FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2022
...we didn't quite know how to function: We're still attempting to recover from the experience of watching yesterday's presentation by the January 6 committee.
Personally, we'd track the lunacy to the coverage of the Clinton campaign in early 1992.
For the record, much of that lunacy came from within the mainstream press corps. (See Gene Lyons, Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater. By rule of law, the book went undiscussed.)
The rest of the lunacy, during that era, came from figures like Gingrich, Limbaugh, Falwell. The Clintons had committed a string of murders! The lunacy was well underway.
The lunacy continued in the twenty-month punishment war against Candidate Gore during Campaign 2000. (He hadn't condemned Clinton with sufficient zeal for those ten acts of oral sex.)
Principally, that lunacy came from the mainstream press, not from "the right-wing noise machine." For that reason, that lunacy has never been discussed, and it never will be.
The lunacy began tracking right with the arrival of Sarah Palin. The Clintons' various murders had now turned into Barack Obama's death panels.
(Full disclosure: Before the lunacy went political, it had taken the form of the lunatic treatment directed at various people during the lunatic preschool sex scandals of the 1980s. "Man [sic] is the rational animal," Aristotle is said to have said!)
From the death panels, we moved to Donald J. Trump, then on to PizzaGate and QAnon. By now, the mainstream press had jumped off this train, but they had played a leading role in the creation of this clownlike culture.
(Now, they decided to show their moral greatness—by permitting themselves to use the word "lie" and by performing their concern about race.)
As of today, just imagine the wide range of genuine crackpots involved in the chain of events discussed in yesterday's presentation. (We aren't allowed to discuss the possible role of mental illness in any of this conduct.)
After that, turn on Lawrence and Rachel, asking yourself why our tribe can't seem to find a way to right this sinking ship.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our own blue tribe is vastly unskilled. We've played an unmistakable role in the lunacy which ate America. We're preternaturally self-impressed, but are actually quite unimpressive.
We'll try to spell this out in the days to come. But when the lunacy came for us, we didn't know how to react, and we didn't know how to be human.
Cheney looked hot though.
ReplyDeleteHe always does.
DeleteEspecially when shooting a hunting buddy in the face.
DeleteIf Liz Cheney runs for president, I am going to vote for her.
DeleteThat’s the essence of what I’ve been saying.
Delete
ReplyDeleteSo, what exactly happened to Seth Rich, dear Bob? According to the lunacy of your dembot press corp it was a robbery gone wrong. And what's your opinion, as an exceptional, atypical, rare rational animal?
...and what's with that guy, what's his face -- Ray Epps?
Can’t keep all the bullshit straight dumb ass? For once we can sympathize.
DeleteBob murdered Seth Rich?
Delete"Ray Epps reveals how his life has been ruined after conspiracists claimed he was FBI informant at Jan 6 riot"
https://news.yahoo.com/ray-epps-reveals-life-ruined-181950614.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADAMIv5aHBtpmH31brc8tkEwq1jVZpt4PmeN7veGnOn-uvaogZi3MxYKKJfiIxvjjPEb0_r6VEATwEatGA7hczyEBeLPQE5WgkIPRJpAeGlwBZGHRzdX5uSPRsDtLliXYbQHiolW1dsxTj7QUxA4cF8WSfw_2_ji5RM5LmKw4dh5
Bob is back to severely worrying about November.
ReplyDeleteBest not to listen to media chatter.
Well, whatever their flaws, can you find an
ReplyDeleteequivalent with Rachel and Lawrence to Vince Foster, Whitewater, Obama’s non existent IRS Scandal, the War on Christmas, and several dozen more? Certainly Maddow, with Micheal Moore’s egging on, went overboard on the Flynt
Water crisis, but it wasn’t like the whole thing
was invented. Some of the left riot enabling
Police/Race coverage was pandering and
Inaccurate. On the other hand, MSNBC
showed it was perfectly willing to re-elect
Trump fighting for obvious nutcase Tara
Reade until the whole thing fell apart. Thanks
Liberal Media.
Bob ignores the Bush years in his
survey, where W and Rudy were lionized
for failures they should have been
called to account for, and would have
been if they were Democrats.
It would take a couple longish
books to cover it all, but for the
last twenty years we must observe,
what happened to Bob? He mostly
forgot about the great dumbing down
of the nineties and concentrated
almost exclusively on the sins
(real but often pathetically imagined)
of “his tribe.”
That he is still kvetching about Trump
being called a lair says a lot. The
“new” part of yesterday was that their
is considerable evidence that shows
Trump knew he was lying, which
blows Bob’s pathetic contention that
Trump believed what he was saying.
Russiagate was an equivalent. Maddow was doing stories about Russia taking control over our power grids and leaving is all freezing in the winter. They still lead people to believe Russia has the ability to control our elections. It was propaganda pure and simple.
DeleteIt was the free-market who controlled our power grids, and left Americans freezing in the winter.
DeleteRussia has been attacking our power grid and public utilities:
Deletehttps://www.govtech.com/security/russians-hacked-into-americas-electric-grid-heres-why-securing-it-is-hard.html
https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/ncas/alerts/TA18-074A
Russia was sanctioned for its interference in the 2016 election:
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States imposed fresh Russia-related sanctions on Wednesday, expanding a blacklist of individuals allegedly involved in a Kremlin-backed campaign to meddle with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, among other misdeeds."
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-sanctions-treasury/u-s-imposes-fresh-russia-sanctions-for-election-meddling-idUSKCN1OI27F
Yes, but both were not remotely meaningful threats. They were hyped as such by propagandists like Maddow and the DNC.
DeleteAll conspiracy theories and propaganda start with a kernel of truth - you know this, don't you?
DeleteMost of the Right, from Louie to Geraldo, use a few dopey Maddow missteps as an excuse to deny the legitimacy of Trump’s first Impeachment, where he was guilty as hell. “Russia, if you’re listening….” Nice try, but you are full of shit. Also, the fact the left press played up a crooked nutball lawyer does not mean Trump didn’t fuck and pay off a porn star. He did.
DeleteBoth cites are to government sources.
Deleteanon 4:48 - "all" conspiracy theories start with a "kernel" of truth. Some conspiracy theories turn out to be true, I suppose. But what you say seems like total bullshit. An example that comes to mind is the one that is in the news, about the Alex Jones and his claim that the mass killing was a hoax. What is the "kernel" of truth on that one? I'm sure there is a plentitude of other similar examples.
Delete"What is the "kernel" of truth on that one?"
DeleteThe kernel of truth in this one, dear dembot, is that there are institutions dedicated to disarming the citizens. It's logical to expect them to overemphasize, overplay -- or, who knows, perhaps even fabricate -- events useful to their crusade.
...speaking of which, dear dembot, what's the rationale for the RF government for allegedly "attacking our power grid and public utilities"?
Mao are you the top or bottom?
Delete5:43
DeleteThe point is that Maddow over hyped a non-issue, which was that Russia's election interference activity was a meaningful threat to the outcome of the election and that their alleged hacking of the electrical grid posed any kind of meaningful threat. I know you don't agree. I know that some government agencies have said that their interference was a grave threat. I know that you believe one side is all good, and the other side is all bad. I get the black and white thinking that you use to approach politics. Good versus evil, like a comic book or a cowboy movie. I get that your team is Rachel and the Democrats.
Have a good weekend.
5:43, this seems like circle squaring from a nervous moderate snowflake. "Russia, if you're listening...." I have no doubt if a Democrat said that you would be happy to call that evil with a capital "E." Oh yes, and Trump has been a guest on Alex Jones. Evil enough for you yet? Roger Stone has proudly proclaimed his belief that hatred is stronger than love. He has certainly made trying to prove it his life's work.
DeleteSorry if this makes it tough on Thanksgiving with the family. Try just talking about Sports.
Is that my old buddy Cicero? If so, as usual, you have no idea what you're talking about. Trump almost certainly would not have become president if it weren't for Russian interference. Trump won by razor thin margins in three battleground states -- states that were essential for him to win the electoral college. Thus, Russia's interference only had to have a very small impact on the electorate to affect the outcome of the election. (Ditto for Comey's fuckery, which Nate Silver has done a good job of showing that it alone very likely had enough of an impact to change the outcome of the election.) The Democrats' emails that the Russians hacked and which were released at very strategic times dominated news coverage towards the end of the campaign and became fodder for Trump and his accomplices. There was one key release immediately after the "grab 'em by the pussy" scandal broke, which diverted attention from that scandal. To think that such punishing headlines at the end of a campaign didn't swing votes is absurd. Also, contrary to your denials, there was likely collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Once again, it's the height of absurdity to think that Manafort's sharing of internal campaign data with a likely Russian intelligence operative was just for shits and grins. Also, who do you think was helping so precisely and strategically release those hacked emails, in such a way as to maximize their effect? Roger Stone was shown to have had contact with WikiLeaks, and had foreknowledge of the releases. Both Stone and Manafort obstructed the investigation.
DeleteHi Mike, thank you for taking the time to write this comment. There's no conclusive evidence that supports any of your claims. That's why no one was indicted for colluding or conspiring with Russia in 2016 or indicted for any of the events you mentioned here. But you are free to speculate of course and as always, do your own research and draw your own conclusions about what may have happened. I do feel if you were to research this further, you would not have this precise conclusion though. Trump's victory in general was a worldwide shock and specifically in those States was unexpected and by a small margin but it was a confluence of many different factors, not just Russian interference that led to it. For instance, television advertising or the lack thereof on the part of the Clinton campaign, Clinton campaign's decision to have her not even visit one of the states would probably have a bigger impact than the Russian interference. We do know from Senate intelligence hearings that Russia spent under $5,000 on social media advertising in those swing states. I can provide a source if you would like. This was in a multi-billion dollar election where tens of millions were being spent every month by the Trump campaign. The devil is in the details but I appreciate you sharing your beliefs here with me tonight and I do wish you the best.
DeleteNo one was indicted because Trump controlled the DOJ.
DeleteI could write a book in response to that silliness. But life is short, so I'll just point out that the bulk of what you wrote misses the point entirely. Of COURSE many factors played a role. My point was that because of the slim margins in critical states, if you removed any single one of those factors, it very well could have changed the outcome of the election, and this includes Russia's interference. Russia not only illegally hacked Dems' emails, which then generated a ton of negative headlines for the Clinton campaign at crucial moments, but Russia also helped spread pro-Trump/anti-Clinton content via the use of bots. Notice I didn't say anything about Russia's own social media advertising.
DeleteYet there is no conclusive evidence that supports any of these events had a meaningful impact on the outcome of the election or any impact at all. "Very well could have"? Sure! Eg. you can look at Google Trends for searches of "Podesta Emails" to compare the relative volume of searches on topics by state and time. There is some spike when the story breaks followed by a steep and rapid decline. But the spike is hardly uniform. By far the largest happens – surprise – in the District of Columbia and far, far less in the swing states. And the assertions about bots are impossible to evaluate and have never been systematically detailed.
DeleteAgain, if you were to research this further, I think you would find the claim actually quite silly. (Multi billion dollar elections are not swung by comparably insignificant foreign influence campaigns, if they were, everyone would do it.) It makes far more sense that the Russian accusations are raised in order to take the attention away from the shortcomings of the Clinton campaign and the economic appeals that led to Trump's shocking upset.
Lol. Yeah, extensive negative media coverage in the lead up to an election has no impact. Talk about silly.
DeleteMao, I see in your world what a "kernel of truth" is. It can be anything any lunatic comes up with. What is your goal to come up with something as ridiculous?What good is being advanced?
Delete
DeleteHoaxes and false flag operations are not uncommon, dear dembot. Was Jussie Smollett's hoax invented by Alex Jones?
No need to get carried away, but if you don't realize that every story super-convenient to establishment's goals needs to be treated as somewhat suspicious, then, we're sorry to say, you are a lunatic. Yes, you, dear dembot. Not a rational animal. Liberal.
The "kernel of truth" about the conspiracy theory that CRT is being taught in elementary schools, is that Republican voters are bigots.
DeletePoor Somerby, his pet theory continues to fall apart, as we were informed yesterday that Trump admitted he knew that he lost to Biden shortly after the election.
ReplyDeleteAll these months of posts from Somerby, all climbing the wrong tree.
Poor Somerby.
Somerby is a dork.
DeleteNo one really knows who won the election.
Delete@2:53 -- Liar.
DeleteYes, as if we really needed to be informed.
DeleteAndy Borowitz traces the dumbing down to Ronald Reagan and Dan Quayle. Yes George W. was dumb, didn't read and was incurious, and only worked 2 days a week, like Trump, but he was preceded by other Republicans who were just as bad in terms of incompetence to hold office, and the press took most of them seriously (except Dan Quayle). The same aides were behind those Republican politicians as helped Trump be elected: Roger Ailes, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort. Borowitz explains how "handlers" helped conceal the stupidity and ignorance of these Republicans using flash cards, video briefings and cram sessions, and even then couldn't prevent major blunders. Bad things happen when a party, such as the Republicans, doesn't care about competence but only about winning power. They ALL did damage to our country. Trump is merely the most criminal of them, not the stupidest.
ReplyDeleteRonald Reagan is by far the worst President this nation has ever had, and almost all of our current problems can be traced to his Presidency.
Delete"For the record, much of that lunacy came from within the mainstream press corps. (See Gene Lyons, Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater. By rule of law, the book went undiscussed.)"
ReplyDeleteIt is difficult to go back to 1996 and see whether it was mentioned on cable news, but the book was reviewed by the NY Times and Atlantic Magazine, and Lyons appeared on C-Span and NPR, as well as on college campuses and bookstores. That isn't a lot of attention, but it also isn't nothing. I heard about the book online and read it at the time it was published.
"Principally, that lunacy came from the mainstream press, not from "the right-wing noise machine."
ReplyDeleteMaybe Somerby is giving the right wing a pass because he appeared on Fox News himself, to defend Al Gore:
"WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON -- Waiting in the Green Room for his five-minute appearance on one of Fox News Channel's political chat shows, Bob Somerby glances up at the TV as it promotes his upcoming spot: "Al Gore's college friend says he's not a liar."
"College friend?" Somerby mutters. He prefers the label "press critic." Oh well, he shrugs in resignation. He knows that's his cachet, his calling card, these days."
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2000-02-22-0002220211-story.html
CNN's Wolf Blitzer seems to have originated some of the attacks but that doesn't mean Fox & Friends were on Gore's side, nor that they didn't attack him too.
Media Matters (Jamison Foser 2007) says:
"n mid-October 2000, just weeks before Election Day, the Times ran an article headlined “THE 2000 CAMPAIGN: THE CREDIBILITY ISSUE; A Sustained G.O.P. Push To Mock Gore's Image.” The article's hook was what it described as “a skillful and sustained 18-month campaign by Republicans to portray the vice president as flawed and untrustworthy.” In doing so, the Times noted:
On the day Mr. Gore formally announced his candidacy in Carthage, Tenn., his family's hometown, Jim Nicholson, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, had a more elaborate stunt. He rode in a wagon pulled by mules to the Westin Fairfax Hotel on Embassy Row in Washington where Mr. Gore lived for much of his youth." He has tried to pass himself off as this hardscrabble, homespun central Tennessee farm boy and that is not what he is," said Mr. Nicholson, playing off the fact that Mr. Gore had told The Des Moines Register that he had learned to slop hogs and clear land on the family farm. Friends later told reporters that Mr. Gore's father had kept him on a backbreaking work schedule during summers on the family farm.
But, even as it noted the “sustained 18-month campaign” by the GOP, the Times made no effort to assess its truthfulness."
https://www.mediamatters.org/legacy/media-matters-jamison-foser-35
Obviously, the right wing noise machine did not give Al Gore a break, no matter how Somerby remembers things.
Somerby is fuzzy about the contribution of the right wing to Gore's torment. Borowitz says that Declan McCullagh for Wired Magazine wrote a post about Gore creating the internet that was picked up by Trent Lott and Dick Armey, both Republican leaders, who "started faxing sarcastic press releases mocking Gore as the internet's self-styled 'inventor.' McCullagh tried to walk back the story.
DeleteBorowitz says "The...joke unfairly popularized his image as a grandiose fibber, but also reinforced another damaging perception about the vice president: that he was an elitist wonk whose obsession with science and technology alienated 'ordinary people."
And today, elitist wonks are the very people Somerby argues against as he attacks every guest on cable news with a Ph.D from an Ivy league school. Somerby appears to have forgotten that Gore was compared to Adlai Stevenson, "susceptible to strange ideas supposedly grounded in science." When asked to name some of his influences, Gore "eagerly complied, name-checking Reinhold Niebuhr, Edmund Husserl, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the author of that juicy page-turner 'Phenomenology of Perception.' These are the sorts of authors Somerby delights in mocking these days, akin to Godel and Einstein. I get the impression that if Somerby had not known Al Gore at Harvard, he would have been the last person to vote for him in 2000. In contrast to Gore, Bush ran on his everyman ignorance, just as Trump did in 2016, and proud of it.
Is it perhaps that Somerby disliked that aspect of Gore's persona, recognizes at some level that it did him in and lost him the election, but doesn't want to sound disloyal to Gore by acknowledging it? And does he hate intellectualism because it was Gore's downfall? Who know? But Somerby is showing very little intellectual integrity when he argues in favor of ignorance while steadfastly supporting his friend, Al Gore. But that's for his shrink to disentangle. My point is that it wasn't the mainstream media that torpedoed Gore -- the right wing was on the job.
"The lunacy began tracking right with the arrival of Sarah Palin. "
ReplyDeleteArguably, the lunacy began tracking right with the arrival of Ronald Reagan. Like Trump, he didn't read, was incurious and didn't want to hear briefings, and was grossly ignorant about politics, the world, and government. He had one speech that he gave over and over, could not answer impromptu questions and made ignorant gaffes, much like George W. Bush (who also preceded Sarah Palin).
And the press covered for him, even when it was starting to be evident to outsiders that Reagan had incipient Alzheimer's (for real, it is what he died of). Reagan played the affable gipper and people loved him, so the press covered up his incompetence to hold office. And that made it OK to do the same for Republican successors. Meanwhile the press also mocked egghead Democrats because they knew things and were competent. George Bush was elected because people thought he would be fun to have a beer with, not because he could run the country well. Somerby never talks about the denigration of intelligence in Democratic candidates -- and he himself mocks expertise -- yet that is exactly why Al Gore was sent packing. He was another smart-sounding Democrat who was too stiff to have a good time. There is some irony that Somerby continues the same tradition of anti-intellectualism that cost Gore his election and put Bush into office, causing all those deaths in Iraq.
Al Gore sounded smart to you?
DeleteAl Gore is the reason GPS satellites are available for public use and not limited to military use. Thank him when you use your car navigation. I think that was smart of him.
Delete"(Now, they decided to show their moral greatness—by ...performing their concern about race.)"
ReplyDeleteRight, Charles Blow doesn't really care about race -- it is a fake, performative with him. Neither does Jemele Hill or Ta-Nehisi Coates. How could Joy Reid really care about race? Or Don Lemon?
And the papers or cable news stations they work for obviously only hired them to talk about race, not because they are actual journalists and cable hosts and op-ed writers. For that matter, even John McWhorter doesn't care about race, despite having spent his career studying the linguistic dialect spoken by black children. It is all a pose with these guys, because of their big bucks -- according to Somerby.
Sarcasm aside, the only person here who doesn't care about race is Somerby, and he doesn't try to hide it at all, nothing performative about him, except when he talks about all those good, deserving black kids who are good and yet don't deserve to go to selective high schools in NYC.
"Performative" is a word invented by the right wing to accuse liberals of being hypocrites when they talk about racial inequities. When Somerby uses such a word, he gives away his own attitudes, showing that (at least with respect to race) he does not adhere to strongly held liberal values. Civil rights is at the core of liberal politics, to the point that someone who veers right on that topic is not likely to be receptive to anything Democratic Party candidates have to say, whether it is Hillary or Biden or anyone else -- but no wonder he takes time to denigrate Kamala Harris -- she too is probably being performative when she talks about the gender pay gap and other issues that women AND Democrats care about.
When Somerby talks about "moral greatness" and being "performative", he sounds just like Cecelia, whose last word is always to blame commenters for being morally superior, when she runs out of other arguments. Cecelia thinks Somerby is "brilliant" and dotes on his every word, trying to correct his misstatements by explaining what Somerby really means. I wouldn't be surprised if Cecelia were Somerby's sockpuppet, but her loyal support tells me all I need to know about where Somerby stands politically -- if he were liberal, Cecelia would be challenging his statements, not agreeing with them.
DeleteThat is insanely flattering, but I’m brought back to earth because it’s also revealing as to how brain dead you are.
DeleteWhy is 4:44 brain dead? Seems on the nose, perhaps too much.
DeleteMeh father issues, sometimes mother issues, are at the core of liberal Democrat politics. They want to rebel and scold due to emotional disorders. Their concern about race is performative.
DeleteAre you challenging his contentions that the thinkers of the Clinton era, the intellectual gate keepers, failed both the Clintons and Gore and were onstage doing fan dances with the lies and craziness that ushered in the Bush Era?
DeleteWhy are you fighting that contention? It’s not a conservative one.
You are doing it because you want me to counter him from the standpoint of defending Bush/Cheney so that you can turn this into a discussion of them, rather than the point of the blogger about prominent thinkers of the day and today.
In reality, all your folks too are Bush/Cheney now. You are the intelligence agencies and federal law enforcement.
You are the global corporatists seeking the billions of the Chinese market and you’’re fine to be on board with that as long as the leaders go along with 500 genders, a living wage, free health care and allow you to be their social, political, and philosophical police department.
Don’t ask me to defend Bush/Cheney. Don’t ask me to defend their expansionism and desire to win the world for Nike and Nabisco with you as their managers.
Somerby is solidly a liberal. It’s you who have morphed into something else.
Lies and craziness? You mean budget surpluses that had us on the way to a balanced budget? Measured, effective use of the Military? Healthcare progress in the face of the Republican "don't get sick" plan? Oh yes, there was Monica. Seems pretty tame (understatement of the year) on what you signed on for with Trump.......
DeleteYou think I was complaining about the Bill Clinton presidency when I said that Bob considers Clinton/ Gore to have been abandoned to lies and craziness by the thought leaders and the media of that era?
Delete“When Somerby talks about "moral greatness" and being "performative", he sounds just like Cecelia, whose last word is always to blame commenters for being morally superior, when she runs out of other arguments.”
DeleteMy argument? Your every post is a defense of your moral superiority in the face of Bob telling you that you ain’t so hot.
If Bob was a true liberal he’d acknowledge your greatness, embrace it as his own, and focus on those conservative rascally rabbits.
Your patented response to anyone who counters you to say they’re intrinsically a bad person
Read your stuff… it’s more effective for sleep than ambien.
“More effective for sleep…” What you are you waiting for? So go to sleep already and quit bothering the rest of us.
Delete"Are you challenging his contentions that the thinkers of the Clinton era, the intellectual gate keepers, failed both the Clintons and Gore and were onstage doing fan dances with the lies and craziness that ushered in the Bush Era?"
DeleteI am challenging it. First, the mainstream media are not "intellectual gate-keepers." Second, it was the voters who decided they didn't want a wonk in office. Bill Clinton disguised his intellect by channeling Elvis, to out-stupid Bush. Lucky for the country, he was actually intelligent and competent. Gore was not as astute at concealing his smarts in order to attract votes, among the other ways in which he lost the election for himself (without any help from the media). For one thing, he selected a terrible vice president. For another, he let Tipper attack Rock n Roll lyrics. And he failed to capitalize on Clinton's strong record of accomplishments, choosing to run away from Clinton, a wildly popular president even after his affair with Monica. Gore was a bad candidate. The press didn't help him out, but they also were not the reason he lost. The right wing was merciless and it is unclear to me why Somerby is pretending they didn't attack Gore when they obviously did.
And the lies and craziness started with Reagan, not Bush. Read Borowitz's new book, Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber. What Somerby calls mental illness is what happens when you give too much authority and responsibility to someone ill-equipped to deal with it, resulting in chaos. The gate-keepers who failed are in the Republican party -- the ones who thought Reagan should be governor or Dr. Oz a senator. What happens when you give a chimp a loaded pistol is a good analogy for today's mess on the right.
You, Cecelia, come here and try to flaunt your ignorance as if anyone here will buy it, and then get upset when people call you out on it. You don't know what words mean and you can't think clearly about what other people have said, and it shows every time you open your mouth. You should have stayed in school (or even just stayed awake), because competence counts and our world needs better educated voters than you. That doesn't make me morally superior to you -- just a better speller. But at least I try to be correct about things and there is no evidence you are doing anything here except trying to own whoever you are arguing with, usually by just typing the last word after others have gone off the sleep.
People on the left are concerned about the number of FBI agents who supported Trump. We are also concerned that the Secret Service knew there would be violence and yet did nothing to warn or prepare others for it. Did you not hear this during 1/6 hearing on Thursday? That doesn't mean we think there is a deep state conspiracy. It means we think that law enforcement tends to support Trump and be against protesters and that tends to interfere with them performing their functions even-handedly, and may have contributed to 1/6 by leaving the Capitol police unprotected and at the mercy of the armed mob.
DeleteBut I don't see this as a partisan issue. Nor is it a "conspiracy theory" when there is evidence involved and a sense that there needs to be more investigation of their role on 1/6.
And here is the word salad:
Delete"You are the global corporatists seeking the billions of the Chinese market and you’’re fine to be on board with that as long as the leaders go along with 500 genders, a living wage, free health care and allow you to be their social, political, and philosophical police department.
Don’t ask me to defend Bush/Cheney. Don’t ask me to defend their expansionism and desire to win the world for Nike and Nabisco with you as their managers."
The part I don't get is that Bush/Cheney were going to install liberals as managers for Nike and Nabisco? Business leaders tend to be Republicans, so I just don't see that happening.
The rest makes no sense to me at all. Globalists are asking for a living wage or free health care, especially not corporations. That's why we have unions. These are just words strung together but there is no coherent meaning to them. I guess we are supposed to think that globalists and corporations are bad, but try running an economy without them. The 500 genders thing sounds kinky but Cecelia is welcome to whatever she wants to do in the privacy of her home and I really wouldn't want anyone checking anyone's genitals in public -- but to each their own.
I guess this is what passes for discourse over on the conservative blogs. No wonder they need a Q to tell them what to think.
Well, you can’t make everyone happy.
DeleteGod knows the blogger doesn’t.
"(We aren't allowed to discuss the possible role of mental illness in any of this conduct.) "
ReplyDeleteWhen there are millions of MAGA Extremists and thousands of people involved in Trump's plot to stay in office, how can mental illness be a viable explanation for that behavior? Somerby has proposed no mechanism by which so MANY people would have become mentally ill, with the same psychotic delusions, at this point in time. Mental illness doesn't just happen by magic, when an explanation for gross malfeasance in a political party is needed -- one that will excuse and justify criminal behavior. Yet Somerby has proposed no possible way in which this mental illness happened. Even the pandemic had a virus. And such an explanation would also need to explain why the Democrats didn't catch it, why we have stayed sane (although Somerby asserts that Dems too are suffering, making the whole world crazy, according to his theory). Yet Democrats are clearly different than Republicans these days -- very different. Slapping a pseudo-medical label on a political party just doesn't excuse what they did. It doesn't explain it. It doesn't say how they got that way or how they can get better. It doesn't say anything at all about what is going on -- except that maybe it sounds slightly less negative than MAGA Extremists as a label.
This isn't even thinking, although Somerby makes vague references to "20th century science." Somerby's level of explanation is the same as when primitive people blame crop failure on angry gods or witches' curses. In medieval times, the insane were locked up. Maybe that is what we should do with Trump and all of his accomplices. Except Somerby doesn't believe in locking people up either. I think he just expects us to let them all go -- leaving just the foot soldiers misled by Trump's big lie to rot in jail. We liberals believe in justice, and that wouldn't be fair. So Trump needs to be held accountable for his crimes. And Somerby needs to stop trying to misuse clinical psychology for his own purposes -- to excuse Republican wrongdoing.
"We're preternaturally self-impressed, but are actually quite unimpressive."
ReplyDeleteI'm willing to believe this about Somerby -- he has imaginary analysts and thinks he consults expert anthropologists who exist only in his mind. As for other people, many are humble and some are quite impressive, especially the sane ones. I find myself admiring Joe Biden a lot, especially give his age and the shitpile he was handed to deal with when he took office.
No, mh, I haven’t told you that conservatives are by nature mo’ better than you. I have not lauded my own character or praised my political party’s moral greatest based upon supporting the right political policies.
ReplyDeleteI haven’t said that the Democratic party and its leader are “pieces of shit”.
I’ve said liberalism is morphing into something that ain’t liberal and the leadership of my party started changing even sooner.
I’ve said that you often argue like a putz and you do.
Your version of liberalism is a joke. You are a midget trying to reach the shelf and mh is the real deal.
ReplyDeleteTo conclude, Bob can’t really talk or think
ReplyDeleteabout Thursday’s hearings. It’s now
compellingly documented that Trump
never believed he won, which blows
his foolish contention ( meaningless
nonsense anyway) that Trump may
have believed he actually won, clean
out of the water.
"liberalism is morphing into something that ain’t liberal and the leadership of my party started changing even sooner."
ReplyDeleteYou can trace the leadership change of your party to the day "Brown vs Board of Education" case was decided.