Charlie Tells The Truth

Charlie Pierce is a national treasure.

"Battlefield courage and political courage can be quite different things"

His piece on Poppy Bush at Esquire:

However, as Bush rose in the Republican Party, its power base swung south and west. It slowly embraced empowered radical religious fundamentalism. And, most significantly, in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, it made a conscious decision to energize itself through the splintered, but still powerful, remnants of American apartheid. 

Bush never appeared comfortable with these developments, but he never could quite bring himself to denounce them, and he had very little compunction about using them when he needed to do so. Because of this, and because of the starchy aloofness of his basic mien, he struggled mightily against the impression that he was inauthentic. He did not often win that battle.

My lord, the man enlisted to fight in World War II when he was still underage and he came back a genuine hero. (Say what you will about those old WASP families, but there are a lot of their names on the wall in Memorial Hall and in the Memorial Church at Harvard.) Why did he feel that, to be president, he had to butch it up against Dan Rather, or tell an audience after his debate against Geraldine Ferraro that he’d “kicked a little ass last night.” Why did he feel he had to flip flop on reproductive choice as baroquely as he did? He felt he had to act in this ridiculous fashion, and he wasn’t strong enough to fight against his own ambition. Battlefield courage and political courage can be quite different things.

- and -

He could have been one of the most powerful voices against the slide of Republicanism into movement conservatism, religious fanaticism, and irrationality in general. Maybe nobody could have stopped it. (Even his son, George W. Bush, made a kabuki stab at it. Remember “compassionate conservatism”? But, because he was a Bush, W handed this phantom philosophy over to Karl Rove, who had been too much of a ruthless ratfcker for the elder Bush. We ended up as a nation that tortures.) But he could have tried. His stature would have counted against it.

But he could never muster enough political gumption to overcome his own ambition.

Today's Tweet

Wonder how much he thinks they can get for beans and wheat that's mostly slime by now.

Good news, Farmers, he loves you.

He loves you like a billionaire loves a porn star. https://t.co/xvfntdYkDR

— Stonekettle (@Stonekettle) December 3, 2018

And how much suffering are the rubes willing to endure just so they can avoid having to admit they're getting played?

It's A Wonderment

"I'm not a scientist but..." 

That one needs to be added to the big shit can right along with

• "I don't mean to be a jerk about it, but..."
• "I'm all about the women's rights thing, but..."
• "I'm not a racist, but..."

There's nothing that comes after that kind of opening that anybody should listen to for any reason other than some weird masochistic desire for a little aural pain.

Trevor Noah:

And I ask again: Why do we have to rely on late nite comedy shows for honest media criticism?

Today's Quote

I hope to arrive at my death late, in love, and a little drunk.

-- Atticus

hat tip = Ed Freeman, Darden School of Business

Today's GIF

Angela Merkel is the woman we should all aspire to be.

Today's Tweet

Seems like it should be pretty clear for normal people

A “perjury trap” is where you convince a pathological liar to do what he normally does, except under oath.

— Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) December 2, 2018

Poppy Bush

Bush41 died late last night.

Poppy gets points for the good things he did, not the least of which were passing the ADA and making some moves to get the federal budget in line - the tax increases he let through would cost him dearly in 1992.

And we should remember his efforts to fix some of the shit he helped create. Noriega's Panama comes to mind. And Saddam - to an extent, even though he got an awful lot of Iraqis (and Persians) butchered simply by letting that shit go on in the 80s.

And there are other little gems as well.

By that same token, we can lay a good bit of the blame for lots of things at his feet. eg: The other Narco States of Central America that were strengthened because he refused to pursue the idiots who gave us Iran-Contra. And a lot of the shit the CIA pulled under his directorship that helped create conditions that eventually led to the blowback that came home to us on 9/11.

So I won't eulogize him, partly because I didn't know him, but mostly because in this country, we're supposed to be able to recognize that while some presidents are obviously better presidents than other presidents - and far better people too - they're all humans, they're way short of perfection, and not one of them deserves to be fitted for a halo.

Today's Tweet

When you see the new guy sucking up to your work crush.

LMAO HOW DID WE MISS THIS pic.twitter.com/JXv2ionRqt

— Jules Suzdaltsev (@jules_su) November 30, 2018

All Man

Daddy State Awareness Rule 2:

Every boast is an admission of inadequacy

WaPo, Eric Knowles and Sarah DiMuccio:

From boasting about the size of his penis on national television to releasing records of his high testosterone levels, President Trump’s rhetoric and behavior exude machismo. His behavior also seems to have struck a chord with some male voters. See, for example, the “Donald Trump: Finally Someone With Balls” T-shirts common at Trump rallies.

But our research suggests that Trump is not necessarily attracting male supporters who are as confidently masculine as the president presents himself to be. Instead, Trump appears to appeal more to men who are secretly insecure about their manhood. We call this the “fragile masculinity hypothesis.” Here is some of our evidence.

The piece goes on to lay out the case, and the graphic is pretty amazingly unsurprising in how closely it matches their Fragility Index with the way we know these guys usually vote.

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