Foreign Affairs

Falun Gong

• It's my contention that all authoritarian regimes are, by their nature, Right Wing.
• It's my contention that there's no such thing as a Left Wing authoritarian regime.

The Chinese Communist Party has been authoritarian and autocratic from the beginning.

Falun Gong is no different, it's just that they grew out of the old ways of the Chinese imperial dynasties, with some perverse, monstrously affectatious element of "spirituality" attached to it, in an attempt to give itself some kind of gravitas or credibility.

So yeah - they're pitted against each other - both wanting supreme power over people.

And Falun Gong is no more "religious" than the American evangelicals. It's politics, just as religion has always been politics.

And every business, every church, every political organization needs PR.

BTW, I told ya BKjr is a fuckin' loon.

Conservatives Aren't

There's no greater bullshitty bullshit than "we need conservatives to run things because they're the good business people."

Florida taxpayers pick up bill for Ron DeSantis’s culture war lawsuits

Governor’s Disney battle and extremist policies are met with costly lawsuits covered by ‘blank check’ from Republican legislature

Since Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, took office in 2019 and embarked on his culture wars, lawsuits from various communities whose rights have been violated have been stacking up against the far-right Republican.

As DeSantis fights the lawsuits with what critics have described as a blank check from the state’s supermajority Republican legislature, the mounting legal costs have come heavily at the expense of Florida’s taxpayers.

In recent years, DeSantis’s ultra-conservative legislative agenda has drawn ire from a slew of marginalized communities as well as major corporations including Disney. The so-called “don’t say gay” bill, abortion bans and prohibition of African American studies are just a few of DeSantis’s many extremist policies that have been met with costly lawsuits in a state where residents are already struggling with costs of living.

“The list of legal challenges precipitating from DeSantis’s unconstitutional laws is endless,” the Democratic state senator Lori Berman said.

“We’ve seen Floridians rightly sue many if not all of the governor’s legislative priorities, including laws that restrict drag shows for kids, prohibit Chinese citizens from owning homes and land in Florida, suppress young and Black and brown voters, ban gender-affirming care and threaten supportive parents with state custody of their children, and of course, all the retaliatory legislation waged against Disney for coming out in support of the LGBTQ+ community,” she said.

As a result of the mounting lawsuits against DeSantis, the governor’s legal costs, which the Miami Herald reported last December amounted to at least $16.7m, have been soaring.

In DeSantis’s legal fight against Disney following the corporation’s condemnation of his anti-LGBTQ+ laws, it is going to cost the governor and his handpicked board nearly $1,300 per hour in legal fees as they look into how the corporation discovered a loophole in DeSantis’s plan to acquire governing rights over Disney World, Insider reports.

“Disney is a perfect example. It doesn’t hurt any Floridians. There is nothing. It’s creating a legal issue out of nowhere and now Disney sued so they have to respond and that is going to cost taxpayers’ money. The whole Disney case is just because of DeSantis’s ego and his hurt feelings,” the Democratic state senator Tina Polsky said.

“Taxpayers are paying to foot the bills to pass unconstitutional bills and to keep up with his petty vengeance,” she said, adding: “I don’t think they’re aware at all … They’re too brainwashed at this point that they wouldn’t even care.”

Meanwhile, in another case covered by the Orlando Sentinel, DeSantis’s administration has turned to the elite conservative Washington DC-based law firm Cooper & Kirk to defend the governor against his slew of “anti-woke” laws. The firm’s lawyers charge $725 hourly, according to contracts reviewed by Orlando Sentinel. As of June 2022, the state authorized nearly $2.8m for legal services from just Cooper & Kirk alone, the outlet reports.

With mounting taxpayer-funded legal costs against DeSantis’s legislative agenda, critics ranging from civil rights organizations to the state’s Democratic lawmakers have lambasted DeSantis’s policies as unconstitutional and mere political stunts designed to propel him to the frontlines of the GOP primary.

“DeSantis went to Harvard for his [law degree]. This is someone who should understand the constraints placed on him and the state by the United States constitution and the Florida constitution. He knows those constraints, but he doesn’t care. His goal is to intentionally pass unconstitutional laws and set up legal challenges in order for the conservative supreme court to overturn long-held protections,” Berman said.

Bob Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University, echoed similar sentiments, comparing DeSantis to his main competition and current GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, both of whom he said are cut “from the same cloth”.

“Ron DeSantis is a Harvard law school graduate. He is a lawyer. Whereas Donald Trump at least could make the argument, ‘I’m just the layperson, I don’t know’ if … something is deemed illegal or unconstitutional … DeSantis does not have that defense,” Jarvis said.

Nevertheless, DeSantis appears unfazed.

“DeSantis knows very well that … what he is doing is unconstitutional and illegal … Lawyers by training are very cautious so this is quite remarkable to have a lawyer-politician who not only knows better, but does not care,” said Jarvis.

To DeSantis, it does not matter whether he wins or loses the legal battles as he knows he “ultimately controls the Florida supreme court”, according to Jarvis.

“He is playing a ‘heads, I win, tails, you lose’ game. If he gets one of these crazy policies passed and they’re challenged and the court upholds him … he can say to the press and to the public, ‘I was right and the proof is in the pudding because the courts agreed with me,’” he explained.

“But even better for DeSantis when they rule against him … DeSantis is able to stand up and say, ‘These crazy judges want our children to watch drag shows, they want our children to be taught to be gay, they want Disney to be this terrible company. That’s why you need a strong governor and why you will benefit from having me as president because I will make sure to get rid of these judges and replace them with judges that have traditional American morals,’” Jarvis added.

As DeSantis continues to fight his costly legal battles, the state’s supermajority Republican legislature appears to encourage him wholly.

“We’re in a litigious society,” the state senate president, Kathleen Passidomo, told the Tallahassee Democrat while the senate budget chair, Doug Broxson, told the outlet: “We want the governor to be in a comfortable position to speak his mind.”

With Republicans rushing to DeSantis’s defense, perhaps the most glaring example of the legislature’s endorsement of his legal wars is the $16m incorporated into the state’s $117bn budget to be used exclusively for his litigation expenses.

Speaking to the Guardian, the state’s Democratic house leader, Fentrice Driskell, called the budget a “carte blanche” from Republicans and the result of zero accountability.

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“The legislature is supposed to be a check on executive power. By giving him a carte blanche to go and fight these wars in court, it’s basically just saying that there are no checks and balances when it comes to the state government in Florida,” said Driskell.

“It’s a waste … They are just allowing this single person to impose his will on the state of Florida and they’re willing to waste taxpayer dollars to do it,” she said, adding: “Most Floridians can’t afford their rent and property insurance rates are through the roof. We could have redirected that money towards affordable housing.”

Driskell went on to describe Medicaid iBudget Florida, a waiver that provides disabled Floridians with access to certain services and which currently has a waitlist of more than 22,000 residents.

“It’s very difficult for them to get off that waitlist because the Republicans underfund Medicaid. We could put that money towards funding the waitlist and getting people off of it. I think there’s only $2m that was put in the budget for that this year. If we added the $16m that was added for these culture wars, my goodness, that’s $18m. Presumably we could help get nine times more people off of the waitlist,” said Driskell.

As DeSantis remains embroiled in his legal woes at the expense of Florida taxpayers, there is perhaps a single group of people that have benefited the most out of all the legal drama, Jarvis told the Guardian.

“The lawyers who got that $16.7m, that’s money from heaven. That’s money that fell into their laps … Anytime there’s a loser, and the loser here is the Florida taxpayer, there is a winner. The winners here are the lawyers who are collecting those enormous fees. The more that plaintiffs file lawsuits and the more they fight these crazy policies, you know that’s just money in the bank for these lawyers,” Jarvis said.

“DeSantis has been God’s gift to lawyers,” he added.

So we can now counter the usual conservative complaints about profligate libruls:

Republicans have no problem

spending Other People's Money.

Today's Bye Bye

Political obituaries are tricky. Especially when the "politician" is more focused on power and money than they are on public service and trying to make things better for actual people.

The Huckster Culture in the GOP is very attractive to people who see a political campaign as little more than a revenue opportunity.

That may be "the way of the world", but I guess I'm a little old-fashioned. I still believe very strongly in something AC Howerton (a mentor) told me a thousand years ago. "If you do good for your clients, doing well will take care of itself. Keep doin' good, Mikey."

Sarah Palin Loses as the Party She Helped Transform Moves Past Her

The former Alaska governor, once the standard-bearer of the G.O.P.’s dog-whistling, no-apologies culture, was no match for the same forces she rode to national prominence.

It is hard to overstate just how much of a jolt to the political system Sarah Palin delivered when she defeated her first fellow Republican 16 years ago.

He was Frank Murkowski, the sitting governor of Alaska and a towering figure in the 49th state. She was a “hockey mom” and the former mayor of a small, working-class town who vowed to stick it to the “good ol’ boys.” That race put her on the map with the national Republican Party and set her on a path that would change her life, and the tenor of American politics for years to come.

Then, Ms. Palin was at the vanguard of the dog-whistling, no-apologies political culture that former President Donald J. Trump now embodies.

Today, having lost her bid for Congress after years out of the spotlight, Ms. Palin is a much diminished force.

She was, in many ways, undone by the same political currents she rode to national prominence, first as Senator John McCain’s vice-presidential nominee in 2008 and later as a Tea Party luminary and Fox News star. Along the way, she helped redefine the outer limits of what a politician could say as she made dark insinuations about Barack Obama’s background and false claims about government “death panels” that could deny health care to seniors and people with disabilities.

Now, a generation of Republican stars follows the template she helped create as a hybrid celebrity-politician who relished fighting with elements in her own party as much as fighting with Democrats — none more so than Mr. Trump, who watched her closely for years before deciding to run for president himself. He ensured this month that he would remain in the spotlight, announcing another bid for the White House in 2024.

But as the next generation rose up, Ms. Palin’s brand of politics no longer seemed as novel or as outrageous. Next to Mr. Trump’s lies about a huge conspiracy to deny him a second term, or Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s casual allusions to political violence, Ms. Palin’s provocations more than a decade ago can seem almost quaint.

Ms. Palin, 58, started on the road to political fame after her upset victory in the governor’s race in Alaska in 2006, when the Republican Party was in need of a fresh face. Republicans had just lost badly in the midterm elections — what President George W. Bush called a “thumping.” The G.O.P.’s conservative base was angry with party leaders over their support for an immigration reform bill. And the broader public was war-weary after five years of conflict in the Middle East with no end in sight.

Ms. Palin was as different from a Bush Republican as they come. She promised to do things as governor that politicians in her party typically didn’t, such as restoring social welfare funding and scrutinizing tax breaks her state gave to large corporations. She appealed to Alaskans’ insularity, too, channeling mistrust of outsiders like oil companies, fisheries and federal agencies.

She prided herself on being able to work across party lines. One Democrat she developed a relationship with in the state Legislature was Mary Peltola, who has now defeated Ms. Palin twice — first in a special election over the summer to fill Alaska’s lone congressional seat and now for a full two-year term. Ms. Peltola is the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress, and Ms. Palin has spoken of her warmly despite their political rivalry.

But Ms. Palin had long displayed a willingness to make specious claims that her opponents were untrustworthy because they were different, and to insinuate that those differences stemmed from a lack of patriotism or Christian faith. In her victorious race for mayor of Wasilla in 1996, she brought the country’s culture wars to the steps of city hall, championing biblical principles and the Second Amendment. She suggested — falsely — that electing her would give Wasilla its “first” Christian mayor. (Her opponent and the incumbent mayor, John C. Stein, was raised Lutheran.)

Ms. Palin’s supporters were always drawn to her not just for the battles she picked and the enemies she made — the people she denigrated as “blue bloods” in the G.O.P. leadership and the “lame-stream media” were two favorite targets — but to her ordinariness. She was a working mother who had a young son with Down syndrome, a teenage daughter who got pregnant right when the Palin family was introduced to the nation in 2008, and a son who served in Iraq.

When Mr. McCain picked her as his running mate, he told advisers at the time that he knew it was a gamble, and said in characteristically colorful terms that that was what he liked about it. It was a Hail Mary pass that fell short in the end. Ms. Palin’s youth and freshness balanced out Mr. McCain’s image as an aging, decades-long denizen of Washington. But her inexperience in national and world affairs made her a liability. She sometimes struggled to answer basic questions such as what newspapers she read.

But to the legions of followers that seemed to grow larger by the day on the campaign trail — at one rally in The Villages retirement community in Florida, 60,000 people turned out to see her speak — the missteps only made her more authentic. And as she became more popular, her language grew sharper and more incendiary.

At one point, with help from McCain campaign speechwriters, she drew widespread condemnation after accusing Mr. Obama of “palling around with terrorists,” which many people at the time saw as a barely veiled, racist allegation. (False rumors that Mr. Obama was secretly a Muslim had long circulated among conservatives.) Her rallies started to draw angry outbursts from the crowd when she mentioned Mr. Obama’s name. People shouted “treason!” and “Obama bin Laden.”

Many wrote off Ms. Palin for dead politically after Mr. McCain lost and when, a few months later, she resigned as governor. But to many Republicans, especially those outside Washington, she was still the biggest star in the party. She went on to write a best-selling memoir, “Going Rogue,” and signed a contract with Fox News worth $1 million a year.

She was initially considered a front-runner for the G.O.P. presidential nomination in 2012, at times beating or slightly trailing the eventual nominee, Mitt Romney, in the polls. And when she embarked on a bus tour up the East Coast over Memorial Day weekend in 2011, she drew so much media attention that news of her stop in New Hampshire pushed Mr. Romney’s announcement for president that same day off the front page of the local paper.

It was during that trip she made a fateful visit to Trump Tower at Mr. Trump’s invitation, where the two met and posed for the throngs of paparazzi waiting on the sidewalk before stopping at a nearby pizzeria for slices. (Infamously, he ate his with a fork.)

At the time, many political insiders thought the possibility that she could run was very high. But privately, she was already expressing doubts about the toll that another campaign would take on her family. And when a group of Republican activists met with her near her home in Scottsdale, Ariz., to pitch her on the idea of running — including two future Trump campaign officials, Stephen K. Bannon and David N. Bossie — she conveyed as much.

She lives in Arizona, and she was running to represent Alaska.

Herschel Walker lives in Dallas, and he's running for Georgia Senator.

Mehmet Oz lives in New Jersey, but he ran for Pennsylvania Senator. 

Josh Hawley lives in northern Virginia, but he's a sitting Senator "from" Missouri.  

It doesn't get any more Republican than that.

Ms. Palin was never truly able to rekindle the same spark she lit during the 2008 campaign, when she was the loose-lipped insurgent to Mr. McCain’s elder statesman of the establishment.

In 2016, she declined again to run for the Republican nomination, clearing the path for the next Republican insurgent: Mr. Trump. He asked her for her endorsement before the Iowa caucuses in February, and she obliged. In a column she wrote later that year for Breitbart, Ms. Palin recalled with delight what a friend had told her about why she liked Mr. Trump so much: Liberals, establishment Republicans and the media couldn’t stand him. “I love him because YOU hate him!” Ms. Palin said her friend told her.

The reversal of Ms. Palin’s political fortunes today means that many of the renegades who modeled themselves after her — and many of her rivals — have outlasted her. Lisa Murkowski, the daughter of the former Alaska governor Ms. Palin defeated 16 years ago by more than 30 points, has won her bid for another term to the United States Senate. (Ms. Murkowski, a Republican, endorsed Ms. Peltola, the Democrat who beat Ms. Palin on Tuesday.)

Ms. Palin, never one to be especially sentimental about public service, often seemed disengaged during what was supposed to be her comeback campaign and revival as a national conservative icon. Though she went into the race with the highest name recognition of any rival and had Mr. Trump’s endorsement, she struggled to raise money toward the end.

And she kept a light schedule. In the final days of the election, with little time left to campaign, she was spotted at a Knicks game in New York.

Democrats believe they're called to serve

Republicans think they're entitled to rule

The Daddy State Shows Up

This is pretty simple.

Crapo is saying we can expect to be punished by employers and bankers and Wall Street crooks for demanding tax equity.

Daddy State Awareness, rule 3:

Every prediction of some dire consequence is a threat.

Either they intend to do some shitty thing, or cause some shitty thing to happen in an attempt to coerce us into doing what they want.

Get 'Em While They're Hot

Now available at Amazon - in men's or women's

Grab Your Wallet

Paraphrasing Harry Truman:

"Anybody who leaves office with more money than he started with is a crook."

The boycott thing is on.

Make a call
Send an email
Get this thing goin'

Some Kinda Of Sick Sense

Today's tweet, and holy fuck - this makes the whole vulgar charade into an even bigger shit show than we thought.

Trump "considering creating his own media business built on the audience that has supported him thus far in his bid" https://t.co/hdZ2P4nNcd

— Sarah Posner (@sarahposner) June 16, 2016

Here're the first few graphs from the Vanity Fair piece:

Every election cycle has its own breakout media star. In 1992, it was CNN. A few years later, it would be an e-mail blast called the Drudge Report. By 2000, the country had more or less been neatly delineated between MSNBC and Fox News households. The 2008 election introduced Politico and the Huffington Post to the adults’ table. BuzzFeed joined in 2012. 

The breakout media star of 2016 is, inarguably, Donald Trump, who has masterfully—and horrifyingly—demonstrated an aptitude for manipulating the news cycle, gaining billions of dollars worth of free airtime, and dominating coverage on every screen. Now, several people around him are looking for a way to leverage his supporters into a new media platform and cable channel.

Trump is indeed considering creating his own media business, built on the audience that has supported him thus far in his bid to become the next president of the United States. According to several people briefed on the discussions, the presumptive Republican nominee is examining the opportunity presented by the “audience” currently supporting him. He has also discussed the possibility of launching a “mini-media conglomerate” outside of his existing TV-production business, Trump Productions LLC. He has, according to one of these people, enlisted the consultation of his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who owns the The New York Observer. Trump’s rationale, according to this person, is that, “win or lose, we are onto something here. We’ve triggered a base of the population that hasn’t had a voice in a long time.” For his part, Kushner was heard at a New York dinner party saying that “the people here don’t understand what I’m seeing. You go to these arenas and people go crazy for him.” (Both Kushner and Ivanka Trump did not respond to a request for comment.)

Mr Oliver, If You Please

I'll keep asking the question - when do we start to get this level of quality reportage back in "the news"?

And also too - yes, there's an opinion embedded in this stuff.

• My opinion is that facts matter.  
• My opinion is that those facts show Trump University to be a scam.
• My opinion is that those two things add up to: Donald Trump is a lyin' sack of shit.

3500 lawsuits in about 30 years time?  Makes me wonder what his real bidness might be.

GOP Ain't Shit

So I'm thinking there has to be something wrong with the GOP - no really, something way wronger than the usual junk we see every day.  Something fundamental.  There's a serious rot problem in the heartwood. 

They're always telling us that the only polling that counts is the polling that happens on Election Day, and we hafta let the people decide.  Well first, how come Repubs are working so hard to keep people from voting? And second, why are Repub leaders in Congress so sure the people didn't decide they wanted Obama to appoint a Justice to SCOTUS (eg) if need be? They say all these high-sounding things about democracy and then ignore the decisions people make when those decisions don't jive with GOP thinking?  If that thinking is so obviously superior, why is it so often a direct contradiction of what so many people are  telling them?  Elitist much?

Here's the kicker - Repubs and "Conservatives" (and Neo-Liberals too) love to link themselves to Business; they preach at us every day that we have to run the joint like a business; "the free market" - that magical marketplace of ideas - provides all the truly great pronouncements about quality and truth and America-ness because we're "letting the market make the call".

But it's largely an upside down bullshit little game.  People have been polling and voting in favor of (eg) Zero-Emmission Cars and Solar Energy and a Greener Planet for a coupla generations now, but the (mostly) Republicans have perverted that message and have been telling us that what we're really saying is that we want more Ford Pintos and Coal Mining Jobs and 8-Dollar Toasters.

Gotta remember that popular doesn't necessarily mean good and unpopular doesn't necessarily mean bad, but over a period of time, when millions of your "customers" are trying hard to send you the message that your product stinks because your company's been taken over by people who can't be trusted to run a high school car wash, ya gotta brighten the fuck up a little and make some changes.

That's the "Marketplace", guys - it's speaking in loud clear ways; has been for years. You can't take all that feedback and pretend forever that it doesn't say what it says.  And you can't just throw some pixie glitter in the air and wish for a whole new set of customers.

You have to make some changes.

(And BTW: let's not hear any more about "conservatism hasn't failed us, we've failed to be conservative enough".  Cut that shit out.  The Soviets sounded stoopid when they were singing their version of it in the late 80s and you don't sound any smarter now. So just stop it.)

Today's Charlie

Charlie Pierce on the little stroke fest going on between Chris Matthews and Hillary:

Chris Matthews had an interview with Hillary Rodham Clinton on the MSNBC channel of the electric teevee machine Tuesday afternoon that was flatly astounding. This is especially true if you remember Matthews' sorry history with the Clinton family, especially concerning HRC, against whom he was so hostile in 2008 that kindly Doc Maddow called him out on it on the air. Now, though, apparently, Matthews sees HRC as the only thing keeping the Battleship Potemkin from sailing up his driveway.

I don't need a lot of encouragement to slag Tweety.  The guy is a political sycophant who made his bones serving congress during a time that became pretty notorious for official corruption - not that anything can compare with what's going on now, but back then, bribery  was still illegal.  Aah, the good old days.

Anyway, Matthews giving Hillary a tongue bath on the air like a dutiful little Press Poodle was a little surprising given the outright hostility that Charlie points out, but it makes a lot of sense from the stand point of the corporate media needing to rally around the power center and protect the status quo against the efforts of a Bernie Sanders who seems to be trying to turn this joint into some dirty little democracy or some such.  Eww. 

Careers are at stake here.  If they allow Bernie to gain any real momentum, the whole Political Infotainment Industry is in real danger of total collapse.  They know he's that much of a threat.  Isn't it interesting how some people are so sure that protecting their paycheck is more important than serving our little experiment in self-government?  That's the mindset of the overseer.

Somebody - actually a group of very powerful somebodies - has made a decision that Hillary's going to be our next POTUS.  They'll hedge their bets by flacking Marco Rubio, but that's the window dressing; that's the match-maker shit they pull on us every fucking time.  

Rubio is being cast as the GOP's Barack Obama - coming from behind to knock off all the favorites in the playoffs and win a shot at the title.  I think it's interesting that Cruz (IMO) is being used as the cat's paw to countervail Trump, while Rubio is being pimped as some kind of quiet giant killer.  BTW - I tho't that role was going to be Jeb's, but the guy is apparently even more adept at fucking up a free lunch than his dumb-as-a-stump brother, and I'm dumb enough to have tho't otherwise.

Anyway, we all remember what an epic battle it was for the Dem nomination in 2008 when we had the crafty veteran squaring off against the upstart newcomer, so why not just replay that whole fucking show; that was a dandy - but this time, we'll put 'em on opposite sides in a contest for the ultimate prize - it'll be a spectacularly spectacular spectacle to see these two valiant warriors in action as they slug it out for blah blah blah.  This isn't even a horse race anymore - it looks a lot more like Professional Wrestling.

Call me wacky and y'know - I may be paranoid, but that don't mean nobody's out to get me.

Wanna know what stops this shit - or at least changes it for the better?

Today's Tweet

The Narcissus Borealis (thanks tengrain) ponies up and endorses Donito Trumpelini - and history rhymes again in the 2016 personification of Churchill's lament about "when tyrants embrace".

Palin: "self-made" Trump doesn't rely on Other People's Money. Trump co-wrote book saying his success built on OPM pic.twitter.com/X3SfP148tW

— Richard Hine (@richardhine) January 20, 2016

Still not gettin' my panties in a bunch over this one tho', because I'm still not convinced Trump really wants to be Prez.  He starts getting a little too close to winning something, he has to do something outrageous that pulls in a few more rubes while pushing the establishment a little farther away. 

The plan is to boost his brand, but always always always - sit on your ass collecting rent while somebody else does the work.

The wise ones tell us he got Palin's endorsement to prop him up in Iowa - but then she's a no-show at a Trump event the very next day?

This is "USAmerica Inc - Campaigning For Fun and Profit". Palin got the paycheck for the one night stand, but it doesn't look like she'll be joining the tour.  Or maybe she's just waiting for her own bus again.

Now take a look at what pops up from the GOP Establishment - "Movement Conservatism" -  about what they think of Trump voters:

(btw - watch Joy Reid's expression starting around the 1:30 mark)

And also too - Rick Wilson's prob'ly looking for clients, and so saying what he said in that clip is part of the blurb - it's his prospecting letter, going out to potential customers.

Everybody gets a chance to cash in when the carnival's in town.

Bowden's Trump

It's not a long piece, so I just grabbed the whole thing.

From Vanity Fair, by Mark Bowden:

Over a long weekend on assignment for Playboy Magazine, Mark Bowden found that behind the garish Trump façade lies only more ugliness. --MARK BOWDEN

I spent a long, awkward weekend with Donald Trump in November 1996, an experience I feel confident neither of us would like to repeat.

He was like one of those characters in an 18th-century comedy meant to embody a particular flavor of human folly. Trump struck me as adolescent, hilariously ostentatious, arbitrary, unkind, profane, dishonest, loudly opinionated, and consistently wrong. He remains the most vain man I have ever met. And he was trying to make a good impression. Who could have predicted that those very traits, now on prominent daily display, would turn him into the leading G.O.P. candidate for president of the United States?

His latest outrageous edict on banning all Muslims from entering the country comes as no surprise to me based on the man I met nearly 20 years ago. He has no coherent political philosophy, so comparisons with Fascist leaders miss the mark. He just reacts. Trump lives in a fantasy of perfection, with himself as its animating force.

Before I met him back in 1996, I felt bad for him. He’d had a rough 10 years. He had just turned 50 and wasn’t happy about it. He looked soft, from his growing jowls to the way his belt bit deeply into the spreading roll of his belly. As a businessman he had crashed and burned, rescued only by creditors who had to bail him out lest they be dragged down with him. His enterprises were being run by court-appointed managers, who had put him back on his financial feet mostly by investing heavily in Atlantic City, which was then on the rise.

He had insulated himself from failure with bluster. In public he was still The Donald—still rich, still working hard at being a symbol of excess. I was working on a profile of him for Playboy, which was his kind of magazine. He considered himself the magazine’s beau ideal, and was inordinately proud of having been featured on the magazine’s cover some years before. His then wife, Marla Maples, told him, sardonically, that he ought to buy the magazine: “You bought the Miss Universe Pageant; it’s right up your alley.” He must have figured it was a safe bet to agree to cooperate for my story. But well before I left him, we both knew he probably wouldn’t like the final product.

I was prepared to like him as I boarded his black 727 at La Guardia for the flight to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home—prepared to discover that his over-the-top public persona was a clever pose. That underneath was an ironic wit, an ordinary but clever guy. But no. With Trump, what you see is what you get. His behavior was cringe-worthy. He showed off the gilded interior of his plane—calling me over to inspect a Renoir on its walls, beckoning me to lean in closely to see . . . what? The luminosity of the brush strokes? The masterly use of color? No. The signature. “Worth $10 million,” he told me. Time after time the stories he told me didn’t check out, from Michael Jackson’s romantic weekend at Mar-a-Lago with his then wife Lisa Marie Presley (they stayed at opposite ends of the estate) to the rug in one bedroom he said was designed by Walt Disney when he was 18 (it wasn’t) to the strength of his marriage to Maples (they would split months later).

It was hard to watch the way he treated those around him, issuing peremptory orders—“Polish this, Tony. Today.” He met with the lady who selected his drapery for the Florida estate—“The best! The best! She’s a genius!”—who had selected a sampling of fabrics for him to choose from, all different shades of gold. He left the choice to her, saying only, “I want it really rich. Rich, rich, elegant, incredible.” Then, “Don’t disappoint me.” It was a pattern. Trump did not make decisions. He surrounded himself with “geniuses” and delegated. So long as you did not “disappoint” him—and it was never clear how to avoid doing so—you were gold.

What was clear was how fast and far one could fall from favor. The trip from “genius” to “idiot” was a flash. The former pilots who flew his plane were geniuses, until they made one too many bumpy landings and became “fucking idiots.” The gold carpeting selected in his absence for the locker rooms in the spa at Mar-a-Lago? “What kind of fucking idiot . . . ?” I watched as Trump strutted around the beautifully groomed clay tennis courts on his estate, managed by noted tennis pro Anthony Boulle. The courts had been prepped meticulously for a full day of scheduled matches. Trump took exception to the design of the spaces between courts. In particular, he didn’t like a small metal box—a pump and cooler for the water fountain alongside—which he thought looked ugly. He first questioned its placement, then crudely disparaged it, then kicked the box, which didn’t budge, and then stooped—red-faced and fuming—to tear it loose from its moorings, rupturing a water line and sending a geyser to soak the courts. Boulle looked horrified, a weekend of tennis abruptly drowned. Catching a glimpse of me watching, Trump grimaced.

“I guess that’ll have to be in your story,” he said.

“Pretty much,” I told him.

This apparently worried him, because on the flight home a day later he had a proposition.

“I’m looking for somebody to write my next book,” he told me.

I told him that I would not be interested.

“Why not?” he asked. “All my books become best-sellers.”

The import was clear. There was money in it for me. Trump remains the only person I have ever written about who tried to bribe me.

As I’ve watched his improbable political rise, it is clear that he hasn’t changed. The very things that made him so unappealing apparently now translate into wide popular support. Apart from the comical ego, the errors, and the self-serving bluster, what you get from Trump are commonplace ideas pronounced as received wisdom. Begin registering all Muslims in America? Round up the families of suspected terrorists? Ban all Muslims from entering the country? Carpet-bomb ISIS-held territories in Iraq (killing the 98-plus percent of civilians who are, in effect, being held hostage there by the terror group and turning a war against a tiny fraction of the world’s Muslims into a global religious crusade)? Using nuclear weapons? The ideas that pop into his head are the same ones that occur to any teenager angry about terror attacks. They appeal to anyone who can’t be bothered to think them through—can’t be bothered to ask not just the moral questions but the all-important practical one: Will doing this makes things better or worse? When you believe in your own genius, you don’t question your own flashes of inspiration.

I got a call from his office some days after my profile of him appeared in the May 1997 issue of Playboy. I had already heard how he’d blown his stack to Christie Hefner. I was traveling at the time, working on my book Black Hawk Down. The call came to me in a motel room in Colorado, from his trusty assistant, the late Norma Foerderer.

“Mr. Trump would like to talk to you,” she said.

I waited, sitting on the edge of the bed, bracing myself.

Foerderer came back on the line. She said:

“He’s too livid to speak.”

Today's Lesson In Snake Oil Scams

Erick Erickson (via Media Matters):

What we are learning now is that Republican leaders have no inclination to fight this evil. They have for years been protected by a Washington pro-life establishment that has worked damn hard to keep Bart Stupak listed as a pro-life warrior as he sold out the cause on Obamacare. The pro-life establishment in Washington puts their Republican affiliation ahead of children who are being ripped apart.

[...]

If Republicans and the Washington Pro-Life movement, when confronted by the evil documented on unedited tape, are not willing to defund Planned Parenthood, we should destroy them all, level their organizations to the ground, and spread salt on the remains (metaphorically speaking, of course).

Republicans in Washington have spent more time avoiding their constituents over the August recess than they have fighting for anything in the past several years. Now here is a perfect opportunity to stand up for smaller government, fight evil, and put the left on defense.

Already there are voices on the right saying no, but then they always say no. Already there are voices on the right saying they can't, but then they always say they can't. Already there are voices on the right saying the President will veto it, but the President will always veto it.

And the babies continue to die -- ripped from their mothers wombs and their organs harvested.

If the Republicans will not fight this evil, they should be destroyed.

Every Republican Presidential candidates should be on record on whether they think the GOP should hold the line against funding Planned Parenthood no matter what.

If Republicans in Washington will not stop this and defund Planned Parenthood, Republican voters should take any and all action to destroy the party at the ballot box. If this party will not fight this evil, it will fight no evil and should itself die.

Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Here's the thing: If we lose Planned Parenthood, it's all but certain the number of abortions will go up.  

("Planned Parenthood" - as in not becoming a parent until you actually want to become a parent.  Ya do some planning, and then ya don't get pregnant, and then ya don't need no stinkin' abortion.  Get it?  Kinda what that whole "planned" thing's all about, y'know?)  

Anyway, Erick Erickson needs to kill Planned Parenthood because Erick Erickson needs more abortions so that Erick Erickson can stay famous and powerful and go on making fat stacks by being in the business of railing and wailing about abortion.

It's not really very different from the basics of the God-Knobber Scam.  To wit: "I'm here to convince you that you have an imaginary disease so I can sell you an imaginary cure."  

Ever wonder why the God-Knobbers always seem to be big-time Fetus Pimps too?  Same game, but with a really shitty twist: "I'm gonna make it more likely for you to have a very real problem, so that I can talk the rubes into buying me another house."

The numbers on Erick Erickson's W-2 are directly proportional to the number of abortions in USAmerica Inc.  Can we stop pretending this jagoff has any intention of working himself out a job?

Milbank On Trump

Dana Milbank seems to be partially recovering from his long bout with the kind of wishy-washy crap that's deeply infected Chuck Todd and most of the Both-Sides-They're-All-The-Same-Yeah-But-The-Democrats bunch of weak-minded 'librul' Press Poodles.

No - I'm Not Back Yet

...I just had to post a coupla videos.

Yeah, it's Russia TV so we hafta to be maybe a touch more skeptical than usual, but I'll take a nugget of truth wherever I can find it:

Told Ya

A coupla days ago, I posted a bit about the Great Gathering of Grifters aka: Kaptain Kornball Klub, aka: The Iowa Freedom Freakout Summit.  And in that post I opinionized about how certain of the "candidates" were there for reasons other than Public Service.  Well - imagine my surprise when I find out that there are people out here in the Blogoshpere who do more than just opinionize - they actually look into this shit.

Last week, Mother Jones reported that Mike Huckabee used his PAC to funnel more than $400,000 to his family. This week, Politico’s Ken Vogel gives us a story about scammy conservative PACs that make thousands of dollars from home with just one weird trick. These “scam PACs” play fast and loose with federal election rules by claiming-but-not-quite-claiming to represent Tea Party favorites like Ben Carson, Allen West, or Donald Trump’s hair plugs. The catch is that almost none of the money these scam PACs raise goes to those candidates. It’s the political equivalent of selling beachfront property in North Dakota, and because it’s politics, it’s somehow not fraud. ‘Tis truly a blessed time to be a conservative grifter!

Aha!  I posted mine 2 days ago, and then all of a sudden, there it is all over the place.  Post hoc ergo propter hoc, muthuhfuckuh.  Well, Ok, except for that 'last week' thing.  shit

You're welcome, Wonkette - glad I could help. Please keep doing that part of my job for me.

Unintended Truth

Some of those dirty fuckin' hippies have been trying to tell us for a pretty long time about how the "political center" has moved way to the right over the last 30 years, and practically everybody I know either shrugs it off or tells me I'm a fool for believing the left-leaning media which we all know has a wicked librul bias.

But then, along comes Steve King making a bit of a slip as he introduces Moose-alini at the annual meeting of the Kaptain Kornball Klub in Iowa.  

This turns into the Mother of All Word Salads as it appears Palin tries it without the teleprompter, but listen close in the first few seconds:



Yeah, I know - I couldn't stay with it either.  After the first few minutes, it's like you can hear your brain cells screaming as they start to die.

BTW - everybody and his fuckin' uncle is running on the Repub side so far, and I think it might be because the rubes' pockets aren't quite as deep as they used to be - having nuthin' at all to do with stoopid GOP economic policies of course - so you have to show up and do some of the huckstering in person - gotta work 'em a lot harder than just a coupla years ago.

I'll go out on what I consider a very short limb here, and I'll say that everybody not already positioned to get rich by holding an elected office is in this thing to boost their mailing lists, bolster their networks of "supporters", and make it all pay off by hittin' up every yokel for a generous donation...cuz that's what most of these jag-offs are - they're panhandlers; they're fuckin' moochers playin' every sucker for every dime, every chance they get. And boy has it been a good long run.

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Today's Video

You know you're politically dead to about 60% of the country when Jon Stewart cuts you into tiny little pieces and scatters your remains to the wind.

The Daily Show
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I won't say ol' Vaginal Bob is all washed up - lord knows there's a double-digit percentage of voters with single-digit IQs who're thinking "anybody them libruls hate that much cain't be all bad".  The guy actually still has a constituency, and that makes him worth something to the GOP machine.

So he'll find his way into the Wingnut Welfare System.  My guess is that he'll drop out of sight for a while - he has to raise a shitload of money for "the defense fund" and that means he has to stay low while some of his "friends" make a shitload of money off of his need for a shitload of money (politics is as good a scam as religion in exactly that way), but mostly he needs time to reflect and to assess and to search his soul, and to find a good ghost writer for the truly inspiring story of his rise to the Governor's Mansion, and his fall (because of the wickedness of his helpmate who was tempted by the Evil One because of her lustful heart); and his time in purgatory, and his eventual redemption in the eyes of The Lord - can I get a fuckin' AMEN here, people!?!

And then he'll end up with a relatively low-profile job at one of the Lobby Shops, where he'll slave away for a few election cycles, and then suddenly pop up at one of the "conservative" circle jerks - CPAC or whatever - to take his shot at re-emerging as a viable  political player etc etc etc.

We've seen this movie a thousand times.

Confidence

Gallop put out another popularity poll - trying to discern the level of 'confidence' Americans have in various institutions (eg: SCOTUS, Congress, Military etc).

And guess what?  It shouldn't come as any kinda news to anybody that we love the US Military and we hate Congress - even though we continue to re-elect the people who make up the institution that gets a whopping 10% confidence rating.

90% of us say we don't have confidence in our #1 governing body, and yet the incumbents get re-elected 96% of the time.

Here's the thing:  We do what we're told to do.

Every time we turn around, there's somebody somewhere telling us every jarhead, zoomie, dog-face and squid is so Star-Spangled Awesome that God his-own-self steps aside whenever one of 'em walks into a room.

We are also constantly badgered to the point of befuddlement about how fucked up every little thing is when it comes to Government - except of course in those state and local rural centers where the good Christian small-government conservative dirt-huggin' gun-totin' real people hold power like an abused and frightened 4-year-old clutches a suffocating duckling on Easter Sunday.

We don't need to be brain-washed.  And we don't need to be turned into programmable automatons.  All anybody really has to do is keep us a little off-balance; getting us to consider just for a moment that (eg) Niall Ferguson's opinion that "hey, fracking isn't all that bad" is just as valid as the actual research that's been done proving there's at least real cause for concern, and that maybe we shouldn't be turning everything over to The Suits at giant corporations who feel nothing for anybody or anything that doesn't pump an extra 2¢ per share into their quarterly reports.

The enormity of the bamboozle is practically never revealed until well after the enormity of the crash caused by the bamboozle starts to sink in.  And if you wanna know what that's like, ask a Russian some time - or any of a rapidly-growing number of Greeks or Irish or Americans or or or.

The Self

Your homework assignment for this weekend:

Starting at about 25:00, try not to think about Leo Strauss or Freddie Hayek (an elite group controlling the herd's animal instincts).

Part 1


Part 2
(at about 23:15 - getting the consumer to substitute your product for what she really wants - "nearly 4 inches longer...", and the lady goes "ooooooh!")
Nuthin' but brilliant.


Part 3


Part 4