The Commentariat -- July 28, 2015
Internal links removed.
Afternoon Update:
Michael Shear of the New York Times: "Jonathan J. Pollard, who was sentenced to life in prison in 1985 for passing classified documents to the Israeli government, will be released on parole in November after 30 years in prison, a government panel decided on Tuesday. Mr. Pollard's lawyers announced the decision of the United States Parole Commission on Tuesday afternoon, and officials at the Department of Justice confirmed that Mr. Pollard had been granted parole."
Carol Morello of the Washington Post: "Secretary of State John F. Kerry on Tuesday defended the Iran nuclear agreement as a 'strong deal' before skeptical members of Congress who expressed concern that it will eventually give Iran the freedom to build nuclear weapons and finance mayhem in the region. Appearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Kerry told lawmakers that it is a 'fantasy' to think that sanctions can prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons should it choose to do is."
Erik Wemple updates Donald Trump's media strategy in the wake of his consigliere's threats against a Daily Beast reporter.
A Marine Corps lieutenant colonel is relieved of her commend, & the Marine Corps Gazette subsequently decides not to publish her essay criticizing the Corps' treatment of female Marines. C. J. Chivers of the New York Times has the backstory, & publishes the essay.
Mika Brzezinski is often pretty silly & shallow. Not this time:
... ** Unsurprisingly, Israelis are offended, too.
*****
BBC News: "US President Barack Obama has warned that Africa could not advance if its leaders refused to step down when their terms ended. He also called for an end to the 'cancer of corruption', saying it took money away from development. Mr Obama made the comments in the first ever address by a US leader to the 54-member AU at its headquarters in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa." Here's a clip:
Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: "Now, with a push from President Obama, and perhaps even more significantly a nod from Speaker John A. Boehner, Congress seems poised to revise four decades of federal policy that greatly expanded the number of Americans -- to roughly 750 per 100,000 -- now incarcerated, by far the highest of any Western nation. Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee who has long resisted changes to federal sentencing laws, said he expected to have a bipartisan bill ready before the August recess."
Scott Wong & Kevin Cirilli of the Hill: "House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Monday said his chamber will not vote on the Senate's six-year highway bill. McCarthy's declaration that the House will not be 'taking up the Senate bill' means a short-term extension is the only way to prevent a lapse in federal infrastructure funding at the end of the week. It also means the Export-Import Bank, linked to the highway bill in the Senate, will not be renewed until September at the earliest." CW: One more reminder -- as if you needed one -- that Republicans in Congress are incapable of running their arm of the government. ...
... ** In Which Mitch McConnell Play the Hero. NEW. David Dayen explains why House Republicans want a five-month extension of the highway bill: "Of particular interest should be the timing. This patch would last until December 18, the last day of Congress before the Christmas break, also known as the time when Congress slips things into law while everyone is off holiday shopping and trimming the tree. And there's a plan for what to do with a long-term highway bill too: fund it through a corporate tax amnesty, allowing multinationals to bring home their foreign earnings with a minimal tax hit, well below the normal 35 percent range. Future Democratic leader in the Senate Chuck Schumer and Republican Rob Portman have already teamed up on this, using the enticement of infrastructure funds to alter the way the corporate tax system works." ...
... Another GOP Zombie Plan. Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post: "Tucked into a dusty corner of the Senate's Highway Trust Fund bill ... is a zombie proposal to hire private debt-collection agencies to hound delinquent taxpayers on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS has actually tried outsourcing tax collection activities to private debt collectors before, at Congress's behest. Twice, in fact, over the last two decades. Both times, the experiment was a disaster.... Both times the program was scrapped because it actually cost taxpayers money on net.... Yet for some reason -- perhaps amnesia, a blind devotion to privatization at all costs, a desire to line the pockets of friends in the debt-collection industry, or a conspiracy to make Americans hate the IRS even more than they already do -- this policy proposal just will not die.... The solution is to just adequately fund the IRS...."
Pete Williams of NBC News: "The governing body of the Boy Scouts of America voted Monday to end its decades-long ban on gay scout leaders. The organization's national executive board, meeting in Texas, concluded that the policy of excluding gay adults 'was no longer legally defensible.' The decision was approved by 79 percent of the board." ...
... Ben Lockhart of the Salt Lake City Deseret News: "The future relationship between the Boy Scouts of America and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is now uncertain after the Scouting body voted Monday to rescind a nationwide ban on gay Scout leaders, prompting strong words of concern from the church and a promise to re-evaluate its century-long affiliation with the organization.... Church spokesman Eric Hawkins said in a prepared statement. '... the admission of openly gay leaders is inconsistent with the doctrines of the church and what have traditionally been the values of the Boy Scouts of America.'" ...
... Margaret Hartmann of New York: "The Christian Science Monitor notes that as a result of its ban on gay individuals, over the years BSA's membership has grown more conservative, with about 70 percent of troops now run by religious organizations. Following the 2013 decision, some conservatives left the Boy Scouts and created the group Trail Life USA. BSA enrollment had been declining for some time.... Southern Baptist Convention spokesman Roger Oldham said that, like the Mormons, Baptists may be ready to abandon the Boy Scouts altogether instead of being forced to eventually accept gay leaders."
Jessica Glenza of the Guardian: "Planned Parenthood representatives say that hackers appear to be working to gain access to the abortion providers' employee information systems. The organization notified the FBI and Department of Justice of a possible data breach, a spokesperson said on Monday, one that representatives from the organization said 'if true' could threaten the 'privacy and safety of our staff members'."
Dana Milbank: Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kansas) returns to a Washington unlike the one he left. The art of the deal used to involve friendship & compromise.
Sally Kohn in a Washington Post op-ed: When will we start holding racism and misogyny accountable for the violence they rationalize and inspire?... John Russel Houser, who killed two women & injured many more people in a Louisiana movie theater "was steeped and stewing in right-wing xenophobic, homophobic, misogynist and racist hate.... Houser was crazy and held some beliefs that were variations of more mainstream conservative beliefs. The roots of some of Houser's political views are hard to distinguish from ideas espoused by many, if not most, of the candidates running for the Republican Party's presidential nomination.... When there's evidence that a mass shooting suspect who's Muslim espoused anti-American, pro-radical Islamicist views, we tie that suspect to the broader ideology.... Black Americans are presumed to bear blame as a group even when they're the victims of violence.... White privilege extends even to white mass murderers...."
Samuel Gibbs of the Guardian: "Over 1,000 high-profile artificial intelligence experts and leading researchers have signed an open letter warning of a 'military artificial intelligence arms race' and calling for a ban on 'offensive autonomous weapons'. The letter, presented at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was signed by Tesla's Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Google DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis and professor Stephen Hawking along with 1,000 AI and robotics researchers."
Hang your head, Ben.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.
All Our Pulitzers Are Tarnished. But We Led the News Cycle! CW: The New York Times publishes an unsigned CYA "Editor's Note" explaining why Hillary Clinton is not behind bars yet despite their excellent "criminal investigation" bombshell story. For one thing, you can't trust the government: "That article was based on multiple high-level government sources." (Those sources likely being Trey Gowdy, Trey Gowdy's top staffer & the boyfriend of a DOJ clerk who once worked at Justice but now represents the RNC. And Trey Gowdy.) For another, Hillary's henchmen harassed a cub reporter the moment the story hit the Internets: "Shortly after the article was published online, however, aides to Mrs. Clinton contacted one reporter to dispute the account." BTW, we decided that before we tried to bury Clinton, we would not offer her the same courtesy we do other subjects: contacting her before publication. Yeah, I wouldn't sign this piece of crap either. But at least this excuse for a mea culpa is helpful to the folks Erik Wemple cites:
...CW: In Confederate America, there's a new meme. The New York Times changed its blockbuster story outing Hillary Clinton as a serial criminal BECAUSE HILLARY ASKED THEM TO. So that's another scandal on top of all her criminal misdeeds. Erik Wemple of the Washington Post has the details: "... the critique was leaving out something that once mattered in political dialogue: the truth." BTW, here's an unnamed Democratic spokesman to back up what I've been saying for days: "A Democratic spokesman for the House oversight committee, which is closely involved in Clinton e-mail stuff, told the Erik Wemple Blog: 'Unfortunately, the New York Times did not check with us before running its story, even though we have offered to help in the past and could have corrected these errors before they showed up on the front page. We do not know who the New York Times talked to, but we talked to the Inspectors General themselves.'" What a concept! ...
... MEANWHILE, "independent journalist" Ron Fournier of the National Journal wants to know what Hillary is hiding. Fournier never mentions his own fucked-up complaint of last week that Hillary was "blaming The New York Times, which is as pathetic as it is laughable" & that the DOJ should investigate her criminal activities. ...
... Laura Clawson of Daily Kos: "Twice in the last few months, a hot, breaking New York Times story on Hillary Clinton's use of a private email address while secretary of state has gone from 'wow, that looks terrible for Hillary Clinton' to 'wow, that looks terrible for the New York Times' in the day or so after its initial much-hyped publication.... The Times is making it clear that it isn't prepared to change the practices that led to serious mistakes in two bombshell-turned-bomb stories about Hillary Clinton's emails...."
Political scientist Henry Farrell explains why Tom Friedman never has to say he's sorry. CW: Here's another funny bit: I came to Farrell's piece via Paul Krugman, who is forbidden to say anything bad about the bozos & bobos who people the same op-ed page he does. True to his code, after a fashion, Krugman never mentions Friedman.
Presidential Race
Command Performance -- The Koch Presidency. Ken Vogel of Politico: "Four leading GOP presidential candidates -- Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker -- are traveling to a Southern California luxury hotel in coming days to make their cases directly to the Koch brothers and hundreds of other wealthy conservatives planning to spend close to $1 billion in the run-up to the 2016 election. The gathering -- which also will include former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, but notably not Sen. Rand Paul -- is hosted by Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the umbrella group in the Kochs' increasingly influential network of political and public policy outfits. It represents a major opportunity for the candidates at a pivotal moment in the presidential primary." ...
... Dave Weigel & Matea Gold of the Washington Post: "Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is turning down a coveted invite to a gathering of wealthy conservative donors this weekend, citing his plans to be on the campaign trail.... Paul told The Washington Post..., 'We've been invited -- it's just hard to make [these] decisions, because you can't be everywhere.'" CW: If Li'l Randy's purpose in giving up a chance to grovel at the feet of the Koch Brothers' Band of Billionaires by caucusing with the cornpones of Iowa was intended to make him seem like a man of the people, he might have announced his populist sacrifice without employing the royal "we."
Tim Mak & Brandy Zadrozny of the Daily Beast: "Donald Trump introduced his presidential campaign to the world with a slur against Mexican immigrants, accusing them of being 'rapists' and bringing crime into the country.... It was an unfortunate turn of phrase for Trump.... Not only does the current frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination have a history of controversial remarks about sexual assault, but as it turns out, his ex-wife Ivana Trump once used 'rape' to describe an incident between them in 1989. She later said she felt 'violated' by the experience.... Ivana Trump's assertion of 'rape' came in a deposition -- part of the early '90s divorce case between the Trumps, and revealed in the 1993 book Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump." Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen told the Daily Beast, "You cannot rape your spouse. And there's very clear case law." ...
I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we're in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don't have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know. So I'm warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I'm going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me? You write a story that has Mr. Trump's name in it, with the word 'rape,' and I'm going to mess your life up ... for as long as you're on this frickin' planet ... you're going to have judgments against you, so much money, you'll never know how to get out from underneath it. -- Michael Cohen, special counsel to the Trump Organization to Tim Mak of the Daily Beast
... Ben Jacobs of the Guardian: "Marital rape was made illegal in all US states in 1993. It was made illegal in New York state in 1984, five years before the alleged incident. Donald and Ivana Trump settled their divorce in 1992." ...
... Arturo Garcia of the Raw Story: "ABC News reported that the Trump campaign responded to the report by calling the rape allegation 'old news and [that] it never happened.'... The campaign also downplayed Cohen's role, saying, 'Nobody speaks for Mr. Trump, but Mr. Trump.'... The response came hours after Cohen appeared on CNN billed as a spokesperson for the candidate."
... Nate Cohn of the New York Times: "Most of the polls [which came out this week & showed Donald Trump in the lead for the GOP nomination] were partly or entirely conducted before Mr. Trump's controversial comments [about John McCain].... For good measure, it is not at all clear that we should expect Mr. Trump to suffer discernible losses in the near future. Take Herman Cain, who faced reports that he was accused of sexual harassment in late October 2011. These reports were surely more problematic for his candidacy than Mr. Trump's comments about Mr. McCain, and yet the early polls conducted after the allegations did not show much evidence that they had any effect on his standing. One month later, Mr. Cain was out of the race." ...
... Steve M. argues there's no comparison between Cain & the Ablest. ...
... CW: Yeah, and there's this. Greg Sargent: "A big majority of Republicans believes that the government's main focus on immigration should be not just on stopping the flow of illegal immigrants, but also on deporting those already here." Do you suppose there was "a big majority of Republicans" who believed it was quite all right for (black) men to fondle (white) ladies without their consent? Possibly not. ...
... Dara Lind of Vox: "If a new CNN poll is correct, a majority of Republican voters are significantly to the right of pretty much every Republican elected official and every single Republican presidential candidate -- including Donald Trump -- on immigration."
... Stefanos Chen of the Wall Street Journal: "... Donald Trump has sold his penthouse in New York's Trump Park Avenue building for $21 million, according to real estate listing agent Michelle Griffith. With slide show. CW: All the rooms are white. He plans to purchase & extensively remodel another White House.
Jim Tankersley of the Washington Post: "On the campaign trail, Jeb Bush has repeatedly emphasized his record overseeing Florida's boom economy as the state's governor.... But according to interviews with economists and a review of data, Florida owed a substantial portion of its growth under Bush not to any state policies but to a massive and unsustainable housing bubble -- one that ultimately benefited rich investors at the expense of middle-class families.... In the four years after Bush left office..., the typical Florida family's net worth fell 60 percent in that time, according to the Census Bureau.... Many of those families now pay rent to Wall Street firms."
CW: If you think the next administration & future federal courts should be made up on graduates of Livingston High School, New Jersey, & Seton Hall Law, you should definitely vote for Chris Christie. It will happen. Matt Arco of NJ.com reports. Nonetheless, I suppose David Wildstein won't become Transportation Secretary. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Beyond the Beltway
Jeff Mulvihill of the AP: "Three public workers' pension funds are suing New Jersey for billions in damages, claiming the state government breached contracts when it contributed less than planned. The filing Friday is the latest volley in a more than yearlong dispute over pension contributions. They stem from Gov. Chris Christie's decision last year amid a budget shortfall to veer from a pension funding plan he signed into law in 2011.... Spokesmen for Christie did not respond immediately to a request for comment." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "A conference protesting police violence against African Americans ended in police violence against African Americans on Sunday, when at least one officer deployed pepper spray against men and women protesting the arrest of a 14 year-old teenager."
Way Beyond
Nicholas Watt of the Guardian: "Lord Sewel has announced he is to resign from the House of Lords with immediate effect as he apologised for the 'pain and embarrassment' he has caused after the release of a film showing him allegedly taking cocaine with sex workers.... Sewel's decision will raise questions about whether Paul Kernaghan, the House of Lords commissioner for standards, will continue with his investigation into whether the peer broke the code of conduct for the upper house.... The peer's resignation will have no impact on the police investigation that was launched on Monday...."
News Ledes
Guardian: "Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of Libya's former dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, has been sentenced to death by a court in Tripoli. Saif, once seen as his father's heir apparent, was condemned to death along with eight other figures from the former dictatorship, including the former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi and Gaddafi's last prime minister, Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi."
Reuters: "FIFA boss Sepp Blatter deserves a Nobel Prize for his stewardship of soccer's governing body, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview aired by Swiss broadcaster RTS on Monday."
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Reader Comments (14)
Everything about the New York Times story on Clinton's emails was disgraceful: the narrative made little sense ("impenetrable" in Eichenwald's words), the headline made it seem that Hillary was facing arrest, and the piece was filled with lies as a result of being so poorly sourced. It is impossible to escape the conclusion that the Times reporters only spoke to Republican sources (the same who no doubt fed them the story to begin with). It is clear they never gave the Clinton campaign the courtesy of a phone call (something I thought was basic Journalism 101 - you call the person who is the focus of the story for their side).
Eric Boehlert cites a number of respected journalists who found the Times behavior appalling, and also links it to a long pattern of deplorable reporting on the Clintons, what he refers to as a "disturbing pattern of misinformation."
Last night I came across a Confederate screed (one of thousands) warning about yet more Obama perfidy.
Then it hit me. Like a lightning bolt from ol' Nathan Bedford Forrest hisself (lucky I wasn't standing next to a giant burning cross).
As of this writing, President Obama has only 541 days, 15 hours, and about 20 minutes left in office. This guy had better get his ass in gear.
I mean, he's had over six years and so far there's not one FEMA concentration camp, not a one; no plan for taking away all the guns, not a single sentence of the Constitution shredded or blotted with the blood of Confederates, no imposition of Sharia Law, no attacks on the one percent, no Islamic extremists camped out in the Lincoln bedroom, no hint of socialism/fascism (don't ask), no movement on making it punishable by death to read the Bible (Jeez, Louise!), no war on Christians, and he's got a loooong way to go to wreck the economy and drag it back to where it was under Bush and the Republicans. AND I have yet to see even a single oddly shaped cloud in the sky resembling a black helicopter.
I mean, c'mon, dude. Get a move on. Half the country is waiting for this laundry list of atrocities to be true. You can't disappoint all those tinfoil hat wearin' loons (a set that includes at least half the Confederate candidates for president, by the way).
Surely all those predictions of catastrophe and doom weren't just based on whackadoodle ideological wanking and good ol' fashioned Confederate racial animosity, right? I mean there were Very Serious People prophesying exactly these outcomes, prophesies that were picked up and repeated in MSM outlets as well. And they're never wrong.
Right?
@Akhilleus: You have not been following what's happening in Texas.
Also, too, just today (see clip above) President Obama said, "I actually think I'm a pretty good president.... I could win [again]." Obviously, the first open declaration of a man planning to become President for Life.
Marie
First, congrats to Boston for turning down an Olympic bid—it is a worthy comparative to the dumping of tea in the harbor.
The Olympics have grown into a money-making machine for a few. It is long overdue that a permanent venue be reconsidered. Why not return it to Greece where it began, maybe this would be one way to bring Greece out of some of its financial woes. Cities that have invested millions and millions into creating Olympic venues always seem to end up with deteriorating facilities that never deliver on promised future use & revenues. Look at Barcelona. Look at the spectacular 'Bird's Nest' stadium and the overall costs to China for a few days of events. These costly architectural wonders never live up to future expectations.
Meantime, I'm quickly tuning out on GOP nonsense and its roster of idiot candidates. This election process is just too, too long...and embarrassing. I'm exhausted keeping up with the daily stupid. Who can take any of these candidates seriously?
The NYT is diminishing its stature via inept 'journalists,' — and today's commentary by Joe Nocera touches on another issue that is of great concern. When commercialism & profits overtake a publication nothing good comes out of it. I am, and have been a paid Times subscriber, since they began—but I will not click on a Paid Post. My background is in advertising and marketing, but I detest shenanigans that cross the line.
My admiration for a former owner of the WSJ family who wrote a commentary on Newscorp taking over the family business. (I knew Jim Ottaway, Jr., who was about my age way back when I was the ad director for a department store, which was then the biggest advertiser the paper had.)
He wrote: "If you need a taste of what the 100-year Dow Jones legacy could become, just turn on your television and watch Fox News or read Harold Evans' book about his time as editor of the Times of London, where he describes how Mr. Murdoch eroded its standards, and broke written promises he made to maintain the paper's editorial independence.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB117847597734093670
Margaret Sullivan's intention to provide CYA to the Times for its Hillary Clinton article/screwup is apparent in the fourth paragraph. She writes: "The first major change was this: It wasn't really Mrs. Clinton directly who was the focus of the request for an investigation." Such squishy language. How about putting that as a simple declarative sentence without qualifiers? Such as: "Mrs. Clinton was not the focus of the request for an investigation."
I didn't bother to read the rest of her "journal entry." That told me enough.
I spent a couple of glorious hours last night watching Warner Bros' 1938 "Robin Hood" starring Errol Flynn, with my little man. He is at the age where everything is black and white. The good guys get the bad guys and all is right with the world. It would be unseemly to nitpick the film's risible inaccuracies and historical silliness: Richard the Lionheart shows up in Sherwood Forest after returning from a harrowing crusade and captivity in Austria with a contingent of knights errant all perfectly coifed and gowned in royal raiment. But who cares? It's not HISTORY. It's not factual.
It's a fairy tale, and a gorgeous one at that. The good guys are all kind hearted rascals who can fight like it's no one's business, but they fight for a good cause, of course, stealing from the rich, giving to the poor and all that. The bad guys are sniveling, sneering liars who worship wealth, blame all their problems on the poor, abuse women, and hide their misdeeds behind corrupt religiosity (hey, they sound like Republicans!). Everything is accompanied by a ripping score from the pen of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and the imagery, like N.C. Wyeth canvasses come to life, is resplendent in sumptuously saturated Technicolor.
I thought of this when reading the link (above) to a piece about the hackography of one Thomas Friedman who is wrong so often but still sits on his perch high atop the increasingly embarrassing New York Times op-ed pages letting out with the bullshit on a weekly basis. And he's not the only one. Friedman is just one of many hacks abroad today retelling old fairy tales and passing them off as the absolute, unimpeachable truth.
Der Professor, Herr Krugman, is notably and rightly peeved by this state of affairs because the public is constantly bombarded by hackwork cobbled together by incompetent hacks who are not just wrong, they're wrong at the top of their lungs.
We're all too aware, sadly, of the usual suspects, the Kristols and Wills and Krauthammers, but the blogosphere and MSM are "full of vultures, vultures everywhere" (to quote another Warner movie).
The amazingly hackified historian David Barton, who a couple of weeks ago announced that god said retirement is for heathens and we should all work 'til we drop (The Kochs would like that and besides, the Bible says so, so nyah, nyah), is THE source for historical support material for Ted Cruz and Glenn Beck (I don't give a damn about Beck, but Cruz? A presidential candidate?). This guy simply makes shit up and must have, at one point, decided that 1. he never has to back up any of his claims because either 2. no one will check him, or 3. fuck 'em if they do.
Another winger hackorian, Jonah Goldberg, who routinely pisses onto the pages of the National Review whatever comes into his small brain, feels the same way. Goldberg puts on the airs, in the best David Brooks tradition, of being a Serious Thinker, but simply dropping names like Edmund Burke does not a learned man of letters guarantee. Alex Parene, in a Salon piece, describes Goldberg thusly: "The problem is Goldberg is not smart or hardworking enough to pen a genuine piece of scholarship, or even popular history, and he is too pretentious to admit to having written an Ann Coulter-style, red meat-for-morons polemic."
Still, you routinely see Confederates dropping Goldberg quotes. Is second and third hand shit any better than first hand shit?
My favorite in the sweepstakes for a winger writer with a lack of self awareness and a grasp of economics and history incrementally above that of a dancing monkey is Megan McArdle who, alarmingly, was a senior editor at the Atlantic and now writes for Bloomberg.
McArdle, like so many other neocons, was a staunch cheerleader for the Iraq clusterfuck. When asked, after that fact became so apparent, what she might learn from being so wrong, McArdle went on the attack stating that Americans should pay more attention to those who were WRONG about Iraq than those mean old finger-pointing lefty complainers who were right. She even goes so far as to declare that those who were right about Iraq were likely "... wrong about how they got it right". What? No surprise, she also believes the ACA is paving the road to economic collapse, in the face of facts that point to the exact opposite conclusion.
She still has a job. Her fairy tale dissemination continues apace.
And there's the problem. These people, who are wrong with even more regularity than Old Faithful, are placed in privileged positions on blogs, journals, in newspapers, and magazines and on influential websites (the idea that you can read a thoughtful piece in the Atlantic by James Fallows then turn the page and read head scratching gibberish from Megan McArdle is more than a bit alarming).
And we see how the attenuation of journalistic ethics and fact-based reporting and commentary has caused serious baseline erosion. Just look at the horror show the Times made of its "Clinton: CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION!!!!" fairy tale. And the blame falls on editors too.
How (and why) media outlets like the Times and even the Atlantic countenance such shoddy work (Brooks, Douthat, even Friedman), boils down to an interesting possibility. Thomas Levenson of the Inverse Square Blog, suggests that a writer like McArdle "...continues to weigh in on a whole raft of stuff about which she willfully knows nothing, all in order to advance an agenda that has only one item: to comfort the comfortable."
That's not the only possibility, but it's an entirely reasonable and rational one. The only other one is that people have thoroughly lost their fucking minds letting assholes like this spout incorrigible nonsense on a daily basis.
But the regular leaking of Confederate claptrap into the water supply means that contamination is inevitable and readers who are not all that attentive drink in this swill and may decide that everyone is wrong and no one is telling the truth.
And any way you look at it, that's a win for the Confederacy. A win for nonsense, and for those who tell fairy tales that comfort the comfortable and pass them off as absolute truth.
Welcome to Sherwood.
Akhilleus,
To comfort the comfortable, yes. That is, if by comfortable you mean those who have creature comforts that range from just getting by to outrageous ownership of private jets and car elevators, and more to the point care not a whit for those who don't. As for the lost minds, it's hard to lose something you never had.
As you say, there is much corrosive about all the misinformation and downright lies, too. The mindless too often accept what they hear or read as truth; many others just conclude that everyone lies and all are equally on the take, which leads to the he said/she said emptiness of too much reporting.
Seems to me, though, it all comes down to that Commandment thing, the one Christian Right would like to feature on courthouse lawns across the county. One of them says something like "I shall not tell a lie." Barton and his ilk pay no attention to that of course.
Instead it's all business and the business is money. In a culture where money is always good (and it must be; you can't live without it), if you can make money lying, then lying is not so bad. The money proves it's not.
And the caring for others, once thought to be an essential Christian impulse? Unless you run a large foundation, or skim cream from the charity stream,you don't make much money doing that, so again we seriously devalue the impulse.
In the money world we inhabit, truth, selflessness and other traditional virtues (except I guess working for a pittance until you drop) always come in last.
Maybe I presume too much here, but as I think you might say or maybe already have, "Christians, my ass!"
Just watched the Mika Brzezinski clip Marie posted this afternoon in which she takes idiot Mike Huckabee (didn't he used to try to come off as an "aw shucks" gi-tar playing, Jesus loves everyone kinda guy?) to task for his Holocaust comparison.
A couple of things. First, it's so refreshing to hear someone looking out from an insulated TV studio saying anything that doesn't feel pre-scripted and pre-approved (in a good way). But then one of the babblers comes in with an excuse for Huckabee. It's all the fault of Trumpy the Trumpet. If he hadn't been running around off the chain, giving out with the crazy, other candidates wouldn't feel like they had to run their pennants up the pole of ignorance right after him. Oh well, in that case...
Sorry, but as my mother used to say, jumping off a cliff just because other kids had done it is the height of stupidity.
One of the requirements of being president should be perspicacity and level headedness (ignore The Decider who had neither).
Finally, watch Joe Scarborough. He looks like he either wants to jump in and help Fuckabee or he's in a trance. He looks stupefied. Schmuck.
But Brzesinski is right. This should be it for Rev. Douchebag.
But it won't be. His flock of haters and holy rollers will rally around him. As Ken suggested, too many of these people are Christians in name only.
@Ken Winkes: The trouble is, the Bible has more than one Jesus; ergo, there is more than one kind of Christian. The synoptic gospels portray a radical Jew who rages against authoritarian excesses & injustice. This Jesus derives from a tradition of reformers & of radical guerillas who were at war with foreign conquerors & the Jewish quislings who enabled the consquerors & enriched themselves at the expense of ordinary Jews.
The Gospel of John, on the other hand, presents an authoritarian Jesus in the tradition of the Old Testament God. This Jesus performs some of the same type of miracles as synoptic Jesus, but his purpose is not so much to help people as it is to show them he's a powerful son of God who speaks for the old man, & by God, folks had better follow him or else. Conservative religions like the Roman Catholic Church, traditionally, & evangelical sects have been drawn to the Gospel of John & to the OT God who's always pissed off at the Jews as well as their enemies.
One can't read the Bible to find out what Jesus might have been like, & what sort of moral code he would have espoused. There are a minimum of five quite differing versions of Jesus -- the four gospels & some of the supposed letters of Paul. So people pick their own guy & look for passages to support their own moral codes.
If you asked me what Christianity stands for, I'd have to say it represents a belief in the supernatural, in the afterlife & in divine judgment. From there, the believer is on his own to choose his path in hopes of getting thru the pearly gates.
Marie
@Akhileus: I caught that comment by the babbler too. I forget her name, but she's on MSNBC a lot and is on their staff I believe. She rarely fails to spout conventional wisdom, and she did not disappoint in this instance.
Mika B. was awesome!
Nice summation Marie. To which I'll just add that the bible thumpers ought sometime to actually read Deuteronomy. Mosaic law makes Sharia law look like a model of enlightened liberality. I doubt whether any of the GOP candidates would escape being stoned to death under the Deuteronomic Code.
Marie,
True, indeed true. Well said. Many of today's Christians are Republicans for a very good reason. They, too, are bad scientists (sorry Ms. Eddy), picking the data to support the desired conclusion, ethics and sense be damned.
Had more in mind the progressive/social gospel tradition that brought us many good things, if one is willing to ignore Prohibition and other excesses of do-goodism to which they were occasionally too prone. But maybe the social gospel business is a thing of the past.
My wife just reported that as she visited the local food bank to drop off some freshly picked beans, someone stopped a car and screamed repeatedly at the Hispanics waiting in line, "Go home to Mexico where you came from!"
Probably Christians...
And somewhere beyond Sherwood Forest in an Atlanta suburb where a little black girl was celebrating her birthday with her extended family along came trucks of armed confederate supporters shouting racial slurs and death threats. Christians? Maybe––but one thing is certain: the evil in this act is not up for argument. And "Go home to Mexico where you came from," is not up for argument. And the person who made the "oven comparison" needs to be outed for the fool that he is and then be outed period. And the person who drugged and raped forty some women needs to atone. Enough is enough––I am sick to death of all of it!
Here's the link:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/27/1406207/-Armed-Confederate-supporters-interrupt-Black-child-s-birthday-party-w-racial-slurs-death-threats?detail=email