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-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
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Sunday, September 18, 2011

This morning I thought I'd died and gone to smart heaven
Posted by Jill | 2:42 PM

Four walls can barely contain this much smart


If you think you've seen Chris Hayes all over the place the last few weeks, it's because you have. Over the last year, Hayes has been doing the Rachel Maddow Training Path gig of subbing for as many MSNBC hosts as possible. When he first started appearing on television, Hayes was a walking argument against drinking too much of the Official Coffee of Morning Schmoe, but as he's become more comfortable in front of the camera, his overcaffeinated bounciness has largely been tamed into a kind of youthful puppylike enthusiasm -- or at least it was until MSNBC gave him his own show, which premiered yesterday morning at the ungodly hour of 7 AM, and today at the almost as ungodly hour of 8 AM.

It's really kind of disingenuous for MSNBC to on the one hand recognize just how ferociously smart (and yeah, ok, cute) Hayes is, clearly want to flog the show enough to make even Joe Scarborough have a REAL progressive on as a guest instead of calling that unctuous tool Mark Halperin one; and on the other hand bury him at a time when almost no one in his target audience is awake yet. But if you are one of our younger readers, and you don't yet have a DVR, get one. Or watch online. But even if you are older than the target audience, which I am, it's really worth your while to get up early and see what a Sunday morning news talk show can be when it's NOT completely populated by Beltway dinosaurs who have been spouting the same relentlessly wrong and misguided conventional wisdom for decades. I mean seriously -- does anyone still actually care what George Will says, or Cokie Roberts, or Doris Kearns Goodwin? It would be one thing if these people were using a lifetime of observation of Washington to provide insight and perspective into what's going on today. But if you've watched what Driftglass so charmingly and accurately calls the Mouse Circus lately, you've no doubt wanted to stick an icepick in your own eye and lobotomize yourself just to make Teh Moronic Platitudes stop.

It's clear that unlike conventional Sunday gasbag shows, which parade out the same Republicans week after week, followed by a panel of irrelevances primly having the vapors over President Obama daring to question his Republican Overlords, Up with Chris Hayes (a title which both snarks at and embraces Hayes' chirpy, bouncy overcaffeinated chipmunk persona) is going to be light on guests, perhaps because there are few political figures who are going to be willing to put on full makeup and go into a studio for a 7 AM live interview with a guy who sounds like he's been up all night drinking Starbucks and fueled by the tray of pastries prominently displayed on the interview table, still has another six hours in him. Still, Hayes managed to score an interview with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for his debut show, which was followed on Sunday by an expression of frustration to his special guest and BFF Rachel Maddow (who was resplendently geeky in full Nerdy McNerdlington regalia) at how you can't get these people to say anything beyond their talking points.

The panel looks like it's going to consist of a few young think-tankers and high-end bloggers, one libertarian-leaning conservative, and a token Old Guy. Saturday's panel consisted of the ubiquitous MSNBC correspondent/HuffPo political blogger Alex Wagner, liberal comic John Fugelsang, former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, and American Conservative blogger Michael Dougherty. Sunday's panel included the equally overcaffeinated frequent Real Time with Bill Maher guest Reihan Salam, the aforementioned Rachel Maddow, New York Times correspondent and former Salon writer Rebecca Traister, and Pam Spaulding lookalike Heather McGhee of Demos. The Old Guy role was played today by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (NY-8) who surprisingly didn't seem at all out of place, perhaps because he is not among the gasbags to be invited to the Mouse Circus.

There's a ridiculous amount of content packed into these four hours of weekend television, which often seem paced as if they are running at 78rpm in a 33-1/3 rpm genre. But especially when you watch Chris Hayes banter with Rachel Maddow and his young panel, it makes you remember what intelligent political discourse used to look like, before Sally Quinn came along and conducted the unholy marriage between Washington politicians and the journalists who cover them. And as a special bonus? The show is executive-produced by original Morning Sedition producer Jonathan "Smartypants" Larsen.

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Sunday, August 14, 2011

How we know that Rick Perry's ascension to the presidency has already been decided
Posted by Jill | 4:00 PM
We knew that the media were already in love with Rick Perry. Even though we've already had a theocratic moron from Texas with a full head of hair and a glad-handing manner and cowboy boots in the White House, one who took control of a country with a surplus from eight years of peace and prosperity and wrecked it with tax cuts and wars that go nowhere, the men of the media loves them some good hair and cowboy boots. And it wouldn't matter if Barack Obama were somehow able to get unemployment down to 4% in the next fourteen months, these guys want them some cowboy and they're going to get it.

Bear witness:



Let's repeat David Gregory about four minutes in, shall we?
You know, Perry talked about potentially seceding from the union. You think that's extreme. Well people on the other side think that introducing health care reform for the whole country is akin to European

And there you have what passes for punditry: Talking about the possibility of secession is EXACTLY THE SAME as thinking that people who are poor should have the same right to health care as the rich do.

Coming next: Rick Perry's saying that there's nothing we can do to fix things other than to just pray to Jesus is the very definition of strong leadership.

There's nothing to do with David Gregory except throw our hands up in the sky, say "Hasa diga eebowai", and link to some Driftglass Photochoppin' here and here.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Finally, a mushy liberal has the balls to speak the truth
Posted by Jill | 5:58 AM
Joan Walsh, who isn't exactly known for being a firebrand, puts the Wanda Sykes/Rush Limbaugh flap in its proper context (emphasis mine):
Sure it was off-color and, um, slightly out there – but that’s the point. Or it used to be. Even if I didn’t already love Sykes, my point of view would be: Once a barely elected president who started a devastating war on false pretenses can joke about those pretenses at that same dinner (Remember Bush looking behind sofas for WMDs? ) it’s hard to ever be offensive again.

There are other wince-worthy examples we never hear about: At the 1970 Gridiron dinner, according to "Nixon's Piano," by Kenneth O'Reilly, the not yet disgraced GOP president Richard Nixon and his scandal-dogged VP Spiro Agnew did a classy racist interpretive piece. "What about this 'southern strategy' we hear so often?" Nixon asked Agnew. "Yes suh, Mr. President," Agnew replied in what was known as “dialect,” adding "Ah agree with you completely on yoah southern strategy." While Nixon played a variety of songs on piano, Agnew drowned him out with his renditions of “Dixie.”

Also in that Gridiron program, a newspaper reporter sang a rendition of “Dixie Melody” with these words: “Rock-a-bye the voters with a southern strategy; Don't you fuss; we won't bus children in ol' Dixie! We'll put George Wallace in decline Below the Mason-Dixon line. We'll help save the nation From things like civil rights and inte-gra-tion! Weep no more, John Stennis! We'll pack the court for sure. We will fight for voting rights - To keep them white and pure! A zillion Southern votes we will deliver; Move Washington down on the Swanee River! Rock-a-bye with Ol' Massa Nixon and his Dixie strategy!” Hilarious, right? Move over, Wanda Sykes! Let's make room for that kind of comedy!

Does anyone honestly believe that were (God forbid) Rush Limbaugh to be the featured entertainer at the White House Correspondents Dinner, that he would tone it down? Hardly. And anyone who's ever seen Wanda Sykes knows that what she served up Saturday night was pretty weak Wanda Soup. I would question wishing kidney failure on someone solely under the category of its potential to deliver Bad Karma to oneself, but my main gripe about that line was that it just wasn't funny. Sykes made a valid point about how wishing failure on a president faced with a crisis IS wishing failure on America, and that wanting America to fail really IS something that Limbaugh and Osama Bin Laden have in common, and for the same reason: the amassing of power unto themselves.

It's really a shame that she had to throw that in there, not because it was insulting, but becuase it was a convenient hook on which too many people, (and even Keith Olbermann succumbed), could hang their Outrage Overcoats, while ignoring the sad truth she spoke just seconds earlier.

As always, Jon Stewart nails it:


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Friday, February 06, 2009

Krugman Slaps Morning Joe With Truth; Tells Obama to Get on Offensive Before Catastrophe...
Posted by Melina | 1:50 PM
In today's New York Times Paul Krugman states some pretty stark realities about the edge we're teetering on:
Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.

It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world.

I think there is a reason that Paul Krugman won the Nobel peace Prize in Economics, so I think I'll go with his view of the stimulus rather than Morning Schmoe's. Its not just that I disagree with Joe or his thuddingly simplistic and narcissistic view of whats happening, it's that we don't really have the luxury of listening to idiots seemingly nostalgic for Reaganomics. We used that up with Bush, and his plans didn't even have some destructive nostalgic past touchstone, unless you want to count the Third Reich.

I don't know if the suits at MSNBC think that its good for ratings to have these people on television every morning to spew simplistic crap, and then have someone like Krugman on to disprove it, but in terms that are maybe hard to understand at the crack o' dawn. I had to watch this a few times myself, but maybe that's just me. I think it would be better for everyone if we didn't have to start with a week of lies and propaganda before we get to the meat of this thing:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy



Krugman continues, in the face of the pundits waxing on about conservative values and how bending the truth about slumps of the past and the Great Depression"

Would the Obama economic plan, if enacted, ensure that America won’t have its own lost decade? Not necessarily: a number of economists, myself included, think the plan falls short and should be substantially bigger. But the Obama plan would certainly improve our odds. And that’s why the efforts of Republicans to make the plan smaller and less effective — to turn it into little more than another round of Bush-style tax cuts — are so destructive.

So what should Mr. Obama do? Count me among those who think that the president made a big mistake in his initial approach, that his attempts to transcend partisanship ended up empowering politicians who take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh. What matters now, however, is what he does next.

It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.


Listen to this guy; people are losing their jobs left and right in my area, and those who are secure are not spending. At some point the conservatives have to stop and decide if they want to be contrary or they want to save this country. It's that simple, because Krugman thinks that the package is too small, and that Obama is gonna have to stand up and explain to us in stark terms why it shouldn't be cut anymore...forget the friendly approach to this; we are in a kind of trouble that we can't base on stories of the past.

You can let MSNBC know what you think of Morning Joe and similar programming here.

c/p RIP Coco

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Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Look how they SMILE when they say it
Posted by Jill | 8:06 PM
Watch 3:20 in:



Have these people looked this ecstatically happy since Linda Tripp first talked about Monica Lewinsky's dress? Were they this happy when George W. Bush lied us into a war that has taken the lives of over 4000 American men and women? Were they this happy when George W. Bush sat in a third grade classroom while 2700 Americans died? Were they this happy when George W. Bush turned us into a Nation of Torturers? Hell, no. Because where the Beltway punditocracy is concerned, a failed presidency two weeks in is EXACTLY what the doctor ordered when the country is on the verge of a Great Depression. Just as long as the failed president is a Democrat. If he's a Republican, it's read the talking points distributed from the White House and STFU.

After all, THEIR jobs are safe, why should they worry about the rest of us?

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It's a happy day for MoDo
Posted by Jill | 6:29 AM
Now she doesn't have to be nice to Barack Obama anymore:
On 9/11, President Bush learned of disaster while reading “The Pet Goat” to grade-school kids. On Tuesday, President Obama escaped from disaster by reading “The Moon Over Star” to grade-school kids.

“We were just tired of being in the White House,” the two-week-old president, with Michelle at his side, explained to students at a public charter school near the White House.

Even as he told the children his favorite superheroes were Batman and Spider-Man, his own dream of being the superhero who swoops in to swiftly save America was going SPLAT!

It just ain’t that easy.

Unlike W. and Dick Cheney, who heroically resisted acknowledging their historically boneheaded mistakes, President Obama summoned a conga line of Anderson, Katie, Brian, Chris and Charlie to the Oval Office to do penance, over and over.

“I think I messed up. I screwed up,” he confessed to Couric.

He told the anchors that the man who helped make him president, Tom Daschle, had made “a serious mistake” by not paying taxes on a car and driver. (It should have been a harbinger of doom when Daschle began sporting those determined-to-be-hip round red glasses.)

Mr. Obama admitted that “ultimately it’s important for this administration to send a message that there aren’t two sets of rules. You know, one for prominent people and one for ordinary folks who have to pay their taxes.”

It took Daschle’s resignation to shake the president out of his arrogant attitude that his charmed circle doesn’t have to abide by the lofty standards he lectured the rest of us about for two years.


Because after all, sitting dumbfounded in a third-grade classroom while over 2500 people burn to death or jump out of 100-story windows is EXACTLY THE SAME as just wanting a taste of the real world that doesn't have anything to do with people like.....Maureen Dowd.

Well at least now we know for certain what makes the Beltway gasbags tick -- they're still the dumbass jocks and cheerleaders who think the smart kids with good grades are just a bunch of wussy-ass goody two-shoes.

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Thursday, January 22, 2009

It has started already
Posted by Jill | 5:00 AM
Digby: How the Assholocracy of the Washington press is already tired of its new toy and is bound and determined to lay the groundwork for a Grand Republican Restoration in 2012.

Oh, and while you're at it? Go read this post about how the Drudge spin about how much more the Obama inauguration cost than that of George W. Bush did eight years ago conveniently leaves the cost of security out of the latter.

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Sunday, August 03, 2008

Only Nixon could go to China
Posted by Jill | 10:02 PM
And only Nixon's old speechwriter, David Gergen, could sit there and tell George Suckupagus that as a native Southerner, HE recognizes a racial dogwhistle when he sees one:



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