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The Professional Left

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Today's driftglass

Asking for several gazillion friends - whatever happened to that Greenwald guy?

You know, that guy who I used to write about from time to time and point out that he lied kind of a lot about really big, important issues? Bit of a thin-skinned asshole and monumental hypocrite whose automatic response to any criticism from anyone was all-out, knives-out attack? Who divided the world neatly into "People who agree completely with Glenn Greenwald" and "Drooling, jackbooted Obot servants of tyranny?"

Yeah, last I saw him he was stooging over on Fox News with his BFF, Tucker Carlson:

.@ggreenwald on media: I think what it is, more than dishonesty, is really warped incentive scheme bolstered by this very severe groupthink pic.twitter.com/CXIl2On7CY

— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 18, 2017

Today's Internet Thing

Overheard on FB

Adults:
Record numbers of our teenaged kids are suffering from depression of one kind or another - we must find out why.

Kids:
School is like really stressful, our parents fucked up the economy, put the earth on a path to become unfit for human habitation, and now we have to deal with actual Nazis.

Adults:
It's the iPhones, isn't it?

Keith

Buy it on Amazon

"I really need to get to Trump"

$60,000,000.00

A company called Jesand LLC

Make A Start

Jim Jeffries, with a perspective that sounds almost universal - or should.

"I thought I was a pretty good guy, what with all the not-raping I've done..."

Today's Tweet

Need some fake news? Look no further than your nearest Self-servative Media outlet.

BTW - what this jagoff has done is illegal. And it's a federal rap. (Stolen Valor Act 2013)

And wouldn't it be nice if somebody charged DumFux News with being an accessory? Yeah but - you know - 1st Amendment. Dammit.

Fox anchor on 'Navy Seal' extolling Trump: "God bless John Garofalo"
Fox correction: “All Garofalo’s claims untrue" https://t.co/uoJDvu9lUn

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) October 20, 2017

How It's Done

Mrs Myeshia Johnson

NYT:

“When she got off the phone, she said, ‘He didn’t even know his name. He kept calling him, ‘Your guy,’ ” Ms. Wilson recalled the widow saying. “He was calling the fallen soldier, ‘your guy.’ And he never said his name because he did not know his name. So he kept saying, ‘Your guy. Your guy. Your guy.’ And that was devastating to her.”

I think 45* tried to say what John Kelly said from the podium yesterday. I think he had Kelly's words in his head, but he said it so badly, it made him look like a jerk.  

And of course, he is a jerk - there can be no mistake about that at this point. 

The guy has no soul and no honor, both of which are required if you're going to have even a marginally positive effect when trying to console someone who's just suffered the worse kind of loss any of us can imagine.

Starting at about 6:00, John Kelly says it really well.

I think 45* got a warm fuzzy feeling from the way Kelly puts it, because it sounds noble, and manly, and heroic - all the things 45* desperately wishes pertained to him. But those characteristics have nothing to do with 45*, so he's always looking to appropriate them for himself without doing the work necessary to earn them.

If he'd known just a tiny bit about it, he might've pulled it off, but 45* doesn't know anything. He doesn't really want to know anything. He doesn't listen. He doesn't study. He doesn't learn. He's never prepared.

So when he needed to say the right thing in a way that gave the grieving family someone to lean on; or a reason to feel something other than their crushing sorrow, he blew it. He screwed the pooch. Again. As always.

He failed at one of the basic duties of a Commander in Chief; a leader; POTUS. The guy isn't man enough to pack a lunch for any one of those dead kids. Because he refuses to learn one fucking thing about his fucking job.

This is how it's done:

(to Mrs Lydia Parker Bixby)

Executive Mansion,
Washington, 21st November, 1864.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln

-and-

(to 21-year-old Fanny McCollough, on the death of her father, Lt Col Wm McCollough)

Executive Mansion,
Washington, December 23, 1862.

Dear Fanny
It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer, and holier sort than you have known before.

Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother.

Your sincere friend,
A. Lincoln.

Today's Tweet

It keeps popping up - like some kinda zombie meme

this why #AllLivesMatter is completely irrelevant pic.twitter.com/cyENyLf5B8

— iya perez (@lostsinks) July 8, 2016

Keith

"...like trying to shovel smoke."

POV

If the sight of an amazingly beautiful sunset makes you think of your god's handiwork, but you don't see that same aspect when you look at the burst pustules of small pox, then you're being selective about the list of things you consider part of your god-created universe, and you're well on your way to living the fantasy that you can make the universe into something that includes only that which matches your chosen philosophy.

Stop doing that.

hat tip = Neil DeGrasse Tyson