Professional Left Podcast Episode #300

"Please won't someone give Joe Scarborough just one more hour of air time every day!"

-- Said no one ever

Links:

• Former McCain Adviser Wants Jorge Ramos To 'Read The Fairness Doctrine'
• The Driftglass & Blue Gal "porn" kast!

Preternaturally Naive Man Calls For Republicans To Stop Being Republicans

I can't decide whether representative Adam Schiff is trying to be funny or is he has just been unconscious for the last 25 years.

From the New York Times:

Disband the Benghazi Committee
By ADAM B. SCHIFF
SEPT. 4, 2015 

...
Since its formation, the Select Committee on Benghazi has been aimless and slow moving, not knowing what it was looking for or where. It has acted in a deeply partisan way, frequently failing to consult or even to inform Democratic members before taking action, and selectively leaking information to the press. After 16 months and more than $4 million, the committee has gained no additional insight into the attacks in Benghazi. It has nothing new to tell the families of those killed or the American people.

But it does have emails. Lots of emails. Some of them are from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But none of her emails tell us anything of consequence regarding the events of Sept. 11, 2012. They don’t substantiate the bogus theory that the State Department ordered the military to “stand down” or that there was gun running, or that the secretary somehow interfered with the security provided at the diplomatic facility or annex.

Nor were any of the secretary’s emails marked classified at the time she received them. Some in the intelligence community believe that a subset of them should have been, a conclusion with which the State Department disagrees. That’s not an uncommon clash of views. As the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, I am deeply interested in making sure that all classified information is protected. And yet, as a member of the Select Committee charged with finding out the truth about the attacks, I am appalled at how much we have lost sight of the mission — if indeed that was ever the point.

Whatever their original purpose, the Select Committee’s leaders appear no longer to have any interest in Benghazi, except as the tragic events of that day may be used as a cudgel against the likely Democratic nominee for president.

The committee is solely concerned with damaging her candidacy, searching for something, anything, that can be insinuated against her. With all of the committee’s obsessive focus on Mrs. Clinton, you would think that she was a witness to the killings, instead of half a world away.

Some of my colleagues think this is just good politics. And already, other ambitious committee leaders are hoping to get in on the act with their own inquiries and attacks on Mrs. Clinton. This is a terrible mistake, and it would be no less offensive if it were a Democratic majority going after a Republican candidate. Do we really want to see future select committees ginned up to attack other likely presidential nominees?
...

Congressman Schiff, we are long, long past the point when trying to appeal to Republican's sense of fairness or concern about future repercussions is anything other than quaint oratory delivered to an empty house.

This is a party which copes with contradictions by simply denying the past ever happened, and does not believe the future will ever come.

And trying to shame them out of using their elected offices to conduct blatantly partisan witch-hunts is as useless as trying to shame a dog out of licking his balls.

Today In "Both Sides Do It": Peter Wehner

Q:  Why is the Beltway Media like a TARDIS

A:  Because, on the outside it presents itself as far too small to accommodate any additional passengers.  Sorry Liberals -- No room for you!  But on the inside it is gargantuan with plenty of room for every Centrist asshole with a keyboard and a new way of stringing together the same old bullshit.

Like, say, Peter Wehner who alert reader Unsalted Sinner called to my attention this morning.  Mr. Wehner's New York Times CV tells us that he is "a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, served in the last three Republican administrations and is a contributing opinion writer."  So as as servant of the "last three Republican administrations" who is watching in real-time as the ignorant wingnut army he helped to create sacks the political party which he serves (just as the dirty Hippies predicted) take a wild fucking guess as to how Mr. Wehner will frame the Conservative pillage and rapine he is watching from his window?

Yep.

Clinton, Trump and the Politics of Self-Destruction
SEPT. 3, 2015

RIGHT now it looks very much as if the two major political parties in America are in a race to see which one can destroy itself first.
...

Mr. Wehner then devotes 3/4 of one paragraph and one fragment of the last sentence of his op-ed to the subject of Donald Trump.  And the other 9.9 paragraphs?

One clue as to how vulnerable Republicans consider Hillary Clinton to be is...

In public Mrs. Clinton often comes across as inauthentic, charmless and brittle...

Mrs. Clinton’s supporters point to her experience as a strength. But that can be a double-edged sword...

During Mrs. Clinton’s eight years as a senator...

...intervening event that may well turn Mrs. Clinton from a weak candidate into a crippled one

Something something private!email!server!

We know from the inspector general of the intelligence community that at least two of her emails contained “top secret” information...

Something something David H. Petraeus!

... a violation that may prove to be lesser than those Mrs. Clinton may have committed.

Mrs. Clinton has lost control of events as a result of an obsessive need to manipulate them...

Mrs. Clinton has already suffered significant political damage...

If nominated, Mrs. Clinton will be the weakest Democratic nominee since Michael Dukakis in 1988...

Welcome back to the 1990s, kids!

The Comcastrati II: MSNBC Drops The Veil

First a warning, musical;

Then the hour, irrevocable.

The leaden circles dissolved in the air.

― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

From Mediate:

Exclusive: MSNBC to Expand Morning Joe One More Hour; Kate Snow Gets Afternoon Role

More sweeping changes are coming to MSNBC per a well placed source.

As reported in this space exclusively last week, Kate Snow of NBC News will be taking on a substantial role in MSNBC’s dayside programming. Ms. Snow formerly a weekend anchor for Good Morning America and a frequent face seen on the NBC Nightly News and Dateline will inherit the 3-5 p.m. ET time slot on weekdays on MSNBC.

Also of major note, Morning Joe will be expanded to a four-hour program (it’s currently three). Starting soon, the political roundtable show can be seen from 6 a.m. ET until 10. Note: With the 2016 race heating up, and the great political theater that has come with it and only promises to continue, it only makes sense to expand the network’s editorial page in the morning.

One notable causality to emerge from these moves is current 9-11 a.m. anchor José Díaz-Balart. With Morning Joe going to 10 a.m., Tamron Hall will then take over the 10-12 noon slot, thereby leaving Mr. Díaz-Balart as the odd man out.

...

Following the aforementioned Snow in the 3-5 p.m. block will be Chuck Todd at 5 p.m., a move that was also previously reported by Mediaite in late July.

...

I assume they'll keep Rachel Maddow around for awhile longer:  her ratings are still respectable and it lends a little class to the place to have a concert pianist working the ivories at what has become just another Beltway whorehouse. 

But make no mistake: Liberal teevee has been on the DNR list for a long time, and by bulking up his line-up with Moar!Joe!Scarbourgh and Shuck Todd, MSNBC prexy Phil Griffin has pronounced Liberal teevee dead.

I shall miss it.

In Days Of Old, When Knights Were Bold...

We rejoin our story as the slow-motion GOP freakout over the !Sudden!Discovery! that the Republican party is full of -- gasp! -- Republicans ...



... continues to dominate the nation's Grand Guignol comedy circuit (for today's example we turn to the Breitbart Collective Farm):

LIMBAUGH: TRUMP MOVEMENT EXPOSES LOW REGARD CONSERVATIVE INTELLECTUALS HAVE FOR ORDINARY AMERICANS

Which is certainly horrifying.  And not funny at all.  And bitterly funny-as-hell.

But let us leave the fog and thunder of America's political media battlefield where everyone is feigning surprise that, under it's tissue-thin veneer of David Brooks respectability, Conservatism is a roiling cesspit of ignorance, racism and crazy...

...and return to a simpler time.  A time before YouTube and Instagram.  Back before your 'umble scrivener was even a blogger -- when I was just a long-winded commenter at the late Steve Gilliard's News Blog.

Steve's comments sections are long-gone now, existing only in the memories of those who found a home there and stomped the jolly fuck out of the trolls that sometimes stumbled through the door (Looking at you, "bloomie".)  But sometimes Steve would haul a comment up from below-decks and turn it into a post, so while all of my comments have turned to digital dust and blown away... thanks to Mr. Gilliard occasionally front-paging my comments, what you see below was saved from the bony fingers of internet entropy.

I am reposting it here because I think from time to time it is vital for us on the Left to to look back and remember just how fucking spot on we have always been about the GOP, and how aggressively we have been slandered and ignored by the Beltway media and by the political elite precisely because we have been right about the Right all along.

From The News Blog in March of 2005:

They are serious

Driftglass posted this in comments and it's too damn funny to stay there.

IMHO it’s as simple as: “Never jump into bed with someone who’s crazier than you are.”

For the Suburban Gated, the non-deranged gunnies and the Tax Cuts Uber Alles Republicans, it’s all jolly good fun having a romp with the Fundies…as long as they keep delivering the 20% margin the GOP must have to win anything and as long as they stay the fuck away from my house and family, its all just good kinky fun…

…until the sun comes up, and you realize that the Electoral Candy you were offered was just bait to get you into the Windowless Fundy Panel Truck. Oops.

And now you’re waaaay out in the country somewhere you don’t recognize without your pants, and you start to figure our that all the Burning Crosses and Swastikas and Apocalyptic Paraphernalia that tricks out the inside of the van isn't tatted-up Goth Chick posturing.

And Randall Terry and Tom DeLay wave to you from the front seat and say, “Mornin’ shug! Get ready; we gonna burn us some ‘a them Chirst Hatin’ Abortionists today.” Or Fags. Or Negros. Or Liberals. Or Ay-rabs. Or Jews. Or, really, Anybody.

And all of the slack-jawed yokels who were so eagerly helpful while you were passing you’re Lovely Tax Cuts are sitting around you giggling…and armed to their snaggled teeth.

And then you hear, “Bring Out The Gimp.” (Which, for my money, should be the Democrats’ Lead Media Message for the next four months.)

Oh. God. You mean these crazy fucks were serious? Like, really, really serious?!

No shit they’re serious, Suburban Weekend Bad-Ass -- and it's not exactly like you weren't given Ample Warning: Now they have your shriveled nuts in a razor-lined C-clamp, they want the very high interest vig on the Electoral Loan they made you to pay for your Optional War and Drunken Safety Net Shredding Good Times.

As I've been saying, the devil wants his due, and he's come to collect.

They thought they could play them forever. I guess forever is today,

 Other than a few of the names, there is absolutely nothing about this post from more than a decade ago from a long-dead blog that needs updating.

Absolutely nothing about the Right which we did not see coming and have been shouting from the rooftops since forever.

And that's a tragedy.

The Comcastrati

Now that Comcast/MSNBC has shifted its business model to "Make things so unbearably hostile to Liberals that eventually Rachael Maddow will quit and we can finally replace her with some tits-and-a-two-bit-wingnut-opinion fembot like Kimberly Guilfoyle" it becomes necessary, day in/day out, to find new and exciting ways to drive away whatever fraction of their once-substantial progressive audience that still remains.

So what better way for Phil Griffin to drive home the point that Liberals Are Not Welcome Here Anymore than to first invite Hugh Hewitt on to pimp Dick Cheney's book...

...and then follow that up by pulling the chair out for Mr. Unalloyed Evil himself, and his portable organ bank, Ms. Unalloyed Evil Junior, for a nice, relaxing tongue bath.


Going into Iraq in 2003 was the right thing to do.

We got it right with Iraq.

Iraq was stable when we left.

Same old lies regurgitated by America's most famous traitor and unindicted war criminal, who has no business being in front of any camera, anywhere, except a closed-circuit rig at the Hague to monitor his cell 24/7. And yet there he sits on your Liberal teevee, smirking happily, promoting horrid, revisionist swill that will put another million or two in his pocket and swatting the softballs which Squint Scarborough underhands to him and his vampire offspring.

Given the fact that our Beltway media has made it their mission to insure that no matter how grotesque the Republican lie or how shameless and depraved the Republican liar, the lies and the liars will always be treated with Waylon Smithers-grade cloying affection and craven deference --

-- how can anyone still feign surprised at the rise of Donald Trump?

Possibly The Greatest Thing Ever

From iDigital Times:

Spongebob SquarePants Broadway Musical For 2016: David Bowie To Write Songs

An epic Spongebob SquarePants musical is in the works. The musical is set to debut during New York City's Broadway theater season for 2016-2017. According to Variety, Spongebob will do a preview of the show in Chicago during the summer of 2016, just before its New York debut.

The Nickelodeon produced musical will feature original songs by Steven Tyler, Aerosmith's Joe Perry, John Legend, Lady Antebellum, Cyndi Lauper and David Bowie. Cyndi Lauper is now a Broadway production veteran due to her success with the pop rock Broadway musical Kinky Boots.

...

They Know But They Do Not Say, Ctd.

Another in an irregular series in which some prominent individual deep within the Beltway power structure fucks up by letting it slip that they damn well knew that the fucking Liberals were right all along, but nobody said nuttin' because David Brooks would freak out and write mean editorials about them.

Or something.

This administration is quite obsessed with what David Brooks thinks of them pic.twitter.com/b2wx17MLY0

— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) September 1, 2015

This week's edition features trusted Clinton adviser and the wingnut's newest favorite Sinister Insider Cabal chew toy, Sidney Blumenthal, who wrote the following back in August of 2010 in an email to Hillary Clinton which was never intended to be made public.  From (shakes head.  sighs.) The Blaze:

Sid Blumenthal Unloaded on Tea Party in ‘Confidential’ Three-Page Memo to Hillary Clinton

The August 2010 memo from the trusted Clinton adviser, revealed Monday night after the State Department released a new batch of Clinton emails, provided the then-secretary of state with “some language on extremism and the Republican Party.”

“The Republican Party today is a captive party. It is captive to the swamp fevers of the extreme right,” Blumenthal wrote at the outset of the memo. “It is captive to its out-of-power desperation for political power—willing to do and say anything to grab it—willing to use extremists to help climb back to power—willing to give the extremists power. No one is speaking up for responsible conservatism within the Republican Party.”

“If the Republicans don’t have the nerve to speak up for their own best heritage, then someone has to do it. The Republican Party is in a state of political disorder. Into the midst of its chaos a Trojan Horse has been thrust in the form of a self-proclaimed Tea Party as though the extremists behind it have something to do with the American Revolution and are not a stealth takeover operation of a confused political party funded by the same people who paid for the extremist movements against President Eisenhower and President Kennedy,” he continued.

Blumenthal blasted the John Birch Society that is “praised today by Glenn Beck.”

...

In another paragraph, Blumenthal accused the Tea Party of trying to drive America apart.

“The Republican Party is being purged of moderates, responsible conservatives, anyone who has a thought they don’t like. It’s divide and conquer. Divide the Republican Party. Divide the nation. Region against region, South against North, West against East, rural America against cities, state governments against the federal government, religion against religion, and soon, before you know it, it won’t look or feel like America. Out of loud declarations of love of country, they will break this country apart,” he argued.

...

So almost from the start, the most influential people in Washington damn well knew what the Tea Party was (ed note:  There.  Is.  No.  Tea.  Party.) and spoke the truth among themselves, but only within the safe inner sancta of power.

You know who else was speaking the plain and easily observable truth about the Tea Party back them?

Nobody!

Nobody...but a the same ragged band of disreputable Liberals bloggers who could not and still can't get within a hundred miles of a national microphone.

• From me in November, 2009:  The "Independent" Granfalloon
• From me in February, 2010: "Mike Royko Leaps From Grave; Cockpunches Phil Ponce."
• From me in September, 2010: "Now, The Bush-Belly Sneetches"

They knew.  

Of course they knew.  

They knew all along, but they dared not say, because as always, the grotesque truth about the Right directly contradicts the Both Siderist fairy tales from which our Beltway media derives their wealth and leverage.  As a case in point, some of you longtime readers might remember what happened in September of 2011 when, far too late, President Barack Obama dared to stray outside of the established borders of the Villager narrative and suggest that, just maybe, the GOP was the tiniest bit, uh, dangerously unhinged.

Here is America's Moral Thought-Leader, David Fucking Brooks, getting absolutely hysterical in the pages of the New York Times:

Yes, I’m a sap. I believed Obama when he said he wanted to move beyond the stale ideological debates that have paralyzed this country. I always believe that Obama is on the verge of breaking out of the conventional categories and embracing one of the many bipartisan reform packages that are floating around.

...

So the White House has moved away from the Reasonable Man approach or the centrist Clinton approach.

It has gone back, as an appreciative Ezra Klein of The Washington Post conceded, to politics as usual. The president is sounding like the Al Gore for President campaign, but without the earth tones. Tax increases for the rich! Protect entitlements! People versus the powerful!

...

There is no lesson here except a reminder that being right has nothing whatsoever to do with winning the argument.  And there is not surer way to get yourself shunned and ridiculed than to tell an ugly and obvious truth which those in power are deeply invested in not hearing. 

Donald Trump's Vile, Brilliant Ad

As AMERICAblog pointed out today, Donald Trump's knives-out anti-immigration attack ad against Jeb! is nothing short of a reboot of the infamous Willie Horton ad which Jeb!'s daddy used to blow Michael Dukakis out of way in 1988.

Donald Trump goes Willie Horton on Jeb Bush

8/31/15 1:24pm by Jon Green

With a 21st Century take on one of the most iconic moments of racism in political advertising, Donald Trump hit Jeb Bush today with a video, posted to Instagram, juxtaposing Bush’s “act of love” comments on immigration with pictures of immigrants who have committed crimes...

It's a hateful piece of fascist race-baiting, but it's also a work of minor evil genius.  Because in case you haven't been paying attention to American politics for the last 30 years, from Poppy Bush slinging Lee Atwater slime with both hands while wrapped in an American flag --

...

In 1988, one of the central attacks revolved around the Pledge of Allegiance. Mr. Dukakis, as governor, had vetoed state legislation in 1977 that required teachers to lead their students in the pledge. He did so on the basis of an advisory opinion from the state court, which said the legislation was unconstitutional.

Mr. Dukakis, a Harvard lawyer surrounded by other Harvard lawyers, believed himself on very firm ground. But by August 1988, his Republican opponent, Vice President George H.W. Bush, was rousing huge crowds with a contemptuous question: “What is it about the Pledge of Allegiance that upsets him so much?”

Mr. Dukakis, Mr. Bush said, was “out in deep left field on these issues.” He was also “a card-carrying member of the A.C.L.U.,” more concerned with giving furloughs to criminals — like Willie Horton — than upholding national values, the vice president asserted.

“I simply can’t understand the kind of thinking that lets first-degree murderers out of jail on a furlough and won’t deal with the Pledge of Allegiance,” Mr. Bush said.

...

-- to his halfwit, dry-drink son unleashing the full ratfucking fury of Atwater's protege, Karl Rove, on John McCain in 2000 --

...

McCain’s closest aides were so stunned by the angle of the attack that at first they tried to shield him from it. “We expected one thing, and it was quite the opposite,” said Fletcher, who personally saw the “Negro child” flyers “all over every car” at the debate. “We figured they would go after him on some sort of philandering issue. McCain had pretty well knocked all that down [by admitting in his 1999 autobiography that, at some point after his five and a half years in a North Vietnamese prison, he’d been unfaithful to his first wife], but I always figured that would sort of be the underground thing there. But, man, the child thing.… I’ve seen the worst form of racist sons of bitches in the world in David Duke, but this was unbelievable.”

Almost daily, the ugly buzz grew. Another prominent rumor was that Cindy was a drug addict. In 1994 she’d admitted that she had a prescription-painkiller problem and blamed it on two spinal surgeries and the stress of her husband’s role in the Keating Five scandal. (He was rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for intervening with federal regulators on behalf of a disgraced financier.)

There were other whispers as well: McCain had slept with prostitutes and given his wife V.D.; he’d turned traitor in the “Hanoi Hilton,” or was mentally unstable from his captivity, or was a Manchurian Candidate, brainwashed to destroy the G.O.P. (There was then, and still is, a wacky Web site devoted to those last theories. The former Green Beret behind it, Ted Sampley, is back at it today with a savage “Stop Hanoi John Kerry” diatribe; he also supports the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Beyond Sampley, most anti-McCain vets in South Carolina opposed the senator on political and/or veterans’ issues—not for his war service. A top McCain aide told me he didn’t think the vets’ antagonism was nearly the factor that the more personal attacks were.) For just meeting with the gay Log Cabin Republicans, McCain was labeled the “Fag Army” candidate.

...

-- The Bush Crime family has always been more than willing to spelunk as deep as necessary into any available political sewer in order to win an election.  

And for the most part, the Beltway media has been willing to let the Bushes job out their political wetwork to the scum of the Earth, dab the blood and viscera daintily from the corners of their mouths once the slaughter is done, and then go right back to pretending they're a tribe of genteel, well-mannered aristocrats without too many questions being asked.  As the late Doctor Thompson wrote back in 2000:

...

There was one exact moment, in fact, when I knew for sure that Al Gore would Never be President of the United States, no matter what the experts were saying -- and that was when the whole Bush family suddenly appeared on TV and openly scoffed at the idea of Gore winning Florida. It was Nonsense, said the Candidate, Utter nonsense. ... Anybody who believed Bush had lost Florida was a Fool. The Media, all of them, were Liars & Dunces or treacherous whores trying to sabotage his victory.

They were strong words and people said he was Bluffing. But I knew better. Of course Bush would win Florida. Losing was out of the question. Here was the whole bloody Family laughing & hooting & sneering at the dumbness of the whole world on National TV.

The old man was the real tip-off. The leer on his face was almost frightening. It was like looking into the eyes of a tall hyena with a living sheep in its mouth. The sheep's fate was sealed, and so was Al Gore's. ... Everything since then has been political flotsam & Gibberish.

The whole Presidential election, in fact, was rigged and fixed from the start. It was a gigantic Media Event, scripted & staged for TV. It happens every four years, at an ever-increasing cost & 90 percent of the money always goes for TV commercials...

Over and over again Trump has whipped his opponents at their own game by simply lifting pages straight out of Roger Ailes' Olde and Forgotten Bewitchments and Charmes and the Bush Family Grimoire and running the dark magic spells and incantations of the Conservative elite right back at them with twice the throw-weight.

As I said, the Trump campaign's latest ad is worst kind of hateporn for brownshirts.  That said, if there are any Democratic campaign advisers out there who are not cribbing notes from the Trump campaign on the general subject of how to use the Right's own hexing powers against them, those advisers should be fired immediately.

Where Yesterday Has Been Exiled, Memory Is Rebellion

"Grow gills." 

-- Jonah Goldberg's advice to the people of New Orleans,  August 29, 2005

Ten years ago, much of our Conservative Alternate Reality Media very publicly shit the bed during the man-made catastrophe that destroyed New Orleans, killed +1,800 people and sent hundreds of thousands of American citizens into exile.

As the disaster unfolded, some of what was being said was captured for posterity at sites like The Cunning Realist, one example of which was Lucienne Goldberg's shitbag telling the losers of New Orleans to "grow gills":

On Monday, August 29, NRO's Jonah Goldberg advises people in New Orleans to "grow gills" (each post header below links back to the original):

ATTN: SUPERDOME RESIDENTS

I think it's time to face facts. That place is going to be a Mad Max/thunderdome Waterworld/Lord of the Flies horror show within the next few hours. My advice is to prepare yourself now. Hoard weapons, grow gills and learn to communicate with serpents. While you're working on that, find the biggest guy you can and when he's not expecting it beat him senseless. Gather young fighters around you and tell the womenfolk you will feed and protect any female who agrees to participate without question in your plans to repopulate the earth with a race of gilled-supermen. It's never too soon to be prepared.

The indefatigable Media Matters also documented some of the atrocities:

Ann Coulter just called out MoveOn on Hannity & Colmes:

MoveOn.com is down protesting outside the White House. How about putting together some evacuee bags? How about actually helping out? Speaking of that, I think I’d like to hear a breakdown at the end of this, how much churches are contributing versus… MoveOn.com?

Last Thursday, as tens of thousands of families found themselves newly homeless, MoveOn launched an emergency national housing drive called HurricaneHousing.org. In just one week, over 235,000 beds have been offered to Katrina victims through the site. 

ThinkProgress to Ann Coulter: How about you stop embarrassing yourself on live national television?

This was a rare moment in American political culture because, as the late Steve Gilliard noted at the time, the Bush Administration's complete abdication of its most fundamental domestic civic responsibilities in the face of such a disaster momentarily scrambled the Right's lock-step support of the worst President in American history:

...
At every turn, the right has stepped up to the plate like John Cole and Cunning Realist, or revealed their race hatred, like the folks at the Corner. I mean, people like John Derbyshire have dug up their 1964 nigger hatred guide. I wonder if they pipe in Johnny Rebel and Skrewdriver as they work?

I think it reveals something else, that the divide on the right which is coming is going to be about how they see America. Joe Scarborough has long been a whipping boy for the left, but he actually stood up and tried to help people. The Manchester Union Leader, so right that it should be printed in German, ripped into Bush for his failures. I think a lot of these people see Americans in trouble and want to help them. They certainly act that way.
...

Hell, for several days after it became clear how monumentally the Bush Administration had fucked this up, even David Brooks' reaction was so...appropriate...that I officially retracted 4% of what I have written about him in the past and promised that, yes, if he were on fire, I now would whiz on him to put it out.

Mr. Gilliard got a lot right on his News Blog, but sadly, ten years later, what my friend and blog-father got wrong stands out in more and more painful relief every day.  Ever the hard-nosed skeptic, Steve Gilliard nonetheless believed that catching the racist Right out so far on the wrong side of history might change things:

...

A couple of days ago I was reading a Bob Sommersby post chiding Atrios for calling the Corner folks racist. I had to admit that I don't read Bob much, and with that post, he simply entered irrelevancy. He went on about people being helped in "red states" and blogs recreating the yippies. It was weird, as if he had been living in a cave the last week. I know he has his hobby horses, but after that, I can't imagine anyone taking him seriously anymore.

Why?

Because I have never seen such racism in my life on or offline.

I posted the crap posted by the racists at the Corner, and frankly I'm stunned.

I'm also deliriously happy.

Why, because, they are shown to be the extremists that they are. When I call Jonah a racist, I will forever have his gills post to prove my point.

...

The Southern Strategy has been exposed for what it was, a fraud to con whites into hating blacks while benefitting the rich. Oddly enough, Bush's crony state has failed white Mississippi as badly as black New Orleans. Many conservatives have demanded both accountability and effective responses.

But there are others, like the folks at the Corner, who need to prove how good it is to be white.

You have to see Mark Williams on Headline News. Not only did the Dem react in horror, Karyn Bryant, who is biracial, was equally stunned and angry. OxyBoy Rush called NO Mayor Nagin Nayger

But what is so stunning is how out of tune they are.

They don't get it.

Sometimes the world changes before your eyes. December 7th was such a day, November 22nd was one, so was July 4th. Those days didn't just change America, they changed the way we saw the world.

The right blogosphere, used to defending Bush, is caught on the wrong side here and not only do they don't know it, they keep digging deeper. Ann Coulter says something so dumb, so obviously disprovable, it's like she doesn't get that the rules have changed. Her petty attacks are wildly inappropriate, and more importantly, just not relevant. Everyone from the Southern Baptist Convention to MTV are helping to raise money and feed people. The only people not doing anything are the righties. They're too busy pointing fingers at poor, helpless people who might have picked up a case of water so they didn't die in 90+ degree streets with no shade.

If the GOP is the daddy party, it's a crooked deadbeat dad telling the judge that partial payment is fine, even if the kids are on the street.

Americans don't like open racism, even the TV reporters recoiled after seeing how people used their footage to demonize the poor.

This is the most serious domestic crisis since Pearl Harbor, and these folks are acting like it's still Ok to be Bund members. They don't get that everything changed after Bush failed to help the Katrina survivors.

The right bloggers are treating this as politics.

A lot of people, left and right, realize the implications here, and Bush is being hammered because of this. If there had been a terrorist attack on a chemical plant or if an LNG tanker, FEMA's inaction would have killed thousands of people from untreated trauma injuries. This is no longer about politics, but survival.

To be frank, all 9/11 did was change the scale of our response to terrorism. It didn't even really change Manhattan. The dead linger in my memory, but except for the few blocks in Manhattan, life went on. Three thousand families were changed. Here, hundreds of thousands of families are going to be changed forever. A lot of sadness, but the subways never stopped running.

But New Orleans is gone. I mean, a unique way of life is gone. It doesn't get much more serious than this. And the right bloggers are making jokes and arguing about buses.

...

But Gilly was wrong.

Ten years later, and the Conservatives who were momentarily driven from their doctrinaire spider holes by Katrina have long since gone back the profitable business of pimping Conservative claptrap, blaming Both Sides and lying about American history.

Ten years later, if you ask the average Republican base voter what happened during Katrina, you will hear a lot about "buses", "Liberal", "government dependence" and more or less everything else that Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh shat into their skulls ten years ago. As far as they're concerned, this is settled history, just as the assassination of Vince Foster, death panels and a "stand down" plot by the Obama Administration to murder American foreign service officers in Benghaaaaazi is settled history.

Ten years later, and Jonah Goldberg is still doing just fine, thank you very much, and Ann Coulter is still treated as an honored guest on Fox News, and a trusted adviser by the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

Ten years later, "Heckuva Job, Brownie" is being give the full rehab treatment, and Dubya can visit New Orleans to give a speech and is not drive from the stage by a tsunami of rotten eggs and tomatoes.

Ten years later, the MSNBC you used to know is all but dead, the Liberal blogosphere is a ghost of what it once was, and Steve Gilliard's words crumble quietly to digital dust in the untended grave of The News Blog.

Ten years later and, irony of ironies, it may turn out to be that fighting every day just to remember our yesterdays as they really happened -- just to conserve the past against an implacable onslaught of revisionist propaganda -- is most important duty we dirty Liberals have.