GEOGRAPHY OF THE CRAZY: Donna Brazile is stark raving mad!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2017

Part 1—Her frightening role in the scary sale of the frightening Uranium One:
As a courtesy, we start today with a pair of key observations:
No people are uninteresting.
Their fate is like the chronicle of planets.
Yevtushenko made those controversial claims in his 1933 poem, People. We became aware of the poem in the early 1970s when we read Ivan Illych's 1971 book, Deschooling Society.

We recall nothing else of the book. We've never forgotten its detailed citation of Yevtushenko's poem.

We offer these thoughts as a soothing prologue to today's semi-discussion of Donna Brazile, who has written a new book.

No people are uninteresting, Yevtushenko alleged. Also, though, as it turns out, Donna Brazile is crazy.

We hadn't necessarily known that before, although we'd had the occasional minor impure thought.

Donna Brazile is part of The Crazy! This new fact could be highly instructive for us floundering liberal types. First, though, how do we know that Brazile is nuts?

Simple! We know Donna Brazile is crazy because:

(1) "We understand the English language, it's our mother tongue" (Sam Ervin). But also because:

(2) Prompted by Kevin Drum's UPDATE, we read the front page of yesterday's Washington Post.

At the top of that front page, we encountered a 2400-word news report about Brazile's "explosive" new book. Here's the way that report began, hard-copy headlines included:
RUCKER (11/7/17): Brazile weighed replacing Clinton/
Book details thoughts after nominee fainted


Former Democratic National Committee head Donna Brazile writes in a new book that she seriously contemplated setting in motion a process to replace Hillary Clinton as the party's 2016 presidential nominee with then-Vice President Biden in the aftermath of Clinton's fainting spell, in part because Clinton's campaign was "anemic" and had taken on "the odor of failure."

In an explosive new memoir, Brazile details widespread dysfunction and dissension throughout the Democratic Party
, including secret deliberations over using her powers as interim DNC chair to initiate the process of removing Clinton and running mate Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.) from the ticket after Clinton's Sept. 11, 2016, collapse in New York City.

Brazile writes that she considered a dozen combinations to replace the nominees and settled on Biden and Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), the duo she felt most certain would win over enough working-class voters to defeat Republican Donald Trump. But then, she writes, "I thought of Hillary, and all the women in the country who were so proud of and excited about her. I could not do this to them."
Did Donna Brazile "seriously contemplate" dumping Candidate Clinton after her "fainting spell" in September 2016? Did she seriously contemplate dumping Clinton and Tim Kaine, replacing them with Biden and Booker?

We tend to doubt that, but if she did, Donna Brazile is nuts. If she didn't, then she has invented a ludicrous tale, maybe perhaps with the possible thought that an "explosive" claim of this type might produce headlines atop the Post's front page for her exciting new page-turner.

Is Donna Brazile just making this up, perhaps to hype book sales? If so, it wouldn't be the first time that somebody hyped a boring book with an "explosive" claim about the troubling Clinton.

Tomorrow, we'll recall the "explosive" claim Bob Woodward made, or didn't make, in his otherwise deadly 1996 book, The Choice. Woodward quickly began rejecting the way his explosive claim was being interpreted in the press.

According to today's Washington Post, Donna Brazile is now involved in the same old game.

Did Donna Brazile just make this shit up? We'd have to say that's possible! As a courtesy, though, we'll assume that she didn't make this up.

That would mean that Brazile is nuts, crazy, stark raving mad. Consider:

In October 2016, Brazile was canned by CNN for a dishonest act which, according to Rucker, she apparently says she can't remember but also doesn't deny. In that dishonest act, she had tried to help Candidate Clinton prevail over Candidate Sanders in the Democratic nomination race.

According to Rucker, Brazile can't recall committing that act, but she also doesn't deny it. Now we're told that, in September 2016, she contemplating dumping Clinton from the national ticket. This would have required an astounding political action, an action which has never occurred in our nation's political history.

If she really considered doing that, Donna Brazile is nuts. In your other possible choice, her explosive claim is the latest stupid fake story designed to excite us excitable rubes while serving the interests, and/or lining the pockets, of the person who pimped it.

Our political discourse has reeked of such claims for the past twenty-five years. And sure enough! Aother such claim was being discussed in yesterday's Washington Post.

We refer to the frightening claim that Hillary Clinton concocted a scary uranium deal with Those People, the Russkies. More specifically, the Post's chief fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, examined the very scary claim that Clinton gave away twenty percent of the nation's uranium to the aforementioned Russkies in the scary sale of the company, Uranium One.

Kessler examined that ubiquitous claim, and uh-oh! When he finished, he awarded Four Pinocchios to Rep. Devin Nunes and to Tucker Carlson for making that explosive claim about the twenty percent, which he said is more like two. Not that anyone has ever shown that Clinton had anything to do with this apparently trivial deal.

(On this occasion, Kessler made no mention of the New York Times, who transferred this stupid tale from the fever swamps of the crackpot right to our elite mainstream discourse. The famous paper performed this service in an explosive, 4400-word "news report" in April 2015, the latest ridiculous act by the Times which career liberals ignored.)

Was Kessler's assessment beyond reproach? We'll examine that question in the days ahead. But in a nutshell (no pun intended), this is where The Visible Crazy resided in yesterday's Post:

Atop page A1, the latest crazy claim or claims were being fashioned about Clinton. Atop page A4, a crazy claim the Times took mainstream was being debunked again.

Our public discourse has been lousy with crazy claims of this type for the past several decades. Crazy people like Donna Brazile form a very significant part of this crazy history, a history which has left us with Donald J. Trump in the White House.

Atop A1, one crazy claim; atop A4, another! As the week proceeds, these episodes will help us examine the modern geography of The Crazy. Also, the nature of the people who prosper as they sell these explosive claims.

The modern geography of The Crazy is extremely complex. It stretches back through many episodes, through numerous crazy claims.

No people are uninteresting, but many of their claims are fake, self-serving. We liberals have tended to sit on our hands as these crazy claims are advanced, especially when the claims are advanced by the big grinning stars of the mainstream and liberal press corps.

Tomorrow, we'll start with Woodward's crazy claim from The Summer of 96. But oh, the distance we hope to travel before the week is done!

Tomorrow: Robert Woodward's explosive claim about the crazy seance

33 comments:

  1. "Yevtushenko made those controversial claims in his 1933 poem, People."

    Seems unlikely, as he was born in 1932.

    As for Brazile, this piece by Glenn Greenwald should help...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The poem was published in 1961, translated into English in 2008.

      Here is a refutation of the piece by Greenwald, who has his own axe to grind:

      https://medium.com/@jesse_41795/open-letter-from-hillary-for-america-2016-team-f1c545304be1

      Delete
    2. This is not a refutation of the piece by Greenwald. It doesn't even mention Greenwald, let alone refuting him.

      It's merely a zombie-like drivel by DNC minions, claiming that Brazile is hypnotized by the Dark Lord Putin. And if that's their best defense, then the verdict is obvious.

      Delete
    3. Hillary for America was Clinton's staff, not DNC minions. Start with that.

      Delete
    4. Mischa, when do you think that Alexei Venediktov will "accidentally" walk into a bullet or step in front of a bus? After all, Pootie is hot on the campaign trail.

      Delete
  2. Even while calling Donna Brazile crazy, Somerby cannot keep from referring to Clinton as the "troubling Hillary Clinton". With friends like Somerby, who needs enemies?

    Not only is Brazile crazy/trying to sell a book, but she has always hated Hillary Clinton. Anyone who was paying the slightest bit of attention over the past 10 years knows this. They would also know whether she is (1) crazy, or (2) trying to sell a book.

    Another possibility is that she is helping to distract the public from Donald Trump's very real Russia problems. Her book deal may be tied to that.

    Has anyone noticed how silent Bernie has been in the midst of this? He could be trying to calm this down, the way the Clinton staff did with a public statement and release of the actual agreement, but crickets, while the Bros make noise all over liberal websites, aided by Russia trolls.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I believe that Bob's use of the word "troubling" is meant as sarcasm. Of course, I could be wrong.

      Delete
    2. Whether it is sarcasm or not, his constant labeling of her that way sinks in and made it difficult for her to gain the enthusiasm of some voters in 2016.

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    3. In his unending 2016 election post-mortum, Somerby is obviously running out of gas.

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  3. No planet is uninteresting...their fate is like the chronicles of people

    But people are much easier to study because they are so much closer to us. But because we live among them, we can hardly have the same objectivity as when viewing planets.

    So Yevtushenko sounds profound...planets...awesome dude. While the much harder study is the one closer to us.

    The strawman premise, that someone would find any peoples boring, is as crazy as Donna Brazile. Doesn't Somerby actually think about what he is reading when he encounters a poem? Maybe it sounds better in Russian.

    This is Brazile's tragedy. She apparently thinks she has to say something crazy in order for people to find her book interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hilldog collapsing into her own footprint at frefall speed at the site of the Twin Towers has to be the funniest thing that happened in 2016.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Laughing at the misfortunes of others? check Lack of empathy? check Calling a woman a dog? check -- probably a conservative

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    2. No, the funniest thing was the revelation that Der Trumpenführer likes golden showers.

      Delete
  5. What is the connection between the poem and the Donna Brazile story?

    "No people are uninteresting, Yevtushenko alleged. Also, though, as it turns out, Donna Brazile is crazy. "

    This seems like a non-sequitur for comic effect:

    People are not uninteresting, but/and Donna Brazile is crazy?

    A value judgment like "crazy" is acceptable, but not one like "boring?"

    Also, a quibble: the poem states:
    "no planet is like another", when it is quite possible that one planet is quite similar to another somewhere else in the universe, physically speaking. It's also likely that astrophysicists might deem certain heavenly bodies uninteresting when sufficiently similar to others amongst the billions that exist.

    And what to make of Yevtushenko's stereotyping of people from his quote in the Observer (1991):
    "Why is it that right-wing bastards always stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity, while liberals fall out among themselves?"
    Yevtushenko here permits himself to view humans as belonging to groups (or "tribes") for the purpose of passing judgment on them. Is that permitted only to poets or other lofty individuals?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Who knew the Clintons and DNC staff their inner inner circle with crazy lying nuts?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Who knew that one person is a staff?

      derp

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    2. Why, let's be fair: not only crazy lying nuts.

      Crazy lying nuts and those murdered under extremely suspicious circumstances.

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    3. "murdered under extremely suspicious circumstances.":
      Denis Voronenkov
      Boris Nemtsov
      Boris Berezovsky
      Stanislav Markelov
      Anastasia Baburova
      Sergei Magnitsky
      Natalia Estemirova
      Anna Politkovskaya
      Alexander Litvinenko
      Sergei Yushenkov
      Yuri Shchekochikhin

      Delete
  7. Kevin Drum talks about the very early Russian Twitter support for Donald Trump from the first days of his campaign, and asks how they decided to support him. He lists some theories but ignores the most obvious one -- that the Russians recruited Trump to run. It is entirely possible that Trump has been a Russian puppet from the beginning, especially given the interwoven business interests of American energy billionaires and the Russian oligarchy. I think Trump has always been their boy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. For a smart guy, Drum is incredibly obtuse.

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    2. Not obtuse, just a normal zombie.

      Delete
    3. As the obtuse troll repeats the same meme over, and over, and over, and over, and over and over, ....

      Delete
  8. Mao, what do you think of Evtushenko's 'People'? Better in the original Russian?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Trick question. Mao can only troll in English.

      Delete
  9. What was the crazy part? If the Democratic nominee were incapacitated, then Brazile would have been responsible for steering the process for fielding a substitute candidate for the general election.

    Did HRC give everyone a heads up that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia? HRC abruptly leaves a 9/11 ceremony and the head of the DNC should do what? A) Pretend not to notice
    B) Wait for (and trust) the Clinton's lame explanation
    C) Develop a contingency plan for a difficult scenario

    I don't think "C" is the crazy answer.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The crazy part: she had neither the power nor the authority to unilaterally choose a completely new ticket. She did not write that she had to develop a contingency plan. She wrote that she considered replacing the ticket and even came up with the alternate ticket. In fact there was no basis for either. Apparently Prima Donna bought into the fake Russian propaganda about Hillary's health. Secretary Clinton released her full medical report for all the see while her opponent the fat fuck pussygrabber put out a bullshit letter from his crazy doctor vinny boombatz.

      Her Biden deliberation story seemed more immediately ripe for debunking: The Democratic National Committee chair does not have the power to unilaterally remove a candidate. The Washington Post updated its story on the book Saturday afternoon to clarify that Brazile knew the process would be more complicated.

      Still, in the context of what seems to be a pattern of exaggeration, reactions to Saturday’s revelations ranged from dismay to comic disbelief.


      http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/11/donna-brazile-i-considered-replacing-hillary-with-joe-biden.html

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    2. First of all, the Russians didn't make Clinton hide that she had pneumonia.

      Did Brazile actually say that she would "unilaterally" replace the ticket? Or is that an embellishment? Why, if the Washington
      Post updated their story, do you still believe the earlier misleading story?

      So where exactly is the pattern of exaggeration? Josh Marshall has had this story pretty much wrong from the start and it looks like he's taking you along for the ride.

      Delete
    3. ....Clinton hide that she had pneumonia....

      Clinton Derangement Syndrome. There is no cure.

      Sorry, I didn't realize there is a rule that political candidates have to have a press conference to announce every time they get the sniffles.

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    4. If you don't understand the difference between "sniffles" and pneumonia, then there is indeed a derangement syndrome at work. With sniffles, you can attend the 9/11 ceremony in full. With pneumonia, you have to stumble to your limo as cameras record your mystery health problem.

      Anyway, mm, have a nice day and let's enjoy yesterday's election results.


      Delete
    5. On that we can agree. Have a good day also.

      Delete
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    ReplyDelete
  11. Donna is bad hoot hoot hoot!

    Try harder man.

    ReplyDelete
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