The Commentariat -- July 18, 2016
See also yesterday's Afternoon Update, which is extensive.
Julie Bloom & Mike McPhate of the New York Times: "Three law enforcement officers were fatally shot and three others wounded on Sunday in Baton Rouge, La., the authorities said, less than two weeks after a black man was killed by the police here, sparking nightly protests. The gunman, who was identified as Gavin Long of Kansas City, Mo., was killed by the police. Mr. Long was a Marine who served six months in Iraq, according to his service record. He joined the corps in 2005, served five years and was made a sergeant in 2008. The police said initially that they were looking for other possible suspects, but the superintendent of the Louisiana State Police ... said at a news conference that the person who attacked the officers had been shot and killed at the scene." -- CW ...
... Matthew Teague of the Guardian: "Baton Rouge staggered into a new week of violence as a black separatist killed three police officers, including a black officer [-- Montrell Jackson --] who recently pleaded with friends online: 'Don't let hate infect your heart.'... By Monday, key details started to emerge about both the shooter, 29-year-old Gavin Long of Missouri, and his victims. Long's personal history is marked by radical twists: he was a military veteran who took a series of ideological turns, and eventually joined a fringe group called the Washitaw Nation of Mu'urs." -- CW ...
...Travis Gettys of RawStory: "The gunman who killed three Baton Rouge police officers Sunday apparently believed most laws did not apply to him because he'd declared himself a 'sovereign citizen.' Gavin Eugene Long ... filed documents last year near his Missouri home declaring himself a United Washitaw de Dugdahmoundyah Mu'ur Nation, Mid-West Washita Tribes, reported the Kansas City Star...The sovereign citizen belief system originated about 40 years ago in the deeply racist and anti-Semitic Posse Comitatus movement, which teaches that the government has authority over only those citizens who submit to a contract." --safari...
... Steve Hardy & Jim Mustian of the Baton Rouge Advocate: Montrell Jackson, "a Baton Rouge policeman who was once injured trying to save a toddler from a burning building and recently welcomed a son of his own, was one of the three officers killed in a Sunday morning shooting." --CW ...
... Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post: "Storied civil rights figures ... as well as the young leaders who make up the Black Lives Matter protest movement were quick to decry the violence against officers in Baton Rouge.... Shooting police is not a civil rights tactic,' said Jesse Jackson, a longtime civil rights leader. 'The shooting in Dallas had nothing to do with the civil rights struggle, and neither does the shooting in Baton Rouge.'" -- CW ...
... B.J. Lutz of WISN Milwaukee: "A Milwaukee police officer was shot in a 'vicious' attack early Sunday as he sat in his squad car while colleagues investigated a domestic disturbance call, an official said. The suspected shooter, identified by police as a 20-year-old West Allis man with two felonies on his record, was found dead in a nearby yard, they said." The officer, Brandon Baranowski, was saved by his bullet-proof vest.
Carol Morello of the Washington Post: "Secretary of State John F. Kerry cautioned Monday that Turkey's membership in NATO could be jeopardized if abandons democratic principles and the rule of law in a post-coup crackdown. 'NATO also has a requirement with respect to democracy,' Kerry told reporters after European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini warned Turkey not to execute coup plotters. She noted that countries with the death penalty cannot join the European Union, as Turkey has sought to do." -- CW ...
... Tim Arango & Ceylan Yeginsu of the New York Times: "The coup attempt [in Turkey] seems to have been decisively quashed, with nearly 6,000 military personnel in custody.... As the weekend progressed, it was becoming clearer that for [President Recep] Erdogan and his religiously conservative followers, the moment was a triumph of political Islam more than anything else.... As Turks waited to see in which direction their mercurial and powerful leader would steer..., Mr. Erdogan struck some conciliatory notes on Sunday. Yet he has also raised the possibility that Turkey would reinstate the death penalty, which it had abolished as a part of its pursuit to join the European Union." -- CW ...
... Gardiner Harris of the New York Times: "Signs of testy relations between Turkey's embattled government and the United States continued Sunday, as Secretary of State John Kerry denounced any suggestion of American involvement in Friday's coup. 'We think it's irresponsible to have accusations of American involvement,' Mr. Kerry told CNN Sunday. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has accused Fethullah Gulen, a reclusive cleric now living in Pennsylvania, of orchestrating the violence, and Mr. Erdogan demanded that Mr. Gulen be extradited. Mr. Gulen has denied the charge, and Mr. Kerry said the Justice Department would examine any evidence Turkey presented as part of an extradition request." -- CW ...
... Dexter Filkins of the New Yorker: "With the coup attempt thwarted, [President Erdogan] will no doubt seize the moment. In recent months, Erdogan has made little secret of his desire to rewrite the constitution to give himself near total power. There will be no stopping him now." -- CW
... Erdağ Göknar, in Juan Cole's Informed Comment (originally published in Duke Today): "To those who claim this coup was a hoax, the evidence points to the contrary: The parliament has been bombed, the Turkish general staff headquarters were occupied, top military commanders were detained, TV stations were taken over, more than 200 are dead, more than 1000 are injured, and gruesome images continue to emerge." -- CW
Yes, the Supremes Are Politicians. Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The thing that separates all the smart lawyers who would like to become federal judges from the ones who actually become judges is most often political connections.... Involvement in ideological causes, political campaigns and conservative or liberal organizations acts as a sieve. It separates out those who are chosen by the political elite for lifetime appointments. And then Senate confirmation is supposed to instantly transform the recipient into a nonpartisan and objective trier of facts and interpreter of laws." -- CW
Presidential Race
John Wagner, et al., of the Washington Post: "The takeaway from interviews with dozens of Democrats is that [Hillary Clinton] has an array of options [in make her vice-presidential choice], and her ultimate choice will reveal a great deal about the president she intends to be. Clinton's interviews with the contenders have been short on chit-chat, instead homing in on each candidate's policy chops." -- CW
Another Sanderista comes around:
... If you've got sticker envy, looks like you can create your own, for a price. Thanks to Rob W. for the link.
AP: "A West Virginia Republican lawmaker said on Sunday his comments made on Twitter calling for Hillary Clinton's public execution were not meant to be taken literally.... In the tweet, [W.Va. House of Delegates member Mike] Folk said ... [she] 'should be tried for treason, murder, and crimes against the US Constitution ... then hung on the Mall in Washington DC'.' Folk defended his tweet against claims it was a death threat & says he has received death threats as a result of the tweet. CW: This is reassuring: "Folk is a United Airlines pilot. United Airlines said in a statement on Sunday that he had been removed from his schedule and was not flying, pending an investigation." So not exactly the "friendly skies." Your pilot is off his rocker, people.
I put lipstick on a pig. I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is. I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization. -- Tony Schwartz, ghostwriter of The Art of the Deal, who says if he wrote the book today, he would title it The Sociopath ...
... ** Jane Mayer of the New Yorker interviews Tony Schwartz, who ghost-wrote The Art of the Deal. CW: Schwartz & Mayer reinforce everything you already knew or suspected about Trump. ...
... The Sociopath, Ctd.:
Your running mate ... voted for the [Iraq War]. -- Lesley Stahl
I don't care. -- Donald Trump
... Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "That's a remarkable comment.... He has repeatedly argued [that Hillary Clinton's vote for the war] shows his judgment is superior to [Clinton's]. But Pence casting the same vote? He doesn't care....
But I was against the war in Iraq from the beginning. -- Donald Trump
"This is the point at which we note that the only record of his having an opinion on the war in Iraq before it began was an interview in which he expressed support.... In Trump's mind, Pence gets a pass on that judgment, rooted in bad intelligence. Trump himself gets a pass on not being able to present any evidence that his judgment was any different. Clinton, however, is riddled with bad judgment because of her stance on the issue. This will cost him zero votes."
CW: Stahl just says, "Got it," when Trump says Pence is "allowed to make a mistake once in awhile," but Clinton is not. When is some interviewer going to respond, "That doesn't make sense. It's the kind of thing crazy people say"? ...
... All About Trump. Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump ... did most of the talking during the 21-minute ['60 Minutes'] segment that aired on Sunday night, while Pence sat beside him, gazing approvingly and allowing Trump to answer nearly all of the questions, even those directed at him. By the end, Trump had uttered more than 2,160 words while Pence's word count clocked in around 900. When Pence did get the chance to speak, Trump would often cut him off with a correction or answer of his own." -- CW
**141 Disqualifications. Chris Kirk, et al., of Slate: "[W]e have compiled a list of specific things that make Trump an unacceptable candidate for the presidency. Some are policy proposals that should be outside the bounds of debate, like punitive torture. Some are casual vulgarities, like his description of Rosie O'Donnell. You might not agree that each individual item on the list is disqualifying in isolation -- you can vote those down, and vote up the ones you find especially egregious-- but the list's cumulative weight makes its own statement." --safari
Daily Beast Editors: "Donald Trump implied Monday morning that President Obama was insincere when he spoke about the shooting deaths of three Baton Rouge police over the weekend. 'There's something going on,' the Republican presidential nominee kept repeating onFox & Friends. In the past, Trump has used the same phrase to imply that Obama secretly supports terror attacks. This time, The Donald suggested that the president might support cop-killing." --safari
'Tis Folly to Be Wise. -- D. Trump. Marc Fisher of the Washington Post: Donald Trump "appears to have an unusually light appetite for reading. He said in a series of interviews that he does not need to read extensively because he reaches the right decisions 'with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had, plus the words 'common sense,' because I have a lot of common sense and I have a lot of business ability.'" About all he reads is articles from newspapers & magazines -- about himself. ...
... CW: BTW, Jane Mayer's interview of Tony Schwartz backs up Fisher's report: "Schwartz believes that Trump's short attention span has left him with 'a stunning level of superficial knowledge and plain ignorance.... I seriously doubt that Trump has ever read a book straight through in his adult life.' During the eighteen months that he observed Trump, Schwartz said, he never saw a book on Trump's desk, or elsewhere in his office, or in his apartment." Then there's a collective anecdote in which we learn that Trump kept a copy of Hitler's collected speeches at his bedside, but that he never read so much as the title.
"The Normalization of Trump." Jonathan Chait (July 15): "... to look at Pence as a dissident from Trumpism is to misunderstand the nature both of Pence and his party. Pence didn't endorse free trade and oppose Trump's Muslim ban because liberal internationalism runs deep in his soul. He did it because he is a committed movement conservative and party operative, with deep ties to party funders like the Kochs. It served the party's interest to fight Trump during the primary, but it currently serves that interest to close ranks." -- CW
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Paul Krugman: Part of the reason Donald Trump is succeeding "is that too much of the news media still can't break with bothsidesism -- the almost pathological determination to portray politicians and their programs as being equally good or equally bad, no matter how ludicrous that pretense becomes.... Surveys show that Mrs. Clinton has, overall, received much more negative coverage than her opponent." -- CW
Gabriel Sherman of New York: Corey Lewandowski, crack independent CNN journalist, is still advising Donald Trump to be his stupid self.
Tabatha Abu El-Haj & of Slate: "Those coming to Cleveland to exercise their First Amendment rights, whatever their partisan persuasion, will leave frustrated and disappointed. Next week in Cleveland will likely prove to be a sad new low for First Amendment exercise in this country." --safari
Scammer in Chief. Oliver Laughland & Mae Ryan in the Guardian: "In Mount Pleasant [a neighborhood in Cleveland's East Side], where more than 15% of the neighbourhood's housing stock is currently vacant or abandoned, average property sale prices plunged [during the 2008 housing crisis] from an average of $84,000 in 2005 to just $14,837 in 2015.... At the height of Mount Pleasant's suffering, Trump sought to capitalise. In 2008, the billionaire Republican advised 'pupils' at ... Trump University, that they could make a million dollars within a year by targeting vulnerable communities with individuals desperate to offload their properties.... At the time, the real estate mogul had only recently shuttered a brokerage company, Trump Mortgages, which had, according to insider accounts, offered subprime mortgages to customers through cold calls. Trump is set to accept his party's nomination ... three miles down the road from Mount Pleasant on Thursday." A long read. --safari ...
...Allegra Kirkland of TPM: "Republican National Convention organizers on Sunday released the final schedule for what Donald Trump's campaign manager promised would be 'a Trump convention.'" CW: For those of you who want to plan your week around convention events, here's the schedule. ...
... The Guardian is liveblogging happenings leading up to the Republican convention, or what it calls the "Trump Family Circus." -- CW ...
... Benjamin Wallace-Wells of the New Yorker analyzes this year's GOP platform, a disturbing amalgam of Donald Trump's nationalism & Tony Perkins' Christianist sex-obsessed theology. "... it seems that Perkins [-- head of the Family Research Council --] has realized that Trumpism can be understood ... as an injunction against the usual concerns of political correctness or partisan tactics, against worrying about the way things might appear. It may be that what Trump has lent his Party is not so much a program but a prompt to conservatives, to feel themselves unconstrained." -- CW ...
... Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times: "... nothing will test the news media like the next few days in Cleveland.... Mr. Trump will have ... nearly full control of the national media stage for four straight evenings in prime time.... He has been planning to make full use of his time in his trademark way, with daily themes that will weave in staples of hot-button topics...: Bill Clinton's infidelity, Hillary Clinton's response to the attack on the American compound in Benghazi, and immigration.... The robust fact-checking industry that has sprung up over the past several years will have to work overtime during both conventions." -- CW
Beyond the Beltway
Organized "Religion". Luke O'Neil of The Daily Beast: "According to ex-members of [the] Twelve Tribes [religious sect] who spoke to The Daily Beast, children are regularly beaten and leaders preached 'slavery is necessary.' Now, an escapee has taken over the Facebook page of the Plymouth bakery run by the commune so he can broadcast its ills.... [The] former members... [say] [Elbert 'Gene'] Spriggs, [also preached] ... that homosexuals should be put to death.... The half-dozen former members who spoke to The Daily Beast also allege a culture of systematic child abuse, subjugation of women, and psychological torment." --safari
Kate Lyons of the Guardian: "The six wealthiest countries in the world, which between them account for almost 60% of the global economy, host less than 9% of the world's refugees, while poorer countries shoulder most of the burden, Oxfam has said. According to a report released by the charity on Monday, the US, China, Japan,Germany, France and the UK, which together make up 56.6% of global GDP, between them host just 2.1 million refugees: 8.9% of the world's total...In contrast, more than half of the world's refugees -- almost 12 million people -- live in Jordan, Turkey, Palestine, Pakistan, Lebanon and South Africa, despite the fact these places make up less than 2% of the world's economy." --safari
Sean Ingle of the Guardian: "A devastating and damning report into Russian sport has found that the country's government, security services and sporting authorities colluded to hide widespread doping across 'a vast majority' of winter and summer sports. The International Olympic Committee has promised it will not hesitate to take 'toughest sanctions available' against those implicated.... The IOC president Thomas Bach called the McLaren report 'a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sports and on the Olympic Games'. The IOC's executive board will meet via conference call on Tuesday to make initial decisions on possible sanctions for the Rio Games." --safari
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Reader Comments (18)
So it looks like the media is finally catching on. Yes Trump does not read books or anything else. He already knows everything about everything. And it is time to stop looking for rational reasons for is behavior. Seriously, dangerously mentally ill.
This is scaring me. Trump doesn't read, except tweets, and you can bet his followers are the same, so any rational discussion presented by actual journalists (maybe there are one or two?)won't disturb the unwashed masses who love him in the least. So telling people the truth if they refuse to hear it seems futile. This whole week is going to consist of hearing from/watching liars and fakers and zealots, and everyone else with their fingers in their ears screaming "lalala-- I can't hear you--" and I repeat: the condition of this country is scaring me.
Wow! no more lipstick on a pig. Tony Schwartz done put Donald way down or as Tony says, "He's a living black hole!" Jane Mayer's long piece here is almost shocking in the sense that someone as close as Schwartz was to Trump has finally come clean and revealed the true art of the deal:
"He has no attention span..."
"Trump's contribution[for the book] remained oddly truncated and superficial."
"Lying is second nature to him."
"His need for attention is completely compulsive."
Trump lies about his own father's heritage and birthplace? I mean that all by itself is so crazy that one has to take a deep breath here. And Roy Cohn saying "Donald pisses ice water." Roy Cohn, for christ sake!!! Of course we all said early on that Trump is psychologically impaired ––there weren't no lipstick on OUR pig––but the media loves blokes like this. I applaud Schwartz for finally speaking out but wish he had done this many months ago.
Yes, Leslie Stahl–-finding the whole Iraq contradictions amusing. Another example of reporters letting Trump off the hook.
Kasich not moving to restrict the open carry law during the convention is deplorable. After I heard the news of yet another shooting last night I screamed out loud at the TV about gun control. The TV ignored me just as any change in legislative push for this will be ignored. What the fuck is it going to take to change our gun obsessed country to change it's mindset. And what we don't hear on our "Breaking News" cycle are the hundreds of children that are shot dead day after day in certain sections of our country.
Talk about ice water pisses.
Read a few words to my wife last night from the "Sociopath cont." segment above. Got no more than three or four words into it (I thought it amusing; such was my mood at the time), when she walked away, edging into impatience, saying "We've known all that for months."
Yeah, we have. And that it seems all the proof piling up re-confirming what we already know still matters little to forty percent of the voters is the great mystery of our age.
But maybe no more mysterious than the latest Pokeman craze, or in the face of hundreds of years of bloody evidence, the persistent belief that violence does not beget violence, or the indisputable fact that thousands apparently liked hearing Trump abuse people on his popular TV program enough to actually watch it.
So much that passeth understanding.
I expect that future dictionaries, which include the definition of a sociopath will also feature an image of Donald Trump. Trump the embodiment of antisocial behavior.
Of course, his image will also appear with other words: Egoist, asshole, bigmouth, bully, braggart...you got it!
The Art of the Steal
The other day, Ken and I had a little back and forth on the dangers of unchecked religiosity. I called up a passage from Gibbon's Decline and Fall, an observation that connects the dots in scary fashion that have aligned around Herr Drumpf and the way Trumpism in all its nativist, racist, ignorant gory, seems to have handily supplanted the hopes and dreams of movement conservatives. Largely because many of those hopes and dreams are also infected by nativism, racism, and ignorance. But it's more than that. The Never Trump movement was comprised of some big names in the Republican Party, names the press has for years decided were Very Important People thinking Very Important Thoughts. The Never Trumpers folded like a pup tent in a hurricane, and their former adherents are now firmly in the camp of an authoritarian bigot. Here's Gibbon's take:
"...the practice of superstition is so congenial to the multitude that, if they are forcibly awakened, they still regret the loss of their pleasing vision. Their love of the marvellous and supernatural, their curiosity with regard to future events, and their strong propensity to extend their hopes and fears beyond the limits of the visible world, were the principal causes which favoured the establishment of Polytheism. So urgent on the vulgar is the necessity of believing, that the fall of any system of mythology will most probably be succeeded by the introduction of some other mode of superstition."
Gibbon is talking about religion, but he could just as well be talking about the Trumpotheosis.
Jeanne is right to be scared. I am too. It's true that Trump doesn't read anything but articles about himself. He's possibly even more incurious than the previous Republican president who at least liked people to think that he was a reader. Trump doesn't give a fuck about that. And neither do many, if not most, of his supporters. They get their information from Fox and from online sites that reinforce their worst fears. And if there was a sense that these supporters of movement conservatism, of staunch Southern Baptist style Christianity would steadfastly abjure Trumpism and its anti-American, anti-Christian core elements, that assumption has been dashed on the rocks of expedience for the tribe. Ideology, at long last, doesn't matter at all. What's driving the Trumpists is a virulent hatred of the Others who have "stolen" the country, and of Hillary Clinton and any and all things connected to Obama.
So a new set of superstitious myths supplants the old one. What's the big deal?
The thing that really scares me is not those people. It's the people who are not telling the pollsters that they're lining up to vote for this idiot. And there could be a lot of them.
Last week, I read a truly disturbing story about a silicon valley engineer who is firmly in the Trump camp. This guy presumably is a reader, is educated, and makes good money, if not oligarch money. He has bought into the notion that Obama, not Trump, is the friend of the billionaires and Hillary is the same (there's something to that, but to suggest that either of these Democrats--who operate firmly in the world of facts and realpolitik--are worse stewards of the economy than Trump will be is fucking insane).
This guy sounds like a poorly informed pseudo libertarian type who cleaves to his own set of superstitious myths (government is evil, the world is going to hell because of Obama, Trump will fix everything), and worse, even though he acknowledges the scary stuff that Trump promises, he has convinced himself that he's in the know on that score, that Trump doesn't really mean any of it (*wink-wink*) the racism, the xenophobia, the hatred, the ignorance; it's all just a ploy. When he's president, all will be well. Oh, and one giveaway as to another reason he's a Trumpist? He's a victim. Yup. People in Silicon Valley don't love Donald Trump and they're mean to him because he does. In which case, let's vote for fucking Armageddon. Douchebag.
I tell you, my brothers and sisters, this is some frightening shit.
And the media is falling right in line on two points. First, the low expectations set for Trump. As long as he can tie his shoes, he's qualified to be president because we never expected him to get this far anyway. Second, Hillary is targeted for everything and anything that can be pinned on her. Besides, she deserves it, right? After all, she seems qualified and all, so she needs to be brought down a peg or two or three, to Trump's level or below, to make it all even out. They will help him steal this election (and now that he's the new darling of Republicans, don't forget that they'll be calling upon their dark arts of election rigging, for the good of the tribe, of course--screw the country).
And these will be the people, eight years from now, publishing their sorrowful mea culpas about how wrong they were after the country is in ruins, as they were years after jumping on the Bush War-Based-on-Lies Bandwagon when the Iraq Adventure turned the middle east into a radioactive waste site and hordes of new terror groups were unleashed into the world.
They'll be sorry, but they'll still have their jobs.
We'll be fucked.
Just read Krugman, what he said and didn't say.
What he said is fine enough, I guess, but what he didn't say is the real story.
Why all this false equivalence? Certainly the gotta be fair impulse plays a part; and to the degree that explains it, I guess it's worthy of praise. But the other two elements behind the reluctance to be truly impartial, not so much.
The first is simple fear of offense. Editors have to know that the same forty percent of voters I mentioned above will accept only what they already believe and media that must appeal to a general audience cannot afford to drive those believers away.
And no doubt the gravity of Big Money very directly moves journalism from the objective ideal we naively set for it to a fictionally constructed middle. Ownership hath its privileges--and its obvious effects.
Another one of which might be its most deleterious. Because everyone knows we can't rely on contemporary journalism to tell the truth, we come to trust it less and less, which in turn adds to the general distrust we have in all institutions....
....and which then leads to acceptance by that forty percent of someone who "tells it like it is," regardless of his reported flaws, which are easy to ignore because we all know, as we have been taught, you can't believe anyone or anything, the media especially.
Ken,
Trust in journalism? Yesterday, I watched some of NBC's Meet the Press, recorded in the hallowed halls of the Quicken Loans Arena (there is just something so con-game-ish about that name, which is perfect as ground zero for the ascension of Donaldo Trumpius,. "Hey kid, you want a quick loan? Huh? Do ya? Sure ya do. Step right in, old Uncle Don'll take good care of you."). Upchuck Todd, as is his wont, asked a perfectly idiotic question. Something to the effect that the crazy stuff going on in world, Turkey, Baton Rouge, Dallas, Nice, must all be directly related somehow, right (an idea not even a stone's throw from Alex Jones country)? Luckily Tom Browkaw was there to do two things. First, to say, well, no, idiot, they're not directly related, but second, to provide the comforting--if largely useless--sentiment that we all have to understand one another and work together.
Sure, why not?
Now, I'm not being snarky, but it's a little like saying "All you need is love." Yes, that's true on its face, but how do you do it? How do you get there? It's like saying, things would be great if we could cure cancer, end poverty, and invent no calorie ice cream. No question. It would be fucking peachy. I'd dance the tarantella 'til my blisters had blisters. But just saying something like that ignores the barriers that have to be overcome first, an idea that would have been worth at least acknowledging. Instead, Todd, with his trademark supercilious smirk replied "Work together. Yes. Great idea. Well, stay tuned folks, when we come back, more TRUMP!"
If I could have reached through the set and punched him in the face, it wouldn't have been near enough for that self-congratulatory, simpering shithead.
And this is one of the gold standard "news" outlets. Better than Fox, certainly, but with Fox, at least you know you're never going to get anything resembling thoughtful coverage or, ya know, truth.
Trust? Chuck Todd? I'd have more faith in the roulette operator at a penny ante carnival.
And Ken––look what happened to Ginsburg when she spoke the truth––"unseemly it was for a S.C. justice to speak politically", yet these are dangerous times and as I said before she was speaking as a citizen that loves her country and fears what might become of it if Trump takes hold. Who better to warn the populace––thems that don't read (like their savior) and are ready to vote for this maniac––than a S.C. justice who crossed the line and will be a front page story. It's a sacrifice she was willing to make.
Just got done reading safari's link to the story of the Twelve Tribes––and Jeanne––if you haven't read it yet, be prepared to be even more scared than you are now. Another example of crazy religious take overs of souls––frightening stories like the Jim Jones saga. No wonder the show "The Walking Dead" is so popular––sickness becomes you, it goes with your gait––no more "moonlight becomes you, it goes with your hair"––sentimental journeys are bygone memories; what we have now are creepy people selling baked goods in small New England towns looking for victims to fill their cult while New York houses a deranged person who may just make the White House his home.
Movie rights are pending.
The Lesley Stahl interview pretty much proves my point about how the media treats Trump. This was a perfect occasion for her to put him on the spot. What did she do? Pass. Everyone passes with Trump. Do you think she'd pass on a chance to smack Hillary for benghazi, Benghazi, BENGHAZI?
Oh, and those chairs? Holy cheesy dime store grandiosity, Batman. But this sort of embarrassing, sleazy ostentation is all of a piece with Trump's idea of "amazing", and what he thinks will be a smashing opening night program for his Quicken Loans Coronation: Chachi from Happy Days, a golfer more recognizable with her clothes off, a minor beefcake soap opera star, and homophobia's gift to cable TV, the Duck Dynasty guy who has declared that he and Jesus are both gay haters.
Wow. That line up oughta keep 'em in their seats. Way to go Donald. SNL writers in their heyday couldn't have invented a weirder assembly of faux celebrities.
P.S. It's important to realize that, as easy as it is to make fun of this sorry show, his fans don't care. They don't care that he's ignorant, foul-mouthed, racist, misogynistic, an inveterate liar, sociopathic narcissist and bully. They don't. He could stage a convention with strippers and wrestlers holding forth on issues of domestic and international policy questions and they wouldn't care.
Oh wait.....
@Ken Winkes: You're right. But there's another element to the problem, and that is insider-pundit etiquette. It was evident in Lesley Stahl's interview of Trumpence. These poobah pundits belong to a social network with a ruthless pecking order. To get to or stay on top, the rules are that you're polite to everyone, no matter what their supposed political leanings, because one day the guy who's down is going to be up.
This approach is obvious in the fake "hardhitting" interview a la Stahl/Trump & perhaps made most famously by the late Tim Russert. Years ago, I was shocked when I read other pundits saying what a tough, no-holds-barred journalist Russert was because I had listened to him time & again let politicians get away with whoppers.
Later on, I realized the fawning over Russert & other fakey journalists was part of the insider game. The real criticism goes on at the margins; the center would not hold if Lesley Stahl & David Brooks & Tom Friedman & Andrea Mitchell & Chuck Todd & Judy Woodruff didn't stick to their insider code of etiquette. Call it Sunday Show Syndrome.
If you think I'm kidding, watch some forum on CNN where conservative & less-conservative (so-called liberals) get together to discuss some issue of the day. After half an hour, you wonder who's sleeping with whom.
Maybe if they interviewed David Duke, they would be tougher. But Trump is a "get." & they aren't going to ruffle his feathers to the point you can see his bald white scalp. Yes, they would be critical of a President Trump, but not so critical as to venture outside the boundaries of their conventional wisdom (which, BTW, requires a certain amount of criticism of any presidential administration, because ginning up Beltway-sanctioned "controversy" is also part of their job description -- they have to pretend to be speaking truth to power). Trump would have to actually send the Army to shut down the Washington Post before these insider pundits would speak out, & even then, given their lack of practice, I'm not sure how good they'd be at it.
The result is that ordinary voters, even the ones who try to be good citizens & follow news events on the teevee, don't know what the candidates' records really are. We in the public are left to our own devices, with help from some more serious, B-list journalists & commentators -- the ones who care more about facts & less about how many times they sit in the green rooms of the major networks. Mitt Romney might have won in 2012, but for the bartender & David Corn of Mother Jones exposing his 47-percent remark. This percolated up through outsider journalism, not through Bob Schieffer.
Marie
We need to stop interconnecting the words media and journalism.
@Akhilleus: That Silicon Valley Trumpbot isn't stupid. He has constructed a rationale for his self-interested vote. He knows Republicans will make sure he gets to keep a bigger share of his income than Democrats will, so he's voting for Republicans, no matter how bad they may be at governance. I get that.
The real dopes are the lower-middle income guys who think some flecks of Trump's gilt will waft down on them. At the end of a Trump presidency, they will all be worse off, and they will all still be blaming the Nee-gros and the Mexicans, people who are in fact even more powerless than they.
Marie
Just a thought about tonight. Will Phil (God Hates Gays) Robertson show up in camo? And will he offer his stated belief in the necessity of child brides as a Trump campaign platform? It seems to be an article of faith in certain Confederate religious views that getting women to shut up and put out requires getting them married at 15. Think Donaldo would support that?
Even if he wouldn't come right out and say it, providing someone like this with a place of honor and a soapbox in a national convention, in front of an audience of millions around the country, is more than a tacit approval and support of such ideas, not to mention Robertson's oft seen virulent and violent homophobia.
We thought we'd hit the bottom of the barrel with The Decider and his pet shark. We weren't even close.
Marie,
Yes, and MAG's accurate labeling of Trump as an egoist, as opposed to an egotist, is in line with many similarly inclined voters who see in him a way to make things better for themselves no matter what else happens to everyone else. It's the raising of Reagan's rapacious "Fuck you, Charlie, I got mine" mindset to depths rarely plumbed in modern democracies.
The Quicken Loan Coronation is all that Confederates could hope for: police state presence, a restriction of protesters' First Amendment rights (greatly reduced area where those who aren't willing to go along with the Trump Authoritarian Party Platform can speak--no camping, no speaking platforms, and a long list of everyday items banned.).
The City of Cleveland, at Republican urging, wanted a much stricter list of controls on anti-Trump protesters. And in the end, things like tennis balls are banned, but not assault rifles. Because Trump supporters need to have their weapons handy. And best of all? A heightened sense of personal victimization on the part of Confederates, by The Other.
Coronation proceedings were kicked off with a moment of silence for the victims. Oh....not the innocent black victims whose murders kicked off this latest violence jag. Silence for police officers. Confederate wunderkind Tom Cotton made it clear that his party backs the "boys in blue". What, no support for the women in blue?
Guess not.
So, victimization, hatred, guns, misogyny, authoritarianism, and Drumpf.
A Confederate wet dream.
Stahl did push back when Trump said he didn't care about Pence's support for the Iraq war. Perhaps it was edited for broadcast?
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/18/donald_trump_doesn_t_care_about_mike_pence_s_vote_for_the_iraq_war.html
Sorry, the Stahl link above doesn't work. You can try this one and clink on the snapshot of Stahl to play the video.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/18/donald_trump_doesn_t_care_about_mike_pence_s_vote_for_the_iraq_war.html?sid=5388d805dd52b8870b00f6bf&wpsrc=newsletter_slatest