Gerson

File this one under "about fucking time".

Republicans got an administration that is morally small. Trump’s proposed budget would require massive cuts in disease research, global development and agricultural programs — just as a famine gathers a hideous strength. The proposed budget practices random acts of gratuitous cruelty.

This is a pretty bad combination: empty, easily distracted, vindictive, shallow, impatient, incompetent and morally small. This is not the profile of a governing party.
But then, I look a little closer, and I see the standard "moderate sensible conservative" thing goin' on.

Gerson is providing a way for Repubs to put some distance between themselves and 45* - as usual (driftglass nails this one pretty consistently).

As soon as the voters act on the bullshit that guys like Gerson are always flacking at them, guys like Gerson are always quick to bail.

1. Take whatever shitty things the GOP has been up to and tie them all to (eg) a president
2. Pretend you were never actually in favor of the shitty things "this president has done" (which gives every rube the rationalization for denying ever having voted for that phony traitorous bastard)
3. Make sure nobody even mentions his name at the next convention
4. Find the next guy to front for your fuckery and start again at 1

You may have noticed a slight change in the last dozen or so years.

First of course, there was apparently no such thing as a Republican President since Reagan. And there was no Republican majority anywhere in DC or any of the states where some really shitty things were happening to the GOP's most faithful voters.

Second, rather suddenly in the last few years, not that many folks are doing a whole lotta talking about Reagan either. Possibly because even the dumbest rubes have started to think a little - and they're thinking the Golden Era of the 80s is beginning to look more and more like a very long time ago.

And the kicker - what we've known for a good long time: they've been promised all kinds of sparkly results in return for their party loyalty, but what they've been delivered is little more than balloon filler.

BTW - that Gerson piece was very boiler-platey. We can now look forward to the followup which will attempt to nail it down in terms of "Trumpism" (in order to further distance the GOP from the guy they pimped at us - the guy carrying their fucking flag), and shoehorning it all back into the usual Yeah-But-The-Democrats-Both-Sides bullshit.

Let's Lay Down A Marker

To be clear:

Obama inherited a big fucking mess from W and in his calm and cool way, he went about fixing what he could fix over the next several years.

45* inherited the thing in fair-to-middlin' shape and in his hysteria-mongering and chaos-creating way, he's fucked it up in less than a month.

driftglass

Nobody deconstructs David Brooks better than driftglass:

In case you hadn't caught on by now, Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times is not really a person.

Mr. David Brooks is a brand. Mr. David Brooks is a profitable multimedia Conservative corporation that specializes in one and only one service. Like a bank or insurance company or funeral home, Mr. David Brooks sells reassurance. He specializes in very high-dollar, high-influence clients. Addlepated university presidents, for example. CEOs. Political professionals. Beltway media assholes. Sclerotic, plutocrat shut-ins. And so on.

His job for the last 20 years has been to reassure his clients that no matter how fucking insane, obstructionist, incompetent, vicious, dishonest, seditious and pig-ignorant the Republican Party may appear to be on any given day, it's not really as bad as you think. In fact, the real Republican Party -- the secret Republican Party which operates behind a curtain that only Mr. David Brooks can peek and sets policy using a code only Mr. David Brooks can decipher -- is doing just fine.

Everything is under control.

And if there are evident cracks below the water-line? Well you can trust Me. David Brooks when he tells you that they're very tiny cracks -- inconsequential really -- and certainly weren't caused by the captain and crew of the USS Saint Ronald Reagan rammed the ship repeatedly into every fucking iceberg in the North Atlantic.

 

Blowin' With The Wind

Samantha Bee

On becoming a "catastrophist" - there was never any likelihood that Obama was going to do the horrible things the wingnuts insisted he was going to do. He never said he was coming for anybody's guns, or that he was banning Christmas, or that he intended to destroy capitalism, or take over the healthcare industry or nationalize the car makers, or anything else. But that's what "conservatives" insisted was actually happening - they weren't just saying watch out for this or that - they said that's what Obama and the Dems were doing.

Obama never did it; Obama never said he'd like to do it if he could; and none of Obama's surrogates ever said or did any of that shit either.

But Glenn Beck sure as fuck said that's what Obama wanted to do. Glenn Beck said that's what Obama said he wanted to do.

And now we've got Glenn Beck retreating to the sheltering arms of False Equivalence.

Beck is saying Samantha Bee is doing the same thing he did, and for no better reasons than he had.  He's inviting the inference that Trump hasn't actually said he intends to "open up the liability laws" (eg), clearly implying that he'll go after people who criticize him.  Beck is ignoring the fact that one Trump surrogate has said Trump's detractors will "bow down before him", and that Kellyanne Conway has issued veiled threats of legal retaliation for opponents and press people who "should be careful what they say about Mr Trump".

The list of shit Trump has actually threatened us with is long and a matter of record.

So, yay Glenn Beck? Fuck that noise.

Yes - we have to get together to push back as hard as possible, but all is not forgiven or forgotten, Mr Beck.  You stood up and yelled "Fire" without cause and for no reason other than filling your bank accounts. Now that we have reason - and really good reason - you wanna make nice and start fresh? Fuck off, Uncle Fucker - your apology tour isn't even off the ground yet.

Today's Press Poodling

(all of this was front page at HuffPo as of about 11:40am today)

Because of this:

We get all this:

Don't get me wrong, I want to know about the negative side of Hillary's ledger.  But does it really have to be part of an obvious attempt at artificially pimping the horse race narrative?

Tempting

The north Carolina GOP decided to pitch a bit of a hissy fit because of what they tho't was a horrible Democrat doing something horrible to "their" America".

Here's a screenshot of that @NCGOP tweet about @timkaine, since they deleted it. #DemsInPhilly pic.twitter.com/LbAywwnnob

— Ben Amey (@BenAmeyTV) July 28, 2016

That's the story, but it's not really the story.

I think it happens too often for it not to be a Dirty-Tricks thing.  You make a charge about some made-up bullshit, which is intended to reinforce the negative image of the Democrat Libtards because of all the other made-up bullshit that's been installed like firmware in "conservative" brains for 35 years - it's not true, and you know it's not true, and you know it doesn't matter. It only matters that you get it into the consciousness stream.  The rubes are already conditioned to take on whatever negative shit you feed 'em so you put it out there, and if you get slapped down, then you can issue the basic non-corrective corrective or whatever, knowing that the thing has already taken root and has passed into the body of GOP lore about rotten Democrats, and the rubes will never go back and look for any kind of retraction or rebuttal.

And the other point is that you don't see that shit - not anything rising anywhere near that level anyway - coming from the Dems.

Yes Different

Congressional Interns, 2016 - Democrats:

Congressional Interns, 2016 - Republicans:

Questions?

OK, I Think I Get It

From Robert Reich's FB page:

May I have a word with those of you Bernie supporters who consider Donald Trump to be no worse than Hillary Clinton? It’s a point of view a number of you have expressed on this page, and it's dead wrong.

As I said when I endorsed Bernie for president, I view Hillary as enormously qualified to be president of the political system we now have. She is smart, capable, and experienced. I endorsed Bernie because I thought he would help create the political system we need. But Bernie will not be the Democratic nominee. That does not mean the end of the movement Bernie advanced. That movement was never about Bernie; it was about reclaiming our democracy and our economy. And that movement will live on, and it will grow. It needs your continuing activism and your tenacity.

You are, of course, entitled to support anyone you wish to. But if you don’t get behind Hillary you increase the odds that Donald Trump will be president. That would be a disaster for America and the world. Trump is a menace. He is not just unsuited to being the president of the United States – a bigoted narcissist who incites and excuses violence – but his presidency would threaten everything this nation stands for: tolerance, inclusion, freedom of the press, equal justice, and equal opportunity. It would make it far more difficult ever to achieve the progressive goals you and I share.

What do you think?

Our Mr Brooks

driftglass does the David Brooks takedown a lot better than I do.

Another in the continuing parade of passive-voiced responsibility-ducking bullshit:

Anybody who spends time in the working-class parts of America (and, one presumes, Britain) notices the contagions of drug addiction and suicide, and the feelings of anomie, cynicism, pessimism and resentment.

Part of this pain arises from deindustrialization. Good jobs are hard to find. But hardship is not exactly new to these places. Life in, say, a coal valley was never a bouquet of roses.

What’s also been lost are the social institutions and cultural values that made it possible to have self-respect amid hardship — to say, “I may not make a lot of money, but people can count on me. I’m loyal, tough, hard-working, resilient and part of a good community.”

 

It's A Wonderment

(at about 5:10 when Bloody Bill Kristol spouts off about how nobody trusts Trump or Hillary, Brazile nails it):

"...we have to get over the fact that we won't have a lotta love in this campaign."

I'm anything but a Donna Brazile fan, but that right there is fucking genius - get the fuck over it, kids.

The rest of it is more of the same old crap about Both Sides, and everybody's awful, and there's no reason anybody would wanna vote for any of these jokers, and gee whiz, I wonder why we can't get Americans to show up on Election Day. Which of course is what makes the Donna Brazile thing so sparkly, and why she doesn't get to talk about it much on the air.  She came a little too close to calling the Horse Race Bullshit for what it is.

And also too - is there really any reason to keep Cokie Roberts around - for anything?  I haven't heard her express a cogent thought that isn't basically "Yeah, but the Democrats..." for a dozen years or more (thanks, driftglass).  Does she have somebody's grandkids tied up in her basement or something? Fuck me, lady - enough. You're done. Time for you to be the Grande Dame of the Georgetown Cocktail Circuit full-time or whatever, but please just go the fuck away already.

Not that I feel strongly about it or nuthin'.

It Is To Laugh

If it was any less tragic, it wouldn't be funny.



And there it is - right there at the end.  Did you catch it?  

It's always some variation on, "Yeah, but the Democrats" - what driftglass calls "the razor in the apple".

This was a 4-minute piece about Trump dropping in on the enemy encampment in DC.  They spent the whole time saying not really much of anything except that a buncha Show Ponies got together for a little meet-n-greet, followed by the usual grip-n-grin photo ops etc, and while it sounded like we were kinda getting a little subtext about the really bad shit going on in the GOP, in the end, the Press Poodles at PBS just have to bring it back to the crapola False Equivalence that keeps the coffee mugs and the tote bags flying off the shelves and blah blah fucking blah.

Pay It Heed, Dummy

And remember that while the Dems have been pretty much too quiet and too absent for too fucking long, the GOP is nothing but Guns-Everywhere-Kill-'Em-All-Let-God-Sort-It-Out.

You don't like it? Get up on your hind legs and do something about it.

The Inoculating Attack

FBI Joins Investigation Of #FlintWaterCrisis https://t.co/qlZKC2Rb8a #p2 pic.twitter.com/uZbPVLrePw

— R.Saddler (@Politics_PR) February 2, 2016

The main reason Repubs are always launching what are truly silly "investigations" into non-troversial un-scandals like Benghazi and Voter Fraud and Whitewater and IRS and Fast And Furious and Vince Foster and whether or not Hillary was on the grassy knoll in Dallas and and and - anyway, they do it partly because they know their little fishing trips will uncover something eventually that embarrasses whoever they're sliming, plus they can use it to sell the baloney about "aren't you tired of all the scandal surrounding [insert Democrat's name here]?  But mostly, by constantly using this one government power tool, in the most cynical and manipulative way possible, they set the frame that makes it easier for them to claim "it doesn't mean anything; it's all just political" when (eg) there're legitimate reasons for somebody to slap Rick Snyder's face around to the other side of his head.

And BTW - if you can't point out at least 6 times the Dems pulled this kinda shit, then shut the fuck up with all that Both Sides bullshit.

UpChuck Todd Rides Again

This one's making the rounds big time, so why not pile on a little?



Todd's main "point" is that if he barks at the politicians who make statements that are obviously untrue, then those politicians won't come on the show again.  As long as he doesn't call 'em on their bullshit, he'll always have a steady stream of "News Makers" on the show in order to attract lotsa viewers who'll absorb some of the enlightening messages from all those ads about Lockheed's F35 and Raytheon's new E-Surveilance Software and the killer drones from General Atomics (yes, that's a real company).

That's what makes sense now.  That's what passes for reasoning.  Chuck Todd doesn't want people who don't tell the truth to stop coming on his TV show.

I'm not big on arguing from a strictly binary position, but this one's kinda hard to avoid: Chuck Todd wants people to lie to us, on his show.

What exactly would be the harm in keeping liars off your show, UpChuck?

What We're Not Talking About

So, it's not about "Amnesty".  But it is about using the word 'Amnesty' to stir up the shit-for-brains-knee-jerk bunch.

I guess I'm wondering a tiny bit - why does Megyn admit it on the air like that?  I get the feeling she's the DumFux News version of Up-Chuck Todd - not the least bit interested in getting to the facts; she's only there to keep the mill wheels turning; her job is to tend to the Horse Race.  If she ever asks Ted Cruz on the air why he opposes Immigration Reform when it seems pretty clear Obama's trying to do basically what Repubs want him to do, she'll be fired immediately.  So maybe she's feeling so confident of her position of power she just let's it slip(?)

Dunno, but here's the thing: As soon as there actually is some kind of amity and collaboration in DC, ad revenues at Fox and NBC and CNN hit the skids.  They need the fight - shootin' wars, political campaigns, race trouble, gun violence - whatever makes us more likely to watch the coverage is what gets pushed by the image-makers and the pollsters and the lobbyists.

The reason we keep hearing about "both sides" is because billions of dollars are being spent on both sides of any given issue in order to keep us in a state of constant tension.

Tried and true - divide and conquer - if we're kept busy enough fighting each other over a few scraps that slop onto the floor, we're more likely to discount the simple fact that we've been bustin' our humps workin' together to put the food on that fuckin' table in the first fuckin' place.