Steve M has a good piece on the hurt feelings excuse that Karen Susan Collins and the rest of the “moderates” (God I hate that word in this context) are going to use for a reason not to call witnesses. Two things:
First, we all have little clichés or old saws that we use to explain human behavior. In this case, I’m going to go with either “Never teach a pig to sing, it wastes your time and it annoys the pig” or “How many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb? One, but they have to want to change”.
These pigs don’t want to change, and they’re pissed that Schiff, Nadler and the rest are pointing it out while they have to sit quietly and listen.
Second, you often hear people remark that, for a group that uses the expression “fuck your feelings” a lot, these people sure are delicate. That’s true, but there’s a little more to it than simply hypocrisy. It’s a result of the very effective, 30+ year project of “othering” by the conservative media. Long before Fox News, Limbaugh and others worked to make “liberal” an epithet to describe someone who is lesser than the person using the term. These fuckers couldn’t use racial epithets in public anymore, so they found a better one – it doesn’t matter what color you are, or where you came from, if you’re a god damned liberal, then fuck your feelings. But if you’re a conservative, please tread carefully, because you’re dealing with a legitimate human being who is easily damaged by lack of respect.
It would be bad enough if this attitude had been embraced by a third of the population or more, but it’s also been accepted by the mainstream media. There are hundreds of examples of this behavior, but here’s one: how many stories have been written in outlets like the Times that contain concerns that a given Senator or Congressperson is “too right wing”? Find me one, I’m sure they’re rare. That’s because these people are legitimate members of the establishment “Freedom Caucus”, and as such, they have a certain set of deeply held legitimate beliefs. But the same media outlets will shit themselves if they don’t crank out a story about Warren, AOC, Ilhan, etc. that doesn’t contain handwringing about whether any of those women are “too liberal”.
I guess this is all bloody obvious to most of us, but it’s the coronavirus of the mind that is going to kill this country.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
off the top of my head:
Steve King, Dan Lipinski, Kelli Ward, Richard Mourdock, Todd Akin, Ken Buck, Sarah Palin
smintheus
Collins is less concerned that her party leadership is conspiring with Trump to cover up his extortion of Ukraine and his invitations to foreign governments to meddle in the US election, than she is by the fact that a Democrat mentioned the cover up.
hitchhiker
Thank you.
The other facet of this is that I’m required to bow my head to the “deeply held religious beliefs” of people whose religious beliefs amount to contempt for my deeply held conviction that they are in fact full of horseshit.
No respect is due to a person who simply says, “Your bible is full of nonsense, and it has nothing to do with me.” That is my own deeply held belief. It gets no play from anyone. It’s used against me constantly, in spite of the obvious fact that very, very few people anywhere on the planet take their bibles seriously enough to follow Jesus.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
I have promised myself that every time I hear Sue Collins name from now on I am going to kick a little bit into the kitty for her Democratic Challenger Sara Gideon, who seems like my kind of politician:
“Gideon’s legislative record also helps support her claim. She championed Medicaid expansion — a policy that Maine voters later approved by referendum and that former governor Paul LePage obstructed — and helped to override LePage’s veto of a bill that made Narcan available over the counter to Mainers under the age of 21. (Maine experiences high rates of substance-use disorders, which LePage, an admirer of President Trump, once blamed on “guys by the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty … from Connecticut and New York.”) After Janet Mills, a Democrat, defeated Shawn Moody, a Republican, to replace LePage in the governor’s mansion, Gideon has worked more amicably with the executive branch and passed legislation that expanded abortion rights in the state.”
Meet the Democrat running for Sue Collins Senate seat
Mr. Longform
Back in the day, FDR and others made the “liberal” label a badge of honor. There were “proud liberals,” and conservatives were on the defensive for being hidebound and narrow-minded. It is the Goldwater/Reagan era embrace of the ignorance, racism, and selfishness that turned the tide. But it couldn’t have succeeded without the acquiescence of the media – they continued to believe there were two sides of equal intellectual stature when it was clearly not true, and we are living with the long-term consequences of that.
MattF
I don’t believe that RWers are so sensitive. They feed on the combination of rage and resentment— it’s mother’s milk for them. They’re listless, aimless, and bored without it.
Jay Noble
I thought it was “Never mud-wrestle with a pig.” “You’ll both get dirty, but the pig will enjoy it!”
Barbara
Few things will make me happier than to see Susan Collins drummed out of public life. She is indeed worse than Ted Cruz because she won’t accept her status as an enabler of horrible policies.
Baud
We need to all do a better job of policing all bullshit attacks on Democrats, including the Democrats we hate, and including attacks made by people we like or generally agree with.
And, yes, that also means centrist Democrats also need to stand up for the “far left” of the party when they are attacked on a personal level.
It’s the only way I see to overcome the situation we find ourselves in.
FWIW, I am somewhat heartened by the mainstreaming of the skepticism of the NYT.
Raoul
Gender is certainly part of this as well. Brian Williams wrapped up Schiff’s closing last night as being very emotional and that he “lost his composure.” As I said last night in response, God forbid we have feelings as we lurch towards the edge of the precipice.
But note also that what Williams is doing there is feminizing. Now, in my world, feminine is awesome. I’m pro-Warren for potus. I was pro-Kamala. Over 65% of the MN House races I supported last cycle were women. I firmly believe that (with exceptions for shitstains like Marsha Blackburn), on balance more women in elected office will be damn good for this country.
But. I can’t shake the notion that what Williams was doing there (maybe subconsciously, but from a lifetime of marinating in patriarchal culture and esp GOP-led misogyny) was saying “oh, look, girly man is all up in his feels instead of using manly logic.” Fuck. That.
Also worth noting: Republicans went all out to feminize Al Gore and John Kerry in their respective runs for potus, and the press ate that shit UP.
Chyron HR
@Baud:
* all democrats
** an entirely different party that explicitly rejects any organizational or ideological connection to the Democratic party except when they went to run in our primaries
zhena gogolia
Villago Delenda Est
Karen Collins and the rest of the GOP traitors can go fuck themselves.
Kay
“Take her out”. Says the thug and his co-conspirators.
Has Guiliani been indicted yet? What’s the hold up? Do we still have a functioning justice system? I hope like hell the “NY Field Office” isn’t on the case.
Jeffro
@Baud: Totally agree. It will take years, but we need to push back on double standards of all kinds, whether it’s a mainstream media outlet or a RWNJ hack outlet doing the double-standarding.
Un-working the refs, as it were.
Man, I am full of bad turns of phrase today.
Villago Delenda Est
@Raoul: My nym. Again and again.
Sniveling serial fabulator Williams can just fuck the fuck off.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Raoul:
Charlie Pierce used to talk about the way Maureen Dowd used to “pink wash” Obama by calling him “Barry” and “Obambi”
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: Donald’s been indicted. A slight majority of the jurors are looking the other way.
Warblewarble
“Heads on pikes” oh please, please.
Villago Delenda Est
@hitchhiker: White fundigelical “Christians” are ideologically descended from slaveholders and their supporters. They reject huge swaths of the Gospels. They do not follow Jesus of Nazareth, but Jeebus, son of Mammon.
Baud
@Chyron HR: Bernie has chosen not to be a member of the party.
By “far left,” I’m talking about people like Warren and Katie Porter and many others who haven’t rejected the Dem coalition. I’d also put AOC in that category despite her support for Bernie, since I haven’t seen her specifically dismiss the need for solidarity.
Cheryl Rofer
@Raoul: I won’t disagree that gendering is part of it, but I think it’s also the “both sides” syndrome. We are supposed to be dispassionate and kind to the other side, because both sides contain some truth. “Very fine people on both sides.”
I found Schiff passionate in his defense of our country. That’s admirable in my book.
Baud
@Raoul: Democrats are emotional. Republicans are passionate.
#MediaThesaurus
Raoul
@hitchhiker: Not only do ‘respect our religious fee-fees’ laws not respect atheists and humanists. I am sadly sure that some of these new Trump judges will contort themselves to find that religious accommodation doesn’t apply to preferencing/protecting Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, UUs or what have you.
Somehow in a Muslim-Christian dispute, surprise, the Christian hurt is the more egregious one and always has to be accommodated. This is of course antithetical to a pluralist society. But pluralism is the devil’s handmaid in the American Taliban.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Raoul: Emotion is OK for a male politician as long as it’s anger or bullying. A woman who is a Democratic politician is not allowed to get angry, short tempered or belittling or she will pay for it forever.
MattF
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: But the unforgivable sin is being smarter.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Giuliani was doing his Grandpa Crazypants routine on Fox & Friends this morning, babbling a mile a minute about Biden and Ukraine and a plot to poison the corrupt prosecutor general, etc. The sofa squatters were desperately trying to shut him down.
Zzyzx
@zhena gogolia:
I want that to be checked and checked and checked again but if it’s confirmed…
…well it still won’t get one more vote for impeachment but it might move the story for a few weeks. It’s perfect timing for this to break.
Raoul
@Cheryl Rofer: Yes. And it’s all such kabuki bullshit though. Republicans were fidget spinning and leaving in large groups for the cloakroom, and even doing live shots on Fox. Nada from CJ Roberts about comity or rules. Only when the transparently disingenuous Susan Collins clutched her pears and sent a note did Wonder Bread Man do his both sides play nice schtick.
Aleta
They’re puppets; the puppet show is “Stay on Top.”
MattF
@Betty Cracker: A delicate operation. You want to cut out the embarrassing parts but leave the shamelessness intact.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: Since when does “Take her out. Okay? Do it.” mean fired?
“Get her out” could mean that, but “Take her out” means something else entirely.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Raoul: Agreed. It’s occasionally challenging being an atheist in a liberal, blue state , I don’t want to think about the fun if I ever move to a red state. My state still has a religious exemption for vaccines for example, I think California and Mississippi(!!) are the only 2 states that have no religious nor philosophical exemptions.
pacem appellant
I’m sharing this post with my friends for the critique, but mostly because of the FotC lede.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay:
I have no faith in the DoJ. I can’t imagine a sloppy fuck like Rudi didn’t break state laws. All my hope is in Laetitia James in this case. IANAL, of course, but I imagine if the state has the goods on him, they may embarrass DoJ into doing something.
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl:
Especially when you’re talking to non-government people. Mobsters, in effect.
WaterGirl
@Cheryl Rofer: Did Schiff show his emotions during that speech? Absolutely? You could see it in his face, hear it in his voice.
But lose his composure? He most certainly did not. I marveled at Schiff’s ability to keep his composure while imploring people to not destroy our democracy.
Zzyzx
I wonder if a lesson we learned from 2016 is to wait with damning stories and drop them at a great moment. We have no attention span anymore, but dismissing impeachment looks worse when it’s being done at a time when this is the lead story.
Raoul
@Kay:
Projection a la extraordinaire.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Cheryl Rofer: Funny how “work across the aisle” only seems to go in one direction these days…
zhena gogolia
@Raoul:
Raoul
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: MoDo doesn’t seem to understand that Barry White is more man than she could ever handle.
OTOH, Obambi is pretty f-ing rude.
Reboot
@Raoul: Re: feminizing, I’ve thought for a long time George Lakoff did Democrats no favors by genderizing the political parties: Democratic Party as ‘nurturant mother,’ Republican Party as ‘strict father.’ I went back to check my phrasing–all the reporting on Lakoff uses ‘nurturant parent’ but since he genderizes Republicans as ‘strict father,’ ‘mother’ seems all but implied. Which would be great, except for this country’s misogyny problem. Probably binary models like this are inherently unhelpful anyway.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Reboot: I don’t know when Lakoff wrote that, but the idea of the “Mommy party” and “Daddy party” goes back a ways. I’d bet tweety doesn’t get through 48 hours without bringing it up
SiubhanDuinne
@Raoul:
Is that what the kids are calling them now?
Kent
Used to not be that way. Democrats were the party of the hard working blue collar man. Farmers, truckers, union factory workers, and so forth. Republicans were the party of the effete white collar bankers, lawyers, etc. who never got their hands dirty.
I think it really began to change with President Carter and the influx of the ‘nanny state’. I was middle school age then. Reagan was elected when I was a sophomore in HS. But Carter had a lot of annoying nanny state qualities with the 55 mph national speed limit, turning the thermostats down, putting on your sweaters, switching to the metric system, that sort of thing where government was creeping into people’s lives in annoying little ways. Reagan had an easy time campaigning as the opposite. In the 1960s, no one would have thought to accuse Kennedy or LBJ of being effete.
hells littlest angel
@Jay Noble: The list of things you shouldn’t attempt with a pig is a long one.
Baud
@Kent:
I don’t know about your timing. They did a hit job on McGovern and slammed Muskie for crying. That was 1972.
ETA:
Since Raven is taking a sabbatical, this might be a good time to have an LBJ appreciation post.
Until then, Fuck LBJ.
MattF
@hells littlest angel: Apparently, many people have attempted many things with pigs.
Baud
@hells littlest angel: Yet not long enough.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I see twitter is very excited about Bernie getting the coveted Joe Rogan endorsement. Am I even more out of touch than I thought? Is this a Thing?
The Moar You Know
The great unstated freedom in American life has always been the freedom to be a fucking moron, regardless of how many people’s lives it ruins.
As a result, it was always going to be adherence to some idiotic belief system that was going to do this nation in.
Martin
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: Add West Virginia, New York, and Maine. Though like CAs, I think those are all very recent.
Reboot
@Kent: Ha, yeah, the “nanny state.” I’m semi-recalling some lame attempt by someone in the ’80s or early ’90s to re-masculinize the Democrats. Possibly James Carville? I think it involved pick-ups and shotgun imagery.
SiubhanDuinne
@Kent:
The “double-nickel” speed limit was instituted under Nixon, not Carter.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Obligatory.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: I am become Seymour Skinner.
jimmiraybob
Nazi/fascist: “We should exterminate all the Jews.”
Moderate Nazi:/fascist “We should amend the laws before exterminating all the Jews.”
AliceBlue
I’m seeing a breaking news alert on my computer that says 34 troops suffered traumatic brain injury as a result of the Iran attack.
“Just some headaches. No big deal.”
Mallard Filmore
@Raoul:
Does comity still apply in Senator v Representative?
The Moar You Know
@Kent: Kennedy’s brief presidency was replete with examples of people calling him weak, soft on communism, effete…if you will. Which quickly turned into numerous public calls by the right wing for his murder, no more so than in Dallas in November of 1963.
I will say this: everyone was far too terrified of Johnson, for good reason, to do that. He had a very long and very public track record of making people pay for crossing him, even after decades had passed in some cases.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
And inspired the rock anthem I Can’t Drive 55.
Kay
@AliceBlue:
The President lied about it. That’s a big lie. He denied the existence of these injuries. Any other President would pay for that. Let’s see if this coddled, pampered snowflake does.
Which of the other low quality hires lied about it? Do they lie to him, too, in addition to the public?
VeniceRiley
Republican operatives dispatched by Heritage FDN have been all over BBC, EURONEWS, France24, etc. all spouting the White House talking points. “they’ve wanted to do this since before the inauguration, and it isn’t serious or impeachable offenses. Move along. Nothing to see here except partisan shenanigans.” No matter the mouthpiece, the same talking points.
Baud
@VeniceRiley: Hack deficit.
Ghost of Joe Lieblings Dog
@Raoul:
Fixed.
Gin & Tonic
@jimmiraybob:
This is the central thesis of Timothy Snyder’s Black Earth: the elimination of legal protections, ultimately the destruction of state mechanisms in occupied areas, was what allowed the extermination of the Jews to proceed.
MomSense
Anyone see that the Countdown Clock went closer to midnight yesterday? We are now at 100 seconds until midnight. The crises that put us closer are climate change and the threat of nuclear war.
Martin
Well, Kennedy would have fucked their wife in front of them, and LBJ would have stripped naked and windmilled his donger, so, maybe they had good reason to not accuse those two.
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: How appropriate that this is comment #55.
Kay
@AliceBlue:
It’s funny because I knew it was a lie when they said it. Any other President of either Party I would have waited for more, because it’s such a big lie and I knew they would get caught, but the moment he said it I knew. They think they’re untouchable. They will say anything, about anything.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic: Haha. Good catch.
AliceBlue
@The Moar You Know: Doris Kearns Goodwin told a story about being in the room with LBJ when he was dressing down some hapless aide. ” I was paralyzed with terror and I wasn’t even the person he was angry with.”
Betty Cracker
@SiubhanDuinne: Seriously? All my life I’ve heard that blamed on President Carter and never thought to question it!
artem1s
@Barbara:
and she is exactly the kind of female politician that the GOP thinks that Democratic women will knee jerk vote for because = vagina-haver. I have a blistering hatred of Joni Ernst for similar reasons. They also lend credence to the Identity Politics argument so I want them gone. Both because of the GOP argument that they are appeasing ‘women’ voters with ‘women’ candidates – and the argument that the GOP has real women who want to kill reproductive rights for our own good!. blech!
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker:
Baud
It’s worked for them in Maine so far.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I was betting it was Lev who leaked the tape, and it looks like it was, but Igor recorded it.
So… if Lev has not only his own receipts but Igor’s…
wasn’t Barrasso one of the people complaining that the House presentation was like Groundhog Day, the same thing over and over again?
Betty Cracker
@Kay: One hopeful sign that maybe the “Trump denies service member injuries” story might have legs: it was taken up on Twitter by Jake “Respecter of Troops” Tapper. Maybe Tapper will pursue Trump’s outrageous lie with the same grim sanctimony with which he dogged President Obama for sneaking the occasional cigarette.
hitchhiker
@Raoul:
One of the great pleasures of being old, it turns out, is that you don’t have to pretend to respect people who haven’t earned it. We should all start asking people who claim to be Christian for evidence.
Show me what you do that makes you Christian. Give me some examples from your life that demonstrate your devotion to Christian ideals. Start by naming those ideals.
One of us has contempt for your religion. The point is, it’s you.
germy
Democrats to wrap up opening arguments; defense expected to start Saturday
So Republicans get the last word?
Just like on my TV news and talk shows.
SiubhanDuinne
@Gin & Tonic:
! ! !
LongHairedWeirdo
It’s not *even* hypocrisy. It’s pure-D bad faith. Come on, folks, be honest with *yourselves*. They are seizing anything that might make them look like victims, and putting it on a flag and waving it high over head, blowing whistles and shooting off fireworks. To paraphrase a vile human being, “no one enjoys (hearing they’re engaged in a cover-up, or that the President has a son named ‘Barron’) more”. Coulter, of course, was referring to widows who’d lost their husbands, which gave them the opportunity for Coulter to make a low blow. Here, were talking about Trump supporters who want to accuse decent people of doing something bad.
To wit: mentioning that the President has a son named Barron, who can’t be granted a title of nobility *by* the President, is not an insult, or in any way demeaning; similarly, to say that people who are trying to pull the covers over a conspiracy are engaged in a “cover-up” is factually accurate, and what even most of the slimiest villains would agree is a fair cop (so, the GOP isn’t as ethical as a Bond villain).
They’d been cooking all day waiting for the Ds to say *something* they could attack, and Collins decided that “cover-up” was this hearing’s “My God They Made A Pun On A NAME!!!!!” – a totally invented, completely fraudulent, controversy of the type that would make an innocent person wince (“boy, my side *has* been like that…”) and only inflame the passion of someone who is upset that the truth has been spoken.
That is: in my day, a man called a coward would look at the insult-giver like something they’d failed to scrape off their shoe, and say “we both know that’s not true, so your empty words don’t bother me.” It’s only the *coward* who takes offense. Or, for a more relevant example, only a man caught red-handed in a conspiracy would ever say “I want no quid pro quo, tell him to do the right thing.” (I can’t believe he brags about having said that! I also can’t believe he thinks that’s exculpatory after having demanded investigations after the jig was up! I can only believe the GOP lets him *use* it because, face it, they let people lie us into a war, and then demanded he didn’t *lie*, he just didn’t tell the truth, so what’s the big deal?
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Kent: Ah yes the metric system, the system the ENTIRE world uses except for the U.S., Liberia and Myanmar. The reason the optics on the Hubble telescope were screwed up and why the 125 million dollar Mars climate orbiter was lost (NASA used metric, one of the contractors used imperial measurements, and whoever did the conversion screwed it up.
zhena gogolia
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
How can he be calling for Yovanovitch’s “firing,” when he’s talking to people who have no power to “fire” her?
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
I remember it well. Was there, and driving, and had never yet heard of Jimmy Carter.
JanieM
@Martin: Maine’s law is so new it’s not in effect yet. See here for some info. There’s a very well-funded people’s veto campaign going on to repeal it, see here. It will be on the ballot in March.
Signs are going up around where I live, framing the issue as a fight against “Big Pharma.” Not that I’m a fan of “big pharma” as such, but vaccines are not one of big pharma’s big sins.
Bunch of murderous idiots. (The repeal campaign, I mean.)
Warblewarble
George Washington “I cannot tell a lie” tRUMP setting new records for lying. Lindsey Graham “In his own mind tRUMP has done nothing wrong” “Sir have you no shame” Shame heh heh.
pacem appellant
@hitchhiker: Sounds like a Noah Lugeons diatribe. If he hasn’t done one along that vein on The Scathing Atheist, he should.
germy
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I love how the Trump people, who spend their lives traveling from a luxury SUV 50 feet into red carpet events, dismissed the injuries as “headaches”. Because they’re all so tough and rugged. These soft, pampered old men. They take up arms on Twitter! Real heroes, these corrupt gargoyles. Trump requires a team of assistants just to glue his hair on.
The Moar You Know
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: China actually uses both (as does the US, de facto) which is insane and has been the cause of some hilarious and/or tragic manufacturing problems.
Jerzy Russian
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
As I recall, the Hubble mirror was ground very smoothly to the wrong figure because a lens in a test system was not aligned properly. I had not heard the misalignment was due to a unit conversion error.
Aleta
Re: the behavior of Congress, the GOP, other enablers + T’s business/financial culture. (We’ll probably be reading for years about behavioral studies that apply.)
I’ve been thinking about this report by the Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, which made a big impression on me in general about individuals in a culture that justifies lying and cheating. (The report doesn’t come up any more on the army.mil server. Below are two articles from Feb. 2015 that describe it.)
The excerpts below don’t include the articles’ statements for balance or their specifics. Just what might apply to the immoral hell we are in.
Kay
@germy:
Sasse wrote an insufferable, sanctimonious book scolding young people on how they don’t work hard enough and lack discipline. My 17 year old behaves better than any of them. He can complete a fucking TASK without snacks and a toy, for one thing.
J R in WV
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
West Virginia has never had a religious exemption for vaccination. California’s exemption was removed after their last measles outbreak, so not long ago. Before that it was just Mississippi and W Va… amazing to me, but good for us~!
Kent
@Betty Cracker: I had to go back and look it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law It was passed in 1974 and signed into law in 1975 by President Ford.
But yes, in common memory, everyone blamed Carter. Perhaps not so much for the passage of the law. But he was president when it was being implemented and enforced, and he was something of an evangelical for it in his public communications. I remember my Dad blaming Carter, not Nixon.
MattF
@Jerzy Russian: There was a NASA Mars mission that failed because of a units problem (Lockheed used ‘engineering’ units, NASA didn’t). But I don’t think the Hubble focus problem was due to units.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kent: I was in grade school, but I remember how much sweaters and the suggestion of turning down thermostats pissed people off. A preview of Ari Fleischer, when asked if we should think about cutting back on our dependence on oil given the Saudi influence in jihadism: “The President believes the American way of life is a blessed one..”
Jeebus wants us to drive SUVs
Nelle
@Kent: Funny. We drove from Kansas to the Texas coast in January of 1974, 55 all the way. We were calculating where we would be on the previous speed limit. Carter became president in 1977.
cckids
@Kay:
This. Also, most teens can sit through something they believe is boring or not significant (see calc class or family reunions) and not be disruptive assholes about it.
jimmiraybob
@Gin & Tonic:
Conspiracy (2001) about the The Wannsee Conference (1942) in Nazi Germany is a chilling take on the tension between outright extermination of the Jews and concern over compliance with the anti-semitic Nuremberg Laws. I watch it from time to time to remind me of the potential depths of human depravity and the extent to which a corrupted society (and legislative/legal system), untethered from morality and ethics, will go toward legal justification of heinous acts.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Raoul: Yet John Boehner could openly weep on the regular and it just proved “how very much he loved his country, in the manliest of ways”
Soprano2
I listened to the 1A news roundup this morning, like I usually do. It was the worst news roundup they’ve done for a long time. In just one hour they 1) called the memo of the call a transcript, which they did correct and talk about later on; 2) talked at length about the Republican senators complaining about not hearing anything new without once mentioning that all of those senators voted not to hear anything new!; and 3) directly said that Hillary Clinton called Tulsi Gabbard an agent of Russia. They were corrected on FB and Twitter by more than one person (including me), but they never corrected either of these last two things. It was Juana Summers of NPR, Julie Pace of the AP, and Fernando PIzzaro of Univision. I expressed my displeasure on the post they made for the broadcast on FB. That was Diane Rehm’s show, how far this program has fallen since she retired.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Soprano2: lousy panel today, I agree, but in general I am pleasantly surprised by Todd Zwilich. Joshua Johnson’s millenial-broder schtick was getting worse the longer he was on the air. “I watch these House hearings and I think, my gosh, why are they all just yelling at each other”
Tim Wayne
They are not moderates, they are centrists.
Gravenstone
@zhena gogolia: @Kay:
So dumbfuck had zero idea that HE had the singular capability in his currently unearned role to recall her from Ukraine? Had to go all mobster and talk about “getting rid of” her?
Tim Wayne
Excellent post. Thank you.
sherparick
This is so true. Newt Gingrich wrote a memorandum to his candidates on it in 1990 on how to do it and Rush picked it up for his show which was just going national post “Fairness Docrtine.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOPAC
GOPAC memo of 1990
Drawing rhetorical inspiration from Newt Gingrich, GOPAC wrote and distributed a memo to Republican Party legislative candidates in 1990.[3] The memo, called “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control”, contained a list of “contrasting words” and “optimistic positive governing words” that Gingrich recommended for use in describing Democrats and Republicans, respectively. For example, words to use against opponents include decay, failure (fail), collapse(ing), deeper, crisis, urgent(cy), destructive, destroy, sick, pathetic, lie, liberal, they/them, unionized bureaucracy, “compassion” is not enough, betray, consequences, limit(s), shallow, traitors, sensationalists; words to use in defining a candidate’s own campaign and vision included share, change, opportunity, legacy, challenge, control, truth, moral, courage, reform, prosperity, crusade, movement, children, family, debate, compete, active(ly), we/us/our, candid(ly), humane, pristine, provide.
The cover page of the memo said: “The words in that paper are tested language from a recent series of focus groups where we actually tested ideas and language.”[4][5]
“…Second, you often hear people remark that, for a group that uses the expression “fuck your feelings” a lot, these people sure are delicate. That’s true, but there’s a little more to it than simply hypocrisy. It’s a result of the very effective, 30+ year project of “othering” by the conservative media. Long before Fox News, Limbaugh and others worked to make “liberal” an epithet to describe someone who is lesser than the person using the term. These fuckers couldn’t use racial epithets in public anymore, so they found a better one – it doesn’t matter what color you are, or where you came from, if you’re a god damned liberal, then fuck your feelings. But if you’re a conservative, please tread carefully, because you’re dealing with a legitimate human being who is easily damaged by lack of respect….”
Omnes Omnibus
@jimmiraybob: I have been unable to watch it more than once. That being said, everyone should watch it at least once.
Kathleen
@Omnes Omnibus: What struck me the most about that film was how matter of fact the discussions were. Like an executive board meeting reviewing a business plan. That and the contrast between the horrific subject matter coupled with the luxurious setting with fine china and food. Chilling and eye opening.
Captain C
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?: To be fair, he was probably drunk most of the time.
Captain C
@Gravenstone: He’s too much of a chickenshit coward to fire people directly, his heavily edited
realitygame show nonwithstanding.LongHairedWeirdo
@Aleta: that’s exactly the expected behavior if the reporting requirements, (or the “everything’s okay” requirements) are too onerous. That’s a grave danger of any bureaucratic institution, where you can’t check all the boxes, so you stop worrying about *any* of them, unless you personally understand why one needs to be checked.
There’s a darker issue, though – legend has it, during the presentation of Hitler’s Final Solution, most people in the room were, in fact, horrified; they were also all perfectly culpable. They couldn’t tell a tribunal they didn’t know that extermination was the final stage; what they’d done already set the stage so perfectly, that only a durn fool who never thought of mass extermination as an option would have failed to notice it. (NB: so, I agree, some of them were shocked, but shouldn’t have been so naive.) At that point, the coverup becomes a mutual, shared, responsibility among all parties.
Of course, that’s not what happened here – the deepest shame ever of American history for this period will be that there was only one whistleblower, and that, only for one of the most obvious abuses. The same sort of point applies, though – they’re all so dirty, mutual coverup seems right and proper. You’re not a team player, if you won’t cover up everything, not just the part with your fingerprints on it.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Captain C: ten bucks says he handled it on the show because he got to be mean to someone truly powerless.
Oh, you want hundred-thousand-to-one odds on that bet? Can’t blame you.
Procopius
@Mr. Longform:
Excuse me, but I feel a pain in my gut whenever I see “he thinks …”, “she wants …”, “they believe …”. We can’t know that. What we can know is what they say, which may not be true. My opinion is that the members of the celebrity press said they believed that, but bear in mind they also said they were for truth, justice and the American Way. Their claims are not worth a pitcher of warm spit.
Procopius
@Kay:
Hahaha! You make the comedy.
Procopius
@Baud: I certainly agree with your initial post. I speculate that what Chyron HR is furious about is that AOC has been sending money to other progressive Democrats rather than to the DCCC, which would use her dues to support right wing “centrists.”