Steps Toward Decency

I've thought for a long time that, short-term, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is running not for President but for the United States Senate. Senator Chuck Schumer's term is up in January of 2019, and Ocasio-Cortez proably would have a glide path to the nomination if the Minority Leader were to bow out gracefully. Schumer, a supporter of Israel but critic of Netanyahu, would be more likely to call it quits if he weren't being opposed for a fifth term by a strongly anti-Israel candidate. And so:

AOC: I personally do not trust somebody like Marjorie Taylor Greene—a proven bigot and anti-semite—on the issues of what is good for Gazans and Israelis. I don’t think it benefits our movement to align with white nationalists. pic.twitter.com/ufGwW6q6Mv

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 8, 2026

 An outraged Cenk Uygure of The Young Turks tweets

This is just terrible. She sounds just like the establishment. She's attacking an opponent of Israel as an antisemite. This is exactly what israeli supporters want- split the anti-war movement and the critics of Israel's genocide. Deeply counterproductive. And selfish.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is an anti-Semite.  If a member of Congress came out and said "I hate Jews,"  Uygur would claim that he or she was talking only about Israelis. If the individual stated that Israel is no worse than Nazi Germany, he probably would agree. You know the type: Israel is nothing but evil and it doesn't matter whether it's the Prime Minister, one of Netanyahu's Cabinet members, a settler on the Wesst Bank, or a resident of Israel itself; they're all the same.

Ocasio-Cortez has herself accused Israel of genocide, a strange charge to level against a country whose military could wipe out Gazan Palestinians if it chose to do so, though it still would have to contend against Palestinians in Jordan and elsewhere, with whom it has no quarrel. In May of 2021, the New York congresswoman accused Israel of "apartheid," though Arabs and Muslims in Israel proper have rights exceeding those in several Arabic and Persian nations. Nine months later, she voted "present" on an amendment to provide funding for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system, though evidently she opposed the outlay.

Representative Ocasio-Cortez has had a change of heart, at least outwardly, toward Israel, while remaining one of its critics. In July of 2024, she earned the scorn of Democratic Socialists of America when she hosted a panel on anti-semitism. (Oh, the humanity!) A year later, she voted against an amendment, co-sponsored by Greene, which would have cut drastically the funding for Iron Dome.

This may have been a conversion of convenience, behavior common among politicians and not unknown across the professions. And she still rejects funding from AIPAC, let alone not joining the Netanyahu Can Do No Wrong Caucus headed by President Donald Trump. 

Rejecting collaboration with Marjorie Taylor Greene may or may not prove wise in advancing Ocasio-Cortez's preference for a significan change in Israeli policy. Nor is it certain to last; the hostility toward "Zionism" and "Zionists" on the far left is gaining steam weekly and pressuring Democratic politicians. But the congresswoman appears to have learned from the fictional Martin Dooley of "trust everybody but count the cards".and from the Russian proverb,  "trust, but verify" And that not everything should be blamed on Jews.

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Simple Questions Requiring a Simple Answer

In a law class (but not in law school) a few decades ago, the law professor periodically would pose to my class a yes/no question and ask for a response. Before he got one, he would answer it himself: "it depends."

And so it was that Bill Maher on his podcast asked Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks "if you had to live in the Middle East, so, tomorrow, where would you live?" He mentioned several cities and countries, Pakistan, Karachi, Cairo, Amman/Jordan, Beirut/Lebanon. Syria, Tel Aviv, West Bank/Ramallah, even name-checking the Houthis.  He added "Where would you live/ What city would you live in? Where would you be comfortable- in that dress?

Bill Maher SNAPS at Ana Kasparian after she blames “Islam on whitey.”

MAHER: “If you had to live in the Middle East. Any city. Where would you live where you’d be comfortable in that dress?”

ANA: “I’m sure I would not be comfortable in this dress in any of the various Middle… pic.twitter.com/RyeqrYUkyN

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) December 8, 2025

" 

Kasparian would have flunked Professor Rose's class. Instead of defaulting to blaming USA policy on the Middle East, she should have replied "it depends." (The complete discussion of the topic, according to this blogger, is below.)

A rudimentary search for information regarding clothing permissible in the Middle East reveals a confusing array of laws and rules. What can be worn depends upon the country, the sex/gender of the individual, and, to a lesser extent, circumstances. There is no "one size fits all," especially because the government of each nation determines its own regulations.  Regrettably, the clearest explanation, and an objective one, comes via artificial intelligence, Google's Gemini:

A woman can wear a dress in nearly all Muslim countries, but the style and modesty required vary greatly, from Western-style dresses in fashion-forward cities like Dubai or Istanbul to modest, loose dresses in more conservative areas, with countries like Turkey, UAE, Qatar, and Central Asian nations being generally relaxed, while places like Saudi Arabia (which recently relaxed mandatory abayas) and Iran still have strong cultural expectations for covering shoulders and knees.

Kasparian could have explained that whether she'd be comfortable in a Middle Eastern country wearing her dress depended on several factors. But of course she didn't.

She didn't do so because she would be acknowledging something the left is loathe to concede.  Islam is different than Christianity or Judaism, the other two major monotheistic religions. And although Jewish extremism and Christian extremism present their own particular issues at times and places, in the modern world, Islamism represents both a broader and more serious problem.

Imagine someone being asked whether a normal dress- not even one especially revealing could be worn in Israel, currently being governed by a coalition of the ultra Orthodox; in the USA, in which the base of the governing party is composed of evangelical Christians; or in the white supremacist nation of Russia. The woman would be incredulous that even such a question would be asked.

But being unable to dress as one wishes without threat of punishment is widely, though not universally, prevalent in Muslim countries of the Middle East. And it could not be admitted to Bill Maher by a fairly prominent individual of the left. (Neither, truthfully, is it admitted by most centrists and, yes, conservatives.)

Clothing can be a complicated issue. Nuclear weapons not so much, thus this hypothetical is at least as telling:

MAHER: “Well, they have nuclear weapons, which they don’t use. If Hamas had a nuclear weapon, how many seconds would it take before they used it on Israel?”

ANA: “I don’t know.”

MAHER: “Three. Three’s the answer. Three seconds.”

ANA: “How do you know that, Bill? Come on.”

MAHER: “Because it’s in their charter.”

"I don't know?"  A living, breathing human being, co-host of  The Young Turks podcast, with 6.7 million subscribers, doesn't know whether Hamas would launch a nuclear weapon at Israel if they had one.  

That can't be stupidity or naivete. No one can be that stupid or naive. There is a glaring absence of honesty in political discourse in this country, and failure to recognize the danger of radical and militant Islamism is one of the most dangerous.

ANA: “You wanna get exhilarated right now? I can exhilarate you.”

MAHER: “I know you’re gonna say genocide, and I’m gonna say, well, you don’t know what the word means… Hamas is the bad guy. If you don’t get that, you don’t get much.”

ANA: “What Hamas did on October 7th was disgusting killing.”

MAHER: “Well, that’s the easiest thing in the world to say… If you hate oppression… Hundreds of millions of women have basically no freedom in the Muslim world.”

ANA: “So we should slaughter them instead, which is what’s been happening.”

MAHER: “Well, you should prosecute a war to the end. That does involve slaughter in every war.”

ANA: “Civilians get killed in wars.”

MAHER: “Especially when you hide behind them.”

ANA: “But when 83%, according to the IDF’s own data… 83% of the people that they’ve killed are civilians—”

MAHER: “Because they hide behind them.”

ANA: “But Bill, do you understand that by killing so many civilians, they are essentially multiplying extremism.”

MAHER: “I do understand that. Do you understand that there’s very often in the world two very bad choices… You don’t have a good choice. You have the bad choice and the even worse choice.”

ANA: “Israel has nuclear weapons, Bill. They have nuclear weapons.”

MAHER: “Well, they have nuclear weapons, which they don’t use. If Hamas had a nuclear weapon, how many seconds would it take before they used it on Israel?”

ANA: “I don’t know.”

MAHER: “Three. Three’s the answer. Three seconds.”

ANA: “How do you know that, Bill? Come on.”

MAHER: “Because it’s in their charter.”

ANA: “You have a difficult time at least acknowledging the atrocities that have been committed against innocent civilians in Gaza.”

MAHER: “Well, it depends on what you call an atrocity. All wars are going to have atrocities… During the Civil War, a lot of people would say, especially in the South, that Sherman did not have to burn Atlanta quite as badly as he did. I mean, we were pretty brutal. But would you also then just say, well, we don’t know who the good guys were in that war? No, I think it was the North.”

ANA: “I think much of the problems we have in the Middle East are due to the enabling of this expansion. Look, it’s an expansionist policy.”

MAHER: “They’ve never been trying to expand.”

ANA: “They’re trying to annex the West Bank right now. And Lebanon—southern Lebanon—and Syria, which they’ve succeeded in.”

MAHER: “Excuse me, these are all places that they were attacked from. When they became a country in 1947, they said, ‘Okay, we will accept half a loaf.’ They had as much right to that land as anybody. There was a continual presence there since 1000 BC, when King David had a kingdom.”

ANA: “I don’t care about that at all.”

MAHER: “But it’s relevant!”

(MAHER AND ANA TALK OVER EACH OTHER)

 MAHER: “You’re calling them colonizers. They’re not colonizers.”

ANA: “They’re expanding, and they’re annexing land. That’s what colonizers do.”

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Prime Target

The Independent reports

Republican Representative Rick Allen of Georgia defended his position on raising the age when seniors can receive Social Security by saying people want to work longer.

Advocacy group Social Security Works posted a video of Mr Allen walking through the tunnels of the House of Representatives where he was asked about why he wants to raise the age of retirement.

“You know, that’s interesting that you ask that question,” he said. “People come up to me, they actually want to work longer.”

Currently, senior citizens collect Social Security and Medicare at the age of 65. But some have proposed the idea of raising the age to 67.

The person asking him the question asked if that proposal was on the table at the moment.

“Well, you know, if people want to work longer, maybe you need an incentive to do it,” Mr Allen said. “That’s the way to solve every one of these problems, by the way, and actually grow wealth at the same time.”

Mr Allen sits on the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, which deals with health care legislation. Mr Allen’s remarks come as Republicans took control of the majority in the House of Representatives earlier this month.

Responding to Allen's comments, at 1:39 of the video below, The Young Turks' Ana Kasparian remarks

When they say they want to raise the retirement age, don't be tricked into thinking that this isn't cutting Social security. It's just raising the retirement age because Americans are living much longer- except that's actually not true. The life expectancy of Americans has actually been going down in recent years and life expectancy in the United States is comparable to that of people living in Cuba.

 

To paraphrase a old saying, nobody died and made me a fact checker. However, if I had to rate the accuracy of the latter statement of Kasparian on a scale of 0 to 10 (with D. Trump at 0.5 and G. Santos at 0.0), I'd give it an 8.

Life expectancy in the USA had been rising until it declined in 2020. It declined further in 2021, and appears to have remained the same in 2022.  Presumably, that is due to SARS-CoV-2. However, we can be sure neither that it will rebound after the pandemic vanishes nor that there will not be repeated coronaviruses into the indefinite future. Moreover, in 2021 "life expectancy at birth began to rebound in most comparable countries while it continued to decline in the U.S.," suggesting that a decline in life expectancy is not inevitable after the peak of a major health crisis has passed.

Worse even than being "comparable," life expectancy at time of birth in 2021 was 2.9 years lower in the USA than in Cuba. That may be unsurprising because the single-payer health care system in Cuba is superior provides significantly greater benefits than provided in the USA, with its largely market-based system. Undoubtedly unsurprising is the lower age at death in the USA than in other, comparable developed nations.

The fallacy that Americans are living dramatically longer lives than ever before is central to the effort to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits.  On January 12, House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy, fresh off selling his soul and more to be elected to the position, vowed "one thing I will tell you, as Republicans, we will always protect Medicare and Social Security. We will protect them for the next generation going forward. But we are going to scrutinize every single dollar spent."

Hold on to your wallet.  It may be a nod and a wink, but when politicians threaten to protect Social Security and Medicare, it means the programs are on their hit list.  The theory is that the programs are on the cusp of  bankruptcy (they're not) so the only way to "protect" them is to reduce benefits, raise the eligibility age, lower the cost-of-living adjustments, or means-testing benefits. The "scrutinize every single dollar spent" makes it obvious. (McCarthy is not talking about the defense budget or corporate giveaways.)

So when Republicans balk at raising the debt ceiling, it's not only to try to bring the nation's economy to its knees. It's a continuation of a decades-long effort to uproot the social safety net and if the elderly are among its casualties, so be it.

 

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Obama And Biden, Minus Biden

If you go on a rant, it might as well be a righteous one. Early in the video below, TYT's Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian note that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has defended President Obama's decision not to urge legislative action to enshrine reproductive rights.  Uygur recognizes that unlike many Democrats (most, he believes), Ocasio-Cortez "doesn't take corporate cash- she's not influenced by that and I don't think she's at all corrupt." 

However, Uygur's focus is not on the New York congresswoman because

All of the progressives in Congress including Bernie Sanders is hat they get brainwashed by Washington. The minute you step into Washington, they tell you the most important thing to do is to kiss Democratic ass and if you're not kissing Democratic ass 24/7, you will be tarred and feathered and that part is true. You will be tarred and feathered, the mainstream media will  viciously attack you and say that every problem that the Democrats have is your fault.

Although Ocasio-Cortez has "fought more than all of them,"

There's good progressives that fight on some issues but they are still under the spell of Washington. They live in that toxic culture and they believe in a deference to authority on Biden and Obama.

He continues

You think A.O.C. would call Obama a liar. Not one progressive in Congress would ever call Obama a liar. They would call that the rudest, most offensive thing ever. Women's rights being flushed down the toilet a little less offensive in Washington? No, I'm not exaggerating or joking. If you called Obama a liar in Washington, that would be considered a thousand times more offensive than Roe v. Wade being overturned; a thousand times more offensive.

In fact, here I'll make a prediction. For you at some point, some Democratic operative and everyone in mainstream media will even use this exact clip to attack me and any ally of mine and say "can you believe that he dared to call the beloved and angelic Barack Obama and Joe Biden liars? How do you?"

My own prediction, a safe one, is that Cenk Uygur will not be returning to MSNBC any time soon. Democrats don't defer to authority only as pertains to (Democratic) presidents.  We Democrats defer to legal authorities, such as the former federal prosecutors on cable news networks who the past few years have been implying doom for Donald Trump. Or the lawyers appalled at racial bias in policing and unquestioning of the black lives movement who defend every jury decision, for the defendant or the state, and never question America's terrible jury decision.

I digress, but only barely because a naive deference to authority is the common thread in much of Democratic politics. Uygur argues this instinct is applied to "the beloved angelic Barack Obama and Joe Biden." But in so doing, he gives Joe Biden too little, or too much, credit.

Among both Democratic professionals and the Democratic street, Joe Biden is not in the same category as is Barack Obama.  President 44 is in a class of his own.  Despite the damage it can do to Democratic electoral prospects later this year- and the absence of a clear and credible successor- party people have been leaking to the media their lack of confidence in Biden being the party's standard-bearer in 2024.  Under no circumstances would this ever have been done to Barack Obama. Never.

On a positive note, there is no divide between those professionals and rank-and-file Democrats on the issue of Barack Obama. He is not to be criticized. witness the defense of his presidency by, of all people, the leader of The Squad, who pleads "The Democratic Party/voters simply did not have thee votes or solidity on this issue that they do now and swing voters weren't willing to support reliably pro-choice policies until very recently." 

Ocasio-Cortez's defense is legitimate but glosses over the reality of eight years of a Democratic President who chose to do less than he could have. From  his perspective, however, there was no real reason to govern otherwise. He was- and still is- Barack Obama, and to the powers and the voters in the Democratic Party, little else has been necessary.

 

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Replacement Theory And Trump Supporters

As displayed at the beginning of the recent Young Turks video below, three months ago Tucker Carlson wailed

The left and all the gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term "replacement," if you suggest the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots....

The Democratic Party is not trying to replace or reduce the electorate, but instead to expand the electorate. Tucker continues

... with new people more obedient, voters from the third world. But they become hysterical because that's what's happening, actually. Let's just say if that's true. So this matters on a bunch of different levels but on the most basic level, it's a voting rights question. If you change the population you dilute the political power of the people who live there so every time they import more voters, I become disenfranchised as a current voter....

Carlson does not lose the right to vote. His followers don't lose the right to vote. And what is happening is not importing more voters but allowing individuals constitutionally and legally eligible to vote to continue to vote.

In case you thought that Tucker was referring to race when he said "import" and "Third World," he wants you to know

So I don't understand why you don't understand this. I mean, everyone wants to make a racial issue out of it. Oh, you know, the white replacement there- no, no, this is a voting rights question.

Carlson uses not a dog whistle but a blow to the head when he invokes "replacement" theory, a term and concept reinvigorated by author Renaud Camus in his 2011 book “Le Grand Remplacement.” The French news network France 24 last year explained that.

Rooted in racist nationalist views, the great replacement theory purports that an elitist group is colluding against white French and European people to eventually replace them with non-Europeans from Africa and the Middle East, the majority of whom are Muslim. Renaud Camus often refers to this as “genocide by substitution”.

Notions of the theory date as far back as 1900, when the father of French nationalism Maurice Barrès spoke about a new population that would take over, triumph and “ruin our homeland”.

In an article for daily newspaper Le Journal, he wrote: “The name of France might well survive; the special character of our country would, however, be destroyed, and the people settled in our name and on our territory would be heading towards destinies contradictory to the destinies and needs of our land and our dead."

At the time Barrès was writing, “anti-Semitism was extremely mainstream”, says Dr. Aurelien Mondon, a senior lecturer of politics at Bath University in an interview with FRANCE 24. “Barrès spoke about the idea of racial purity,” he says, which is why the theory of population replacement became so popular among the Nazis, for example.

But after World War II, the French far right needed a new discourse to move back into the mainstream. Shifting away from biological racism towards cultural racism, the replacement theory gained ground in the 1970s and 1980s.

“The Nouvelle Droite (New Right) and some French intellectuals were trying to find ways to move away from the margins,” Mondon says. Over the years, these ideas spread among the far right, which was becoming more and more mainstream in France, eventually paving the way for Camus to publish his book on the topic without being disregarded as too radical.

“Camus didn’t invent anything,” Mondon explains. “He put concepts together and coined the phrase, but his theory is part of a much broader context that contributed to the reshaping of the far right [in France.”

With the far-right Marie Le Pen currently posing a serious threat to Emmanuel Macron and democracy in France, the movement has newly taken on added importance. However, it helps make clearer the self-deception engaged in by Trump supporters who believe their hero won the 2020 presidential election. Sarah Longwell writes

I regularly host focus groups to better understand how voters are thinking about key political topics. Recently, I decided to find out why Trump 2020 voters hold so strongly to the Big Lie.

For many of Trump’s voters, the belief that the election was stolen is not a fully formed thought. It’s more of an attitude, or a tribal pose. They know something nefarious occurred but can’t easily explain how or why.

The anti-Trump Republican Longwell concludes

These voters aren’t bad or unintelligent people. The problem is that the Big Lie is embedded in their daily life. They hear from Trump-aligned politicians, their like-minded peers, and MAGA-friendly media outlets—and from these sources they hear the same false claims repeated ad infinitum.

Now we are at the point where to be a Republican means to believe the Big Lie. And as long as Republicans leading the party keep promoting and indulging the Big Lie, that will continue to be the case. If I’ve learned anything from my focus groups, it’s that something doesn’t have to make sense for voters to believe it’s true.

As Longwell notes, the GOP does promote and indulge the "Big Lie" and these voters aren't unintelligent. Yet, they claim "flipped" votes overnight after polls closed; mail-in ballots as a "crock;" a "fixed" election; or  "something just doesn't feel right."  Scorned (or so they believe) for being Trump voters- and maybe for being racist- they won't be as forthright as Tucker Carlson, who has his own reasons for peddling racially divisive ideas.

Longwell concedes the Trump voters hear "false claims repeated ad infinitum" from "Trump-aligned politicians, their like-minded peers, and MAGA-friendly media outlets."   Nonetheless, she maintains "these voters aren't bad or unintelligent people," and she's right about the latter.

But something is at work, and if it's not stupidity, Longwell needs to recognize that a person doesn't have to be a flat-out racist to be at least somewhat malevolent. If asked if liberals voted twice, immigrants voted illegally, or blacks were pressured by Democrats, many of her interviewees would have sounded a lot like Tucker Carlson. They are not helpless pawns, but have found a like-minded spokesman for their electoral interests.

 

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Indirect, But Real

When Bill Maher recently was interviewed by CNN's Chris Cuomo, the host of Real Time maintained that it is Representative Liz Cheney's

job to go after Biden. That's what Republicans do. They go after the - I mean, we did that forever. Republicans and Democrats were cats and dogs, and they fought. But also, Tip O'Neill and Reagan could have a drink, after work. They could work together.

I don't know how we are ever going to work together. How do you - we have how many QAnon members of Congress now? QAnon!

As seen in the video below, The Yong Turks' Cenk Uygur didn't play that excerpt, but instead others in which Maher lamented the contemporary practice of liberals of obsessing about race and gender, which Maher has been sufficiently indelicate to observe has been politically harmful for Democrats.  Maher, who has been warning of a "slow-moving, right-wing coup" by Donald Trump and allies since before the election of 2016, had told Cuomo "I think everyone recognizes, everyone right- thinking, in my view, that still a lot of work needs to be done. Remedial efforts need to be taken still. Racism is part of America." Yet, an incensed Uygur charged (at 9:44) "I think Bill Maher is worse than a right-winger."

Hyperbolic, fact-deficient claims aside, however, Uygur maintained (beginning at 10:04)

"Remember we all agree the left is wrong and he right wing is right." So he says absurd lies like "they're teaching all across the country that groups are- that the kids should be lined up as the oppressed and the oppressor." Show me one example, Bill, show me all across the country. That's not a thing. You just made it up. You just made it up. Because you probably read right-wing trash and think it's real because "all my friends are right-wing, right."

There is no such thing. If they lined up kids and said "you are the oppressors," I'd hate that. I'd be 100% opposed to that. It's not what they do. You liar. You liar.

Oops. In assessing the election of Republican Glenn Youngkin to the governorship of Virginia, Yascha Mounk of the Council on Foreign Relations, Johns Hopkins University, and The Atlantic linked to examples while explaining

The idea that critical race theory is an academic concept that is taught only at colleges or law schools might be technically accurate, but the reality on the ground is a good deal more complicated. Few middle or high schoolers are poring over academic articles written by Richard Delgado or Kimberlé Crenshaw. But across the nation, many teachers have, over the past years, begun to adopt a pedagogical program that owes its inspiration to ideas that are very fashionable on the academic left, and that go well beyond telling students about America’s copious historical sins.

In some elementary and middle schools, students are now being asked to place themselves on a scale of privilege based on such attributes as their skin color. History lessons in some high schools teach that racism is not just a persistent reality but the defining feature of America. And some school systems have even embraced ideas that spread pernicious prejudices about nonwhite people, as when a presentation to principals of New York City public schools denounced virtues such as “perfectionism” or the “worship of the written word” as elements of “white-supremacy culture.”

Mounk argues "It is impossible to win elections by telling voters that their concerns are imaginary. If Democrats keep doing so, they will keep losing." It exists; it's happening. And if liberals and progressives such as Uygur pretend that it isn't, thus failing to heed the warnings the likes of Mounk and Maher, it won't be voters only in Virginia who send the Democratic Party an unpleasant message.

               .

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Rolling On With Unity

Afghanistan. China. Iran. Gulf arm sales. Israeli settlements. Yemen.

In what appears to be "a strategy that radically breaks with past practice, could raise national security risks and will surely compound challenges for the Biden team"

The Trump team has prepared legally required transition memos describing policy challenges, but there are no discussions about actions they could take or pause. Instead, the White House is barreling ahead. A second official tells CNN their goal is to set so many fires that it will be hard for the Biden administration to put them all out.

And yet

President-elect Joe Biden has privately told advisers that he doesn't want his presidency to be consumed by investigations of his predecessor, according to five people familiar with the discussions, despite pressure from some Democrats who want inquiries into President Donald Trump, his policies and members of his administration.

Biden has raised concerns that investigations would further divide a country he is trying to unite and risk making every day of his presidency about Trump, said the sources, who spoke on background to offer details of private conversations.

They said he has specifically told advisers that he is wary of federal tax investigations of Trump or of challenging any orders Trump may issue granting immunity to members of his staff before he leaves office. One adviser said Biden has made it clear that he "just wants to move on."

Donald Trump has no intention of allowing President Biden to "move on." Mitch McConnell, who in all likelihood will return as Senate Majority Leader, has no intention of allowing President Biden to "move on." The Republican base has no intention of allowing President Biden to "move on."

Joe Biden wants to move on because he has no stomach to allow whomever becomes Attorney General to confront private citizen Donald Trump and hold him to account for crimes he committed against the American people.  In the Young Turks video below, Ana Kasparian understands that "if you care about the rule of law, if you care about protecting the democratic process," the past cannot be disappeared.

But maybe this decision will be unrelated to any concern Biden may or may not have about the rule of law or the democratic process.  Following Kasparian, Cenk Uygur notes

Fifty percent of Republicans believe the Democratic Party is led by child molesters. Fifty percent. And who leads the Democratic Party now? Joe Biden does. So he's like "i want to united with the people who are calling me child molester." Why would you want to do that? That makes no sense at all."

Oh, but it does, if you're Joseph Robinette Biden.  In July of 2019, Dr. Jill Biden said

California Sen. Kamala Harris implied her husband Joe Biden is racist with her attack on the former vice president during the first Democratic presidential debate.

In an exclusive interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo airing on Monday, Jill Biden called Harris' criticism of Biden over race and segregation "the biggest surprise" to her in the party's 2020 race so far -- but said voters "didn't buy it."

Her comments come as Biden and Harris battle to win over black voters, a crucial constituency in the Democratic nominating contest. Biden has pointed to his time as former President Barack Obama's vice president as well as his own legacy on civil rights to defend himself, while Harris has taken aim at elements of Biden's earlier career in the Senate.

In the late-June debate, Harris criticized Biden's comments at a private fundraiser earlier in the month about the "civility" of the Senate during an era in which he worked with segregationists in the chamber. She also lambasted his early-career opposition to federally mandated busing.

"I think that they were looking at the past. I mean, the one thing you cannot say about Joe is that he's a racist. I mean, he got into politics because of his commitment to civil rights. And then to be elected with Barack Obama, and then someone is saying, you know, you're a racist?" she said.

The candidate whom Joe Biden's wife Jill maintained had accused her husband of being a racist was Kamala Harris, United States Senator, State of California.

That same Kamala Harris, a little less than a year later, was offered by his target a position on his ticket, the chance to be vice-president, and a heartbeat from being the first female President of the United States of America.

Mull that over. You're called a racist- according to the person whom you most love and possibly respect- by an individual you then honor with the most important, most desired and desirable, appointment you will ever make.

As Uygur implies, Biden doesn't give a whit that the GOP has promoted the idea that the Democratic Party is led by child molesters.  But if Donald Trump accuses Joe Biden personally of being a child molester, it still wouldn't persuade President Biden's administration to consider holding Trump responsible.

Senator Biden was rolled by Judiciary Committee Republicans on the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination' rolled as Vice-President, because that's practically in the job description; and rolled by Kamala Harris, who humiliated him publicly and later was rewarded by a position seen by many as President-in-Waiting.

So if the Trump Administration is laying foreign policy traps for President Biden or setting fires which must be put out, there is no downside for the 45th President or his party.  If Republicans want to demonize the Democratic Party as pedophiles, socialists, or anti-Christmas, they will. They know this is Joe Biden and there will be no penalty to be paid.

 

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No Joking Matter

It was on Wednesday night, when things were already looking bleak, but not hopeless, for President Trump when in Orlando, Florida the President's religious advisor, Paula White, appeared with son Brad Knight and 

led a marathon prayer service at the New Christian Destiny Centre, calling on the almighty for divine intervention in the presidential race.

In a video widely circulated on social media by Right Wing Watch, the “prosperity gospel” pastor can be seen denouncing the “demonic confederacies” working against Mr Trump and declaring that “angels from Africa, from South America” are coming to his aid.

"Angels are being dispatched from Africa right now," she said, adding, "They're coming here."

Speaking in tongues, in which a person utters sounds thought of as a secret language unknown to the speaker, features in Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, as well as other religions.

Joined by Knight, White led a prayer service also on Thursday night. Not only is she a White but preaches a prosperity gospel, a happy coincidence for Trump. On Thursday, she vowed her followers would "override" the will of man and "we overturn it, we overturn it right now, and it will be no more, it will be no more because it is our right by the blood of Jesus, and you will give it to us."

In the video below, if you can look beyond the childish laughter of Ana Kasparian- who lends a note of childish levity- The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur can be seen explaining

Apparently God loves Joe Biden because the sound of victory seems to be headed on to Joe Biden. And she says God chose so I guess God chose Joe Biden. So once Biden is declared the winner, Paula White and all those pastors are just immediately going to flip and go "well, that's it, God wanted Joe Biden, we love Joe Biden then."

I remember when they all flipped and were in favor of Barack Obama because God had chosen everything and they said God was going to choose in 2008 and they said God was going to choose in 2012. And he did- he chose Barack Obama.

A little surprisingly Uygur, a secular Muslim, largely nailed it.  The of se individuals will not claim to love Joe Biden. Nonetheless, most white evangelicals (as the term is generally understood by non-theologians), whether or not advocates of the prosperity gospel, do believe God chooses. Moreover, they maintain that God chose (even) Barack Obama, however few actually voted for him.

They believe, as it's most often characterized, that God is in control. To them, this means not only that God controls human activity in the same manner that a parent controls her child, in which some minor decisions are left to the child, lest she grow up hopeless and helpless. It means that God is determinative; the Almighty is intimately involved with everything and everyone and at every time. God not only can make the final decision but does so invariably.

Uygur reminds us of Jesus' legendary concern for the poor and maintains "media, Democrats, as usual, are so scared to point these things out." He continues in a mocking voice "We don't want to offend religious people, we don't want to offend religious people." Yet

If you can't make fun of that, what has this world come to. Do you have any courage? That is why we allow fundamentalists- not all religious people- run roughshod over us because they just throw the religion card.

There are serious consequences when Republicans run roughshod over Democrats.  The left- and most Americans- will pay for decades in part because of the unwillingness or inability to challenge the GOP on religion in the recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. Democrats

trod extremely gingerly around anything involving Barrett’s religion or personal life. They instead sought to focus extensively on how her past comments suggest she might have prejudged cases on abortion rights and Obamacare.

In fact, the words “religion,” “Catholic,” “Christian” and “faith” were invoked in relation to religious issues about 80 times over two days of question-and-answer sessions with Barrett. Republicans and Barrett accounted for 75 of them; Democrats, only five.

Among the few times that Democrats did invoke faith, they praised Barrett for hers or sought to insulate themselves from the perception that they might be raising it as an issue.

It's probably tactically wise, except perhaps for professional comedians, to resist the urge to make fun of Paula White or other evangelical/Pentecostal Christians in favor of challenging them.  It is past time for media figures to ask such theologically and politically conservative Christians about the incidence of liberal or Democratic outcomes. A sample series of questions might be

-Was God responsible for the election of Joe Biden?

-If so, did you vote for him?

-If not, why were you defying the will of God?

That's only a start. But it's a necessary one, and cowardice is not a good look for journalists or a major political party.

 

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When Race Is Just A Four-Letter Word

Good response to a tweet from the Obama Administration's ethics chief:

Don’t be distracted by this diversionary tactic. Focus on the fact that Putin put a bounty on our soldiers and A) the President didn’t know or B) he knew and did nothing about it. Either is damning and what we should stay laser focused on.

— Wallis S. Traylor (@WallisST) June 28, 2020

Trump long ago took off his hood... and put it back on, took it off and put it back on. He is impulsive and as he faces a daunting deficit against Joe Biden, he will continue to try one idea after another until he lands on what the believes is a winning theme. 

Call it "racist" or call it "racially tinged"; most voters already knew that Donald Trump is racist, racially tinged, bigoted, or whatever we might call it. Even many of his fans know that. The only controversy should be whether, as the media generally implies, he maintains considerable support despite that realization or because of it. I vote the latter.

Consequently, we shouldn't fall for any of his diversionary tactics. Nor should we believe the GOP is about nothing other than white power and corruption, though the former, and especially the latter, are involved.

Discussing with fellow Young Turk (no longer as young as they once were) Carly Fiorina's assertion that she will not vote to re-elect Donald Trump, Ana Kasparian can be seen beginning at approximately 5:34 of the video below going on a worthy rant about Fiorina and her Republican Party. She ends by stating, somewhat inconsistent with her message, "I really think Carly Fiorina needs to take a step back and really re-evaluate her own political ideology and whether she's in the right party."

Recognizing when he has been helpfully set up, Uygur responds

Yea, she's full of crap.... when she talks about corporate control, are you kidding me? So, Fiorina, do you disagree with the rule now? So this is, what they're doing is they're saying you're allowed to do derivative gambling again with customer money and without keeping enough reserves.

It is the riskiest gambling there is on the planet, they wind up gambling with trillions of dollars that isn't theirs and that they don't actually have the money to back up. That's how we collapsed the last time, in 2008. So Fiorina, are you in favor of that or against that?

I know, I don't even have to ask you,. Of course, you're in favor of (here the video is garbled, perhaps something about killing the Volcker Rule) and build more mansions and yachts until we collapse. And is any Republican against it?

.....Mitch McConnell, the dude's middle name is corporate control. What does Mitch McConnell stand for if he doesn't stand for corporate control? Lower taxes for corporations, more deregulation, crush the workers. That's Mitch McConnell, the Republican Party 101. So please spare me this about you're against Republicans, against corporate control. They're more for corporate control then they are racist and it's not even close. where as racist as they are, they would much, much rather have their corporate overloads rule over us all. They're their water boys.

So, yes, Walter Shaub, we can say that Republicans are about more than white power and corruption. They're about corporate control and corruption- but I repeat myself.

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Racialism On Steroids

As seen in The Young Turks video here, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently made a well-intentioned, eloquent and impassioned- though doomed to failure- plea to white supremacists

What I want to say to the young men and increasingly to the young women in this country that are falling into the grip of white supremacy that find themselves getting radicalized in a funnel of vitriol towards Latinos, toward immigrants, toward African-Americans, towards all people black, towards all people Jewish, towards all people of different faiths,what I have to say to you is "come back because there is a mother waiting for you. I know it. I know there's a teacher waiting for you, saying 'what happened to my kid'"?

The "kid' at the end kind of ruins the spirit but as Cenk Uygur remarks, "We also, eventually, have to reach out to them and bring them back. So it's bold at this moment for AOC to say "remember, we'll also going to this second part," the first part being condemnation of the words of the likes of Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson.

Uygur acknowledges, though, that Ocasio-Cortez can say such things without the backlash which likely would result from a similar comment by any Democratic presidential candidate with a chance at securing the party's nomination.

That would, of course, exclude the ridiculous Marianne Williamson, who  with her call during the second round of debates for reparations. She makes a splash, Steve M notes, in the media which is "culturally liberal but don't like actually existing liberalism, with its concrete ideas and policies (accompanied, in many cases, by upper-bracket taxes); Williamson's content-free oratory is liberalism without all that icky stuff."

Three years ago, Williamson presaged her call for reparations, sadly within the mainstream of today's cultural liberalism, with a dramatic performance in which she told (at 10:14 of the video below) her rapt audience she would "lead us in an apology from white Americans to African-Americans on behalf of our country."

It is presumptuous of almost anyone, perhaps especially a self-help author, to lead a group of people in an apology for something so serious; doubly so when the apology purports to be for an entire nation of 350+ million people.  Furthermore, some individuals, including those among the Founding Fathers who were slaveholders, were rather more responsible, than, say, white babies born in June, 2019. Nonetheless:  "white Americans to African-Americans on behalf of" everybody.

There you have it: we're all guilty, all to the same extent, whether we've held political or economic power, whether a corporate executive living in Greenwich, Connecticut or a single woman taking care of her elderly mother and who is herself mother of a young man addicted to opiods in southeastern Ohio. And when everyone is responsible, no one is responsible- or at least held accountable.

We're all the same in Williamson's telling, in which is everyone is either a creature of Satan or has been equally and fatally victimized.  It's the sins of the father, judgement falling upon us because of our parents.

Williamson never will be nominated, let alone be elected President, nor hold any elective office. Such individuals who believe they are ordained to lead an apology for 300+ years of sin would not deign to run for a lesser office. However, she can do real damage to the Democratic Party.

Ocasio-Cortez and Uygur recognize that not all whites are created equal; or, rather, not all develop equally. The white supremacists among us are the minority- even the current President was elected with a minority of the two-party vote.  

That is something Marianne Williamson does not, or will not, understand.  However, if the Overton Window is allowed to move starkly in her direction among Democratic candidates, it will further alienate the vast majority of American voters, prompting an issue clearly in Donald J. Trump's wheelhouse.

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Legacy Admissions, And More

On Wednesday's The View. Joy Behar stated 

Legacy admissions, which means if your parents went to Brown, or to Howard, or UP (sic), you can go. But it's interesting because the idea of legacy admissions is racist in nature and I'll tell you why. It started in the 20's to keep out upwardly mobile immigrants who had started pushing for admission to elite schools. And I think that is a very, very bad system, legacy. Why should your kid get in because you got in?

Meghan McCain, the daughter of Captain John McCain and granddaughter of Admiral John McCain, both of the United States Naval Academy, struck back, confusedly. In response, Cenk Uygur, the top Turk of The Young Turks, remarked

But back to the legacy admissions. It does go to the point that we're all making here, which is legacy admissions don't make sense. I want my kids to go to all the same schools but that's unfair, an unfair advantage for them to have when if you're poor in West Virginia or Kentucky or the Bronx or wherever you are and you worked up and you didn't have the advantages my kids had, well, then, you earned it even more, not less.

Starting out strongly, Brooke Thomas added "we don't talk about  it enough, legacy admissions are the original affirmative action, which should make liberals/progressives question the concept of affirmative action itself." However, it was not to be, because fully recognizing the role of class is unacceptable when we can lay the entire blame upon race. So Thomas, unfortunately, continued

when you think about the college application process, you gotta get those letters of recommendation, you got to do, you know, your extracurriculars, you gotta list all this stuff, the personal essay, your score, all of that. Legacy admissions- they skip all of that and still account for almost 30% at some of these Ivy League programs and only the original people who could to go the universities were like wealthy white men and so these are their descendants.

As a form of affirmative action, granting preference where it is not earned, legacy admissions discriminate against blacks (and Latinos and Asian-Americans). But it is discriminating also against whites from backgrounds which aren't privileged, especially whites who attended high schools in lower-ranked high schools, generally in economically distressed (majority-white or majority-minority) communities.  And white- and especially Asian- applicants are additionally handicapped by more conventional affirmative action programs. The sins of the fathers, failure to attend the most elite schools, should not be visited upon their sons or daughters.

As Uygur emphasized, legacy admissions are unfair. They disadvantage students based on a factor- where their descendants attended college, if at all- which they cannot possibly control. The criterion of race does the same, rendering advantages and disadvantages based upon one's descendants, the color of their skin and/or the continent inhabited by their descendants.

The current scandal alleging massive bribery schemes to secure admission of individuals to several elite colleges may strike a blow against the practice of favoring applicants based upon the academic history of their descendants.  But we shouldn't stop there. Applicants should be accepted at colleges based on who they are and what they've done rather than who their parents are

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Paving The Way

Tom Englehardt rhetorically asks

Can there be any question that, in the 15-plus years since 9/11, what was originally called the "Global War on Terror" has become a permanent war across the Greater Middle East and Africa (with collateral damage from Europe to the Philippines)?  In those years, staggering sums of money -- beyond what any other country or even collection of countries could imagine spending -- has poured into the U.S. military and the arms industry that undergirds it and monopolizes the global trade in weaponry.  In the process, Washington became a war capital...

Additionally, he notes

.... the president, as Michelle Obama indicated recently when talking about Trump’s victory with Oprah Winfrey, became, above all, the commander in chief.  (“It is important for the health of this nation,” she told Winfrey, “that we support the commander in chief.”)  The president’s role in wartime had, of course, always been as commander in chief, but now that’s the position many of us vote for (and even newspapers endorse), and since war is so permanently embedded in the American way of life, Donald Trump is guaranteed to remain that for his full term.

He could have added that Donald Trump's credibility (his legitimacy, presumably, already having been established) was enhanced when the First Lady (shoveling it, second video below) referred to him as "commander in chief" as she argued

... because no matter how we felt going into it, it is important for t he health of this nation that we support the commander-in-chief. Wasn't done when my husband took office but  we're going high and this is what's best for the country.

So we are going to be there for the next president and do whatever we have to do to make sure that he is  successful because if he succeeds we all succeed.













He will not be Commander in Chief for Michelle Obama, myself, nor probably for you because he is entrusted under the Constitution to "be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States."  That leaves out most of us. Questioning our President, we learned in junior high civics class, is our patriotic duty.  Questioning the "Commander in Chief," however, can be distorted as practically treasonous. Good thing we won't have an authoritarian in the position.

Pledging loyalty to President Trump is not surprising coming from an Obama. As seen in the video below, The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur recognizes "the Obamas don't want to rock the boat. They hate to rock the boat. It's like their least favorite thing on earth."

Not only like their least favorite thing, it is their least favorite thing, as the last eight years and the transition have demonstrated.   Uygur concedes the Obamas must be civil, even helpful, during the transition but thereafter Uygur wants

to fight back against these dangerous ideas- and again to be fair to the Obamas, it's a super tough line to walk. But you know sometimes I get the  sense from the Obamas that you know we're comforable. We tried to fight them and we did our best but we're going oto be O.K. Good luck to the rest of you.

He is

hoping that when it is appropriate President Obama speaks out and speaks out clearly and loudly... that he just doesn't retire to a corner and have the Republicans yell at him "remember, ex-presidents aren't allowed to say anything."

A sentient being the past few decades, Uygur refers to Limbaugh's warning to Obama that he not criticize Trump after the inauguration  and notes "we've seen this trick a thousand times."

Having observed President Barack Obama for over 2900 days, we have reason to conclude: good luck with that thing about ex-President Obama speaking out "loudly and clearly."













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He's Having A Jolly Good Time

"When you start a sentence with 'this is probably racist,' you should stop right there."

Priceless. And that was Cenk Uygur's reaction to Rush Limbaugh after the latter on Tuesday commented

One of the e-mails that leaked in the hack of Sony, Amy Pascal, the cochairman of Sony Pictures, in an e-mail thread back and forth, I forget who it was, she suggested that when Daniel Craig's run as James Bond is over -- and this is it, this is contractually his last film -- she suggested a new James Bond.  I'm not sure how you pronounce the guy's name.  Idris Elba is what it looks like.  Idris Elba, which is -- I can't say African-American, 'cause he's British.  African English.  African Brit.  He's black. He's from Great Britain. He was on The Wire, and he was in a British cop drama, procedural called Luther. 

Do you watch Luther?  Luther on Netflix?  I have it, I just didn't watch it.  Here's the thing, though.  James Bond is a fictional character, obviously.  James Bond was invented, created by Ian Fleming, a former spy, MI6, and James Bond is a total concept put together by Ian Fleming.  He was white and Scottish, period.  That is who James Bond is.  But now Sony is suggesting that the next James Bond should be Idris Elba, a black Briton rather than a white from Scotland.  But that's not who James Bond is, and I know it's racist to probably even point this out. 

But the franchise needs to get with it, right?  The franchise needs to get hip. The franchise needs to get with the 21st century.  That's right.  We had 50 years of white Bonds because Bond is white. Bond was never black.  Ian Fleming never created a black Brit to play James Bond.  The character was always white. He was always Scottish.  He always drank vodka shaken not stirred and all that. 

Okay, so we're not supposed to have a problem with this.  I mean, it's the movies.  Come on, we've had 50 years of white James Bonds.  We need to spread it out.  We need to be equal.  We need to be fair about this.  Okay, fine, let's play a little game.  (interruption) Jay-Z's favorite drink?  How would I know what Jay-Z's favorite drink is?  Ah, what would that be, Cristal?  Yeah. 

How about in the movie about the Obamas, 'cause there's gonna be one, how about George Clooney play Obama and Kate Hudson play Michelle (My Belle) Obama?  How would that do?  I mean, if we're gonna do this, let's imagine it.  Nelson Mandela movie, Idris Elba played Nelson Mandela and Nelson Mandela was black.  The movies can do whatever. Kelsey Grammer as Nelson Mandela. How about that?  We're just playing here, ladies and gentlemen. 

Al Sharpton.  There will be a movie, The Al Sharpton Story.  Who do we get to play Al Sharpton?  'Cause they need two or three of 'em at various -- how about Rob Reiner to play the early Al Sharpton with the bullhorn and megaphone and all that.  General Colin Powell, Colonel Colin Powell.  You know there's gonna be a series of TV documentaries or movies. Who will it be?  How about George C. Scott.  He played Patton.  I know he's dead, but what does that matter?  We could reproduce him cinemagraphically. 

How about, let's see, let's see, Condoleezza Rice?  We do a movie on Condoleezza Rice. You might be thinking that we would have Halle Berry.  No, no, no.  Scarlett Johansson. Scarlett Johansson, all she's have to do is take some piano lessons, she's got it. Scarlett Johansson is Condoleezza Rice. Michael Sam.  You know there's gonna a movie on Michael Sam.  And if Idris Elba is going to play James Bond and if that's a natural hit and that's the only way we can go and then let's see, how about Hugh Grant as Michael Sam? ...

They did it with Whitney Houston.  There was a movie in 1947 called The Bishop's wife, and it was remade for Whitney Houston called The Preacher's Wife.  Sometimes a story is just a story, but we can always make it better. We can always be more fair.  We can always be more equal about it.  So, fine and dandy.  George Clooney and Kate Hudson as Barack and Michelle Obama, and you can have Idris Elba as James Bond.

You might wonder why someone says "I know it's racist to probably even point this out" and then goes and points it out.  You'd almost think he was egging his audience on, especially as he mentions Nelson Mandela, Jay-Z, Al Sharpton, Michael Sam and, of course, Michelle Obama. To Rush's credit, he did mention one Republican, Mushroom Cloud Condoleezza Rice, and neglected to mention one of the right's favorite boogeymen, "AlSharptonJesseJackson."

Rush's apparent failure to recognize the difference between real people and imaginary characters understandably is pivotal for Uygur (as seen in the video below), Raw Story noting

“If they think they’ll get good box office returns, and he’d make a great Bond and they’d make more money — hey, Rush, we’d call that capitalism, isn’t it?” Uygur said. “I know it bothers your racist ass — that’s probably why you won’t go see the movie. But the rest of us are not like you, and we might enjoy things ‘shaken, not stirred’ at Bond.”

Limbaugh brought up the issue on his radio show earlier in the day, arguing that Bond, the fictional British spy, “was white and Scottish, period"...

“The question is, why does it bother Rush so much?” Uygur asked, before alluding to conservative reactions to the idea that Santa Claus could be Black.

“I hate to break the news to you, but Santa’s also fictional — we can make him anything we like,” Uygur said. “Yes, normally he was drawn up as a jolly fat guy who’s white. You can make him a skinny Asian if you like.”

That is the obvious takeaway from a critique of a guy who deploys race-baiting roughly as often as he changes his underwear.  (Limbaugh is on only 4-5 days a week so he'd have to do his race thing more than once a day. Most weeks, he meets his quota.)

But though he downplays it, Limbaugh states also

Now, admittedly, all these characters I've mentioned are real-life characters, and James Bond has never lived, per se, he's a fictional character.  But he was white and Scottish.  Oh, I know they're doing it with comic books.  There's now the African-American version of Annie, of Captain America coming up.

The talk show host knows why Sony is doing what Sony is doing- and it has nothing to do with a cultural sensibility Limbaugh and his acolytes would often refer to as "political correctness." He acknowledges "But the franchise needs to get with it, right?  The franchise needs to get hip. The franchise needs to get with the 21st century.  That's right."

He won't admit it, of course, because corporations can do no wrong, but he knows "the franchise needs to get with the 21st century" because its potential customers, ultimately the source of most of its profit, demand it. Sony's consideration of a black James Bond is predicated on economic considerations.  This Limbaugh dares not state explicitly because the interests of the 1% are his primary motivation. Meanwhile, he feeds his followers red meat, tossing out the names of prominent black people.

In an otherwise excellent piece in Salon, professor and author Sophia A. McClennen writes "There seems little doubt that nuance, subtle thinking and critical insight are well beyond the grasp of Rush Limbaugh."   It may seem so because on the right, the market is stronger for outrageousness and simplicity than for nuance, subtle thinking, or critical insight. Limbaugh's effort, is, as McClennon colorfully puts it, "to spit bile at his fellow citizens, constantly hurling invectives at those with whom he disagrees."

But Limbaugh never actually criticizes Sony for its decision. He knows it's money that motivates the company and he will never, ever question that motive.  The rest- albeit racially incendiary- is largely a smokescreen.











                                           MERRY CHRISTMAS


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