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Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

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Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

When we show up, we win.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

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Open Thread: “… Like Bad Reality TV”

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Dana Milbank on the breaking “Issa press aide scandal”:

… The latest symptom of our deformed political-journalistic complex presented this week, when news broke that the office of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House committee in charge of probing the Obama administration, had been secretly forwarding private correspondence with journalists to an author writing a book about Washington. This caused a great kerfuffle among reporters and a fear that the release of the e-mails could prove them to be sycophants: flattering Issa and his staff in hopes that favorable coverage would be rewarded with scraps of news.
__
The episode makes everybody look bad. Issa, a man with subpoena power, was having his staff work as his personal publicists rather than doing honest government work. Issa’s spokesman, Kurt Bardella, was justifiably fired for his double dealings with reporters. And reporters were (or soon will be) exposed as currying favor with the powerful. […] __
From what I understand, the e-mails won’t look good for Politico if and when Leibovich releases them. There are expected to be many from Allen and reporter Jake Sherman. There could be embarrassments for other outlets, including The Post, that played footsie with the 27-year-old Bardella as part of a culture in which journalists implicitly provide positive coverage in exchange for tidbits of news.
_
But this isn’t real news. The items Bardella fed journalists were “exclusive” previews of announcements designed to make Issa look good. Now that Bardella has been fired, Issa has been embarrassed and a few reporters are set to be humiliated, it might be a good time for those who cover the news to regain a sense of detachment from those who make the news.

(h/t Dave Weigel at Slate)

I don’t know what inspired Milbank to abandon his place inside the cocktail party, climb atop the Media Village wall, and send reports down to us peons outside the charmed courtier circuit, but I have to admit I’m enjoying his new perspective.

Reader Interactions

77Comments

  1. 1.

    Scott

    Issa is one of the guys I’d most like to see take a perp walk. He strikes me as a deeply, spectacularly unethical guy

  2. 2.

    tripletee

    Now that Bardella has been fired, Issa has been embarrassed and a few reporters are set to be humiliated, it might be a good time for those who cover the news to regain a sense of detachment from those who make the news.

    Good luck trying to shame shameless whores, Dana Quixote.

  3. 3.

    Emma

    That’s all right. Milbank will go back to his old ways soon. His owners don’t tolerate more than token resistance.

    Yes, I’m fed up with all of them. Does it show?

  4. 4.

    Ash Can

    Issa…was having his staff work as his personal publicists rather than doing honest government work. … And reporters were (or soon will be) exposed as currying favor with the powerful.

    I am shocked — shocked! — to find that gambling is going on in here.

  5. 5.

    Someguy

    Milbank thinks that paid partisan Congressional Staff really do “the people’s work” rather than carry water for their Member, and that it’s a scandal when a Member’s press secretary busts his ass to make his boss look good? Really? That’s a scandal? My understanding is that’s *exactly* what they’re paid to do, and it’s the non-partisan committee staff who are supposed to do “the people’s work.”

    Or maybe he thinks leaking to reporter A, then mentioning to Reporter B (on the same paper writing a book) the earlier leak to Reporter A is a scandal?

    Um, sorry, no. That isn’t a scandal. What it is, is a Member who is having a press afairs scandal because his press secretary is a promiscuous leaker.

    The actual scandal is that the media is in various members’ pockets.

  7. 7.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Mike Allen a power-sucking sycophant? Nay, never, I refuse to believe it!

    I was thinking recently about Mary Matalin’s memo that came out during the Scooter Libby trial, that the Dark Lord considered Chris Matthews too tough and interview, and preferred Tim Russert. Russert wasn’t the least bit embarrassed, it didn’t put a chink in his reputation. Granted, he died not long after and has been apotheosed (if that’s a word) in the minds of his fellow Villagers, but if there was ever a blush on his part or a snicker on anyone else, I never saw or heard of it.

  8. 8.

    MikeJ

    OT, but Nick Jonas proves anybody can sound halfway decent if you put them in front of a band that knows how to rock a Motown cover.

    John Legend, who actually knows how to hit the notes, wasn’t all that great.

    And as we got into “Aint to proud” the cheesy synth sound sounded more like the airport Ramada lounge than a presidential motown salute.

  11. 11.

    Evolved Deep Southerner

    He’s just pissed he wasn’t on the mailing list. You think we’d be hearing about it otherwise?

  13. 13.

    Mike in NC

    Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House committee in charge of probing the Obama administration, had been secretly forwarding private correspondence with journalists to an author writing a book about Washington.

    And the Villagers all rush to their fainting couches…

  14. 14.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Scott: If you haven’t read the New Yorker story by Ryan Lizza that Milbank refes to, if Issa isn’t a criminal, he’s stumbled into more circumstantial evidence than anybody since the kid in 12 Angry Men

  15. 15.

    El Cid

    This is more proof that Wikileaks has destroyed the known universe. Its lack of connection with this issue is irrelevant. An ethics paneled should be empaneled and it should condemn anyone who snickers at released e-mails showing how ‘journalists’ kissed political ass.

  18. 18.

    Martin

    Issa certainly authorized those leaks. Remember, this is the guy that financed the recall election of Gray Davis so that he could get an easy ride onto the governors ballot without having to slug through the GOP machine. Figured he’d just buy his way into office but then Arnold jumped in and Issa backed away. He then slutted around the state until he found a House seat he could win.

    Guy is 100% douchebag.

  19. 19.

    Ija

    Question for the masses: is there really an assumption of privacy with emails? I mean, with the FORWARD button, any email we send to anybody is fair game, right? The recipient can forward it to anybody he chooses.

  20. 20.

    Mark S.

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I was thinking recently about Mary Matalin’s memo that came out during the Scooter Libby trial, that the Dark Lord considered Chris Matthews too tough and interview, and preferred Tim Russert.

    Never heard that one before. Not the least bit surprising; Luke Russert is probably a tougher interviewer.

    But Tim was a real blue-collar guy like the rest of us.

  21. 21.

    asiangrrlMN

    Issa is a slime, to be sure, but this doesn’t really seem to be that high up on the scale of crimes.

    @MattR: And, oh, lookie. The representative is a Democrat.

  22. 22.

    Roger Moore

    had been secretly forwarding private correspondence with journalists to an author writing a book about Washington.

    Let’s be honest, this is about him doing something that puts journalists in a bad light, so it’s naturally going to get turned into a scandal. If it had been cooperating with journalists to put any other category of person in a bad light, the press would think it was dandy. I just goes to prove the old saw about not getting in a scandal war with somebody who buys ink by the barrel.

  23. 23.

    mclaren

    As our flipper-footed thalidomide-brewed teratogenic press corps(e) continues its descent toward lunacy and dementia, the parallel twixt the creatures that came out of the wall in the movie Hellraiser grows increasingly compelling.

    I look forward to our new press secretary Pinhead.

  24. 24.

    James E Powell

    This will be a one-off. Issa is an insane right-winger who consistently provides the kind of hysterical, anti-Democrat mole hills that the corporate press/media loves to make into mountains. Which means that the corporate press/media will continue to flatter him with positive coverage.

  25. 25.

    MattR

    @asiangrrlMN:

    Issa is a slime, to be sure, but this doesn’t really seem to be that high up on the scale of crimes.

    If you were a reporter you would understand that what this staffer did is worse than murder and just slightly less heinous than lying about an extramarital affair.

  26. 26.

    hamletta

    Dana Milbank was never as much a Villager as most lefty blog-type people thought. He was in the WHPC during the run-up to Iraq, and IIRC, asked some rather pointed questions.

    A few years ago, he did a live blog over at GOS, and it was a feeding frenzy where the commenters were holding him responsible for everything published in the WaPo instead of asking him about his own work. It was a trainwreck.

    His bailiwick for a long time was the absurdity of political theatre, and a lot of people took his commentary for approval.

    Yes, there was Mad Bitch Ale, and the dick-whisperer. I was ready to cut him then, and even floated the idea of a rebuttal to Masterwonk Theatre, or whatever it was, with me and my mom’s neighbor, who’d been recently turfed out by the WaPo, with us in tatty bathrobes and pink curlers.

    He’s always teetered on the line of in-it-but-not-of-it, “it” being The Village. But I think he’s a good reporter, and his heart’s in the right place.

    Encourage good behavior, people! Tell him, “more of this”!

  32. 32.

    Roger Moore

    @Mark S.:
    Does it really matter what kind of scary, dark skinned mooslims the Kenyan in Chief grew up around? Either way, they weren’t decent, white, heartland Americans, so he’s a dirty furriner at heart.

  34. 34.

    AnotherBruce

    @freelancer: No doubt it helped him buy his house seat. And his committee seat. Y’know, it never has before, but Marxism is really beginning to appeal to me.

  35. 35.

    Mark S.

    Shorter Chris Christie:

    Of course I’d win if I ran for president. It would be a piece of cake, like the time I fucked your mother up the ass. Fuhgeddaboudit. I just don’t want to run. You gotta problem with that?

  36. 36.

    Stillwater

    Milbank is in it for the long con. CYA is the only strategy the corrupt know. Apart from the con itself, course.

  37. 37.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Mark S.: Awfully full of himself (not a fat shot), isn’t he? Didn’t Christie only win in NJ because there was a purer-than-Corzine indy candidate?

  38. 38.

    Raul

    From the Milbank column

    Bardella also disclosed contempt for reporters he described as “lazy as hell. There are times when I pitch a story and they do it word for word. That’s just embarrassing.

    So when we (frequently) call the press corpse stenographers, that’s much too kind. They’re just copying and pasting.

  39. 39.

    RalfW

    OT, and I noticed another commenter mentioned this on an earlier thread, but the ‘click-to-edit’ just makes the screen go black now and no box in which to edit opens.
    RaflW/Raul

  42. 42.

    Emerald

    @Martin: Nah. Issa was, alas, MY congresscritter before the recall election. (I live in shame.)

    There is no chance of unseating him. You normally don’t know who’s running against him until you see the ballot. The lastest opponent did manage to get a few yard signs up, but that was it.

    North San Diego is winger territory. We also had the highly esteemed Duke Cunningham, in the next district down.

  43. 43.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Huckabee “misspoke”.

    Right.

    The Jeebus-addled doofus knew the teatard meme is all about Kenya, and that’s why he said it. Indonesia? Is that some place where you find Apache and Navajo?

  44. 44.

    Mike in NC

    @Emerald:

    North San Diego is winger territory. We also had the highly esteemed Duke Cunningham, in the next district down.

    I was stationed at NAB Coronado back in ’80-’81 and thought that parts of SoCal were just the Bible Belt with surfboards.

  45. 45.

    LanceThruster

    @Scott: Yeah, where’s the phrase, “Issa has been ‘recalled'”, or “Issa has been ‘indicted'”.

  46. 46.

    RadioOne

    @Ija: well, it’s definitely uncouth, so there’s that. There is a serious practical danger of journalists being unable to do their job without confidential email correspondence with politicians and their staff, simply because it’s been the way both parties have communicated for a very long time. On the other hand, Politico and pretty much every other political news venue has served up so much political bullshit over the past few years, that I think the covenant should be at least questioned for the moment. So I look forward to seeing their emails.

  49. 49.

    kdaug

    I think the pertinent question here is, (and this is a compound one, so pay attention) : How does one go about weighing one’s boobs while mopping naked and admiring one’s beautiful feet without shattering your clavicle?

    (Yeah. Dog, ice, whatev. Own up Cole. The truth is out there.)

  50. 50.

    demz taters

    Between this, Wisconsin and the absolutely beautiful take down of HBGary I’m actually daring to hope that we can start saying “This is how realignments happen” without irony.

  52. 52.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason (formerly frosty)

    @Roger Moore: He grew up around Hawaiians, I hear. A mongrel race of Japanese, natives, and Scotsmen. I shudder to think what kinds of teachings might have been rammed into his head under those circumstances. Especially from the Scotsmen.

  55. 55.

    Ija

    @RadioOne:

    I can understand off-the-record conversation being off-limits. But once you commit something in writing (even electronic writing), I think all bets are off. You can’t really expect it not to get out.

    Why can’t these journalists just ass-kiss in person? Do they have to ass-kiss in emails too?

  56. 56.

    opie jeanne, formerly known as Jeanne Ringland

    @Emerald: I lived behind the Orange Curtain until recently, and the politics there seemed tame by comparison to stuff that went on in San Diego county.
    We had the ever-lovely Loretta Sanchez, opposed by two candidates whose last names were Nguyen. Tan Nguyen was the guy who got into trouble in several different ways, including sending letters in Spanish to registered voters in Santa Ana that threatened them with prison or deportation if they voted.

  57. 57.

    opie jeanne, formerly known as Jeanne Ringland

    @Emerald: Meant to say that Issa and Cunningham kept us wondering what was in the water.

  61. 61.

    El Cid

    Fuck yeah, baby.

    Georgia does the South proud again.

    ATLANTA — Georgia is the latest state to propose legislation that questions whether President Barack Obama was born in the U.S., joining 10 other states who have measures that want more proof before his name is put on the 2012 ballot.
    __
    Even though Hawaii officials have repeatedly confirmed Obama’s citizenship, his birth certificate has been made public and courts have rebuffed challenges, the so-called “birther” issue hasn’t gone away.
    __
    Georgia Rep. Mark Hatfield, a Republican, said he still doesn’t know if Obama is eligible to serve as president, and 92 of his GOP colleagues and one Democrat support the bill introduced Monday.
    __
    “Most people feel it’s an issue to a significant enough portion of our population that it needs to be addressed by the state,” Hatfield said. “It is, in a sense, a response to … the sitting president and his inability or unwillingness to release his original birth certificate.”…
    __
    …Hatfield’s bill would require a certified copy of Obama’s original birth certificate be provided.

    I have no idea what the fuck any of these people even imagine an acceptable birth certificate to be.

    If it doesn’t say “FORGED DOCUMENT TO INSTALL KENYONESIAN MUSLIM N***** AS PRESIDENT TO DESTROY AMERICA BY ALL THE SPENDIN’,” then they won’t accept it.

  62. 62.

    bago

    @Ija: Uhh, once you send out unencrypted data on the internet it’s all out there. Every router is a man-in-the-middle.

  63. 63.

    bago

    @El Cid: Y’know, it might be worth it to see the sworn testimony of the C.I.A. stating that anyone questioning the chain of command would have less intelligence than the C.I.A.

  66. 66.

    El Cid

    This is cool, too:

    The Georgia Secretary of State can smack down any weird black guys running for President if he or she believes that the non-sufficiently-white candidate has failed to deliver enough pictures of his doctor pulling him out of the birth canal in front of that state’s Governor… [PDF here]

    (A) A certified exact copy of the candidate’s first original long-form birth certificate that includes the candidate’s date, time, and place of birth; the name of the specific hospital or other location at which the candidate was born; the attending physician at the candidate’s birth; the names of the candidate’s birth parents and their respective birthplaces and places of residence; and signatures of the witness or witnesses in attendance at the candidate’s birth.
    __
    If the foregoing described certified exact copy of the candidate’s first original long-form birth certificate is not attached and the candidate’s affidavit indicates that a first original long-form birth certificate for the candidate does not exist, the candidate shall attach certified exact copies of other original documentation, including, but not limited to, the candidate’s birth records, adoption records, baptism records, Social Security records, medical records, school and college records, military records, and passport records showing, either individually or collectively, that the candidate meets the natural born citizenship, age, and residency requirements prescribed by Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution. The candidate shall not attach certified or other copies of nonoriginal documents or records;
    __
    (B) Recitations in the affidavit attesting that the candidate has never been a citizen of any country or nation other than the United States of America; that the candidate has never held dual or multiple citizenship; and that the candidate has never owed allegiance to any country or nation other than the United States of America; and
    __
    (C) Recitations in the affidavit that specifically identify the candidate’s places of residence in the United States for at least the preceding 14 years.

    …then the proposed Georgia law makes it a crime for any of the electors (i.e., electoral votes) to cast their votes for the Negro alien.

    Apparently no one born in Hawaii can ever run for President in Georgia, because Hawaii has converted to the electronic birth certificate system.

    So has Texas, I believe. And a number of other states. Arkansas. Massachusetts.

    I guess we need to make sure Georgia prevents anyone from Illinois running for office, too:

    Springfield, Ill. – Birth records will now be handled electronically in Illinois.

    Illinois Department of Public Health director Dr. Damon Arnold announced Monday the launch of the state’s Electronic Birth Registration System within the Division of Vital Records. The department says hospitals will now handle birth records electronically instead of filing paper certificates.
    __
    Arnold says there are about 500 births every day in Illinois and “the efficiency of the new electronic systems should help us get birth certificates into the hands of parents sooner.”
    __
    The department says it anticipates the electronic system will mean that birth records will be filed earlier. Officials say the time frame for hospitals and local registrars to file information has not changed.

  67. 67.

    Yutsano

    @El Cid: I suppose this ruins my chances of becoming President as well. Damn my father for getting stationed in Honolulu.

  68. 68.

    El Cid

    @bago: The CIA could easily have been taken over by Kenyan anti-colonialist Islamic caliphate Weather Underground community organizer infiltrators.

  69. 69.

    El Cid

    @Yutsano: With so many states transiting to EBR systems, soon no one will be eligible.

    I wonder too if swearing allegiance to the Confederacy rules you out?

    That would winnow out much of the GOP bench.

  70. 70.

    Jebediah

    @Ailuridae:
    Clicked on the Tougher Mudder link. Why do they want to set you on fire?
    Good luck – looks like “don’t die” would be more appropriate than “have fun”…

  71. 71.

    alwhite

    I have thought for a while now that Milbanks might actually have a decent heart and desire to actually commit journalism. But his head tells him the money & ‘success’ are with the cocktail circuit crowd. As a result you occasionally get good work out of him but mostly he spews the expected amount of hinny smooching. He is very aware of this conflict & it eats at him, hence the ‘dick whisperer’ – angry for being humiliated on TV but more angry with himself for doing the things that get him humiliated.

    With each new “decent Milbank” story I hope he has finally broken away but, sadly, next week he will probably smooch twice as hard as a form of penance.

  72. 72.

    Jebediah

    @El Cid:
    So they will rush to disqualify any white gooper who can’t meet the requirements?
    Some doubts I am having…

  73. 73.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @freelancer:

    Sorry, but the joke here is that a “melee hunter” is one of the most stupid things you can possibly be in WoW, in that every last one of your most powerful abilities uses a ranged weapon…if you’re using a melee weapon, you’re fail. Total fail.

  75. 75.

    ppcli

    Well, I’m arriving at the party just as the chairs are being put upside down on the tables, but I wanted to add to the chorus that the only scandal I see is the fact that this is somehow regarded as a “scandal”. If Issa’s rep had been sending emails to journalists that made him or Issa look bad, they, or at least the information they contained, would be published in an instant. Why are journalists exempt from scrutiny? Maybe it will improve the sorry state of journalism a bit if their cynical, favor-currying, fawning over the powerful behavior is more often exposed to the light of day. I hope this book appears soon.

  76. 76.

    Catzmaw

    Please, oh please, someone embarrass that smug little twit Mike Allen. Every time I see his grinning mug on some morning show blathering about Obama and smirkily dispensing often irrelevant details of exaggerated failings I feel like smacking him. At least Fox is honestly dishonest. They’ll wink at you as they pick your pocket and lie to your face about things, but Allen and Politico like to pretend they really ARE dispassionate, objective observers despite the obvious spin to many of Politico’s stories, the little jabs made with just the right adjective or adverb to raise the unsuspecting reader’s sense of derision or cynicism.

  77. 77.

    N W Barcus

    @freelancer & the Village Must Be Treated Like Carthage:

    1) I thought it was interesting that no one had noticed the parallel.

    2) I wanted to point out that some of those who are clutching their pearls about violation of privacy were jest fine with those on Journolist losing theirs.

    For the record, I believe both the Journolist kerfuffle and “Climategate” are bullshit. And my stance on human sacrifice continues to evolve. Have a nicer day.

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