The American Freak Show

Anybody else flash on Gilda Radner when they see Marianne Williamson?

Zack Beauchamp, Vox:

Self-help guru Marianne Williamson was the breakout star of CNN’s first Democratic debate — at least if internet chatter and pundits are to be believed.

Williamson was the most-searched person on Google after the debate in 49 out of 50 states. 

CNN analyst and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm praised her “really compelling and authentic” answer on reparations, saying, “Honestly, I think she brought it.” GOP pollster Frank Luntz tweeted that “she’s cutting through the clutter tonight.” A Washington Post article claimed she had “a big night,” writing that she “used her limited time on the microphone to maximum effect, attracting attention for meaningful answers on race and Democratic ideology.” Even current Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) singled out her “surprisingly eloquent answers” to some of the debate questions during his post-debate MSNBC appearance.

This all needs to stop.

Something that I think would go a good long way in trying to stop it is exactly what Mr Beauchamp is doing - ie: take every opportunity to bitch at the Press Poodles whenever they hint at the standard bullshit of "horse race" or some other worn out metaphor, or when they start with the bromides like "Bringing some common sense..." or "a much-needed fresh perspective from outside the beltway..."

(BTW, ever notice how often the inside-the-beltway puffballs complain about how stuffy and stale it is inside the beltway, as they limo their way from one Georgetown cocktail party to the next?)

Marianne Williamson is not a serious candidate for the presidency: She’s a self-help celebrity who openly disdained policy debate onstage Tuesday night. Worse than that, she looms as a menace to public health — someone who has attacked antidepressants and vaccination in a manner that “can literally kill people,” as my colleague German Lopez (who covers public health) put it. She has no business being on the debate stage; the more famous she gets, the more harm she can do.

The fact that a lot of media figures aren’t recognizing this — that they’re either celebrating her flashes of insight on issues like reparations for slavery or enjoying her kookiness — shows that they haven’t fully internalized the lessons of Donald Trump’s rise to power. Williamson is vanishingly unlikely to win, or even come close, but the amount of press attention she’s getting is troubling. Even if public interest in her mandates some level of coverage, at least it could be more muted and skeptical than what we’re seeing.

“As far as I can tell, Williamson has zero experience or expertise that would prepare her to effectively do the job for which she’s auditioning, and that’s terrifying to me,” Seth Cotlar, a historian of the US at Willamette University, tells me. “It’s fun to cover politics as a circus, because it often is a circus, but the stakes of what happens in DC are incredibly serious and have real consequences for people’s lives.”

It's not a game show. It's not a beauty pageant. It's not Wrestle-fucking-Mania.
We're trying to figure what's best for the most, and while we don't get real close to it very often, we do manage to move things along when we're not encumbered by Rent-Seeking Media Leeches who think the point of the exercise is to sell cut-rate insurance bundles, mail-order housewares, and boner pills.

Hey, Press Poodles - wanna know why about 80% of us hate "the media"?  Take a look at about 80% of the shit you guys put on cable all day every fuckin' day.

Bring back Bobbie Battista and HLN. We got 30 minutes of actual news, followed by another 30 minutes of actual news, followed by another 30 minutes...

And when something else happened, they covered it like - you know - a fucking news story. They didn't treat every little thing like it was the Hindenburg in 1937, and they made sure they checked their shit before anything got on the air. 

And when they fucked up (because people fuck up once in a while), they went on the air and they said, "Dang - we fucked up. Sorry, guys. We'll try to do better."

It's like we've lost our ability to have an internal dialogue with ourselves before we blurt out whatever the fuck is rattling around in our heads. We're like 5-year-olds who just start yapping and end up asking grandma if she really is "ignorant hillbilly trailer trash, like Mom said you were a coupla days ago when she was talking to the neighbors...?"

Today's Quote

When the sun sets on your career and they are writing your story - of all the good and bad things you did in your life - the thing you will be remembered for is whether, in this moment, with this president, you found the courage to stand up to him.

--Pete Buttigieg

Here It Comes, Kentucky

Looks like we might get a good one goin' in the Democratic primary to pick who'll have the privilege of trying to kick Moscow Mitch outa the US Senate.

Mike Broiher:

Amy McGrath:

And there's some reporting that says Charles Booker (State Rep) is considering jumping into it too.

Here's hoping for a candidate who stomps McConnell 'til there's nothin' left but a greasy spot on the rug.

A Little Help

Part of our continuing efforts to be of help to voters who're busy living their lives and find it difficult to keep up with all the information they need to know about the various candidates.

Today, we present a Pronunciation Guide:

Kamala = comma′-luh

Beto = beh′-toe

Sherrod = shair′-uhd

Buttigieg = boot′-uh-judge

Trump = crim-i-nal

You're welcome.

hat tip = TrumpForPrison.org

Breakin' It Down

Ana Kasparian, from The Youngs Turks, doing a fine job telling us what's up with the GOP freak-out over AOC.

BTW, I'm not a TYT fan, but in keeping with my search for "the real shit", I'm going to make note of whatever comes across as "the real shit".

And holy crap, what is it with "conservatives"? This Mr Reagan guy almost has to be a parody inside another parody. There's something about it that seems really off.

But maybe I'm just going with my own need to normalize. One of the main tenets of Daddy State manipulation is that "normal people" want very much for things not to be so shitty, and we end up thinking they can't possibly be so shitty that the rubes are going to take a Mr Reagan seriously.

She's Got Points

Kamala Harris, announcing her candidacy for POTUS.

Hometown crowd, but that's a right big bunch of folks.

I'd normally ignore this because I tend not to get going with anybody who comes out almost 2 years ahead of the election. So that loses her a coupla points.

But she hit on most of the points she needed to hit for me.

I want her to get better at bringing the thunder. Presentation is important in public speaking, and as superficial as it seems, if you can't get a neutral crowd whipped up a little, then you might as well be lecturing a bunch of drowsy pre-schoolers right after lunch.

Chris Cillizza recaps it:

1. "We were raised in a community where we were taught to see a world, beyond just ourselves. To be conscious and compassionate about the struggles of all people."

2. "My whole life, I've only had one client: the people."

3. "Fighting for the people meant fighting on behalf of survivors of sexual assault -- a fight not just against predators but a fight against silence and stigma."

4. "I'll tell you, sitting across the table from the big banks, I witnessed the arrogance of power. Wealthy bankers accusing innocent homeowners of fault, as if Wall Street's mess was of the people's making."

5. "On the subject of transnational gangs, let's be perfectly clear: The President's medieval vanity project is not going to stop them."

6. "To be sure we've won and we've lost, but we've never stopped fighting."

7. "We are here knowing that we are at an inflection point in the history of our world. We are at an inflection point in the history of our nation."

8. "America, we are better than this."

9. "When we have leaders who lie and bully and attack a free press and undermine our democratic institutions, that's not our America."

10. "People in power are trying to convince us that the villain in our American story is each other. But that is not our story."

11. "When we lift up the women of our country, we lift up the children of our country. We lift up the families of our country. And the whole of society benefits."

12. "Let's speak the truth that too many unarmed black men and women are killed in America. Too many black and brown Americans are locked up. From mass incarceration to cash bail to policing, our criminal justice system needs drastic repair. Let's speak that truth."

13. "We have foreign powers infecting the White House like malware."

14. "In the face of powerful forces trying to sow hate and division among us, the truth is that as Americans we have much more in common than what separates us."

15. "When women fought for suffrage, those in power said they were dividing the sexes and disturbing the peace."

16. "When abolitionists spoke out and civil rights workers marched, their oppressors said they were dividing the races and violating the word of God."

17. "I stand before you today, clear-eyed about the fight ahead and what has to be done -- with faith in God, with fidelity to country and with the fighting spirit I got from my mother."

18. "An America where our daughters, where our sisters, where our mothers and grandmothers are respected where they live and where they work."

19. "I will tell you this: I am not perfect. Lord knows, I am not perfect. But I will always speak with decency and moral clarity and treat all people with dignity and respect. I will lead with integrity. And I will speak the truth."

20. "As Robert Kennedy many years ago said, 'Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.' "

21. "These are not ordinary times. And this will not be an ordinary election."

For me, every candidate needs to demonstrate they understand that there has to be more than just an implied question for everyone who wants to continue with policies that make it better for a few while fucking it all up for the rest of us - I want them to issue a direct challenge to the Daddy State:

Why does it seem like you refuse to hear it when the entire world is crying?

And Now For Something Different

This whole campaign cycle is a freak show without the tent, and so the only thing that could possibly occur that would seem odd is if somebody actually came up with a policy idea on what we might try in order to make a few improvements - and wow, look at that, it's Hillary Clinton, trying to get us to talk about something other than what Donald Trump is doing with his tiny orange hands.

Vox:

On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton unveiled what is arguably among the most important policies she’s announced during her entire presidential campaign. It is an ambitious but politically attainable plan that will lift huge numbers of families with children out of poverty. It is targeted exclusively at the poor, and the extreme poor in particular, with no money spent on the middle class or rich.

Specifically, Clinton is calling for a change in the refundability threshold of the child tax credit. Those sound like technical changes, but it has tremendous ramifications. Currently, the poorest American families can’t claim the credit, which is a mainstay of the tax returns of most middle-class families. That’s because households that make less than $3,000 a year — the truly, desperately poor — are excluded entirely, and households making under $9,666.67 can’t get the full credit.

Clinton would change the law so that families start getting the credit with the first dollar they earn. That would effectively increase the tax refunds of the poorest families with children. In addition, Clinton would double the credit for children 4 and under, something that helps both poor and middle-class families with young kids, and she’d make the credit phase in much faster for families with kids in that age range.

I make no claims to knowledge of such things beyond the single Econ course I barely muddled thru in one of my abortive attempts at going to college, but I managed to learn that the more people who can participate in an economy, the better that economy works; and that the best way to circulate money thru an economy is to pump it up through the roots instead of sprinkling it on the leaves.  It's basic Keanesian stuff and it's what works best - which seems like a fairly simple concept, but it's something that's proved to be a little elusive for the average "conservative".

I'm a Bernie guy - and I think Bernie'd be good with an initiative like this because it means his challenge for the nomination showed HRC that moving her agenda a little to the left is a good and appropriate and politically safe thing to do, plus it signals Hillary's willingness to fix one of the big problems created by the Welfare Reform thing in the mid-90s, which is something Bernie kept hammering her on. 

So - yays all around.

What We Miss

I have to admit that I get a little too sucked in. There's a tendency to yell and point at all the shitty things we don't like about the other guy's candidate while practically ignoring what "our" candidate wants to do.  So we end up making a choice based on what we don't like about the brand on the outside of the box instead of making an informed decision based on what we know about the content inside the box. 

We can't just go on voting against everything and everybody because that only gets us pretty much to where we are now - half of us are so "against it" that we don't vote at all.  

We have to be able to vote for something. 

One smallish case in point - here's a bit from Hillary's speech in Philly (via Alternet):

We have to heal the divides in our country. Not just on guns. But on race. Immigration. And more. And that starts with listening, listening to each other. Trying, as best we can, to walk in each other’s shoes.

So let’s put ourselves in the shoes of young black and Latino men and women who face the effects of systemic racism, and are made to feel like their lives are disposable.

I don't agree with the part of that article that tends towards cynicism. (Appearances to the contrary, I'm a skeptically pragmatic idealist - it's just that I can't always resist being a bit cynical, cuz holy crap dude, have you even seen what goes on up in here sometimes?)  

But anyway, my point is that I'll vote for Hillary partly because she's standing up and saying there's this real problem and we need to figure out something we can do about it. Which is in fact very different from Trump, who literally just makes shit up, tells us he's seen videos that don't exist, and has nothing to say about anything that might help us form some kind of reasonable policy.

Really, I'm not just against Trump, feeling I have nowhere else to go and I guess I'll hafta hang with Hillary.  I've said something close to that in the past, but I'm a little smarter now - because I've been trying to do my homework.  

So no, I'll go along with Hillary until or unless she bails on it - just like I try to do with all of 'em - hoping for the best while understanding I won't get everything I want, no matter who the candidate is or what issue I'm on about right now.

Stumble forward.

Trump vs Trump

To Whom It May Concern

Dear God,

Prince was my favorite guitar player, and you called him home last month.

Muhammad Ali was my all-time favorite sports hero, and you took him last week.

I just wanted to get up with you today, and remind you that my favorite candidate is a guy named Donald Trump.

I'm not expecting miracles here, but, you know - just in case you got nothing better to do or whatever.

Thanks,
Mike


cribbed from a post by FB pal Linda

What The Donald Says

NYT has a "complete" list of the shittiness that is Donald Trump.

Some hi-lites (and these are his "friends"):

John Sununu

FORMER NEW HAMPSHIRE GOVERNOR

“couldn't get elected dog catcher”

“forgot to mention my phenomenal biz success rate”

“dummy”

Marc Thiessen

COLUMNIST AND FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR

“failed”

“never been able to make a comeback”

“a third rate talent”

“really dumb puppet”

Brent Bozell

PRESIDENT, MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER

“begging for money like a dog”

David Brooks

COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES

“is closing in on being the dumbest of them all”

“doesn’t have a clue”

“one of the dumbest of all pundits”

“he has no sense of the real world!”

“a clown”

“dummy!”

And Then There Were 7

And the question now is - will they let Jim Gilmore into the next debate?  I mean - gee whiz  - he was only 6300 votes outa 8th place in New Hampshire.  And you gotta have an odd number so you can make sure Trump's always at center stage.  C'mon, guys, think. 

Just Creepy