gonzalez:

The True Father of the Tea Party

Remember nothing you said...
Admit nothing you did...
Take responsibility for nothing you ruined...
Deny to your last, lying breath that your own, phenomenally well-documented past ever happened...

...and profit from every drooling, imbecilic falsehood you tell.

So long as bigots, brownshirts, plutocrats and anti-abortion terrorists are permitted to lie without limit or penalty and inflict their various psychoses on the rest of us through the instrumentalities of their own major political party, national television network, national radio syndicate and God...we are fucked as a nation.

I Almost Missed This Article

"by" Andrew Sullivan on the Huffington Post's Shameless Blogsploitation Business Model of building a personal fortune on cranking out a constant, steaming river of traffic-driving softcore porn, gossip and the unpaid-for writing of others...

The HuffPo Model: Rich Liberals Exploiting Blog-Serfs For Millions
14 Feb 2011 02:01 pm

In the wake of the AOL merger, Nate Silver wonders how much money the Huffington Post makes off its unpaid serfs bloggers:

The Huffington Post receives huge amounts of traffic: about 15.6 million page views per weekday, according to Quantcast. But it also has a huge amount of content accounting for those page views. It publishes roughly 100 original pieces per day — paid and unpaid — in its politics section alone. And politics coverage, according to Arianna Huffington, reflects only about 15 percent of the site’s traffic. How many page views, then, does an individual blog post receive? And roughly what is it worth to The Huffington Post?

...

...lost as it was in the Daily Dish's usual barrage of posts made up mostly of free content gleaned from Politico, CNN, Ezra Klein, the National Review, Megan McCardle, PBS, The New York Times, Dave Weigel, Tyler Cowen, American Conservative Magazine David Frum, Wired, Twitter feeds, reprints of reader emails, the Wall Street Journal, Glenn Greenwald, Frank Rich, Matt Yglesias, Michael Medved, Christopher Hitchens, Felix Salmon, a variety of other Atlantic Writers, William Saletan, Josh Marshall, Paul Krugman, YouTube Videos, more David Frum, Nate Silver, Al-Jazeera, Radley Balko, still more reader emails, and so on.

The Huffpo Model -- which shares little DNA with traditional publishing, but bears a striking resemblance to industries like mountaintop mining or clear-cut logging insofar it concerns itself almost exclusively with the use of technology to ever-more-efficiently exploit its targeted resource while at the same time showing absolutely no concern with the disastrous, long-term damage their techniques are doing to the very environment which has made it possibly for them to prosper -- seems so perfectly engineered to kill whatever "professionalism" is still sloshing around at the bottom of the profession of writing that it is almost impossible to imagine that it was entirely accidental.

Mr. Sullivan's own addenda to the work of Nate Silver :

...
The temptation to run a website devoted almost entirely to hysterical claims about Obama's betrayals of the left and shirtless pictures of Hugh Jackman striding out of Australian surf becomes rather huge. Addictive even. But huge is the point. HuffPo's business model is sheer size. If you can throw as much content - free, borrowed or merely linked to - in one, sprawling place, you will generate a big enough crowd of eyeballs - 40 million of them a month at last count - to bring bigger and bigger advertisers to sign on.
...

was re-printed from his Sunday Times column.

Which, as he notes, is pay-walled.

There's a lesson in there somewhere.

I'm not sure what it is, but it does give me an excuse to re-run one of my favorite videos from Harlan Ellison:

Lie-gos

“A half-truth is a whole lie” -- Yiddish Proverb

Anybody idiot can lie, but only a powerful, massively well-funded machine can engineer bushels of goofy, paranoid individual lies into the interlocking components of a Great Wall of lies. And this is the one thing that the Right does supremely well: employing literally hundreds of thousands of people to construct an entire lie-based infrastructure which is constantly rebuilt, refreshed and expanded upon.

What I once called "the fucking Guanine and Adenine in [the Right's] fucking political DNA".

Of course, every now and then, rather than building out the lies and dumbing-down the Base with the steady, consistent, workmanlike evil of a Lee Atwater or Karl Rove Frank Luntz, some eager member of the Wingnut Leadership Caste -- like, say, Glenn Beck -- will try to rush things along by using every wingnut lie in the wingnut witchbag simultaneously to throw a single, poorly engineered suspension bridge to power through the howling, ignorant, paranoid heart American Conservative Movement

with predictable results.

But overall, the constant, tireless carving and lathing of lies into cheap, mass-produced Lego-blocks that can be endlessly rearranged to tell and re-tell the same, depraved fairy tale over and over and over again has been depressingly successful.

So when Paul Krugman reports that the notion of "The Stimulus" failing being a lie because...there really was no stimulus:

What’s extraordinary about all this is that stimulus can’t have failed, because it never happened. Once you take state and local cutbacks into account, there was no surge of government spending.

I cannot help but notice how efficiently this single lie has not only been used by the Right to discredit the very idea of a stimulus...

And yet the failure of the stimulus that never happened has become conventional wisdom — which is what I feared would happen, two years ago, when I was tearing my hair out over the inadequacy of the original plan.

But in the hands of the rest of the Right it also enjoys an endlessly recycled second life...

...from small-bore frauds about personally abusing the money to help out family members (via Urban Legends):

FW: stimulus jobs...

Some have said that the stimulus hasn't saved any jobs, but here is a case where at least one job was saved.

According to an unnamed source, Oregon State University Athletic Director Bob DeCarolis was considering firing their basketball coach, Craig Robinson, after an 8-11 start (2-5 in the Pac 10 conference).

When word of this reached Washington , Undersecretary of Education Martha Kanter was dispatched to Corvallis with $17 million in stimulus money for the university. The source now says that Craig Robinson's job is safe for this year.

For the record, Coach Robinson just happens to be Michelle Obama's Brother.

Analysis: While it's true that Oregon State University head basketball coach Craig Robinson is Michelle Obama's brother, virtually everything else in this message is false.

...to larger-gauge mendacities like the plush, Xanadu-style prison that ex-Senator Obama supposedly had built in Illinois using stimulus money (presumably so that any of his terrorist friends who get caught trying to destroy America could enjoy premium cable and 24-hour on-call massage services while serving their time):

...

One recent example were pictures of an palatial prison with the heading, "Wow, your tax dollars at work." The pictures showed courtyards, basketball courts and game rooms -- it could pass for a luxury hotel -- and it was alleged to be a new prison in Chicago.

The item noted, "Now... who was the Chicago US Senator who helped arrange the funds to build this beautiful `punishment' center. Oh yes, it was B. Obama!!! No wonder he sees nothing wrong with the wasted spending in his `Stimulus Plan.'"

Problem is, the palatial prison is in Austria, according to http://www.snopes.com, which debunks Internet rumors. Obama never had a thing to do with it.

...to the vast, ideology-spanning lies that the likes of David Fucking Brooks spin out of the myth of the Failed Stimulus to prop up their own, bullshit Centrist thesis that the Right should not be punished too hard for, say, lying us into Iraq and then botching their war-of-choice because Liberals get Big Things Wrong Too!

And as long as lying to idiots on behalf of fascists in remains a respected, low-risk/high-reward media gig in these United States, this situation will only get worse.

Sunday Morning Came and Went

It is my understanding that this week's "Meet the Press" featured an EXCLUSIVE! with John Boehner, followed by a panel featuring David Brooks and Mark Halperin.

It's like someone found Richard Cohen's porn stash.

I happily missed it all.

Instead, I spent the last several days doing family things: shoveling out cliffs and glacierettes of leftover snow w/ neighbors while kids built impregnable fortresses in the piles; visiting the Garfield Park Conservatory for a breath of Spring; watching Speed Racer and Rocky & Bullwinkle reruns with the wee ones; cooking; taking kids to grandma's; making up bedtime stories about fictional towns in real places...all while working my p/t gig hard during the interstitial hours and doing lots of packing, unpacking and driving.

So, in lieu of a standard post-Mouse Circus Excoriation, some overdue "Thank Yous" for all the people who left such kind comments downstream...

All,
Many, many thanks. The logistics of all of this is still up in the air, but I can say that much depends on finding the right balance among a lot of tricksie variables, some of which I never had to think about before. I can say for sure that, no matter what we end up doing, it will be good news for John McCain.

Anon,
Constantly.

Capt. Bat Guano,
Thank you.

Via,
Thanks.

Matthew Stephens,
Thank you.

Elliott,
Indeed it is.

Coldie,
Thanks!

jim,
Though Allah be the wiser!
And thanks.

Hef,
We will strive to argue just enough.

Zombie rotten mcdonald,
Tell the shamblers "hey", thanks from us.

SteveUpNorth.
Gratzi.

res ipsa loquitur,
Thanks.
Been a long,strange trip, eh?

Kathryn in MA,
Thank you

darkblack,
"Well" indeed. Considering I went into blogging for wealth, fame and women. I was beginning to think, like, Bogie, that I had been misinformed.

Rehctaw,
The great cosmic muffin is kind. As to your vote, well, this is Chicago :-)

Loveandlight
Thank you

StonyPillow,
Testing the ancient theory that two can podcast as cheaply as one :-)


knowdoubt,
Thank you.

KatieB/christine,
Many thanks.
I would not give the "anonymity thing" a 2nd thought...if I lived in anything approaching a meritocracy where (all things being equal) job security was based on how hard and/or brilliantly one did one's jobs, and not "at will" where a single peeved asshole or rival with the right connections can get you fired on a whim.

I do not live in that world.


gruaud,
Thank you

Dave S,
Thanks. No, it just means I've been doing my job :-)

One Fly,
Thanks. You put that very well.

Rev.Paperboy,
Anything for the cause ;-)

Birthdays of Infamy

Rufus Wilmot Griswold (Born February 13, 1815)

Edgar Allan Poe lived a short and tortured life.

What he left behind was some of the finest fiction in American history.

After Poe's death, his literary legacy fell into the hands of his worst enemy -- the Reverend Doctor Rufus Wilmot Griswold -- who proceeded to methodically attempt to destroy Poe's writing and his reputation:

It almost worked: the world was almost robbed of one of its most important literary legacies, and the reputation of its creator -- helpless in his grave -- was nearly shredded forever.

From the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore:

Whatever the cause of Griswold’s animus, the long years of resentment finally revealed themselves in words of bitterness perhaps unique in the history of obituaries: “Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it“ (New York Tribune, October 9, 1849, p. 2). Afraid of retaliation, Griswold signed this article “Ludwig,” but his dislike of Poe was well known and he was quickly exposed. Griswold admitted to Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, in a letter of December 17, 1849, “I wrote, as you suppose, the notice of Poe in The Tribune, but very hastily. I was not his friend, nor was he mine“ (Reprinted in Gill, The Life of Poe, 1877, pp. 228-229). The “Ludwig” obituary was widely reprinted.

Griswold, having now assumed the mantle of a true villain, then began his most ingenious plot. Through some less-than ethical arrangements with Maria Clemm, Poe’s mother-in-law, he secured the rights to publish a posthumous collection of Poe’s works. (Technically, the rights to Poe’s estate belonged to his sister Rosalie. Mrs. Clemm, unaware of his deep hostility towards Edgar, may have first approached Griswold.) The initial two volumes appeared towards the end of 1849, with a brief preface pronouncing the edition as a charitable act to benefit Mrs. Clemm. In actuality, instead of the promised money, Mrs. Clemm received six sets of the two volumes to sell at whatever she could get. Griswold even kept all of the manuscript material Mrs. Clemm had sent to him, all worth far more than one-hundred sets would have been. It was long claimed that Poe himself had appointed Griswold his literary executor, but no real evidence of this has ever been produced. Initially, the volumes contained only Poe’s writings, reprinting brief and somewhat modified notices by James Russell Lowell and N. P. Willis, but Griswold was not done yet.

In October of 1850, Griswold published an enlarged and even more vituperative account of Poe’s life in the International Monthly Magazine. Almost simultaneously, this article appeared as a “Memoir of the Author” in a third volume of Poe’s works. In this “Memoir” Griswold cleverly manipulated and invented details of Poe’s life for the least favorable account he could create. He even forged letters from Poe to exaggerate his own role as Poe’s benefactor and to alienate Poe’s friends.
...

Griswold thought he could purchase himself an immortal reputation by desecrating the bones of his betters.

Turns out he was right.

NYT Employee Urges Teachers and Scientists

To get out there and stomp the crap outta those mooching widows and orphans.

For freedom!

No kidding. He dresses it up in mumbly Centrist threads, but that is exactly what David Fucking Brooks is calling for: a cleansing little war-of-all-against-all, below-stairs, down among the servants.

The Freedom Alliance

"For every program concerned about budget cuts, the strategy should be less about proving merit and more about partnering with like-minded groups for offense."

...
"The foreign aid people, the scientific research people, the education people, the antipoverty people and many others have to form a humane alliance. They have to go on offense. They have to embrace plans to slow the growth of Medicare, to reform Social Security and to reform the tax code to foster growth and produce more revenue."

And why must the proles fight for crumbs? Um. Uh. Well...

Over the next few weeks, Republicans will try to cut discretionary spending to 2008 levels and tell their constituents they are boldly reducing the size of government. That is a mirage. Anybody who doesn’t take on entitlement spending is an enabler of big government. The supposedly rabid Republican freshmen are actually big government conservatives. They will cut programs that do measurable good while doing little to solve our long-range fiscal crisis.

The word Mr. Brooks is looking for here is "lying". Republicans are "liars" who are "lying" about the issue which their incoherently ranted out campaign slogans indicates they all believe is only slightly less important than celebrating the Imaginary Legacy of St. Ronald Reagan and trolling for skanks on CraigsList.

So instead of fudging and hedging and in every way imaginable cheating on this one, very-obvious matter, why won't Mr. Brooks ever finally once-and-for-God-damn-all just come out use the correct word like I'm sure his boss at Chicago's late, lamented City News Bureau drummed into him at least 100 times?

Three reasons:

1. Mr. Brooks would lose access: Mr. Brooks' stock-in-trade is alleging that he has gone where others cannot go and heard what others do not hear...which somehow always manages to sound exactly like everyone else's Beltway Common Wisdom. However, if he starts telling any portion of the political truth and calling his fellow Republicans out by their correct and proper name, he loses access.

2. Mr. Brooks would lose his job: Mr. Brooks' livelihood depends on hanging onto his specific, hyphenate-Conservative niche at all costs ( hyphenate-Conservatives are those outlying front men [and women] the Right fobs off on the press whenever they need to pretend they are not just a gang of angry, paranoid, white men, anti-science Fundies and billionaires.) As Andrew Sullivan made his bones as gay-Conservative, and Michael Steele makes bank on being a black-Conservative...Mr. Brooks is the "reasonable"-Conservative. Reasonable being defined as, "No matter how horribly the Right fucks everything up, and no matter how blatant the evidence, I will ALWAYS find some way to blame half of the problem on Democrats and the Left."

Like so:

"Meanwhile, the Obama administration theoretically opposes runaway debt while it operationally expands it. The president is unwilling to ask for shared sacrifice if the Republicans won’t ask with him. Fine. But he hasn’t even used his pulpit to prepare the ground. He announces unserious cuts with lavish fanfare."

Translation: Because Barack Obama refuses to allow his Administration to once again be Obamacare-death-panel-immolated for the amusement and political advancement of the Palinite orcs who run Mr. Brook's Party, Obama is unserious and falling down on the job.

3. Mr. Brooks is a Republican. Therefore while theoretically "Reasonable", he is operationally a liar.

And so, once again, Mr. Brooks is forced -- forced, I tells ya! -- to conclude that the only remaining alternative for environmentalists, educators, government research scientists and all other socially responsible types is to slug it out for table scraps with the weak, the elderly, the sick, the powerless...

...in the plutocrat Thunderdome Mr. Brooks' depraved ideology has prepared for them.

I Had Hoped "Chicago Code"

would be an awesome fictionalization of the assembler, COBOL, JCL, CICS, IMS big-iron computer programming subculture that existed briefly in Chicago at the tail-end of the age of 80-character records and mass-storage devices that took up whole floors and were protected by industrial-strength air conditioners and Halon gas blowers.

A dramedy about Friday red-eyes to Vegas, nooners in sticky South Loop hotels, pitching quarters into milk bottles for drinks at 4 a.m. taverns, hustling pool on the shitty little table at the Greek joint, barhopping and bedhopping from sundown until eye-frying sunrise, computer "games" made of formulas, exclamation points and asterisks, pinballing though alleys packed four in a rebuilt Porche, strolling the short-lived disaster that was the State Street pedestrian plaza and dreaming of some day "coding from the beach"...in an age when you could spend hours waiting for the six-inch-thick sheaf of green-bar paper vomited out by a core-dump to wend its way up from the print room so you could crawl your way through a heap of hexadecimal to find which LRECL was busted, or which record and line of code collided because a data entry clerk typed zero instead of "O".

But instead "Chicago Code" is just another bad, unnecessary cop show.

Stoopid Hollywood.

Mubearak Leaves

When history breaks its banks and cuts new courses right before your eyes, it seems only appropriate to go with something timeless from one of the "unacknowledged legislators of the world."

Ozymandias

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.