How I’m feeling right now.
Chat.
by Tim F| 27 Comments
This post is in: Dog Blogging, Open Threads
This post is in: An Unexamined Scandal, Election 2012, Getting The Band Back Together, IOKIYAR, Open Threads, Assholes, Good News For Conservatives, Our Failed Media Experiment
Washington press/pundit coverage of the Republican Presidential race is all about the narratives told, sold and bought at cocktail parties inside the Beltway. You could pick any candidate and the arc would be the same: a narrative is formed, repeated, repeated again, and again until the fiction of the narrative trumps all facts. This is how Al Gore became fat and GW Bush became a Compassionate Conservative.
We are nine months away from the Caucus in Iowa and the GOP field is still sorting itself out. Over the next few weeks most folks will have to decide if they are in or out–and to help the process along, the media is busy creating über narratives about each of them. The other day Newt Gingrich formally entered the race and–almost as an unspoken rule–every time he is mentioned we need to be reminded that Newt is an idea man, an intellectual, a serious thinker and a serious man who just lacks “discipline”. Some have even taken to calling him “The Professor”.
As with almost any Republican, Newt’s flaws are almost always downplayed if mentioned at all. It is all wink, wink, nudge, nudge by folks who know that Newt doesn’t stand a chance in Hell of ever winning. Gingrich is just playing the game to keep his brand out there as a going concern and most of the Beltway media seems all too happy to help Newt pull off the con. Newt Gingrich is a liar, grifter, and hack and yet our failed media experiment has decided that he should be presented sold as an eccentric and thoughtful “Professor” who lacks the discipline to stay on narrative.
It is of course total bullshit. And I’m pleased to see that more and more folks are calling Gingrich out as the liar, grifter and hack that he has been all of his life.
Glenn Kessler, The Fact Checker at the Washington Post, went so far as to fact-check Newt’s campaign roll out on Fox’s “Sean Hannity Show.” The headline said it all: Newt Gingrich’s Pinocchio-laden debut. To fact-check all the shit Newt has said and will say in the coming months is beyond a full-time job, so I’m glad his campaign roll out got some attention. To fact-check everything that falls out of Newt’s mouth would be a jobs program as you would need a staff of twenty or more folks working overtime to run every lie to ground.
Gingrich has been a bomb thrower all his political life from the moment he started running for office in the mid seventies. He is one of the founding fathers of our current state of political malfunction. It is amazing to contemplate all of the shit he has been involved in over the years and all the crazy he has brought to the table. One would need a small library to hold it all, but Mother Jones Magazine has collected some highlights of the last 33 years. Think of it as a way to help Newt celebrate the launch of his campaign and to counteract some of “The Professor” bullshit with facts.
The first item of the Mother Jones list was from a speech that Gingrich gave to College Republicans during his first successful campaign for Congress. In it he advised the people who would grow up to run the Republican Party and modern conservative movement that:
“I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words.”
Gingrich went to Congress and when Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist and Newt’s fellow Georgian Ralph Reed (who may have heard Gingrich’s speech) took over the College Republicans in 1980 they followed Newt’s advice. “Nasty” is about the best single word I can think of to describe Wingnutopia. Newt’s vision has become our political reality. Crafting a politics that celebrates nasty behavior has been his most successful (and profitable) idea. Too bad it is also an idea that is destroying America, but a grifter can’t be bothered by scam fall-out.
A transcript of the speech that the quote above came from is here. I encourage you to give it a read. It helps to explain what happened to the Conservative movement and the Republican Party–and how Gingrich shaped the race to the bottom. It helps to explain the staying power of grifters like Gingrich, Reed and Norquist. And it helps to explain why Jack Abramoff has more photos of himself with Newt than he has of himself with his wife.
Cheers
by Sarah, Proud and Tall| 112 Comments
This post is in: Music, Open Threads
Pleasure:
Guilty pleasure:
I’m 92 and I don’t get out much. What else should I be listening to?
ETA: This one got lost on the “Bitching” thread, so I’m going to shamelessly plug it again.
by DougJ| 57 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
David Kurtz had a very interesting post about the floods that are going on along the Mississippi. I hadn’t realized that this was so serious until a few days.
Use this as an open thread to talk about what is going on and how people can help.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 43 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
My inner Canadian politely encourages me to listen to CBC’s Q on occasion, and this interview touched even a cynical old fucker like me. These two Philosophy majors met in college, fell in love, pursued a dream of sailing, and then started a band with the sound they planned in long discussions while they were out to sea (here’s a sample). They are obviously still excited to be in each other’s presence, and you can feel that in the way they finish each other’s sentences and make fabulously detailed plans together. So, in that spirit, on a beautiful Friday in Spring, since we’ve already had an open thread of bitching, here’s an open thread of love.
by Sarah, Proud and Tall| 140 Comments
This post is in: Music, Open Threads, I Hate All of You
Yes, comments have apparently been disabled on at least one thread. It doesn’t seem to have stopped some of you complaining all you want, so I don’t think your first amendment rights have been violated too badly. Rather than derail a perfectly decent thread about John Ensign, you may want to voice your issues here. After all, John will be along soon to shout at us all, and it might be easier if you kept your stupidity in one place for the moment.
The helicopters are laughing at you.
/edited after posting to remove quote marks and any unintentional implication that johnny walker ever mentioned the first amendment.
by Sarah, Proud and Tall| 27 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, Republican Venality, Torture, Assholes, Blatant Liars and the Lies They Tell, Clown Shoes, Fucked-up-edness, Good News For Conservatives, I Can't Believe We're Losing to These People, I Read These Morons So You Don't Have To, I Smell a Pulitzer!, Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue, Our Failed Media Experiment, Schadenfreude, Somewhere a Village is Missing its Idiot, Sweet Fancy Moses!, The Wingularity, Wingnut Event Horizon, WTF?
Erickson & Trump. One on One.
By RedState on May 11, 2011
Yes, it is true. On Tuesday, I will be going one on one with Donald Trump in his office in New York.
He has agreed to sit down and have an unfiltered conversation with no topic off limits. Thus I will ask him those questions many of you have wanted to ask him and flesh out why he thinks he is a conservative, why he might run, etc.
You can watch the interview live and for free. But you must register by going here.
RedState
H/t: Spaghetti Lee