CAMPAIGN: Our tribe has started its drive toward November!

MONDAY, JANUARY 29, 2024

Something we may be withholding: "It is finished," Jesus is said to have said.

That's what Jesus is said to have said. In our country, it's just getting started!

We refer to this year's campaign for the White House. Rather plainly, the general election campaign has begun. Here's our question, as borrowed from Frost:

Over here, within our blue tribe, could it be that we're "withholding something" as we conduct our campaign? Could it be we're withholding something that is "making us weak?"

Fuller text from Frost will follow! Frost recited the poem in question at President Kennedy's bitterly cold, snow-covered inauguration ceremony, way back in 1961. We watched, on a black and white TV set, in a small stucco home in San Mateo, California.

Last Saturday night, in South Carolina, President Biden delivered a fully vigorous speech. He included several strong campaign points—about the Affordable Care Act and about Roe v. Wade, to cite two examples.

Candidate Trump wants to repeal the ACA. He doesn't want to establish Roe v. Wade as a matter of law. 

Presumably, those will be potent campaign points. But the southern border is lingering there, and other problems exist.

There is no scientific way to fashion a perfect campaign. That said, our basic question returns:

Are we withholding, or possibly doing things which may be making us weak?  Are we doing so in our role as private citizens? How about the people we see on our "cable news" TV programs?

As of this very morning, the campaign was clearly underway. MSNBC's new broadcast day began at 5 a.m.

Morning Joe sidekick Jonathan Lemire went on the air with his broadcast of Way Too Early. We sat there watching, just as you did. At 5 a.m. sharp, he began with a tease of these topics:

A major escalation in the Middle East is putting new pressure on President Biden. Three U.S. service members were killed, and more than thirty others injured yesterday, by a drone strike in Jordan near the border of Syria. We'll go through the details of the attack and show you how the president is responding.

Plus, Donald Trump is now on the hook for a massive payout to E. Jean Carroll after a jury awarded the writer $83 million in defamation damages. We'll get expert legal analysis on that as well as the looming case that could further impact Trump's bank account.

And a stunning second-half comeback sends the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl setting up a rematch of the 2020 big game with the Kansas City Chiefs. 

Good morning, and welcome to Way Too Early...

To watch that intro, you can start by clicking here. Three full days after that jury rendered its verdict, that $83 million assessment was still included by Lemire among only two featured news topics.

It's possible that this selection made sense; it's possible that it didn't. The impeachment attempt concerning the border was finally discussed at 5:15—but at 5:10, in a sign of a deeply disordered time, Lemire told viewers this:

Meanwhile, Trump at the campaign trail in Nevada over the weekend. In Las Vegas on Saturday, Trump bragged at length about his ability to pass a cognitive test, but at the same time he struggled to get basic words out and made a number of highly questionable statements.

Lemore then played brief video clips from Trump's speech in Vegas. We saw no sign that Trump had "struggled to get any basic words out." We saw no sign of that reported problem at all.

To watch that video, just click here. For the record, this:

Donald J. Trump has been making "highly questionable statements" since he came down the escalator in June 2015. For four years preceding that date, he had been making "highly questionable statements" about the place of President Barack Obama's birth.

In doing so over the course of four years, he had stablished himself, on the Fox News Channel, as the mother of all birthers.

For the record, Trump's caddy during those four years was Greta Van Susteren. As we extensively documented in the past, it was on her nightly Fox News show that Trump would appear to make his moronic claims.

(We've met Greta several times. Nicest person on earth.)

Trump was pushing his ludicrous claims. Greta was being paid millions of dollars to sit there and let him do it. Years later, MSNBC hired Van Susteren to host a nightly news show and Rachel Maddow vouched for her journalistic greatness.  

Amazingly, Maddow even said that Geta and her husband had been two of her best drinking buddies during those previous years—during the ugly, stupid, destructive years when Greta was hosting the birther.

We have no idea why a person like Maddow would have behaved in such ways—would have tolerated such appalling misconduct from Van Susteren or would then have vouched for her journalism. 

On the night before Trump came down the stars, Maddow said she had no problem with Mr. Trump. After four years of his appalling misconduct, we have no idea why a blue tribe corporate star would have said such a strange thing.

Alas! From our perspective, our tribe has had an unfortunate lack of success in encouraging millions of American voters to be disturbed by Trump's "highly questionable statements"—by his endless display of ludicrous claims and ugly, disordered behaviors. 

In the face of that failure, we've now been turning to Storyline. We've begun to pretend that Trump's "mental acuity" is being called into question by occasional slips of the tongue, some of which never occurred.

Did Al Gore ever say he invented the Internet? No, he never did! But we humans love to make things up. Journalism is easier, and much more fun, when we grant ourselves such rights.

Did Trump really struggle to get basic words out during his speech in Las Vegas? To our eye and ear, there is no sign of any such problem in the tape Lemire played. 

For the record, this is the sort of thing they do routinely on Fox. They make a claim about a piece of tape and assume their word will be believed, even when they play the tape and the claim is not supported.

At Fox, they do that sort of thing all the time. Now, our massively overpaid corporate hirelings are punking us that way too.

At 6 a.m., Joe and Mika came on the air with a cold open video clip from Saturday Night Live. In the clip, an actor shows Trump using the word "debank" in a recent speech. 

The actor then says that he doesn't know what the word "debank" means. The implication is obvious.

Other people do know what "debank" means. In our view, this is the sorry state into which our corporate multimillionaire tribal thought leaders are now increasingly falling.

"Something we were withholding made us weak?" Frost's poem became famous on January 20, 1961, when blinding light off the snow from an overnight blizzard made it impossible for him to read the text of a new poem he had written for the occasion.

As we close, we return to our initial question. Is there something our anxious team is withholding on this very day and in this dangerous hour?

As of today, our understandably anxious blue team has launched our current campaign for the White House. Is there something we're withholding? Borrowing from Casey Stengel, "Can anyone here play this game?" 

 Can anyone here play this game? Because at the present time, a great deal is at stake.

The future conduct of life on earth may perhaps hang in the balance. And the woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our human minds are inclined to be soft.

There's no perfect way to run a campaign. Campaigning is not a hard science. But of one fact you can be sure:

Like every human tribe on earth, our own blue tribe is highly fallible. The bullshit, dissembling and limited judgment aren't all found Over There.

Are you willing to keep an open mind about the way our blue team is functioning? Or will you prefer to insist that our tribal thought leaders—the people who vote the same way we do—simply have to be noble and right?

Lemire opened with a three-day old story—a three-day old news event which makes blue viewers feel good. A few minutes later, he made an increasingly scripted claim for which he had no evidence.

In our view, there was no sign that Donald J. Trump was struggling to get some basic words out. But when the cable star said that, we were supposed to believe him.

Our view?  We think it's time for us to do better, to demand a bit more from our "dear, dear friends." (Official corporate branding.)

We're going to offer many ideas about the way our team is campaigning. That said, there is no science to this task, and you will be free to reject them.

At any rate, they do it all the time on Fox! This morning, the slithery practice had once again slithered its way over here.

Coming: Endlessly, much, much more

The Gift Outright: Frost's poem concerned the decision to break away from colonial rule by the mothership in England. 

We'll reproduce the relevant lines in a separate post.

48 comments:

  1. Marlena Shaw has died.

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    Replies
    1. Oh my god, no! NO!! Not Marlena Shaw! Please god, anyone but her!

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  2. Nancy Pelosi says the call for a cease-fire in Gaza is Mr Putin’s message, and it should be investigated by the FBI.

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    1. Don’t be an ass.

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    2. How convenient she's powerless to call a ceasefire without being unpatriotic.

      A ceasefire of a genocide is too wicked for her aged white lips

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    3. I find it ironic that US liberals aggrandized Mr. Putin into the leader of the Global South. And still keep promoting and glamorizing him.

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    4. 10:53 - "US liberals aggrandized Mr. Putin into the leader of the Global South"

      Are you completely nuts?

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    5. Let's be honest, America couldn't even wait to forgive Germany for its Nazi genocide and tell them to break down their wall for good measure cause we love them. The American people are descendants of Germans and don't look too hard at the history of colonialism in Africa. This gives it weaker footing to see commonalities of suffering between cross-race histories of Black and Polish Jews under the oppressor, and without any backbone to stand up to white supremacy, they become its handmaidens in the form of "identity politics of zionism" or whatever you want to call the current name for believing that Muslim and Christian Arab/ Semites are not indigenous to the land of Palestine.

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    6. @1:18 PM
      Surely ritualistic pronouncements like "the call for a cease-fire in Gaza is Mr Putin’s message" make Mr. Putin a hero to most of the world?

      You don't see that? You feel I am completely nuts? Okay. You sound like a liberal.

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    7. Pelosi's claim was insane. It's like she wants to alienate voters and present herself as a deluded maniac.

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    8. 1:42 - So Pelosi says some protestors calling for a ceasefire in Gaza might be doing Putin's bidding, and in your view she's "promoting" and "glamorizing" Putin as "the leader of the Global South" and "a hero to most of the world"? Do I have that right?

      If I do have that right, then yes, you're completely nuts. (And yes, I'm a liberal, but any sentient conservative would say the same.)

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    9. Yes. Like I said: ironically she's turning Putin into a leader of the Global South, by promoting and glamorizing him. Because ceasefire in Gaza is what a large majority of people, especially people of the Global South, want.

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    10. The call for a cease-fire in Gaza is the whole rational world's message.

      Saying "the call for a cease-fire in Gaza is Mr Putin’s message" makes him seem like a rational actor and Pelosi look stark raving mad.

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    11. Sort of how the corporate, Right-wing media (AKA the media) made a racist, grifting, self-proclaimed sexual predator seem like a rational actor by pretending they cared about Hillary Clinton's email protocols.

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  3. Are we doing something or withholding something? That covers a lot of ground. Somerby is the king of vague today.

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  4. "Is there something we're withholding?"

    WTF are you talking about, Bob? Are you nuts?

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    1. You had to wait for the second essay of the day - Somerby says we tend to withhold our "independent judgment" by taking our talking points mindlessly from a hapless, corporate, media elite.

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  5. "Donald J. Trump has been making "highly questionable statements" since he came down the escalator in June 2015."

    Liberals, like Bob Somerby, calling things "the Others" believe with their hearts and souls "highly questionable" is what will put Trump back in the White House.
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    Did I pass the audition to take over TDH, when Bob kicks the bucket?

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  6. Maddow said she had no problem with Trump back in 2015 before he began his campaign, quoting her entirely without context. We all have a problem with him now, including Maddow. But why is Somerby still ranting against Maddow for touting Van Susteren when she first joined MSNBC? That was her goddamned job, just as it was to throw to commercials and introduce the next show. Adults get that. Somerby’s hatred of Maddow is ugly.

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    1. "Adults get that."

      "...goddammned..."

      "...hatred... is ugly."

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    2. The point is that Somerby is criticizing Maddow for no good reason. If you @10:24 are suggesting that I am hating on Somerby, you are right, but unlike Somerby, I have a good reason. Reasons matter.

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    3. What I'm suggesting went over your head, but it's more for the benefit of others so no worries.

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    4. You don’t like emotional language. That’s your problem.

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    5. Does that make sense? OP used emotional language in their comment though. "Goddammned"

      To me 10:24 seemed to be pointing out the lack of self awareness of OP.

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  7. The mother of all birthers is the Hillary Clinton campaign which leaked the photo of Obama in his exotic non white clothing

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    1. Barak Obama is the mother of all birthers. His literary agent marketed him as "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii", in 1991.

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    2. 10:46 AM
      Sounds to me like you believe in marketing when it's useful to your narrative

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    3. @1:27 PM,
      What compelled you to post this comment? Are you retarded?

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    4. Not 1:27 but this seems easy to figure out.

      Marketing AKA "lying" has the purpose of convincing consumers in whatever helps sell a product.

      So taking marketing literally when it's useful to bolster a point raises some flags shall we say?

      But outside of that they could be retarded and still make the comment pointing this out, I suppose. I can't answer that part.

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    5. Okay. Here is it, again, for the alternatively gifted:

      Barak.Obama's.Own.Literary.Agent.Published.A.Booklet.With.This.Text.In.It: "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii".

      Capiche?

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    6. And yet, 3:01, Somerby attacks Trump as “king of the birthers” and criticizes the media (van susteren and others) for not challenging him on it. Its an example of Trump’s “questionable” statements put forward by Somerby as an example of Trump’s delusion. Go figure.

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    7. @3:49 PM
      Well, Bob is a Democrat, so at least some (if not most) of his party's bullshit talking points get carved into his brain. It can't be helped, nothing can be done here.

      He used to repeat this "crazy birthers" bit quite often.

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    8. The point of birtherism is not to be right or wrong, but to make people not trust a black person without thinking about it. I personally find Obama's center-right politics faulty in a lot of ways but the campaign smear from the center and the far right was par for the course for America as well.

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  8. Although Trump doesn’t want to establish Roe as law, he claims to support some weaker version that would allow abortions for a limited period.

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    1. David, Trump has already done enough damage to women's reproductive rights. He can go fuck himself now. There is nothing more he can do.

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    2. David, take a guess how many abortions your hero and his sons have paid for. Go ahead, take a guess. Not sure why you think any woman would have any interest in the what Mr. Grab'em-by-the-pussy has to say about Roe now anyway.

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    3. Reason #1: Conservatives will accept anyone that governs the way they want regardless of their personal behavior.

      If I'm mistaken about that, then I guess the backup answer is there are a lot of people out their handling quite the load of cognitive dissonance.

      Let's say they do the cognitive dissonance until it's untenable and then move to reason #1.

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    4. @2:48 — both conservatives and liberals will accept someone who governs as they like despite personal misbehavior. Women’s lib folks supported Bill Clinton.

      @1:03 I agree. I think Trump is personally pro-choice and has paid for many an abortion.

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    5. Economically anxious Trump voters (all none of them) are going to be mighty upset with Trump for making abortion something only the rich can afford.
      You can take that to the bank.

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  9. Your liberal media:

    https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/01/ive-been-through-the-desert-with-a-president-with-no-name

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  10. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania says reproductive autonomy is fundamental, forbidding Medicaid to pay for abortions is presumptively unconstitutional.

    https://triblive.com/news/pennsylvania/pa-supreme-court-overturns-law-prohibiting-medicaid-funding-for-most-abortions/

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    1. Trying to mollify people who think women are second-class citizens by passing the Hyde Amendment, was a huge mistake.

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  11. Forget Biden and Trump. Has Bob lost basic cognitive powers? He seems unable to focus on a basic point or idea. He’ll make a somewhat dramatic point, make no attempt to back it up, and then wonder onto something else.
    The story in the boarder the past couple of days is wheather Trump has ordered the Republican troops not to take action to fix it, so he can keep it alive as an issue ( one Bob is very fond of). Bob had nothing to say about this.

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    1. "The story in the boarder the past couple of days is wheather [sic] Trump has ordered the Republican..."

      That's only a "story" (let alone "the story") among the DNC bots. To the rest, it's the usual Democrat drivel.

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    2. Sadly, Bob is now ignitive.

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  12. Kicking things off with Jesus here is both irrelevant and strange.

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  13. Nikki Haley says we need the border deal.

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    ReplyDelete