Journalism 101: Who? Racists. What, why, and how? Racism. Where? Some busto golf club in Jersey

By A.J. Liebling
Meta-Content Generator

The congregation of twenty white racists in downtown Washington on the anniversary of Heather Heyer's murder in Charlottesville by white racists might be a good occasion to write a think piece about white racists, whether rampaging in the streets in Washington or kicking golf balls out of the rough at some pisspoor golf course in New Jersey.

But if you're The Washington Post, it's just another occasion to dance around the 299-pound elephant in the Oval Office: the indisputable fact that President U Bum is, as amply demonstrated by his own misconduct and hate speech, a racist.

The ostensible peg for the piece was the Bigot-in-Chief's stalwart condemnation of “all forms of racism,” presented by the Post as a sincere change from U Bum's previous embrace of neo-Nazi skull-crushers.  Of course, it's nothing of the sort; it's a restatement of the white apologists' position that persons on all sides (that is, both the victims and the perpetrators of racism) are guilty of racism (a term that such white racism-deniers falsely deem to include calling out racism).

How do we know this?  Because the same day's Post tells us so, in a piece by Philip Bump:

On the surface, condemning racism in any form seems noncontroversial. Of course racism should be condemned. What makes Trump’s comments questionable, though, is that it goes out of its way to include a condemnation of “all types” of racism, instead of simply condemning “racism.” By pointedly adding “all types,” he’s implicitly raising the question of which types of racism might be overlooked unless they were included. And a natural answer to that question is perceived racism against white people.

So we shouldn't have been surprised that we also read in the same day's Post that the gaggle of loser white racists herded into a little ball by DC police for their own protection claimed their hate fest was in fact a rally for “white civil rights.”

Why not call out the Bigot-in-Chief as the racist he is?  The analysis in question carefully takes into account all factors other than the truth.  He hired Omarosa!  (And then called her a “lowlife” in a classic white racist aspersion of the moral character of a person of color.  By Tuesday she'll probably be a “thug.”*)

Also a white cracker from South Carolina who channeled his unjustifiable rage and entitlement into an effort to reverse the 1996 Presidential election on the basis of lovin' says that the Tangerine-Faced Grifter doesn't have a racist bone in his body.  Tell us more, Lindsay Graham: “Graham, who spent considerable time at Bedminster over the past week, added: “It is how you react to him. It is not the color of your skin, it is not the content of your character. It is what you say about him.””

“In an event with racial overtones . . . ”

Well, that's enough for the objective journalists at The Washington Post to conclude that the issue is in doubt.  Their effort to obfuscate the obvious is aided enormously by their failure to provide the context needed to decode the screeching whistles that his adoring white mobs understand.  The Post hacks dutifully remind us that U Bum began his campaign by announcing that Mexico was deliberating exporting his rapists and criminals to the United States, a classic racist trope enjoyed by all white folks gathered together in a lynch mob.

The piece also recalls U Bum's slurs against distinguished politicians and sports stars of color on the ground that they are stupid.  If you can't decode this classic slur as a racist attack on the supposedly inherent inferiority of black people, then we've got a bell curve to sell you, not to mention a whole bale of justifications for slavery and secession.

To white folks with even a lima bean of wit, and all persons of color, U Bum's performance indubitably marks him as a racist, but the Post hacks will go no further than to note that “Trump’s racially charged statements continued to draw backlash.”

What could the Post be so afraid of?  Failing to describe reality as it is does not make it one whit less likely that white racists and U Bum apologists will continue to rail against media that publish fact-based reporting.  We'll dare to go further and say that the failure of real journalists to call out the Grifter-in-Chief's racism provides cover for bad-faith white supremacist platforms, like Fox News, to claim credibly that if you think the Traitor-in-Chief is a racist, that's a defect in your character, to borrow Sen. Blanche duBois's formula.

In any event, it degrades journalism and public debate to pretend that there are two sides to the debate over whether Germany invaded Poland in 1939.  There's only one objective way to cover racism, whether articulated by two dozen white losers in Washington or one obese white grifter at his busto golf course, and CNN's Michelle Kosinski shows us how:

*UPDATE, August 15:  We were so close!  By Tuesday, she was a “dog.”

Whatever happened to Condoleezza Rice? Not much.

By Henry Cabot Lodge
Diplomatic Editor

Whatever happened to Condoleezza Rice, no one has ever asked.  You may remember her as the Bush Whisperer who watched football games with clueless W. whilst his evil henchmen lied us into a bloody war in Iraq that resulted in thousands of dead and wounded Americans, not to mention hundreds of thousands of casualties suffered by the surprisingly ungrateful Iraqi civilians.  You may also remember that she stood by helplessly throughout the entire pre-war process, despite the fact that she was only – [checks notes] – the National Security Adviser, charged with superintendence of all military and diplomatic business.

Anyway, to her credit, she's been largely silent since she disappeared from public life, distinguishing her from renegade Bush coatholders, apologists, and flacks who have now reinvented themselves as anti-U Bum scolds (Hi, Ana, David, Billy, Steve, Nicolle and Max!) and even the valiant few who still dispense the same creaky prevarications in an increasingly desperate attempt to prop up Weekend Bernie, or as it is more formally known, the Republican Party, like Marc.

Georgia is still on Condoleezza Rice's mind (or conscience)

But the strain of not saying dumb sh** was apparently getting to her, because she deployed her considerable skills at confabulation in today's Washington Post, to defend one of the smaller catastrophes on her watch: the abandonment of Georgia, which gave Vlad the Invader the idea that he could seize pieces of other countries with impunity.

We know that you don't give af about a little republic in the Caucasus Mountains, but as it was one of the three places in the world W. could go without fear of receiving a barrage of shoes, the Republicans were fond of it.  Vlad, who doesn't seem to regard the breakup of the former USSR as irrevocable, had snatched two pieces of it via his little green men: Abkhazia and South Ossetia.  W., preoccupied with lavishing the benefits of democracy, in the form of an Iran-backed Shiite theocracy, on the surviving populace of Iraq, did nothing.

Recently Robert Kagan, one of the old Iraq war hellhounds, reminded us what happened:

Ten years ago this week, Vladimir Putin struck one of the first major blows when he sent Russian forces into South Ossetia in neighboring Georgia in support of Russian-backed separatists. The Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, fearing a full-blown invasion, ordered his troops to attack, thus springing Putin’s trap. Using the Georgian attack as a pretext, Putin launched that full-blown invasion, with tens of thousands of troops, fighter aircraft and elements of the Black Sea Fleet all pre-positioned and ready to move the instant Saakashvili acted.

The five-day Russo-Georgian war was ostensibly fought over disputed territories, but Putin’s real purpose was geopolitical. Georgia, like other former Soviet satellites and republics, was seeking to integrate into the West economically and politically, and to gain Western protection from Moscow. Fearing Putin’s reaction, NATO that spring had refused to offer Georgia even a road map to membership in the alliance, but Putin moved anyway — to punish the Georgians, to warn others and to send a clear message to the West. Russia was going to reassert its hegemony by force.

The West’s response bordered on indifference. The administration of George W. Bush, which had championed Georgia’s appeal for NATO membership, wanted little to do with the crisis. . . .

Bush did not even levy sanctions. The United States provided humanitarian assistance but refused Georgian requests for military equipment. Bush let French President Nicolas Sarkozy negotiate the cease-fire, and Sarkozy . . . made a deal that left Russian troops on Georgian territory, where they remain today. Just as the British and French blamed the Czechs for provoking Hitler in the 1930s, Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice blamed Saakashvili for “letting the Russians provoke him,” even while acknowledging that the attack was “premeditated.”

The recitation of this sad history (omitting the fact that with the United States hopelessly bogged down in a useless war in Iraq it had no military forces available to offer the beleaguered Georgians or threaten U Bum's BFF) was too much for the ordinarily pliant Ms. Rice.

Her pained response confirmed every point of the original column: the US had acquiesced in the Russian seizure of Georgian territory, she told Georgia that the US would not lift a single drone to protect the Georgians from Russian aggression, and the Georgians should just be glad that the Russians only wanted the Sudetenland and not the whole enchilada.

She concluded her stirring defense of Bush Administration inaction and ineptitude thusly:

We could not deter Moscow in this case. But we did act, and Georgia survived. It is still a sad story — and perhaps Putin did take the wrong lessons from it.

That's your best defense?

Fortunately the rest of us can take better lessons from it.  First, neither Ms. Rice nor any other W. henchman or Iraq warmonger should ever be allowed to take a responsible position relating to the formation and execution of US foreign policy.  Second, the next time Republicans tell you that Putin is our friend or that we should fritter away our military strength and international credibility in a war against a country that presents no real threat to the United States (like Iran), we should tell them to go paint their toes and leave international affairs to the adults.

Third, for a failed integrity-free W. minion and Iraq War prevaricator, Condoleezza Rice is a hell of a a piano player.

Why We Fight, Chapter 94,340

SHEBERGHAN, Afghanistan — The top commander of the Islamic State in northern Afghanistan stood behind a lectern decorated with the shield of the Afghan government’s powerful intelligence agency.

On his left was the police general in charge of the province. Arrayed behind him was an assortment of other dignitaries: police, army, political figures. An attendant put a bottle of mineral water nearby, in case the intense heat made the commander thirsty.

This is how the Islamic State commander, Maulavi Habib ul-Rahman, began his “imprisonment” on Thursday. Along with 250 of his fighters, Mr. Rahman had surrendered the day before to the Afghan government in the northern province of Jowzjan, to avoid being captured by the Taliban.

He thanked his hosts and, in a scolding tone, warned them to stick to the deal they had just made. “Provide us with personal security as well as stay loyal to the commitments made between us so it prepares the ground for others who fight against the government to join the peace process,” Mr. Rahman demanded from the dais. . . .

If they were prisoners, however, it was hard to tell. The government arranged for them to stay in a guesthouse in the provincial capital of Sheberghan. Guards were posted around it not to keep the insurgents in, but to keep their potential enemies out, according to the provincial governor. Although the fighters were disarmed, they were allowed to keep their cellphones and other personal possessions.

In the guesthouse, the Islamic State fighters celebrated their good fortune, hugging and slapping one another on the back. One of their commanders, Mufti Nemat, wearing a pink shalwar kameez and a knockoff of an Apple watch and holding a satellite phone, fielded calls steadily between giving interviews. . . .

Some of the police officers were angry. “Why didn’t we just let the Taliban kill them, instead of treating them like honored guests?” one officer said.

 . . . .

The dubious nature of the Islamic State surrender has proved a propaganda bonanza for the Taliban, which began an offensive with thousands of fighters about a month ago to wipe out the Islamic State group in the north. All of their fighters have now surrendered, been captured by the Taliban or been killed, according to Mr. Nemat, as well as government and Taliban spokesmen.

Much was made by the Taliban and by the government’s critics here of the mode of the Islamic State prisoners’ arrival in Sheberghan. They were ferried from the battlefield in Afghan Army helicopters, avoiding a potentially dangerous journey on the roads.

. . . .

After watching television footage of the prisoners being fed rice pilaf with meat and vegetables and bottled water, Abdul Hamid, 52, was infuriated. Along with some 10,000 other people over the past two years, he had fled Darzab to a squalid life as a displaced person in Sheberghan, where meat is an unimaginable luxury.

“We lost everything to Daesh, and now the government sends helicopters for them from Kabul and brings them here and gives them rice and meat and mineral water, and provides them with security, and we are not even able to find food,” he railed.

The governor of the province, Lutfullah Azizi, said any crimes would not be overlooked. “We welcome them if they accept Afghan law,” he said. “But those who committed crimes, if there is any documentation or proven complaint against them, they will be punished.” He added that “hundreds” of complaints had been lodged against them during their years in power.

Many of the Islamic State’s crimes are well documented in their own Facebook and WhatsApp posts, with videos of them burning opponents alive, stoning people to death, training children as fighters, and shooting bound prisoners.

They also took credit previously for the killings of six workers from the International Committee for the Red Cross last year, an atrocity that was part of the reason the Red Cross has suspended much of its operations in northern Afghanistan.

On April 15, “they beheaded a 12-year-old child on an allegation of cooperating with local police,” said Baz Mohammad Dawar, 32, also a refugee from Darzab. “They committed hundreds of crimes including raping women and girls, enslaving women, killing and beheading.

 . . . .

– The New York Times, August 4, 2018

A Spy book exclusive: the wisdom of Brett Kavanaugh

Here's an exclusive excerpt [How can it be exclusive if it appeared in today's New York Times? – Ed.] from Brett Kavanaugh's long-awaited memoir, Principled Jurisprudence for Dummies:

More summer reruns from the usual suspects

By A.J. Liebling
Meta-Content Generator

Those of us old enough to remember “picture tubes” will recall that summer was known as the season of reruns on network TV.   When there were only three or four channels and viewership declined, the three networks would simply rerun episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies on the theory that if you were stupid enough to watch it the first time, you'd watch it again.

And they were right, because there wasn't anything else on, unless you wanted to watch Frank Malzone take his swings against the Washington Senators.

With 500 million channels now on offer, networks have grown hungrier, so reruns have been replaced by cheap reality TV like talent shows, buff guys and girls climbing walls, and the Helsinki summit.  At least it's first run stuff.

The newspapers are apparently a different story, because they seem to love rerunning the same lame crap over and over again.  In today's New York Times and Washington Post, you can, um, enjoy reruns of two of the print media's longest-running hits:

1.  Dems in Disarray; and

2.  Middle of America's Wild Trump Supporter Kingdom.

There it was the lead story in the Sunday New York Times, at least in the lamentable early edition that reaches the front steps out here in the wilds of Massachusetts:

Far to the left, eh?  Cue audience: “How far to the left is it?”

Why do you ask?

We read on, eager to find out what crazy far-left ideas these Democrats were pushing?  As National Lampoon used to speculate, was it taxing bowling balls?  Giving Puerto Ricans three votes each?  Or was it ideas that Republicans had smeared as far-left for decades, until somehow they weren't, like universal health care, gay marriage, equal treatment for trans people, or legalizing marijuana?

Despite the torrent of verbiage, the poor reader never finds out what wild ideas these crazy-ass Democrats are pushing.  Apparently the fact that some of them are young, female, brown, Latina, Muslim, or otherwise reflective of the true diversity of America is far left for a newspaper that never acknowledged the existence of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez until she, um, won an election in the Bronx.

The article does make a half-assed effort, although it's too ashamed to say so explicitly, to tar two ideas as the second coming of Emma Goldman:  single-payer health care (known to those over 65 who are entitled to it as Medicare) and folding the out-of-control ill-managed immigration enforcement machinery back into the agency that was in charge of it prior to 2003.  And we all remember what a Communist nightmare that was.

The fact that some Democrats run as progressives and others as moderates depending on their tendencies and the appetites of their districts would be as newsworthy as the excretory habits of wild bears except that the Times is desperate to push a story of Democrats at each others' throats.

The only problem: the Democrats won't play ball.  Ocasio-Cortez has refused innumerable times to rubbish the older generation of Democratic leaders, and for the most part more elder and moderate Democrats are trying to make nice with the progressives, because all segments of the party, with the exception of alter kocker Joe Lieberman, understand that the future of the Republic depends on Democratic success in the midterms.

At bottom the Times is trying to incite fear and outrage over some Democrats running as Democratic Socialists, or, in other words, the branding used by every mainstream left-wing party in Europe.  Last we looked, none of those countries were run like a collective farm.

If the Times is really looking for ideas wildly out of the political mainstream, perhaps it would do well not to patronize energetic young progressives like AOC.  Instead, it might take a gander at the other supposedly mainstream political party, and its not at all extreme ideas like abolishing birthright citizenship and due process, destroying what's left of our planet, slashing the social safety net to ribbons, including food stamps, denying women access to family planning services, turning schools into free-fire zones and transforming government into a get-rich-quick scheme for Republican hacks, including President U Bum.

Those seem like pretty far out ideas to us, even if they do come out of the mouths of white men.  And their Russian girlfriends.

Speaking of far out of the mainstream ideas, let's glance at the second big summer rerun: what do U Bum supporters think about the treasonous bigot now?  We last dissected this chestnut, three weeks ago.  Last week, though, The Washington Post gave us the Jersey Shore edition, featuring young conservatives supposedly struggling with their stalwart support of of the Grifter-in-Chief.

After 500 days of a flaming circus clown car running in circles, has the faith of these young deplorables in their Grifter-in-Chief been shaken, or at least stirred?

If you've read the previous dispatches from whitest America, reader, you know the answer:

Most see Trump as an imperfect means of implementing their favored policies. They’ve been pleasantly surprised by what he has delivered: Gorsuch, the tax law, deregulation. They wish Trump wouldn’t tweet like that. Almost none cared about special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into possible Trump campaign-Russia collusion. . . .

For young conservatives, it became clear to me, the problem with Trump essentially boils down to his meanness. 

It's not the corruption, the treason, the lying, the destruction of the environment, the racist assaults on immigrants and persons of color, the destruction of the postwar liberal order, or the effort to further immiserate the poor and direct all social rewards to a tiny white plutocracy.  These young thought leaders are copacetic with all that.  They don't like the meanness.

The safari leader, one Eliza Gray, tells us that these splendid young Trumpistas are troubled or suffering from buyer's remorse, but not a one of them seems to have the wit or character to say that the Tangerine-Face Grifter is an evil cancer on American democracy or even that they will not vote for him in 2020, should we live that long.

Do today's young conservatives still love U Bum?
Wtf do you think?

The guy who paraded around his college with a cardboard wall (an unequivocal symbol of racism and bigotry, if you came in late) and the gal who grew up poor in Chicopee but managed to attend Mount Holyoke thanks to the taxpayers of Massachusetts (that's me) and the liberal alumnae of MHC may not be “gaga” about President U Bum, but they're still gaga even as they cash in on their loathsome views by working for dark money funded reactionary websites.

And lest you think that the intrepid Ms. Gray interviewed 50 young white people, in fact she found 2 (that's 4%) people of color willing to support the Traitor-in-Chief and his works, one of whom is the son of Obama aide Susan Rice.  She must be so proud!  We're not going to dwell on their particular grievances, but suffice it to say that people of color, like at least 63 million white folks, can hold horrible political views.

None of what any of them says makes any sense at all.  Take the guy who gained attention by “us[ing]  theatrics to get students’ attention — like building six-foot-tall digits to represent the $21 trillion national debt.”  So why does he support the party that rammed through a $1,500,000,000,000 tax cut for the rich, financed by borrowing from our children and grandchildren?  It's hard to avoid the conclusion that today's youthful reactionaries are interested in getting attention, but in paying attention – not so much.

There's a lot more but really none of it adds up to anything worth reading, and of course, the author never tries to probe how it's possible to approve of U Bum's hateful and corrupt views while disliking their expression.  She claims conservatives are fond of young faux-intellectual Ben Shapiro, who tries to use “cognitive dissonance” in a sentence.  But there's no cognitive dissonance between an anti-democratic ideology of hate, bigotry, and misogyny on the one hand and expressing that hate in terms that even the meanest and most vindictive intelligence can grasp.

The only thing this piece makes clear is that the Bigot-in-Chief has succeeded in grabbing 50 more young pussies.  

This just in: Queen Elizabeth to abdicate

By Madeline Bassett
UK Correspondent

Queen Elizabeth shocked her subjects today by announcing that she would step down as their Queen, effective August 1.  According to the Queen's lengthy instrument of abdication, she told the United Kingdom that she “just can't f***ing take it anymore.”

The last straw, according to Her Majesty, was being forced by her Government to stand in the hot sun and be slagged off by U.S. President Donald J. Trump, whom the Queen described as a “f***ing clueless idiot.”

Media reports of U Bum's disastrous visit explained that he committed several serious breaches in his short visit to Windsor Castle, including showing up 15 minutes late whilst the Queen, aged 92, stood in the hot sun.

“He's what my cousin Louie used to call a real bulvon,” The Queen said.

Her statement recounted her long and dutiful service to her country, beginning with Britain standing alone against Nazi barbarism in 1940.  “I can assure you,” the Queen said, “that my father, mother, sister, and I did not dodge Schickelgruber's bombs during the Second World War so that I would be forced to debase myself and my realm by entertaining a wicked golem like Donald Trump.”

“I put up with losing the empire.  I put up with reducing the monarchy to a reality TV show.  I even put up with my idiot heir.  But sucking up to a Tangerine-Faced Grifter?  I am now so f****ing done.” 

The Queen has told her heartbroken subjects:
“If anyone wants to reach me down here after I
leave Britain, just dial 1-800-SOD-OFF”

“Can you imagine what Winston would have said if he saw how I was being treated by that grotesque grifter?  If he had been at Blenheim he would have cracked a magnum of Pol Roger '37 over that hideous combover,” Her Britannic Majesty said.

“I have put up with untold scores of grotesque Americans over the decades,” her statement continued.  “I had to have dinner with Richard Nixon.  Let me tell you, that guy was like Cary Grant compared to Donald F***ing Trump.  And we had to detail two equerries to help George W. Bush find his way to the loo.  But at least when you had a conversation with him you didn't feel like you were about to blow your bangers-and-mash.”

Her bill of particulars against the Grifter-in-Chief was long and terrible, but a few samples will suffice:

- “Not only did he keep me waiting 15 minutes; he couldn't even walk 100 yards in review of the honor guard without shoving me out of the way like I was the Prime Minister of f***ing Montenegro.”

- “I understand that he can't bow because it would cause his huge gut to spill out of his trousers, but then he shook my hand.  I suppose I'm lucky he didn't try to grab my p****.”

- “ He asked me why I didn't put that tar-baby Mayor of London in the Tower.  I had to explain to him I don't really control who gets sent there anymore.”

- “At the end he invited me to come play golf at his pisspoor course up in Scotland somewhere and said he would comp me the greens fees, but that I'd have to pay the cart rental because it's Eric's franchise.”

The abdication statement also referred to her post-reign plans: “I'm pleased to announce that I've been given a 10-million-quid advance for my memoir. I guarantee you – it's worth every penny.  Wait until I tell you about Bill Clinton and the scullery maid at Balmoral.”

Her Majesty said she would use the advance to buy herself an estate in the British Virgin Islands where she said she planned to lie in the sun and drink gin.  She concluded the instrument of abdication with the traditional valedictory of departing British monarchs:  “Bye, bitches!”

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