The Grand Prize Is A Ticket To Henry's 100th

There was a moment when the hottest brand was "liberal humanitarian who supports humanitarian wars." It was a pretty easy grift.  All you had to say was, essentially, "Genocide is bad, BUT" and then make the case why every proposal for dropping freedom bombs was AKSHUALLY the humanitarian thing to do, and those nasty lefties were actually the real racist monsters.

But then you collect your prizes and can stop bothering with the "genocide is bad" part.

 

Samantha Power, who wrote in her book “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide” that Henry Kissinger “had bloodied Cambodia and blackened his own reputation,” attends Kissinger’s closed press 100th birthday party at the New York Public Library. https://t.co/so2QWi0y7K

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) June 6, 2023

Reactionary Centrism

Perry Bacon Jr.

But when we have a left that is pushing America to finish the work of the 1960s and create a true multicultural democracy and a right that is banning Black intellectual ideas from public schools, it’s a huge mistake for powerful non-Republicans in society to spend so much time bashing the left. This anti-woke centrism often sounds as though people are auditioning to be today’s version of the “white moderates” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. castigated six decades ago.

Read the whole thing as the kids say. It explains well why my ire is generally directed at centrist dipshits, without whom we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years.

Kudos to Perry, btw, as critcizing The Sensibles is not conducive to career stability.

Morning

Can't get through a day without one.

Evening

Missed happy hour.

Binance

Long and a bit above my grade, but the politics angle is that FTX and Binance were pointing fingers at each other, saying, essentially, "no you're the bad actor," while desperately trying to buy influence to legalize their individual crime empires.

Some of your faves are implicated!

OK Not Really

The post below is hyperbole.  UK journalists are actually the worst.

On this very fine blog, journalist is usuay short for political journalist, but sadly so much news has actually been subsumed into political journalism that the distinction is fuzzy.

The World's Worst Journalists

 American journalists.

Lunch

 Eat

Gotta Get More Republican

During the Bush years, the Sunday Shows and Meet the Press especially were dominated by Republicans and conservatives (Republican lawmakers and roundtables of the host, two conservatives, and one "objective" journalist were the common format).

The MTP producer justified this by saying Republicans were in charge.

When Dems took control of everything, the guest ideology barely budged, and then the justification was that the Dems, being in control, had others ways to get their message out so it was important to provide a platform for the opposition.

And on and on....

"Deep State"

These types of conspiracy theories used to be more lefty in nature.

Extra "funny" given that while it wasn't the "FBI," people in the NY FBI office really were working to put Trump in office.

Thanks, Comey!

Don't See How Donnie Two Scoops Wriggles Out Of This One

Maggie will keep writing around it, at least! 

NBC News has confirmed that part of Trump's legal team met with special counsel Jack Smith and others at Justice Department headquarters in Washington on Monday, according to a person familiar with the matter. Three of Trump's lawyers — James Trusty, John Rowley and Lindsey Halligan — were at the Justice Department and met with the group of Justice Department officials, which included at least one other career prosecutor; the meeting did not include Attorney General Merrick Garland or Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. Trump's team was first spotted by CBS News and then was seen emerging from the building just before noon.

Morning

Party time.

Happy Hour

enjoy

Afternoon

Busy once again.

Death Is, Like, A Big Deal, Man

Fleshing this out a bit, I'm not saying it seems (to me) that people were less likely to cheer on cops murdering black people or vigilante justice or bombing the shit out of Those People Over There.  Support for racist violence, as an example, is clearly nothing new.

It is more just a breezy dismissal, that deaths barely even matter.  When Jordan Neely was killed on the subway, his death was largely abstract.  The usual assholes thought he deserved it, but also his death was discussed as if it was a plot point in a story, or more fodder for an ongoing debate.

A person died!

Lunch

eat

The Moderate Chair

Haley is aiming for Sensible Centrist support.

Nikki Haley discussing trans girls in kids sports: "How are we supposed to get our girls used to the fact that biological boys are in their locker room. And then we wonder why a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide last year." pic.twitter.com/rA2lD06yVe

— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) June 5, 2023

Wow The People Who Hate CNN Hate It For The Reasons Conservatives Hate It

 Gotta cater to the people who hate us most.

Put a little Doocy in it, people!

When you chase the people least likely to support you, you are trying to replace your audience (or voters!) not expand it.

Seamless

How do people get labeled as "free speech advocates" when they are banning books and restrictng what happens in schools and universities?

How do we shift from "censorius lefties are demanding the n-word be removed from your favorite 1920s children's book" to "ban everything with gay people in it" without missing  a beat?

This isn't about "hypocrisy" which is a separate concept.  It is about reporters typing up the agendas-as-claimed instead of the agendas as they obviously are.

It is about laundering bullshit through our heroic journalists who are always eager to do it.

Morning

Oh no not again.

Sunday Night

Rock on.

Sunday Evening

Monday's coming.