The inimitable Driftglass blogs:
It's a warm, dreary Sunday here in the heartland. April, it seems like, or September. But it's not. It's December, and the long darkness of the approaching winter solstice hangs in the air, and the Republican race for president and the Beltway media coverage of Republican race for president (which Mr. Chuck Todd of Meet the Press
very precisely summed up as
"Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump...but...") has taken on a lurid, Grand Guignol cast:
Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol: "The Theatre of the Great Puppet")—known as the Grand Guignol—was a theatre in the Pigalle area of Paris (at 20 bis, rue Chaptal (fr)). From its opening in 1897 until its closing in 1962, it specialized in naturalistic horror shows. Its name is often used as a general term for graphic, amoral horror entertainment.
And so when someone asks, "Watchman, tell us of the night." I must report that the night does not go well. There is a palpable, frantic ache among the Beltway media to get back to the very profitable business of telling the only fairy tale they know how to tell—the story of Both Sides Do It. But the continued dominance of Donald Trump and the fast-rising horror of Ted Cruz makes that impossible.
Since June they have treated The Donald as if he were some weird-but-transient intestinal blockage which the usual applications of Beltway eye-rolling contempt and Both Siderism would eventually dislodge.
This has not happened.
Instead our media-of-easy-virtue and the shambles of what remains of the Republican party establishment find themselves curled up in a manger, on a pile of money surrounded by the Wise Men of Washington, giving birth to something raving, world-stomping and bestial while continuing to swear that they had nothing to do with its conception and gestation even as it gnaws its way out of their rotting womb.
And so, this Sunday, I report to you the stuff that caught my attention in and around the Sunday Gasbag Cavalcade, since what our esteemed political press corp says after the shows as they swab off the greasepaint is often at least as revealing as the very carefully metered bullshit they extrude while the cameras are on. [...]
Over on "Face the Nation", peeved potato-bug/human hybrid, Frank Luntz, insisted that the Rise of Trump was
certainly not facilitated by decades of constant, reckless, high-intensity, focus-group-tested moronifying of the GOP base by highly paid button men like peeved potato-bug/human hybrid Frank Luntz. Instead—surprise!—the fault for the Rise of Trump lies with another, more, uh,
"swarthy" individual [...]
Tweet of the Day
Blast from the Past
At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—Reid Caves: Medicare Buy-in, Public Option Pulled from Senate Bill:
With Tom Harkin pre-capitulating, telling TMPDC that "There's enough good in this bill that even without those two, we gotta move," even before the Dem caucus met to decide the way forward, the writing was on the wall. Add Rockefeller, who says he'll vote for the bill even without Medicare buy-in, and it's gone.
A number of sources are reporting that the majority capitulated to Lieberman, who was in attendance in the meeting, cuz, you know, he's with us on everything but the war.
Senators emerging from the special Democratic caucus confirm that the Medicare buy-in proposal will have to be stripped from the Senate bill in order to achieve 60 votes.So what's out next at Lieberman's demand? The 90% medical loss ratio is destined to be a goner, now that the CBO has concluded that requiring insurance companies to pay 90% of money collected through premiums out in direct medical care would--and this I don't get at all--"make such insurance an essentially governmental program," that's gonna be out.What's Lieberman's next demand going to be? My guess is Medicaid subsidies have to be removed.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Would a policy of not monitoring social media really be “secret?” Greg Dworkin rounds up the 2016 news, polling, and “brokered convention” speculation. The #GunFAIL Effect. Why gun control advocates should learn to stop worrying.
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