Humans Kinda Suck Sometimes

I realize 'Godfather II' and 'Casino' and 'Bugsy' aren't documentaries, but c'mon - do they think if the dirt in the desert managed to recede, they wouldn't find a whole big bunches of stiffs?

I guess I'm just wondering why it seems like these guys are surprised that dead bodies are being discovered in areas surrounding one of the biggest mobbed-up joints in this country.

Fox5 Las Vegas:

ABC13 Las Vegas:

And then, what do the politicos intend to do about things? They blab about making deals on impoundment and sharing - which is all about what can be done now - I get that - but they never once said anything about addressing the drivers of climate change that're causing of all this shit.

In the west, water is power. Watch this as it unfolds, cuz we're probably going to see this play out all over.

ABC13 Las Vegas:

COVID-19 Update

Mis-Information (and its evil progenitor, Dis-Information) are always with us.

'Twas ever thus, and ever thus 'twill be.

The only antidote is to keep hammering away at the fallacies, and pointing out the nefarious intent of it all.

A lie can make it halfway around the world

before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

I imagine Edward Bernays would be proud of what's going on.

WaPo:

Five tactics used to spread vaccine misinformation in the wellness community, and why they work

When Kristina W. received her first dose of the coronavirus vaccine earlier this year, she was terrified. Until recently, she said, she believed that vaccines were so dangerous she was willing to “go into an all-out war” to protect her children from receiving any immunizations.

“I had this deep-rooted fear that they could, and possibly even would, kill my children,” said Kristina, 26, a mother of two who lives in New Mexico and spoke on the condition that her full name not be used out of concern for her safety.

Now, although she considers herself “pro-vax” and understands that vaccines are safe and necessary, that knowledge doesn’t always quell her anxiety. These lingering concerns, she believes, are a testament to the power of the anti-vaccination narratives she was exposed to in natural parenting and alternative health groups on Facebook, some of which had convinced her that routine childhood immunizations had nearly killed her eldest son.

“If you’ve never been anti-vax and back to vaccinating, you don’t quite understand the level of anxiety” that can come with resuming vaccinations, Kristina said. “You have that logical knowledge that vaccines are just fine. They’re this great thing. But emotions aren’t logical.”

Experts say the content shared in some wellness communities has powerful emotional and psychological foundations that can cause even science-minded people to question the public health consensus on the ability of vaccines to help curb the spread of the coronavirus. Some voices within the wellness space are adept at building connection, gaining trust and sowing doubt — all while appealing to widely held beliefs about healthy living.

“This is what makes some in the wellness community so dangerous,” said Stephanie Alice Baker, a sociologist at City, University of London, who is careful to add that not everyone in the wellness space is trying to cast doubt on vaccines. “It’s not that the wellness community per se is conspiratorial, or that everyone has these kinds of nefarious interests where they intend to manipulate and deceive,” she said. “It’s that once you trust leaders and influencers in this space, then when they become more conspiratorial and extreme, you are susceptible to go down that path with them because you already trust them.”

In some ways, the messaging and themes used by some vaccine-hesitant members of wellness communities reflect those that have been documented in the broader anti-vaccine movement. But there are certain approaches, experts said, that especially key in on the interests and vulnerabilities of people who are invested in wellness culture.

Recognizing these strategies is “essential in helping social media users develop resilience to harmful content and allowing them to report this type of content to platforms,” Cécile Simmons, a researcher with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, wrote in an email.

Encouraging skepticism of institutions

The online wellness community rose to prominence amid an erosion of trust in traditional authorities, such as government, health and science institutions and mainstream media, said Baker, co-author of “Lifestyle Gurus,” which explores how authority and influence are created online. This loss of faith has only been exacerbated by the pandemic, which has produced conflicting and confusing guidance from public officials.

In a “low trust society,” Baker said, “you look for other sources to trust and where to place your trust because we can’t be experts on everything. We need other authorities and influential people to guide us.” In the wellness world, those authorities might include nutritionists, physical trainers, lifestyle bloggers, spiritual coaches, naturopaths, yoga teachers and holistic health experts. Among them are online influencers with large and small followings. Sometimes, in fact, a more modest following can lead to more trust; marketers say that micro-influencers (10,000 to 50,000 followers) and nanoinfluencers (fewer than 10,000 followers) may be seen as more truthful and authentic.

Ashley Taylor, who says she is a registered nurse and holistic health coach, posts frequently about “freedom” on Instagram to more than 51,000 followers. In one colorful post that was deleted after the publication of this article, Taylor wrote, “Approval from a 3 letter agency does not override your right to autonomy and to decide what goes into your body.” While she emphasized in the post’s caption that she wasn’t trying to make decisions for her followers, she also listed multiple reasons she doesn’t “have a lot of trust in the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration].”

Taylor did not respond to requests for comment but afterward shared a public post on Instagram that said, in part, “I am not you. So I will never try to tell you what is right for you. I am here to remind you that it is your choice to make.”

Kristina, the former anti-vaccine mother, recalled seeing comments casting doubt on the motives of public health agencies in the Facebook groups she visited.

For example, she said, she became “suspicious” after reading a misleading claim about the CDC holding patents for a number of vaccines, and “that seemed to scream a financial motive.” While the CDC does license vaccine technology developed within the agency, some of which is patented, it does not sell vaccines.

Promoting distrust can be especially effective when it plays into a person’s existing doubts about traditional institutions — doubts that often stem from legitimate concerns about health and safety or poor experiences with the health care system.

Lydia Greene, a mother of three who was a self-described “anti-vaxxer” for more than a decade, vividly recalls the nurse who dismissed her concerns when she thought her first child had a reaction to vaccinations.

“The nurse basically blew me off and made me feel dumb,” said Greene, 40, who was a quality control chemist at a pharmaceutical plant before she left her job to start a family. Greene said she increasingly turned to online parenting forums for guidance, where she was exposed to anti-vaccination beliefs that convinced her to stop vaccinating her children.

“You just feel so lost,” she said, “and these are your people, and they tell you what to do when you’re not sure.”

Framing themselves as truth-seekers

In this climate of distrust, experts said, many people in the wellness community present themselves as truth-seekers at constant risk of being silenced by mainstream authorities or online moderators.

When these people’s posts are flagged online, Greene said, they often claim the platform’s moderators are just “trying to get the sheep to take the vaccine.”

Heather Shields, a “Health + fitness motivator,” according to her Instagram bio, with about 10,400 followers, has posted during the pandemic about sharing “truth.” In one photo, Shields poses with what appears to be a strip of black tape over her mouth, holding a finger up against the tape in a shushing signal. The post’s caption says, “Why are people like me being hidden, shadow-banned, fb jailed and cyber-attacked? Because WE ARE THE VOICE OF TRUTH…” and includes the hashtag “#wewillnotbesilenced.” Shields did not respond to requests for comment.

heathershields_wellness Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
Harry Truman

Why are Doctors, scientists, journalists, mothers, and injured victims are being silenced?

Why are people like me being hidden, shadow-banned, fb jailed and cyber-attacked?

Because WE ARE THE VOICE OF TRUTH and truth doesn’t fill dirty politicians and pHARMa’s pockets.

But I will never be silenced. I will always fight for my kids. I will fight for the victims. I will even fight for those of you who still think this is about your health. I have always, and I will always fight for truth.

Experts said it’s also important to recognize potential financial motives behind the truth-seeker framing: It can help influencers promote and sell alternative therapies, such as herbal tinctures and essential oils, which undergo far less regulation than vaccines and drugs approved by the FDA.“There’s a lot of content that heads down the path of ‘You shouldn’t take this vaccine. Instead, you should buy my colloidal silver. Instead you should buy my essential oil,’” said Renee DiResta, the research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory who studies the spread of malign narratives across social networks.

Taking science out of context

The public is observing the scientific method up close and in real-time. The uncertainty inherent in the process, and the rapidly-changing public policy based on it, has eroded trust further in authorities and made it easier for members of the wellness community who are vaccine hesitant to present scientific material in a misleading way, experts said.

“The size of the following and the certainty of a voice have substituted for getting in there and understanding if this is peer reviewed or if there’s any science behind it,” said Doreen Dodgen-Magee, psychologist and author of “Deviced!: Balancing Life and Technology in a Digital World.”

“Do your own research” is a common refrain in anti-vaccination spaces, said DiResta. But, she added, it’s often said by people “sharing links to sites that are very aligned in a particular way, usually an anti-vaccine way.”

Another tactic is cherry-picking data. For example, some will point to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, known as VAERS, as evidence of widespread deaths and injuries from vaccines, while ignoring the broadly acknowledged limitation of its data. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, which co-sponsors the database with the CDC and FDA, a report alone cannot be used to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event. Furthermore, anyone can file a report to the database with “incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental and unverified information.”

Gigi Winters, who runs the Instagram account “informed_mothers” and uses hashtags such as “#conservativememes” and “#conservativewomen,” encouraged her 49,500 followers to “Research everything!” in a short video referencing the coronavirus vaccines on Instagram Reels that has been viewed more than 86,000 times. In the video, Winters cites a misleading statistic about the coronavirus survival rate, writing, “I’ll take my 99.9% chance and trust my immune system instead…”

That often-cited statistic, which has been circulating for more than a year, has been identified by fact-checkers as an apparent misuse of modeling data from the CDC, which noted that the parameters it was using in its scenarios “are not predictions of the expected effects of COVID-19” (emphasis in the original). This statistic also doesn’t take into account the long-term health impacts and cost of treatment many covid-19 survivors may face. Winters did not respond to requests for comment.

Appealing to natural and holistic health interests

An interest in natural remedies and holistic health can be a gateway into the vaccine-hesitant community, experts said. Kristina said her journey down the “rabbit hole” started with a desire for a nonmedicated birth. In the Facebook groups she joined, she noticed that many people “seemed to be inherently anti-vax and there was a sort of unspoken rule about not advocating for vaccinations.”

In some Instagram accounts featuring natural and holistic living content, vaccine misinformation is slipped in between general posts about well-being and designed to blend in with a profile’s overall visually pleasing aesthetics: vibrant photographs of food, flowers and landscapes as well as serene palettes and attractive fonts.

“This content is ‘prettified’ for Instagram and often couched in the fairly ambiguous language of personal choice and self-realization that is characteristic of these communities,” said Simmons, of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “Subtle anti-vaccine messaging appears alongside pictures of sunset and yoga poses and posts about meditation and raw food, making it look seemingly innocuous.”

Vaccine-hesitant voices within wellness communities also post frequently about impure, man-made products — and put the vaccines in that category, sometimes calling them “poison.”

Yolande Norris-Clark, who goes by “bauhauswife” on Instagram, describes herself as a “Writer, birth educator, freebirth coach, iconoclast.” She shares information about natural birth practices and photos of herself and her children in scenic landscapes with her 46,500 followers, along with posts questioning vaccines and the medical establishment. In one post, Norris-Clark shared a minimalistic text graphic that read, “The very notion of injecting a foreign substance into a human being’s body to promote ‘health’ is not only absurd, but utterly perverse.” Norris-Clark did not respond to requests for comment.

Anti-vaccine messaging also tends to emphasize strengthening the immune system through natural foods and fitness, rather than relying on man-made interventions, experts said.

The common argument: “You don’t need this. Here is an alternative thing for you. If you only boost your immune system and wash your hands, then you’re not going to catch disease X,” DiResta said.

Building community

Online wellness spaces also can feel welcoming, validating and intimate, in contrast to institutions, which often deliver dry and fact-based information.

Many people in these spaces create a perception of openness by documenting daily activities such as meals, workout routines and self-care regimens. Members of groups also share personal stories that are often relatable and compelling. The perceived intimacy and authenticity of these online interactions can create what experts call parasocial relationships, or a sense of closeness to a person you don’t actually know.

“Western medicine kind of goes, ‘Here’s a fact, believe it,’” said psychologist Dodgen-Magee, whereas the wellness community “appeals to something very unique and shiny and missed for many people in daily life, which is this sense of being known and being seen and feeling felt.”

Isabel Klibanoff, a small-business owner who runs the Instagram account “junebug.co,” which has more than 19,600 followers, describes her page as “a community for beings of light.” Klibanoff has called for that community to resist “tyranny” and “forced injections.” In a now-deleted post alongside a neutral-toned graphic that read, “There is nothing wrong with you. There is everything wrong with the world,” she praised people for “not following the crowd and daring to be different!!” She added, “[You] should all be commended for your incredible bravery and strength.”

In an emailed statement, Klibanoff said, in part, “I firmly believe in each individual’s right to choose what pharmaceutical products they put into their bodies, particularly when there is no long-term safety data available on said products. I believe in informed consent for all medical procedures, and coercion is not consent.”

That sense of community helped draw moms Greene and Kristina into the anti-vaccine movement. “After a while, you have this online family where you can post a paragraph and then five minutes later you’ve got all these replies and all this advice and all this support,” Greene said. “You come to value their opinion and their thoughts and their approval even. It gets deep really quickly.”

But an online community also played a major role in Kristina’s return to vaccine acceptance. In early 2020, Kristina, who had begun to question her anti-vaccination stance, joined the evidence-based Facebook group “Vaccine Talk,” whose co-founder emphasized to The Washington Post in a recent profile that civility is critical to the group’s success.

“What we envisioned when Vaccine Talk was first created was that it could be a place where people could ask questions and get answers from people who are understanding and sympathetic, but giving them evidence-based information that they can rely on,” said Kate Bilowitz, the group’s co-founder. “The people who are active in the group are there because they really care about the group and the members that come in and ask questions are looking for guidance.”

For years, Kristina had been convinced through online natural parenting and natural health groups that vaccination was linked to her son’s severe gastrointestinal issues. But when she posted on Vaccine Talk, its members — who she felt were mostly understanding and patient — helped her find more plausible reasons for her son’s condition. They “helped me critically think about why I had these views,” Kristina said.

These days, Kristina is an active member of another online community — Back to the Vax — a support group for vaccine hesitant people and former anti-vaxxers. Greene, who co-founded the group, said she abandoned her anti-vaccination beliefs after she reexamined them during the pandemic. She is now in nursing school with the goal of using her education to fight vaccine hesitancy.

Both women acknowledge that one of the more difficult aspects of changing their stance on vaccination was coming to terms with the fact that they had been so mistaken.

“It was extremely psychologically difficult to really face what I was wrong on,” Kristina said. “When you have deep-rooted beliefs, anything that goes against that can feel like a personal attack.”

Greene now likens the fear of being wrong to a prison. “It keeps you in this box and it doesn’t allow for growth,” she said. “Just lean into it, you’ll be fine.”

Today's Radical Asshole

Josh Hawley presents as a perfect example of how it happens - how a young man (a child of high privilege) can become radicalized seemingly "overnight", superimposing his fantasies of victimhood on an existing ideology, and eventually doing great harm to the very institutions that were put in place to protect people like him from people like him.

But it's a scam. Hawley and his fellow plutocrats-in-waiting aren't populists - their loud protestations belie them in light of their positions of power and privilege.

Their claims of being victimized by "the powers that be" are designed to throw fog on the public discourse and keep the rubes het up over bullshit synthetic "issues" while guys like Josh Hawley grab and consolidate power.

They're the same phonies this world has had to deal with for 40,000 years.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Joshua Hawley was 13 years old, living comfortably as the son of a bank president, when his parents gave him a book about political conservatism for Christmas.

Hawley became enamored with the ideology. He began writing columns for the local newspaper that seethed with resentment against the political power structure. Even domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of a federal building, killing 168 people, sparked him to speak up for groups that express anger toward the government.

“Many of the people who populate these movements are not radical right-wing pro-assault weapons freaks as they were stereotyped in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing,” he wrote.

Twenty-six years later, those far-right rumblings reached a crescendo during another deadly attack on a federal building — this time with Hawley at the center of the action.

As a U.S. senator, Hawley had led the charge to object to the 2020 election on the false premise that some states failed to follow the law, bolstering the baseless claims from President Donald Trump that the election was stolen and should be overturned. Hawley had said the ascent of Joe Biden to the presidency “depends” on what would happen on Jan. 6, the day of a pro forma congressional vote to affirm the election. He had been photographed that day pumping his fist in the air as some Trump supporters were gathering on the grounds outside the U.S. Capitol.

Later, as rioters ransacked the building and several senators huddled in a secure room, fearing for their lives and trying to persuade their pro-Trump colleagues to withdraw their efforts to undermine democracy, Hawley remained combative in pushing the very falsehoods that had helped stoke the violence.

At 41, the freshman senator had become a face of a movement built on the lie that the 2020 election was fraudulent.

“You have caused this!” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) erupted at him, referring to the events building up to the storming of the Capitol, according to a person familiar with the exchange, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

Over the course of his rapid rise in politics — from law school professor to state attorney general to his 2018 election to the Senate — Hawley has followed two parallel paths, each reflecting a different political persona.

On one, he has pursued elite privilege, even relative to other senators, commuting to a private high school, attending Stanford University and Yale Law School, clerking at the Supreme Court, and working for a powerful Washington law firm, all while courting liberal professors and establishment Republicans who enabled his ascent.

On the other, he has expressed sympathy with some of the country’s most far-right, anti-government extremists, demonstrating a willingness to see the world through their grievance-infused prism even after horrific attacks — from Oklahoma City in 1995, when he was 15, to the Capitol attack in 2021.

In the wake of Jan. 6, Hawley has made clear that he is committed to just one of those personas. It is the one that propelled him to promote Trump’s baseless election claims and help inspire an insurrection — and it has made Hawley an instant star in today’s far-right Republican Party.

Now, former friends and supporters — a middle school classmate, a law school professor, a conservative columnist who promoted him and the Republican stalwart who recruited him to run for the Senate — say they are shocked that he has become a different politician than they expected, describing themselves as victims of political deception and personal betrayal.

“I feel very responsible for Josh Hawley being in the Senate. I feel terrible about it,” said former senator John C. Danforth (R-Mo.), who recently called his encouragement of Hawley’s Senate run the “greatest mistake of my life.” He added, “Josh Hawley played a central role in creating if not the darkest day in American history, one of the darkest days in American history.”

Hawley declined to comment for this article. In an interview last week with Washington Post Live, which he scheduled to promote his just-published book, he stood by his decision to challenge the electoral college results. “In terms of having a debate about election integrity, I promised my constituents I would. I did. And I don’t regret that at all,” he said. Hawley condemned the actions of Jan. 6 as those of a “lawless criminal mob” and said that he considers President Biden to have been legitimately elected.

To combat criticism that he is an elitist, Hawley has urged people to examine the place where he grew up. “I come from a town called Lexington, Missouri,” he said in his maiden Senate speech. “It’s a place that reflects the dignity and quiet greatness of the working man and woman. These are the people who explored a continent, who built the railroads, who opened the West.”

That, however, is a simplistic description.

A racist legacy

Lexington, a city of 4,700 by the Missouri River in a region still known as Little Dixie for its historical ties to the Confederacy, prides itself as a place rich in history.

But the history long told in Lexington, including during Hawley’s childhood, focused almost entirely on the story of Whites who backed the Confederacy, including a battle in which Union forces were defeated. Nowhere in town is there a commemoration of the fact that it was also here that thousands of Blacks were enslaved in the 19th century, the largest such concentration in Missouri, according to Gary Gene Fuenfhausen, president of Missouri’s Little Dixie Heritage Foundation.

“That’s not something we talked about,” said Mayor Joe Aull, who was superintendent of schools when Hawley was a student. “I just never really heard it mentioned.”

Lexington’s lack of recognition of its role in slavery has meant that the city did not have the kind of introspection about inequality that might have broadened Hawley’s outlook, according to his former classmates.

“It’s a small town. There’s a lot of ignorance and a lot of people that don’t leave the county and see the world,” said Patrick Keller, who went to school with Hawley. “He had an insular life in this small town.”

Hawley has said he was politically influenced by a Christmas gift from his parents when he was 13 years old, a book by a conservative columnist.

“I read George Will religiously,” Hawley later wrote about the columnist, whose work has long appeared in The Washington Post. He also was influenced by listening to Rush Limbaugh, the fiery conservative radio star, according to a classmate.

Andrea Randle, who went to school with Hawley from second to eighth grades and served with him in student government, initially was impressed. She recalled that, when she was one of a handful of Blacks at Lexington Middle School, he worked with her on an initiative for a middle school graduation ceremony that was designed to include people from all backgrounds.

“I thought he was being inclusive,” she said. Only later, like a number of other key figures in Hawley’s life, would she decide that she had been misled.

By the time Hawley completed middle school, his parents decided that he needed a more elite education and transferred him to Rockhurst High School in Kansas City, a Jesuit institution. As Hawley commuted to the school, he began his sideline as a conservative columnist for the Lexington News. His first column was titled “A Younger Point of View.” The following columns, which ran in 1994 and 1995, were called more grandly “State of the Union.” He said little in any columns about youth; he opined almost entirely about national political matters. The newspaper’s former editor said in an interview that he didn’t change a word, sending the columns directly to the typesetter.

In his column on the Oklahoma City bombing, which has received new attention after the Kansas City Star recently reported on it, Hawley wrote approvingly about an analyst who said that “the majority of these people who feel the U.S. government is involved in a ‘conspiracy’ against its citizens are average, middle-class Americans. … Dismissed by the media and treated with disdain by their elected leaders, these citizens come together and form groups that often draw more media fire as anti-government hate gatherings.”

As a result, Hawley concluded, they become “disenchanted” and believe “ ‘conspiracy theories’ about how the federal government is out to get them. … Those militias and ‘hate’ groups about which you read with your morning coffee are symptoms that mustn’t go unnoticed.”

In another column, which continues to upset Blacks who grew up with Hawley, he wrote that affirmative action programs designed to combat centuries of racism were a “perverted racial spoils system,” claiming that the slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. would find it “repulsive,” even though King had said that such programs were essential before equality could be achieved.

A mentor is disturbed

As a history major at Stanford, Hawley met professor David Kennedy, who suggested a number of books on the American presidency for Hawley to read. Kennedy said in an interview that he was astonished when his student returned a couple of weeks later and made clear that he had read and absorbed the volumes.

Kennedy became Hawley’s academic adviser and oversaw his thesis, which became a book, “Theodore Roosevelt: Preacher of Righteousness.” Kennedy wrote in the preface that Hawley had “an unusually questing intelligence, a breadth and depth of learning well beyond his years, and an intolerance for conventional thinking.”

In an interview, Kennedy said Hawley was one of the best students he had ever taught, but, like many others who helped enable Hawley’s rise, he now has deep regrets, saying he is “quite disturbed” about the senator’s role on Jan. 6.

“I think he is a thoughtful, deeply analytical person,” Kennedy said. “What I understand far less well is his particular political evolution. I had no inkling really just how conservative he was. I blame myself. The feeling on my part is that I simply was not paying attention to what he was doing in the arena of student culture where he was moving.”

Hawley became president of a conservative group called the Freedom Forum and wrote for a conservative magazine, the Stanford Review. In a letter published by the magazine that foreshadowed his strategy of using race and sexual orientation as political weapons, Hawley in 1999 mocked Democrats whose “self-righteous pronouncements on racial oppression and gay rights activism seem oddly out of place, like disco music at a swing dance.”

After Stanford, Hawley spent nearly a year in London teaching at the exclusive St. Paul’s School, an institution that says it is for “gifted boys.” Then Hawley, who had written in one of his Lexington News columns that people educated in the Ivy League were “elitist,” attended Yale Law School. He became president of the Yale chapter of the conservative Federalist Society.

He then won a succession of coveted clerkships, first for Michael McConnell, a U.S. Court of Appeals judge, and then for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. during the Supreme Court’s 2006-07 term. That led to work at a Washington law firm then known as Hogan & Hartson and next at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, where Hawley was co-counsel on the Hobby Lobby case, in which the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 in 2014 that certain corporations could not be required to pay for insurance covering contraception, a major victory for conservatives.

Hawley returned to Missouri with an eye toward laying the ground for a political career. His availability caught the attention of Thom Lambert, a University of Missouri law professor. Lambert aggressively recruited Hawley and his wife, Erin, to teach in Columbia.

Lambert, who said he is a gay evangelical Christian, said that after Hawley spent several semesters teaching at the university, he became alarmed that Hawley began making pronouncements that didn’t square with his background in constitutional law but instead appeared designed to attract political support. Lambert was especially shocked in 2015 when Hawley, then a candidate for attorney general, weighed in on a Kentucky case in which a county clerk was arrested for refusing to give a same-sex couple a marriage license or to allow her deputies to do so, citing her religious beliefs. Hawley said it was “tragic” that the clerk was arrested, and he promised to protect such government officials if he were elected.

“This is the moment when I realized, I’m not sure I know this guy,” Lambert said. “He was trying to establish his credentials as a religious-freedom warrior. This is where I thought, you’re kind of lying here. You’re misrepresenting how the Constitution works.”

A broken promise

Hawley won the race with the help of a television ad in which he blasted politicians who he said are “just climbing the ladder, using one office to get another.” The ad showed several men climbing ladders labeled “attorney general” and “U.S. Senate.”

But within months of winning the office, Hawley prepared to do exactly what he had mocked: climb the ladder to become a senator. He needed a way to explain to voters why he was breaking his promise. A fortuitous encounter provided a path.

Danforth, the former senator from Missouri, had delivered a speech years earlier at Yale, and Hawley sat next to him later at a small dinner. Now Danforth, who also had served as Missouri’s attorney general, was looking for a candidate to run against Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.

A moderate establishment figure, Danforth by this time had emerged as one of Trump’s harshest critics, and he believed that Hawley could bring a principled vision to the Republican Party.

“You have the training and the ability to be a leading voice for the constitutional order, not only in Missouri but nationally,” Danforth wrote to Hawley in a letter co-signed by three other former Missouri Republican senators.

With Danforth’s letter helping provide an excuse, Hawley broke his vow against “climbing the ladder” and announced his Senate candidacy in October 2017.

Hawley, an evangelical, had seen how Trump captured the presidency in 2016, in part by winning the White evangelical vote by 80 to 16 percent.

So, when Hawley spoke before a group of ministers in Kansas City in December 2017, he sounded like a different person than the one who had written five years earlier that there were “distinct missions of church and state — is it really the role of government, for instance, to promote ‘Christian values’ or refurbish America’s Christian heritage?” The state, he had written, should not be used “to convert non-believers.”

But in his 2017 speech, he advocated going into “the public realm and to seek the obedience of the nations, of our nation … to transform our society to reflect the gospel truth and lordship of Jesus Christ.”

The speech drew a rebuke from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which is dedicated to upholding the separation of church and state. The foundation wrote to the former constitutional law professor that his remark “stands in glaring defiance of the very Constitution that you swore an oath to uphold.”

Tying himself as closely as possible to Trump, Hawley beat McCaskill, 51 percent to 46 percent, and headed to Washington.

‘What’s with Hawley?’

Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had played a crucial role, helping to fundraise for Hawley’s campaign. But the incoming senator would not say that he supported McConnell having another term leading the party. McConnell asked Danforth for an explanation.

“What’s with Hawley?” he asked, according to Danforth. (A McConnell spokesman, asked about the call, responded that “McConnell never solicited Hawley’s support for his leadership election and he ran unopposed.”)

Danforth said he called Hawley, who told him, “I’m going to go to Washington, and I’m not going to be part of the establishment, and I’m not going to be pushed around. I’m going to be independent, and I’m going to speak for the people.”

Danforth told The Post that Hawley’s “response was so aggressive that it struck me as strange.” Nonetheless, he remained supportive, dining with the senator-elect and writing a warm congratulatory note. But Hawley shut him off. He didn’t respond to Danforth’s letter, and the two have not spoken since their post-election meal, Danforth said.

“I think he would not be in the U.S. Senate except for me,” Danforth said. “Maybe that sounds like I’m promoting myself being a kingmaker, but my view is, I put him there and created this thing.”

Hawley made a striking declaration about his view of Americans in a June 2019 article in Christianity Today, titled “The Age of Pelagius.” He said Pelagius, a Greek scholar born about the year 350, had said individuals had freedom to be whatever they chose. “It’s the Pelagian vision,” he wrote. “Liberty is the right to choose your own meaning.”

Hawley found such liberty abhorrent.

He said it meant that an individual could “emancipate yourself not just from God but from society, family, and tradition.” He said those seeking this liberty became elitists.

This was too much for his onetime hero, George Will, who viewed individual liberty as an essential American trait. Will had been helpful during the Senate campaign. He had been urged to write about Hawley by Danforth, his longtime friend and the godfather of Will’s daughter. Will came to Missouri, rode with Hawley on a campaign bus and wrote a column praising the candidate as “an actual, not a pretend, conservative.”

But Will gradually concluded that his assessment had been wrong. He wrote a column in January 2020 ridiculing Hawley’s attack on individualism. As the two feuded, the senator fired off a Trump-like tweet at the man he once revered: “I’m told NeverTrumper and ex-Republican George Will attacking me again today for talking about working people. Oh George. Don’t you have a country club to go to?”

Will said in an interview that he found the tweet “surpassingly dumb.” He later condemned Hawley’s effort to reject the presidential election results and create a “synthetic drama” on Jan. 6, writing that the senator from Missouri, along with Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), must be “forevermore shunned. … Each will wear a scarlet ’S’ as a seditionist.”

The feud with Will — like the one with Danforth and other former key backers — demonstrated how separated Hawley had become from the establishment Republicans who had helped him win the Senate seat.

He moved further to the right, distancing himself from yet another mentor, Chief Justice Roberts. He pilloried last year’s 6-to-3 ruling by the Supreme Court extending civil rights protections to gay and transgender people. It was a decision written by Trump nominee Neil M. Gorsuch and supported by Roberts, for whom Hawley had clerked. But Hawley declared that “it represents the end of the conservative legal movement.”

Hawley then zeroed in on an issue that Trump had turned into a racial flash point: efforts to educate leaders about the history of racism to promote diversity in the workplace.

Under “critical race theory,” companies and government entities have examined the institutionalized racism that has marginalized minorities to low-level positions. Trump had issued an executive order, supported by Hawley, that prevented federal contracts from having such diversity training.

The senator, in a Nov. 30 tweet, echoed his column against affirmative action, written 25 years earlier. “Corporate liberals … love critical race theory and all the other warmed-over Marxist garbage,” he wrote. “They sell out working Americans and sneer at them at the same time. That’s the New Left.”

Kimberlé Crenshaw, a UCLA law professor who coined the phrase “critical race theory,” said in an interview that Hawley is attacking her concept as a means of “race baiting.”

“He walks in the footsteps of many demagogues in America’s historical past, whose trajectory into the center of power has been through racialized scapegoating,” Crenshaw said.

A classmate reaches out

Andrea Randle, who had worked with Hawley on the middle school graduation ceremony, thought of her childhood friend after hearing about the killing of George Floyd, who died last year after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes.

Randle said in an interview that she hoped Hawley could once again work with her, believing he could join the fight for racial justice. She sent him an email with the subject line: “Old Ally from Lexington.”

“Hi Josh,” she wrote on May 31, 2020. “I know you remember me. We grew up together in rural Lexington, ran student council & sang in honor choir. … You were always going to move on to do great things. … The death of George Floyd will be forever etched in every memory & in history. I haven’t seen where you have spoken out about it.”

Urging Hawley to be a leader on the issue, she wrote: “I know the young man who looked into the future & created an 8th grade commemoration … for our small little class of 98 lead[s] with empathy. America needs him desperately right now.”

Randle said Hawley never responded, which deeply disappointed her. “I was hoping he would be on the right side of history of this,” she said.

A month later, Hawley went on Fox News and attacked the Black Lives Matter movement as “Marxist” and belittled its efforts to fight for justice in the aftermath of Floyd’s death. He said it has “hatred for the United States of America” and that “the organization is trying to hijack any movement towards justice for George Floyd, for instance, they’re trying to hijack that conversation away towards their own political Marxist agenda.”

To Randle, Hawley’s dismissal of a group dedicated to civil rights for Blacks and his call to abolish affirmative action are rooted in what she said is his lack of empathy concerning the legacy of slavery in Lexington. She concluded that her initial impression of him as an inclusive person was wrong.

“It just doesn’t seem like that person he was is the person he is today,” Randle said. “It’s disappointing and disheartening. This denial of facts, the denial of the people who are marginalized in our culture, that there are historical systems in place that are still keeping people down. That he won’t even acknowledge it is just kind of crazy to me.

”‘Thanks Josh!’

After the electoral college vote giving Biden the presidency, McConnell wanted to head off the possibility that a single senator could force a vote in Congress on certifying the results. His prime concern was that Hawley would “breach the dam,” as an associate put it, and prompt other senators to follow him. He declared that “the electoral college has spoken” and urged senators to accept the result.

Hawley went ahead anyway.

He announced on Dec. 30 that he would challenge the results, prompting some other senators to follow his lead. Hawley defied McConnell despite the fact that more than 90 federal and state judges had rejected lawsuits seeking to overturn the outcome and Trump’s attorney general, William P. Barr, had dismissed allegations that there was widespread voter fraud.

Hawley focused on Pennsylvania, saying the state had violated its constitution by widening access to mail-in ballots. But it was a Republican-controlled legislature that approved universal mail voting in 2019, and the GOP had encouraged its use. When Trump lost the state, his allies sought to get those votes thrown out, but the effort was rejected by the courts.

The next day, McConnell tried again to head off Hawley, overseeing a conference call that was supposed to include all Republican senators. McConnell said the Jan. 6 vote was the most consequential of his life, and he asked why Hawley was going forward with an effort doomed to fail. The plan was for Hawley to explain himself and for Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) to rebut his assertions, according to a person familiar with the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.

The senators waited for Hawley to respond but heard no reply. They did not realize, as Politico first reported, that Hawley had not dialed in as expected. Hawley then sent a fundraising letter that said he wouldn’t give in to “the Washington and Wall Street establishment.”

Two days after the teleconference, Toomey tweeted that Hawley and others “fail to acknowledge that these allegations have been adjudicated in courtrooms across America and were found to be unsupported by evidence.”

Trump, however, encouraged Hawley, tweeting, “Thanks Josh!” The senator then went on Fox News, where anchor Bret Baier asked about his plans to challenge the electoral college results. “Are you trying to say as of January 20 Trump will be president?” Baier asked.

“That depends on what happens on Wednesday [Jan. 6]; that’s why we have the debate,” Hawley said.

“No it doesn’t,” Baier responded, saying that most experts believe Congress does not have the right to overturn the certification.

A few days later, on Jan. 6, the president praised Hawley during his incendiary speech to supporters. Around that time, Hawley passed by a crowd of protesters at the Capitol and raised his fist in solidarity. Shortly thereafter, as he and other senators were on or near the Senate floor, a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol.

Senators were rushed to the safety of a secure room in an adjoining Senate office building. At that tense moment, fearing that their lives were at risk if rioters found them, a number of senators gathered in the secure room to discuss whether they could shut down the effort to challenge the election results. One senator recalled that every time he looked over, he saw Hawley “standing by himself in a corner,” according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirming a detail first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Romney, in a floor speech directed at Hawley and others, tried one last time to stop the challenges.

“Those who choose to continue to support [Trump’s] dangerous gambit by objecting to the results of a legitimate, democratic election will forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy,” said the senator from Utah, who declined to comment.

Hawley insisted he would proceed with his challenge to the Pennsylvania results. The Senate defeated his effort by a vote of 92 to 7.

Hawley later said that “it is a lie that I was trying to overturn an election,” and he has consistently condemned those who stormed the Capitol. But he has stood by his claim that Pennsylvania’s vote was unconstitutional and wrote that he was reflecting constituent “concerns about election integrity.” He did not point out that such concerns exist largely because Hawley, Trump and their allies stoked them with false claims.

‘We love Josh Hawley’

Hawley’s position has increasingly taken hold in the party, where leaders at every level have embraced the false claims of election fraud. Trump remains the most popular figure in the country among GOP voters, and lawmakers who opposed the electoral college challenge have been booed at home and faced withering criticism from local party officials.

Hawley raised $3 million in the first quarter of this year, according to federal records, and he has audaciously cast himself as the person best suited to redefine the GOP.

On April 17, in his first public appearance in Missouri since the events of Jan. 6, Hawley traveled to Ozark, a city in the state’s southwestern corner where he is building a new home, and strode into his fan base at Ozark High School, home of the Tigers. He was swarmed by several hundred people who had gathered at a Lincoln Day dinner fundraiser for Christian County’s Republican Party.

“We love Josh Hawley because he stands up for Missouri’s values,” said Wanda Marteen, 78, who organized the event. “The first thing, the big thing he stood up for, is the election. We feel like it was fraudulent.”

Most of the speech amounted to an outline of his effort to remake the Republican Party and possibly seek the presidency. Hawley blasted what he called “the giant woke corporations” that opposed a Republican-backed Georgia voting measure, said Democrats would “effectively cancel women’s sports” by allowing transgender athletes and argued that they back legislation “that would effectively close Christian colleges and universities.”

Five days after his Ozark speech, Hawley became the lone senator to vote against the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act, designed to combat discrimination against Asian Americans. It was in some respects an unlikely position for someone eyeing a presidential campaign, but to Hawley, it made sense. It was, he said, “dangerous” to broaden the federal government’s ability to prosecute hate crimes.

Hawley had taken his stand. Once again, he was defiant, beckoning others to follow.

A Survey

The kicker - spoiler alert - is that when Joe Manchin tries to assert that 20-25% of Americans don't feel terribly confident in our elections and woe is me, we can't take the chance on making it worse...?

What the actual fuck, Joe?

First, that means 75-80% of us do in fact have confidence in our elections, so your argument is pretty weak shit to begin with.

Second, you're in a position to change those minds, SENATOR Manchin. Jeezus H Fuq, you have access to everything thing you could possibly want if you decided just to do your fucking job, asshole.

Vox:

Back in March, the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer obtained a recording of an adviser to Mitch McConnell privately bemoaning, on a call with conservative group leaders, that Democrats’ big voting rights bill, the For the People Act, polled quite well. “When presented with a very neutral description” of it, “people were generally supportive,” the adviser said.

A new Data for Progress poll conducted as part of a partnership with Vox backs up that assessment. The poll surveyed 1,138 likely voters nationally between April 16 and April 19, and it finds that much of what the 800-page bill claims to do is overwhelmingly popular.

More than 80 percent of respondents said they supported preventing foreign interference in elections, limiting the influence of money in politics, and modernizing election infrastructure to increase election security. More than 60 percent of respondents supported requiring nonpartisan redistricting commissions, a 15-day early voting period for all federal elections, same-day registration for all eligible voters, automatic voter registration for all eligible voters, and giving every voter the option to vote by mail.

There are, of course, a few caveats. The poll presented these questions without partisan cues about which party supports which proposal. Indeed, the one question that mentioned the parties — about whether Democrats should change Senate rules so they could pass redistricting reform without Republican support — was much more closely divided. (Forty-seven percent of respondents said they supported doing this, and 42 percent said they opposed it.)

The questions also didn’t spotlight Republicans’ preferred arguments — for instance, Republicans would stress concerns that same-day and automatic registration could allow ineligible people to vote, which would likely make some respondents more concerned about these proposals.

And other parts of the bill, like its limits to voter ID laws (it would allow voters without ID to submit a sworn statement vouching for their identity) and its creation of a public financing system to match small donations, may be more controversial. Voter ID requirements generally poll quite well and support for public financing can vary greatly based on question wording. (In polling for a separate client, Data for Progress found 56 percent support for one detailed description of the For the People Act’s matching program, but the conservative polling firm Echelon Insights found very little support for the general concept of “using government dollars to match donations to political campaigns.”)

The poll also asked about a competing redistricting reform proposal not currently in the For the People Act — setting proportional standards such that, if a party wins about half of votes in a state, it should win about half the seats. (I recently wrote about the debate among Democrats over this idea.) This got less support than any of the other provisions above but still was backed by 51 percent of poll respondents, with 34 percent saying they opposed this.

In any case, Democrats’ problem when it comes to enacting the For the People Act isn’t the polls — it’s the Senate filibuster. The bill that already passed in a near party-line vote in the House will require a 60-vote supermajority to pass in the Senate. Since no Republican support appears to be in the offing, activists have argued that the Senate should change its rules to let the bill pass. But moderate Democratic senators don’t want to do this.

One key holdout, Joe Manchin, told me in a recent profile that he fears passing a major voting bill on party lines would only further divide the country. He argued that 20 to 25 percent of the public already doesn’t trust the system and that a party-line overhaul would “guarantee” that number would increase, leading to more “anarchy” like that at the Capitol on January 6. He added, “I just believe with all my heart and soul that’s what would happen, and I’m not going to be part of it.”

Unless he changes his mind, the For the People Act can’t pass the Senate.

Rawr

...it doesn't mean "I love you" in this case.

We always think we should wonder whether or not this kind of thing means something other than a FLOTUS getting her feathers a little ruffled by hard-ass political appointees telling her to do things that she really doesn't want to do, or treating her like she's just some ditzy broad (which, unfortunately, is the best bet) who is little more than arm candy for the boss.

WaPo:

A transoceanic personnel crisis that engulfed the National Security Council this week is partly rooted in a bureaucratic dispute over the seating arrangements aboard first lady Melania Trump’s plane to Africa last month during her maiden solo trip abroad.

As the East Wing prepared the flight manifest for the marquee trip, deputy national security adviser Mira Ricardel became angry that seats on the first lady’s government jet were assigned to a larger-than-usual security entourage and a small press corps with none for Ricardel or another NSC staffer, according to current U.S. officials and others familiar with the trip and its aftermath.

Policy experts from the NSC and State Department were advised to fly separately and to meet the first lady’s party on the ground, a practice the State Department had often used, but Ricardel objected strenuously, those people said. She threatened to revoke NSC resources associated with the trip, meaning no policy staff would advise the first lady during her visits to Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Egypt.

Bad blood between Ricardel and Melania Trump and her staff continued for weeks after the trip, with the first lady privately arguing that the NSC’s No. 2 official was a corrosive influence in the White House and should be dismissed. But national security adviser John Bolton rebuffed the first lady and protected his deputy, prompting the first lady’s spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, to issue an extraordinary statement to reporters Tuesday effectively calling for Ricardel’s firing.

“It is the position of the Office of the first lady that she no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House,” Grisham said of Ricardel in the statement.

After an uncomfortable day of limbo, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders announced Wednesday evening that Ricardel was leaving the White House.

“Mira Ricardel will continue to support the President as she departs the White House to transition to a new role within the Administration,” she said in a statement.

An NSC spokesman declined to elaborate.

And the story just gets weirder as it goes - no real surprise there - but the upshot seems to be that Melania's telling John Bolton to go fuck himself.

Fuck, I'm Tired

Trying to keep up with the shit storm is exhausting. Which is partly the point - I get that - you get that - nobody doesn't get that.

Sometimes, ya gotta take a day or two and run the fuck away from it.

Here I am, back at it, and the truly worrying part for me right now is this:

Repubs don't care about anything but SCOTUS. They seem to believe that if they can get the courts, they don't really need their guy in the White House. They'll have him anyway - at least they'll have their Empty Vessel du Jour.  Reagan & Poppy Bush were proof-of-concept; Bush43 was the Beta Test, and now Cult45 is the Rig Roll-Out.

There are bugs, but once they're done pouring the foundation, they'll be able to install Grover Norquist's latest wet dream of a guy with just enough on the ball to sign his name to whatever bullshit gets the American Kleptocrats paid enough to hire the goons necessary to keep the rest of us in line.

Let's review briefly - SCOTUS reinforced Corporations-Are-People, and then decided Money = Speech. 

So now, we have exactly what the Big Bad Left warned us about.

If money is speech, then the biggest money is the loudest speech; and eventually, it becomes the only speech.

These 2 things:

Corporations are not people
Fuck Citizens United

And vote, dammit.

A Tweet Thread

There's no good reason to feel at all sorry for GOP politicians who have "suddenly" discovered they represent a political party that panders to the darkest instincts of American Populism.

It's been going on for 30+ years, and we got here because this is where Radical Right Republicans have always wanted us to be. (see driftglass)

This is something of a reckoning, and while it seems kinda fun to watch, this shit puts us in grave danger.

Senator Bob Corker "begged" me to endorse him for re-election in Tennessee. I said "NO" and he dropped out (said he could not win without...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 8, 2017

It's a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.

— Senator Bob Corker (@SenBobCorker) October 8, 2017

Meet President Pence

First, I really don't know what I'm talking about here. Because nobody knows what's really going on with the exception of some dedicated spooks and insiders who've been in Washington for a good long time, and who won't be telling us everything that's going on for just as long a time.

Even when (or if) somebody blows it open, we'll see the top layers - maybe several layers - but while we'll be told this is the most amazing revelation of the inner workings of the political machinery, we won't ever know the whole thing. Because if we did, we'd burn the joint down with everybody inside.  But - 'twas ever thus and ever thus 'twill be.

So anyway, Mike Pence.

Pence seems to be under the impression that he's supposed to be 45*'s righthand man; that he'll fill the Veep spot the way the last 3 Veeps have done - as a close advisor for POTUS, and a kind of partner who's in on the top level meetings, helping shape policy and politicking the agenda behind the scenes - more or less The President's Apprentice if you will (Sorry. I knew that one was coming as I was typing it, but I couldn't stop myself)

But it would seem Pence has been kept in the dark. They loaded him up with bullshit and sent him out to be the picket line of the castle's defense, and he ends up looking really stoopid. If he didn't know, then he's a dope, and if he did know, then he's a co-conspirator. Lose and lose some more.

And also but - it's started to look like the White House didn't fuck him over on purpose and they didn't just keep him out of the loop. It now seems this gang is so dysfunctional, Pence didn't know because communications and the decision-making process are completely FUBAR.

WaPo:
First

“The vice president is a very forgiving man,” said one White House official.

(translation: Chump; easily played; ambition overrides integrity; useful fool)

Next

Nonetheless, the two-week lag between when Trump, Bannon and Priebus learned of Flynn’s misdirection and when Pence himself found out through news reports has raised speculation as to Pence’s true clout — or lack thereof — within the White House.

If they're gonna go after 45*, they know it has to be a long slow process of getting an infrastructure (or a shadow version of the administration) in place that can keep things running as Pence gets his feet under him. Somebody has to guide a stealth transition while making sure 45* stays out of trouble as much as possible. 

Yeah - good luck with that whole coup d'etat thing, fellas. We're being told that there could be a monster constitutional crisis in the making, but it kinda looks like we're already in one.

Things have to happen quickly but can't be rushed.  I'm pretty sure it gets worse for a while.

Sam B Brings It

Let's review:

1. Eggs ain't chickens
2. Tadpoles ain't frogs
3. Ain't nuthin' goin' on in my daughter's uterus that's any of your goddamned business

So fuck off, motherfucker. And then fuck off some more. And keep fucking off until you get all the way back here - and then fuck off again.

And let's try to remember that abortion restrictions have almost no effect on any woman living at or above the basic Middle Class level.  The women in Jagoff Dan Flynn's life will hop on a plane to Montreal or Vancouver (to visit an old friend - or to attend an important Jesus-ey thing), and be back all spiffed up, and in plenty of time to make Sunday services where I'm sure they'll be praying for re-election and for a god-sent firebomb to mysteriously destroy whatever's left of those evil Planned Parenthood clinics.  

This shit has nothing to do with health - women's or otherwise - it has everything to do with power.

Learning Curves Are For Pussies

hat tip = TPM

It Could Be Tranference

I've been wondering about the blow-up over Brian Williams.  And about why everybody and his uncle are jumping on this guy for having botched one story - yeah, OK, it was kind of a doozy, but c'mon.  He fell into the "Acquired Memory" trap, and we're compelled to a public lynching?

And here's an interesting little wrinkle - he admitted it, and tried to correct the record long after everybody'd forgotten about it.  When was the last time anybody - ANY-FUCKING-BODY - in the media decided to come clean like that?

We need to hold people accountable, but Coin-Operated Politicians and The Banksters (eg), and a pile of others who've screwed things up way bigger than anything a news reader ever did (DumFux News being the exception of course) - those guys are practically bulletproof, and we get pretty fucking frustrated about how it seems like they never get spanked or even yelled at.  Then along comes a Dan Rather or a Brian Williams, and we lose our shit over it - because we're so pissed at the people we can't touch, we take it all out on the ones we can. 

Press Poodles in general have a lot of shit to answer for - I just wanna make sure I'm mad at the right people for the right reasons.