Tag Archives: Rachel Maddow

As Sordid an Example of “Legislating from the Bench” as We’ll Ever See.

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How the Federalist Society came to dominate the Supreme Court – Harvard Gazette

Not that there was really any question, you understand. But with this “leak” of the Supreme Court’s imminent abortion ruling we can pretty well dismiss the notion that there is ever a “settled” argument in this great, grand democratic experiment of ours. Given sufficient connivery, bad faith and partisan fervor, nothing is ever truly decided and settled.

Court watchers and other sage heads — like Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick — are at the moment undecided about why and who leaked Sam Alito’s 98-page screed/draft of the court’s upcoming opinion. Was it someone trying to gin up enough public outrage to … do something about it? On a court where there’s a locked-in-stone five votes to decide in favor of anything the Federalist Society/evangelical right has on their to-do list?

Or was the leak from someone sympathetic to overturning Roe? An arch-partisan wet dream that has never polled higher than 30% with Americans since 1973? The thinking being that given Americans’ inability to focus on anything longer than two weeks would mean the howling and protesting — from the majority of citizens — will be exhausted by June when the formal decision is expected to be handed down?

Predictably, FoxNews world is already declaring that the “real scandal” here is … the leak … not Alito’s thinking.

Whatever, there’s little doubt that overturning a “settled law” that has maintained 70% support for 50 years will be the signature decision of John Roberts’ court. This vote will be his legacy. And as I’ve followed the news since last night, Roberts has neither said or signalled anything about how he will vote or whether he’s trying to work the team to modulate the greatest example of “legislating from the bench” in modern American history.

The Roberts angle of this is interesting because from everything I know about the guy he is the classic between-the-forty-yard-lines institutional conservative … getting trampled like so many others of his fading ilk by hyper-partisans with a truly hypocritical regard for constitutional integrity. Like so many old-school, country club Republicans, he’s watching the cumulative effect of so many of his status quo/progressive-resistant decisions coming back to wreak havoc on the dignity of the institutions they claim to so revere.

The abortion argument is so treadworn there’s nothing fresh to be said about it. My personal attitude — shared by many in polling over the decades — is that while I could never consent to it in my relationships, and certainly not as “casual” birth control, the idea that The Government has any standing to dictate to a woman what she can and cannot do — even in the case of rape or her health for chrissakes — is about as anti-democratic, anti-libertarian and anti-American experiment as it gets.

What makes the pro-life argument even worse — which is to say even more hypocritical — is that poll after poll and study after study shows that Godly-divined, Christ-sanctioned anti-abortion partisans are nearly as rabidly opposed to social welfare spending — for people like single-mothers — as they are to choice. For them, support for life stops at birth.

Here’s George Carlin’s classic “pro life” rant.

Amy Klobuchar popped up on Rachel Maddow’s show last night making brave sounds about how this means liberals and everyone else in favor of Roe as it stands has to, you know, band together and gird for the fight to change Congress before this authoritarian stampede gets any worse.

To which I say, “Well, good luck with that.” As someone pointed out on Twitter this morning, over two million people have signed a petition to cut Johnny Depp’s ex-wife out of the next “Aquaman” movie because she was so so crazy mean to Johnny.

By contrast, the outrageously sordid tale of Clarence Thomas’s wife cavorting with abject nutjobs and insurrectionists — with his full knowledge — trying to subvert the Constitution by overthrowing an election has faded from public interest with no apparent legal consequences.

The Bullshit Has Gone Toxic

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Traffic for Rachel Maddow spiked a couple days ago when she observed the nose dive the stock market takes every time Donald Trump opens his mouth. Her entirely valid point — to her bosses and media colleagues — is that if Trump can’t spew anything other than wildly misleading to totally false “fairy tales” about miracle drugs being rushed to market, trainloads of medical equipment rushing to the front lines and all the people everywhere telling him what a terrific and impressive job he’s doing, he’s a bona fide health hazard and we’d be better pulling the plug on his daily “briefings“.

To put it in a way the refined and well-mannered Ms. Maddow never would, “The bullshit has gone toxic.”

Put aside flat out ignoring January and February intelligence briefings that this virus was going to get real, big and bad. Put aside all that claptrap about it fading away like a miracle and containing it at 15 cases … and on … and on … and on. What he’s doing today, lying about resources that don’t yet exist, refusing to declare a full-out national emergency and not calling out the Army to set up field hospitals, all while yabbering nonsensically about a malaria drug that’s really “impressed” him has a real world lethal effect. It falsely reassures some people, (most likely his devoted base), who then take fewer precautions with their own health and those around them.

Simultaneously, every briefing, where every time he reaffirms how wildly incompetent he is for this moment, adds a new level of fear among intelligent, informed people.

So yeah, the bullshit has gone toxic. Get Trump off the air. Like Maddow said, if it turns out by some miracle he does say something demonstrably true during one of these appearances, roll the tape. But for god’s sake don’t continue to give millions of overly credulous Americans the idea that this guy A: Knows what is going on, or B: Has any semblance of any idea about what to do next.

He doesn’t. He never has, and we all know that.

And while you’re at it — American press corps — either get tough and in the face of characters like FEMA administrator Peter Gaynor, (appointed two months ago by Trump), or dial back the airtime you’re giving them as well.

Gaynor made a disastrous round of Sunday morning chat shows today and, like Trump, his evasions, non-answers to direct life-and-death questions and “authoritative-y” assurances that everything was under control had precisely the opposite effect on any viewer actually paying attention. Gaynor sounded like every Republican apparatchik in the Trump era, namely, terrified to misspeak the truth and risk the wrath of Dear Leader.

In the best of times American society runs on vast and deep levels of bullshit. Every bag of snack food is the “richest” and “crunchiest” and “butteriest” and most “delicious”. Every car is a “best in its class” performer, dripping “prestige.” Every cookie cutter TV show is “the year’s number one new hit”. Every celebrity is a “break out star” even when they’re not the “Sexiest Man Alive.” It never stops.

And the reason it never stops is that we like it. It’s fun. It’s amusing. It works. We actually buy stuff and lose hundreds of hours of our life because we enjoy the fiction and make believe of being part of the “sexiest”, most “prestigious”, “crunchiest” thing going.

But now the bullshit has gone toxic. What is unequivocally not true, not really happening, not ready for prime and therefore a … lie, is now poised to kill us. Or if not us, our parents, grandparents or anyone with a compromised respiratory system.

So FFS, at least put Donald Trump — the quintessence of sociopathic bullshit — on tape delay.

Now back to my thrice-daily screening of “The Shining.”

Let’s Move to The Avenatti Model

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As promised and on schedule Michael Avenatti has dropped another bomb on Brett Kavanaugh’s crater-filled road to the Supreme Court. Regularly tut-tutted over and dismissed as an ambulance-chaser non pareil Avenatti’s latest client — who is not anonymous — is prepared to tell the most lurid story yet of the young and entitled Mr. Kavanaugh’s sexual misadventures, in this case gang rape.

Avenatti popped up on Rachel Maddow’s show a couple of nights ago hinting at what was to come and vowing he would deliver “within 48 hours”, which he did. Again.

Mainstream, Big “J” journalism’s aversion to Avenatti is understandable, in normal times. Who hasn’t rolled their eyes and endured the righteous (righteous, I tell you!) indignation and oozing self-promotion of well-paid lawyers … performing in front of a TV camera? But at some point the bona fides of even the worst self-aggrandizer build up to the point where guys like Avenatti have to be taken seriously.

When you’re right, you’re right.

I mean, come on. TV in particular is clogged with regular players who either A: Have nothing new or significant to say, or B: Parrot whatever the network in question wants to hear, (so they’ll be asked back), or C: Are so far past their expiration date they’re like a straight-to-video sequel to “Weekend at Bernie’s”, (eg: Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum).

So someone — Avenatti — who is demonstrably in on the action and accurately forecasting what’s coming next should have much higher standing, credibility-wise, than “the usual suspects.” And he does, if you just count CNN and MSNBC, where it seems he has a cot in the corner for easier access to the pundit desk.

But, Big “J” journalism? Not quite so much. Avenatti’s Monday night vow on Maddow’s didn’t create much more than a rustle in big city newspapers, caution toward self-aggrandizers being a primary default for “serious journalists” and anxious politicians, normally for good reason. But after a good year on the scene and a batting average Ted Williams could only dream of, it seems Avenatti is still on a “wait and see” with the self-proclaimed adults in the room.

I think of Avenatti every time I hear someone ask (in solemn theological tones) what Democrats should do if they regain power in DC?

Should they go full payback on Republicans, pulling every foul and miserable trick Mitch McConnell, Devin Nunes, Chuck Grassley and on and on and on have been pulling for the last 20 years? Or, should they hew to the proper course of, you know, “regular order” and follow time-honored (and now regularly violated) standards of civility toward the opposition while seeking to “reach across the aisle?” (Personally, I’ve reached the point that whenever I hear or read someone urging any liberal to “reach across the aisle” I stop listening or reading … right after I gag.)

Implicit in the question is that there is only a binary choice. Democrats can either adapt all the ham-fisted, nefarious, nakedly bullshit tactics McConnell, Nunes and crew have resorted to, or they can be the same earnest chumps they’ve been played for since  Republicans decided winning is “the only thing” and dialed nefarious to 11.

That’s dim thinking.

The Avenatti Model, if we dare call it that, is not nefarious, illegal or unconstitutional. But it is shamelessly aggressive. You isolate a key weakness (illegality) in the opposition and you zero in on it with full prosecutorial energy and zeal. You make the opposition pay a very high public price for nefarious activity. You use every tool at your disposal, which means exploiting Big “J” journalism, punditry and the entertainment industry. And you keep at it until the offense the opposition has committed becomes a permanent stain on their brand. In other words, you make them own their deviousness and bullshit.

(If the concern is you could over-play your hand — like McConnell et al — you’ll hear about it fast enough from the liberal base.)

No matter what happens during Thursday’s hearings, The Avenatti Model would move Christine Blasey Ford and every other woman prepared to speak out against Kavanaugh up to the next level of the court of public opinion. Namely, a coordinated series of TV interviews with — oh I don’t know, Oprah, “60 Minutes” or any of the gal hosts of the morning chat shows — and let the public get a full sense of who these women are and the credibility of their stories.

The effect would be to set the stain on Kavanaugh and his Republican handlers so deep it won’t how Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins eventually vote.

Oh! Not polite and collegial?

Screw polite.

 

 

 

 

Whoa! An actual debate.

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Brian_LambertWell, that was actually interesting. And not because it was a night filled with hysteria and off-the-leash narcissism.

In case we’ve forgotten what a “substantive debate” sounds like, Bernie v. Hillary Thursday night in New Hampshire was a refreshing reminder. Two people arguing stuff that matters … most … right now … and not trying to out hyper-ventilate the other guy in imagining bloodthirsty, color-other-than-white terrorists gunning us down in our pickups on our way to Wednesday night prayer service.

Predictably, the morning after pundits are seizing on Hillary’s “artful smear” line against Bernie, by which she was plainly trying to coax him into saying directly that she’s taken bribes from Wall St. The line didn’t play well. Sanders is simply too honorable and too defiant (some might say “courageous”) in his attack on the country’s most dominant minority (the super-super wealthy) for a shot like that to land with the feel of validity and with any sticking power, especially from Hillary Clinton. I seriously doubt she’ll go there again.

And not because her kissing-cousins relationship with Goldman, Sachs and the rest of the .1% mob will go away … ever. But because Clinton, as she demonstrated again last night, both adapts well to the combat of politics and has plenty of fight in her. And I say that as two good things. The Clintons are unrivaled in their facility with the machinery of the political game, which is one reason Bubba not only swatted back the Gingrich Revolution in ’94-’95, but survived impeachment and left office with an approval rating higher than dottering St. Ronnie.

I keep imagining what the first Clinton years might have been like if they knew as much about neutralizing Republican cynicism as they do now and had no interest in compliant interns.

Someone was saying this morning that the Sanders phenomena is much more about the message than Bernie himself, and that sounds right. You could swap Bernie out with anyone saying the same thing and be in pretty much the same level of contention. But it helps that Ol’ Bern comes off simultaneously as fair-minded and mightily pissed-off.

Certainly until the general election, Hillary will be on serious defensive for her “establishment” (i.e. there’s no way in hell you can call this “progressive”) pas de deux with our 21st-century robber barons. (And this new crew gives guys like Andrew Carnegie and J.D. Rockefeller a bad name). That’s her punishment. The hope has to be that she is aware of how much she has to prove she has not been bought off, as so many suspect.

I thought Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow, who did a very good job with both the line and quality of questions and their willingness to play back and let Bernie and Hillary have at it, missed at least one juicy follow-up.

After Bernie reiterated his familiar charge that Wall St. today — still paying off billions in fines for fraudulent behavior — is really, let’s call it what it is, a massive on-going systematic fraud, Todd and Maddow should have turned to Hillary and asked, “Madam Secretary do you agree that Wall St. as it functions today is a systematic fraud?”

Personally, I would have gone a step further and asked, “Madam Secretary, do you believe JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon should be indicted for fraud?” But that’s just me.

Todd, and certainly Maddow, might have also pursued a line of questioning along these lines: “Senator Sanders, your essential message, talking of a revolution, has demonstrated substantial appeal. But you seem to gloss over the steadfast opposition the current Republican majority has to literally everything a Democratic president proposes, and that includes minor policy shifts they themselves have previously championed. Aren’t you showing a rather blithe disregard for the size and virulence of the opposition to the enormous and fundamental changes you’re proposing, to the banking and health insurance industry in particular? Your reluctance to lay out how, with minorities in both houses, your plans could survive such a torrent of opposition leaves many people deeply concerned you have not fully accepted the probability of that scenario.”

I’m still waiting for a convincing answer from Bernie on that one.

Still, by way of stark contrast, the debate’s focus on financial corruption and that disease’s impact on middle-class Americans was like sucking in a chestful of pure oxygen after the relentless freak-outs and idiocy of the Republican brawls. Everyone’s sense of real-time security will improve immeasurably when we get a license-to-indict grip on our supremely entitled class.

Bernie’s limitations vis a vis Hillary though were dramatically apparent when the topic turned to foreign policy, a range of issues pretty much on the periphery of his appeal. There was no comparison. There’s simply no one in this race or in any race since Bush 41 who rivals Clinton on first-hand understanding of who’s who in the world and how to handle the best and worst players. The question of course remains, facing the next international crisis, does she go with the option that is best or Halliburton et al, or follow Barack Obama’s much less trigger happy strategies?

(The crowd selling Clinton as an inveterate war-monger, primarily for her Iraq invasion vote, is engaging in its own brand of hysteria.)

Not being a believer in perfect candidates, Thursday’s debate was a satisfying confrontation of two sets of valuable virtues and vices, aspirational and idealistic vs. pragmatic and battlefield savvy.