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The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

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The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

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Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

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Mainstream Media’s McCain Mancrush

You are here: Home / Archives for Mainstream Media's McCain Mancrush

Daddy Gets Forgiven So Easily

by @heymistermix.com|  August 30, 20198:49 am| 77 Comments

This post is in: Mainstream Media's McCain Mancrush

Alex Pareene captures a phenomenon I think we’re all sick of:

There’s a certain sort of elite liberal who loves Republican men almost as much as they detest anti-establishment progressives. Not “Republican men” like Mitch McConnell or Jeff Sessions, who are too narrowly concerned with implementing their ghoulish agenda to play the game. Rather, their affections attach to men like John Boehner, perpetually out on his lawnmower; or Ben Sasse, with his family canon of great books by men; or good old John McCain, so recently memorialized by every old liberal’s new favorite young person, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. (Praising John McCain is, of course, good politics—if you are chasing the support of the liberal establishment, that is.)

But while those men easily win over reporters who don’t consider themselves liberal, the path to a more partisan liberal’s heart requires one to become an apostate—or at least play one on television. That’s the lesson Joe Scarborough learned, more or less overnight, when he criticized the Bush administration’s handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In the space of ten minutes, Scarborough went from being a steady font of right-wing outrage and hostility, to being fulsomely embraced as a breath of fresh air on cable news.

The most notable thing about Scarborough’s transformation is that he didn’t actually have to atone for his past life beyond, perhaps, a dollop of mild contrition.  […]

Pareene’s topic is how Joe Walsh will get the same treatment as Scarborough by running against Trump, even though Walsh is pretty awful.  The never-Trumpers in general get this treatment.  One notable example is David Frum, who in a just world would be a marginal figure being roasted for the Iraq War.  Instead, he’s enjoying a renaissance on MSNBC and CNN because he’s an apostate .

Don’t get me wrong – an enemy of my enemy is my friend, but Jesus Christ, not a close friend, and only as long as we have the same enemy.  I’m certainly not going to roll over and submissively urinate in their presence.

Daddy Gets Forgiven So EasilyPost + Comments (77)

Mavericky Maverick Mavericks

by John Cole|  July 25, 20174:10 pm| 220 Comments

This post is in: Mainstream Media's McCain Mancrush

But it was a really mavericky party vote he cast followed by some real straight talk.

Anyone for some tire swinging?

Fuck that worthless scumbag.

Oh, and Capito decided to screw her state. As did Heller and Portman.

Mavericky Maverick MavericksPost + Comments (220)

Senator McCain is Apparently Senile

by John Cole|  June 8, 201712:59 pm| 144 Comments

This post is in: Mainstream Media's McCain Mancrush

Despite the fact that he is an evil, angry man, it was pretty sad watching McCain, because he has clearly lost his mind.

I haven’t felt this way watching a politician since this guy:

He appeared to be under the impression that the election was still ongoing, called Comey President, and then couldn’t understand why Clinton was not prosecuted for helping the Russians elect Trump.

Senator McCain is Apparently SenilePost + Comments (144)

Trump Administration Reverses Course; Supports Massive Funding Increase For Performance Art

by Tom Levenson|  April 7, 20179:12 am| 108 Comments

This post is in: Bring on the Brawndo!, Mainstream Media's McCain Mancrush

A sidelight on yesterday’s Tomahawk raid on a Syrian airbase.

1:  Fifty-nine Tomahawks fired.

2: Targetting:  “The targets included air defenses, aircraft, hangars and fuel.”  For good reason (IMHO) the strike avoided stored chemical weapons.  Personnel at the base were warned of the impending attack and as of now, no casualties have been reported.

3: Results: some shit got blown up. All of it can be repaired or replaced with out, it seems, significant difficulty.

All of which is to say that this was what most kindly can be called a warning shot, and rather less so, performance art.

Which gets me to my point.  The price tag for fifty nine Tomahawk missiles runs a little bit shy of $90 million.

For scale: that’s roughly 60% of the $148 million the to-be defunded National Endowment of the Arts received in 2016.

I believe Donald Trump’s grant was titled, “Very Expensive Holes In Concrete.”

Image: Adrian Hill, A British Mine Exploding, sometime during World War I.

Trump Administration Reverses Course; Supports Massive Funding Increase For Performance ArtPost + Comments (108)

Why I Hate The NY Times, Part [n]*

by Tom Levenson|  March 24, 201711:27 am| 65 Comments

This post is in: Mainstream Media's McCain Mancrush, Our Failed Media Experiment, Our Failed Political Establishment

This paragraph:

There is most likely a middle way. Republican lawmakers might be comfortable with a system that shifts more of the costs of care onto people who are sick, if it makes the average insurance plan less costly for the healthy. But making those choices would mean engaging in very real trade-offs, less simple than their talking point.

“Republican lawmakers might be comfortable…”  Think of the assuptions not in evidence required to write that phrase.  Think also of the cluelessness in what comes next:  those who buy insurance are seen here in the Republican frame, as two binary populations, the healthy and the sick.

That would be  the “virtuous”  healthy paid less than the molly-coddled, feckless sick.  That the same people might occupy both identities at different points of their lives seems not to have occured to this Times writer, Margot Sanger-Katz — whom I’ve noted before has an odd willingness to couch her Upshot explainers in weighted and coded language.

As seems to be hers and several Times-folk’s penchant, much of the story from which I extracted above is perfectly fine, an actual explainer of what Essential Health Benefits do and why they’re important. She even notes that in a system without a required benefit package–

…the meaning of “health insurance” can start to become a little murky.

Well, yeah, as it doesn’t actually insure against unanticipated risks.  I’d take issue with the meekness of her critique here, that is, but at least she suggests to the fragile sensibilities of her tender readers that perhaps a minor problem might result here.

Which makes the passage I quoted up top both weird and revealing: cheap insurance for the healthy and soak-the-sick policies for those with the misfortune to suffer the ails that impinge on just about every human being, sometime or other is a pretty damn good example of a murky notion of health insurance.

That is: the habit of mind, the reflexive and seemingly unconscious acceptance of a right wing tropes that lead both to conclusions unsupported by the evidence and an inability to grasp what one has actually just said.  This happens a lot at The New York Times. Happened a lot there too, over the crucial months of 2016.  Which goes a long way, IMHO, to accounting for the predicament we’re in now.

*Where [n] is an arbitrarily large number.x

Image:  Codex Aureus Epternacensis, Christ Cleansing Ten Lepers, c. 1035-1040.

Why I Hate The NY Times, Part [n]*Post + Comments (65)

John McCain is Upset!

by @heymistermix.com|  February 17, 20175:54 pm| 104 Comments

This post is in: Did You Know John McCain Was A POW?, Mainstream Media's McCain Mancrush

So upset that he made a speech that didn’t mention Trump by name:

John McCain is increasingly mad as hell about President Trump. And on Friday, he went after Trump — hard.

During a speech at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, the Republican senator from Arizona delivered a pointed and striking point-by-point takedown of Trump’s worldview and brand of nationalism. McCain didn’t mention Trump’s name once, but he didn’t have to.

And even considering the two men’s up-and-down history and the terrible things Trump has said about McCain, it was a striking display from a senior leader of a party when it comes to a president of the same party.

That’s Aaron Blake, of “The Fix” at the Washington Post.  I subscribe to the Post, and I think Marty Baron’s news crew has been doing the best reporting on Trump of any US newspaper.  But “The Fix”, led by the execrable Chris Cillizza, is like the wedding announcements in the NY Times, the Oscar coverage of the LA Times, or the Mardi Gras coverage of the Times-Picayune: a regrettable, provincial placeholder that pays the bills generated by the real reporters.

If John McCain–an 80 year-old who has probably just started his last term in the Senate–lacks the moral courage to call out our Russian traitor President by name, then fuck him and the horse he rode in on. I honestly lack the imagination to understand why an 80 year-old patriot who suffered for our country wouldn’t be in the vanguard of those calling for an investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia.  What the hell does he have to lose?  After choosing Palin, leading the charge against Trump could be the move that rehabilitates his legacy.  Instead, we get this sniveling, indirect, cowardly horseshit.

John McCain is Upset!Post + Comments (104)

Not Getting Out Of The Boat

by Tom Levenson|  September 26, 20167:35 pm| 160 Comments

This post is in: Music, Open Threads, Mainstream Media's McCain Mancrush

I’m not going to be watching tonight.  My wife and son will be, but me?  I’m around the corner to a bar with the ballgame on.

I’m a wimp. I’ll admit it. I can’t take the debates anymore.  I get too pissed off; I get scared; I get enraged…you get the idea.  I’d rather follow on my phone, switching between the Balloon Juice thread and Twitter, and maybe the Guardian liveblog.

My goal — to get to sleep tonight before two or three, having dodged the useless-replay that I’ve found myself pacing through for hours before I actually get to sleep.

So, this is just to create a thread for those who want to rage, rage against the dying of the light endless derp of modern media, and to offer a little distraction.

Which would be this.  I heard it on the radio today just before I headed off to the dentist to confirm the horrible suspicion that the howling pain in my molar meant (another) root canal (tomorrow at 4, thanks for asking).

I’ve always loved this song, but for some reason it seemed so on point to this election. It certainly put me in a better mood than I had any right (or inclination) to hope for — and maybe it’ll do the same for some of you, mes sembables, mes frères (et soeurs). 

It doesn’t make me feel like the media will ever do its job — I just heard a clip on the local Boston public broadcasting station in which New York Times reporter (of course) Farah Stockman rather giddily proclaimed that this election wasn’t about facts or policy or any of that stuff (in a segment seemingly decrying the calls for fact checking the debate) but about fear.

Well, if so, oh Main Stream Media stalwart, it is because you and your stunningly less clever than they think they are colleagues have allowed it to become so.

So yeah.  Bare Naked Ladies beat our elite political press any day and twice on Sundays.  Enjoy, and say what you will below.

Not Getting Out Of The BoatPost + Comments (160)

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