September 12, 2016

She sure misspoke a lot then. Her "commies everywhere" tirade went on and on.

And Joy Reid is in no way better than 90% of journalists, or even just anyone speaking publicly about politics. I'm sure you could find someone on Breitbart or World News Daily who thinks we're still worried about "communists" in Russia, but that's about it. You'd flunk a basic reporting course for an error that ridiculous.

I mean, look at this. She clearly either doesn't know what communism is or what kind of government Russia has had for the past 25 years.

The Green Party! Trump! Snowden! Putin! All COMMIES RAWWWRRR!

Except none of them are, of course. It's not even a fair cop for Putin, who is running a decidedly capitalist kleptocracy, whatever affection he might have for the past Soviet regime. And Trump? Really? You can paint him with the Putin brush all day long, but that's because Putin's a ludicrous megalomaniacal strongman. He's far closer to the right wing than the left at this point, which is why Trump aligns with him somewhat (although Trump really has no discernible coherent ideology at all).

Regardless, "communism" has literally nothing to do with it, nor does it have a thing to with whatever Reid's objections to the Green Party or Snowden might be. None of these people she's trying to slam even belong in the same ideological basket at all.

Does she actually not understand that? Or is she just trying to smear people with the communist label because it occupies some space in her mind as the worst thing a person could be?

I think her campaign season coverage has been bad all the way through. I saw one of her aggressive Trump-surrogate interviews on MSNBC the other day, and she actually came off like the more anxious, unpleasant person, which was quite a feat up against someone trying to defend Trump. She went back and forth with the guy over whether something he said was a "talking point," which of course it was, but the whole conversation was talking points, and that's what surrogates do. A normal pro like Chris Hayes would have let him get his point out and move on, but she had to literally stop him from speaking chanting "I know it's a talking point," like a snarky child.

I can't believe MSNBC can't do better than this. They're embarrassing themselves.

September 12, 2016

The problem with "remembering" 9/11

is that we still collectively refuse to acknowledge how terribly we reacted to 9/11. I remember a woman in a building where I worked, a banker I think, who had always been nice, getting very upset with me over my suggestion invading Iraq was the wrong thing to do in response. Saddam was building nukes and preparing to wage war on the U.S. -- she saw it on TV. What else was there to discuss?

We're still in the same war, really. Just as PNAC envisioned. War in Iraq. War in Syria. A war in Iran would complete their sleazy vision.

All these deaths, all these trillions of dollars, and Middle East is no better off. America is no better off. But fear still works. Fear has put a half-assed real estate developer on the Presidential ticket. Fear still makes unlimited defense spending okay but Social Security too expensive.

I look forward to the 9/11 retrospectives that include in the horror of a terrorist attack the equally damaging horror of allowing a shocking event to upend our common sense and ability to think critically about what we're doing as a nation.

September 12, 2016

Didn't Joy Reid just claim Russia was still "communist?"

http://www.mediaite.com/online/joy-reid-roundly-derided-for-tweeting-that-russia-is-still-a-communist-state/

Trump and his people adhere to Putin for his belligerence and authoritarianism, not his "communism."

She sounded like Republican with her silly red-baiting. Ms. Reid should maybe at least maybe crack a Wikipedia and understand that the Soviet Empire has not been a thing for 25 years or so, and that authoritarians and "communists" are not the same thing.

MSNBC needs to do a lot better with its commentators.

July 24, 2016

If people thought the DNC's partiality "didn't matter"

They wouldn't be trying so hard to defend it.

Transparent rationalization is transparent.

July 17, 2016

Part of the NRA calculus has always been *who* has the guns.

The Black Panthers supposedly inspired Reagan to support gun control. Someone needs to start the Young Muslim Rifle Association or the Black Lives Matter Militia.

We'd have airtight gun regulations across the board in a week or so.

July 3, 2016

And the discussion continues. Through elections. Through platforms.

Through ongoing debate. No one has it all nailed down or all in the bag. We don't know, even among supporters of a given candidate, who was with them on what basis, although polling tells some of what people support and don't support.

None of that goes away at any point. Shall we sign on to the TPP? Is fracking okay sometimes, all the time, or never? How interventionist shall we be in our foreign policy? How shall we regulate the finance industry? What should we do about student debt or the costs of healthcare?

No one stops pushing. No one stops arguing. No one has a mandate for the minutiae of their individual personal policy, ever. It's why we have freedom of speech, of the press, of the right to assemble and petition the government.

We have picked a candidate. We have not decided everything that the party stands for or what everyone wants to do.

That never happens, and it never should.

July 3, 2016

What a party stands for is an ongoing discussion.

This year's Democratic Party is not what last year's was. Next year's will be different still. In the meantime, issues will be argued and discussed and fought over.

The American political process is not a static series of electing individuals and adopting whatever it is they do. That would be fascism, and it's not what we do here in America, or in the "Democratic" Party.

Leaders are nice, but we support them because and to the extent they reflect the will of the people who permit them to hold office. For that matter, even elected leaders do not always agree, nor do Democrats vote in a unanimous block, as we all know quite well.

Is the hope here that Progressives in general will somehow now go away and stop trying to have any input in the party of which they are a part?

Because that's not going to happen. And it shouldn't, and you shouldn't want it to.

July 3, 2016

"Ideological purity" is a red herring though.

It was just argued here that ideas don't matter at all, just "winning." That's very silly.

I haven't seen anyone in American politics running on a no-compromises platform, nor any real right or left "wingers" running for President. Cruz was pretty far out on the Christian Right, but no one could fairly be called anything like a "purist."

I see this argument trotted out by conservative Dems who just don't like progressive Dems and prefer to imagine their own ideas are " the best we can do."

That's just posturing though. The truth is everyone even remotely in the running -- Trump perhaps being the exception -- has been a thoroughly modern, compromising politican with no overweening ideological fervor.

The better ones though would never make a nihilistic argument that "winning" matters more than the right ideas and policies.

July 2, 2016

And Trump will never be the Republican nominee.

The one group of thinkers that has been completely wrong this election cycle are the "sure bet" folks. Literally nothing has happened the way they thought. Even Nate Silver got blown out repeatedly in the primaries.

The thing about elections is that anyone can win one. Nothing is ever in the bag.

And the fact that candidates once separated by miles draw closer together before a big vote is not an illusion. Sometimes the underdog catches up. Sometimes the pundits are wrong.

It's not "handwringing." It is a reflection of the reality that elections are uncertain, shifting things. Ask Britain.

July 2, 2016

I've yet to see anyone defend "radical Islam."

Nor do I see anyone "ignoring" this attack or any other.

I think what bothers conservatives -- what they consider "ignoring the problem" -- is that we don't go a step further, and draw some conclusion about Muslims or Islam in general. A conclusion they hold very dear, which is that their own version of the Abrahamic religion is the "good" one.

I think they want everyone to "admit" that what we really need is a religious war, where valiant Christians, who stopped slaughtering people in the name of their religion a while ago (save for your sporadic Eric Rudolphs killing women and doctors here and there) finally "do something" about Islam itself, or Muslims themselves, rather than engage in what they see as a foolish attempt to distinguish violent lunatics from millions of people that actually do practice their religion peacefully.

I'm consistently glad they are frustrated about that.