The Carpentariat

Jindal is out and Trump is way up

Yesterday Bobby Jindal went out — on Fox News, of course — defiantly using the same Rhodes-scholar logic with which he came in: "We cannot settle for the left’s view of envy and division." We're still not sure what the left is envious is about, for Booby rarely lectured on this. But thanks to his tireless efforts in bashing the opposition as not only depraved but wildly divisive, Gov. Jindal proved that even Christian fundamentalists can appreciate irony, although they don't much cotton to it.

So Booby, sadly, is gone. Still, as Julie Andrews taught us all as children, when the Lord closes a door, somewhere He opens a window. This He indeed accomplished working through the divine pollsters at the University of Massachusetts, who report that the undivisive Donald Trump is crushing his opposition, at 31 percent among likely GOP primary voters. Ben Carson has 22 percent. (The closest runners-up are Ted Cruz, at 13 percent, and Marco Rubio, at 9.)

It's even better than that. Trump and Carson are the only candidates whom a majority of likely Republican voters are willing to vote for — 54 percent say this of Trump; 56 percent of Carson. (Forty percent say Cruz; 39, Rubio.) Poor Jeb, poor lonesome Jeb, nearly as many — precisely half — say they are unwilling to vote for him in a primary. If one can be deader than Jacob Marley, dragging the weighty chains of the haunted establishment behind him, it is Jeb Bush.

And it gets better yet. "Which candidate," asked UMass, "do you think would have the best chance of winning the general election?" Forty percent said he of absolutely no chance whatsoever, Donald Trump, is the odds-on favorite, followed by Ben Carson — who possesses even less than absolutely no chance — at 24 percent. Thus two-thirds of the Republican primary electorate are hanging their tin foil (sorry, that was divisive: point, Jindal) on the least electable candidate since the Federalists' nominee of no one in 1820.

Where will it all end? I don't know and we can't say, given that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle now applies more to Republican politics than quantum physics. But the real fun begins in just over two months — and Republican primary voters are still living in their own, mysterious dimension.

 

The flowers will protect us?

I just saw this on MSNBC. It could be the most touching one minute ever. (I'll add only that the realist child seems to have doubts about his father's idealism.) 

 

I loved the "Papa." That's what my daughter calls me — with the same doubts. 

 

To mock or not to mock?

Kevin Drum is nervous about his tribe:

Mocking Republicans over [banning Syrian refugees]—as liberals spent much of yesterday doing on my Twitter stream—seems absurdly out of touch to a lot of people. Not just wingnut tea partiers, either, but plenty of ordinary centrists too. It makes them wonder if Democrats seriously see no problem here. Do they care at all about national security? Are they really that detached from reality?

The liberal response to this should be far more measured. We should support tight screening. Never mind that screening is already pretty tight. We should highlight the fact that we're accepting a pretty modest number of refugees. In general, we should act like this is a legitimate thing to be concerned about and then work from there.

A "Twitter stream" does not the Democratic position make. And I have heard no Democratic pols advocate anything but tight screening, suggest that we're accepting an immodest number of refugees, or act like this is an illegitimate thing to be concerned about. Still, the abysmal reality of Republican politics is that it makes no difference what Democratic tweeters or Democratic pols say.

As in the "Ebola Crisis" that never was, Republican pols will frame the Democratic position on Syrian refugees as an apocalyptic betrayal of all that is American. On Democrats' part, neither political temperance nor rhetorical prudence can preempt the GOP's clanging hysteria and cries of treason. One may mock Republicans or not, but not mocking them will in no way lessen their frenzy or the receptive frenzy of "ordinary centrists" who, in further reality, are the ones too bloody "detached from reality" to know swashbuckling demagoguery from authentic concern.

And there's not a damn thing Democrats can do about it. 

 

Irony alert

ThinkProgress headline: "NRA-Backed Legislator: We Can’t Take Syrian Refugees Because It’s Too Easy For Them To Buy Guns."

The Texas state legislator's letter to Texas's U.S. congressional delegation is just as priceless: "While the Paris attackers used suicide vests and grenades, it is clear that firearms also killed a large number of innocent victims. Can you imagine a scenario were [sic] a refugees [sic] is admitted to the United States, is provided with federal cash payments[!] and other assistance[!], obtains a drivers license[!] and purchases a weapon and executes an attack?"

See, from earlier today, my final remarks on democracy.

 

Trump's meltdowns are still selling big, says latest poll

Is there anything in American politics today more rewarding than this?

Real estate mogul Donald Trump continues to lead the Republican presidential field by a wide margin, after seeing his support dip in late October. Trump leads with 38 percent of the vote, twice the level of support of his nearest competitor, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who takes 19 percent.

The poll was conducted by Morning Consult, which is a "technology and media company that serves leaders at the intersection of policy, politics, business, and Wall Street," whatever that means. I searched in vain for MC's actual pollster — so that for you, gentle reader, I could match it to Nate Silver's grading of pollsters — and finally resorted to calling its polling operation's contact person. No, he said, MC does its own polling, which is a recent endeavor, and why I could not find it in Silver's grade book.

Let's hope its polling is embarrassingly accurate.

 

It ain't over till dat lady sings

If anyone cares,

While Gore and Hillary Clinton may not be enemies, they’re not exactly close friends, either.

So reports Politico in an interesting little piece on Al's refusal to endorse Hillary. I'll leave it to you to read why. Personally, I'm less interested in why than in cheaply exploiting the Politico piece as a conveyance for me to indulge. Everyone enjoys indulging a fantasy now and then, and my fantasy is not one but two heroically brokered conventions, resulting in Mitt (insert authentic exclamation point here) vs. Al.

Gore’s allies repeatedly dismissed questions that the former vice president’s endorsement silence had anything to do with any designs of his own on running for president…. About the only scenario anyone close to the former vice president would entertain — and even here it’s preceded by laughs, dismissals and catastrophic caveats — involves an epic collapse on Clinton’s part followed by the Democratic establishment scrambling at the last minute for an experienced replacement.

With a bit of alternative reality yearning in the voice, one of Gore’s former aides posited: "The guy who’s been the victim of Clinton scandals over the years — maybe it is his turn to be a beneficiary."

I know, I'm desperate. With Joe Biden out, I'm really desperate. And desperation leads to fantasizing. It's a relief mechanism, kinda like religion. So please indulge me, as I indulge myself.

 

Mr. Cohen, why stop at Mr. Ferguson?

Well, isn't this familiar? WaPo's Richard Cohen wastes his time on Niall Ferguson, much as I habitually waste mine on Cohen's colleagues, Charles Krauthammer and George Will:

The eminent historian and public intellectual Niall Ferguson looked at what happened in Paris and somehow saw Rome. In his column for the Sunday Times of London, he conjured up Edward Gibbon, who wrote of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon said Rome fell to barbarians who "extended the promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the innocent and the helpless" — pretty much, Ferguson says, what "we witnessed in Paris on Friday night"…. Ferguson’s language in his column approaches Trump’s.

This would be the same eminent historian and public intellectual who, back in 2013, tried his best to tangle, in a series of shockingly uninformed posts, with the eminent economist and public intellectual Paul Krugman. The latter responded admirably: "Some readers have been asking when I’m going to reply to certain rants aimed my way. The answer is, never."

Indifference takes a lot of self-discipline, which Cohen and I lack — as does Krugman, when it comes to his NYT colleague David Brooks. I would, then, love to see Cohen follow through by joining me in wasting his time on Krauthammer and Will.

 

Civil liberties take a hit in France, BUT …

In 1926, H.L. Mencken wrote that he "need not point to what happens invariably in democratic states when the national safety is menaced." He needn't have pointed it out because his readership was only a handful of years away from the Great War's crushing of American civil liberties, aa well as the subsequent Red Scare's (when some anarchist, "permitted to emit his balderdash unwhipped, might eventually convert a couple of courageous men, and that the courageous men, filled with indignation against the plutocracy, might take to the highroad, burn down a nail-factory or two, and slit the throat of some virtuous profiteer.") For the sake of the forgetful, Mencken pointed to what happens anyway: "All the great tribunes of democracy, on such occasions, convert themselves, by a process as simple as taking a deep breath, into despots of an almost fabulous ferocity."

There was more to come. There was still to come Roosevelt's internment of Japanese-Americans; another Red Scare, of the Cold War and McCarthyism; and the second Bush administration's post-9/11, "unitary-executive" swagger. None of these phenomena were particularly astonishing or unpredictable, given that as early as 1798, the Federalist Congress passed and the president signed the loathsome Alien and Sedition Acts, in preparation for war with France (and as voter-suppression measures against the Jeffersonian opposition). An almost fabulously ferocious despotism by the great tribunes of democracy has lurked since the founders' Creation.

There is, however, nothing uniquely American about these historical phenomena. In these assorted instances, American exceptionalism merely proved itself global (as our vaunted exceptionalism is wont to do). Despotic tendencies in times of national emergencies come as naturally to elected defenders of civil liberties everywhere as does demagoguery to Ted Cruz. These tendencies are impervious to geography and ideology; it makes no différence if the democratic tribune is American or French, conservative or socialist. François Hollande, QED:

[He has] called for quick action by Parliament on new legislation that would give the government more flexibility to conduct police raids without a warrant and place people under house arrest. He said he would seek court advice on broader surveillance powers. And he called for amendments that would enable the state to take exceptional security measures without having to resort to the most drastic options currently in the Constitution.

Hollande has my sympathies. There is, of course, an inescapable pragmatism at work here that transcends national security: i.e., the political element to the "quick action" he calls for. The French right will thump its tubs like a fanatical horde of John McCains. Despotic tendencies in the defense of liberty, they'll say, are no vice. To defend against even more extreme tendencies, the leftist Hollande must do what he can. Indeed, he must do what he must. A wounded nation demands it, thus civil liberties be damned. Though ominous, it is understandable — and I pity the grief Hollande is about to take from those purer of mind (and not responsible for national security).

Which brings us back to Mencken — and history. For all his condemnations of democracy and its often unpleasant tendencies, he made his peace with both — with history in mind: "Is [democracy] inordinately wasteful, extravagant, dishonest? Then so is every other form of government: all alike are enemies to laborious and virtuous men. Is rascality at the very heart of it? Well, we have borne that rascality since 1776, and continue to survive." In short, these things pass.

Unlike nearly all progressives or socialists or what have you on the left, I share Mencken's rather comical disdain of democracy — witness no more than a Trump, Carson or Cruz — and yet democracy not only survives, it survives despite itself, which is to say, generally in the right direction. It has here, and it will in France. The religiously inclined might say that democracy is a bit like drunks and children being watched over by God.

 

The Paris attacks and the GOP's truest colors

I'm still recovering from the pharmaceutical assault on my brain, which I'd prefer to be doing in bed. Before resuming that task, I couldn't resist praising President Obama's press conference in Turkey (which I was able to watch this morning before being wheeled in for what you might call a bottom-up assault) and expressing my utter disgust at Republican reaction to it.

Obama reassured the American public that he doesn't "take [military] actions either because it is going to work politically or it is going to somehow, in the abstract, make America look tough or make me look tough." This of course compelled Reince Priebus to denounce Obama's press conference as "excuse-laden," "defensive," and lacking in "resolve." Priebus further noted that he had "never before … seen an American president project such weakness on the global stage."

Why does this disgust me? I honestly don't know, for I have long since abandoned any hope for decency in the Republican Party. Nonetheless, virtually everything that bellycrawling party emits causes me intestinal rumblings far more grievous than any prep measures for a colonoscopy. Let's just say the modern GOP has a way with words — which is invariably rancid and everlastingly sickening. It's the only thing it's good at.

The party's sniping commenced within hours of the Paris attacks. Democrats joined the Bush administration in outrage at the 9/11 attack, but three days ago Republicans began unleashing their outrage on Obama. They possess no shame, no shame whatsoever. For 72 hours the party has done nothing but bash Obama for his lack of leadership and toughness, implying that the attacks themselves were — you guessed it — Obama's fault. George W. wasn't at all responsible for a domestic terror attack, yet Obama is responsible for a foreign attack.

A related word about the virtuous Frank Bruni, who by Saturday night was himself disgusted by American political reaction to the Paris attacks. "On Saturday morning," he wrote, "I read that Paris was going to be good for Republicans. I read that Paris was going to be good for Democrats…. Paris wasn’t just a massacre. It was a megaphone to be used for whatever you yearned to shout. That’s how it works in this era of Internet preening, out-of-control partisanship and press-a-button punditry." All this "both-sides" partisanship sickened Bruni. He wished to mourn instead. What personal examples of both-sides partisanship was Bruni able to cite? Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich, Judith Miller, and some right-wing idiot from PJ Media. Not one example from any Democrat, any liberal, any socialist or progressive — not any anybody except one of the right. 

I thought this should be noted. Now I'm going back to bed. By morning, there'll be a whole new batch of Republican rancidity and nothing but Republican rancidity to cope with.

 

Mitt Romney, beating the war drums - and helping to clean out my system

No blogging this morning. Instead, I'm treating myself to a colonoscopy. (Maybe they'll finally find that bug.) I'm informed I'll be "out," so there's some question as to whether I'll be compos mentis by afternoon. I suppose I could blog while still under sedation and utterly out of touch with reality — thereby attracting thousands of right-wing readers — but we'll just have to see about that. In other words, please do check back.

***

But wait. Before departing for all things colonic, I have just enough time to vomit. If you read Mitt Romney's WaPo op-ed, you'll wish to join me. His is a timely call for war, which means in the nick of time for a presidential draft.

Romney demands that President Obama stop "hedging" and instead take "meaningful steps to defend us and our allies." The first "meaningful" step, which is sure to do vast harm to ISIS, is for the president to begin "identifying the enemy … [as] radical Islamists: jihadists." No more rhetorical pussyfooting, guys. Next, Obama "must call in the best military minds from the United States and NATO," and then "construct a comprehensive strategy that integrates our effort with the Kurds, Turks, Saudis, Egyptians and Jordanians." No problem. (I recommend that Obama appoint Romney as a special envoy to "integrate" the Kurds and the Turks.)

Next up, "leading Muslim nations" must "promote tolerance and eschew violence." Now there's an innovative idea. Also, the West "must stop the insanity" of accepting refugees fleeing intolerance and violence uneschewed. "Women, children and the elderly, perhaps, but not thousands upon thousands of single young men." In reality — political reality — this means no one.

Finally we come to that which all Republican chickenhawks ultimately come to: "Only America can lead this war, and that leadership means being willing to devote whatever resources are required to win — even boots on the ground." We have boots on the ground; thousands in Iraq and 50 in Syria. How many more, Mitt? Five hundred, 50,000?

After that, what next? What of Assad? What of the Russians? What of the Iranians? What of the "integrated" Saudis who detest Assad more than Baghdadi? And what of Iraq when it's all over, seething in the same sectarian tensions?

But of course it won't be over when it's over over there. It will just be starting.

 

The Democratic debate: a stalemate?

Last night's debate circumstantially focused on foreign policy; specifically, the Middle East and ISIS. From what I could tell, there was immense disagreement grounded in seeming agreement — or was it immense agreement grounded in seeming disagreement? 

Hillary Clinton ventured that ISIS "cannot be contained. It must be defeated." (It could be argued that containment is tantamount to ISIS's defeat, since expansion is critical to both its eschatological doctrine and survival. Containment could cause its recruitment to shrivel.) Clinton added, "But this cannot be an American fight, although American leadership is essential." Martin O'Malley chimed in with respectful … disagreement? "This actually is America’s fight. It cannot solely be America’s fight." Bernie Sanders was similarly at odds with Clinton, though on the same page: "The United States cannot do it alone." 

For all their strained bickering, each was saying what the other two were saying. What each might do as president? That of course is a different matter, and must be left to the imagination — or rather abandoned to the imagination, for there was no follow up to that which Hillary sandwiched in her response:  

There is no question in my mind that if we summon our resources, both our leadership resources and all of the tools at our disposal, not just military force which should be used as a last resort, but our diplomacy, our development aid, law enforcement, sharing of intelligence in a much more open and cooperative way that we can bring people together.

What defines the "last resort"? Should diplomacy fail, should development aid fail, should law-enforcement measures and intelligence sharing and regional cooperation fail, would we then find ourselves facing the last resort of unilateral military force? The meaning of "last resort" is on the tongue of the decider. Remember, the Bush II administration said military force in Iraq was a last resort, too.  

Such discussions must be left for another day, though. For it was another Clinton remark that will be hashed, rehashed, ridiculed on talk shows and endlessly looped on television news to great amusement. There are two Hillary Clintons: There is the polished, thoughtful, fluent political player of 11 unblemished hours at the recent Benghazi hearing, and then there's the Hillary Clinton who can unravel in 11 seconds. The second Hillary made a spectacular appearance last night. I need not quote her reasoning on Wall Street contributions, women's donations and 9/11, since, as noted, it will be looped intensely for 48 hours on television and ridiculed sporadically on talk shows for the next 12 months. She might as well have said, "I want to say this to the television audience. I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service.... And I think, too, that I can say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their [prospective] president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got." That, at least, would have been more coherent. 

Was there a winner last night? Sure there was. The winner was human nature, which is to say, the losers were the two candidates disfavored by each viewer — if disfavor there was. I haven't surveyed the media's post-debate assessments much, but I can note that Vox has Hillary as the winner because she didn't lose, and Politico's Glenn Thrush believes "Martin O’Malley sort of won," but "it doesn’t matter." I tend to agree with Thrush's ambivalence, for the same reason I thought O'Malley won the Maddow "forum." He's the one with the least to lose and the most to gain; as long as he can stay in the race, that is "sort of" a win, and one never knows. (Such is my nature: skepticism and doubt with a touch of hope — which I add to my disfavoring of Clinton and of Sanders's premature socialism.) O'Malley scarcely distinguished himself last night, however, hence declaring him the winner would be a fantastical stretch. 

Even if O'Malley had won, how to overcome Hillary's daunting advantages? Bernie is asking the same question.

 

Republican reactions to the Paris attacks should give Republican parents pause

Republican parents should get down on their knees and thank God they have Obama as president. In response to the Paris terrorist attacks the U.S. will overreact, because that's what nations do — it's what they're expected to do — in response to terrorist attacks on themselves or their allies. Yet President Obama's overreaction will be mindful and thus more measured; he's likely to give more the appearance of overreaction. He will thereby save the lives of thousands of young uniformed Americans from another neoconservative nightmare of precipitous, jingoistic, short-sighted foolishness.

That, at least, is one's hope. Given Obama's history of Eisenhowerian reserve, it's not an unreasonable one. The unreasonable, the foolish, the precipitous and short-sighted we leave to Republican wannabes. And they have not disappointed.

Their reactions to the Paris terrorist attacks were swift and entirely predictable. My favorites are two. Speaking in New Hampshire, John Kasich announced that "the way you prevent these kind of things from happening is that you know they're going to happen." This revealed a Kasichian omniscience that is sadly absent in the mortal minds of Presidents Obama and Hollande. He also tweeted, in far less than 140 characters, his expansive worldview and The Ultimate Answer To It All: "We can't wait any longer. ISIS must be wiped out."

The runner-up in my favorites category was none other than that old foreign-policy hand, Ben Carson. He explained we should assist our allies "using every resource known to man" — adding, in that pixilated way that only Dr. Carson can add, that "boots on the ground would probably be important."

Carson further explained — feel free to skip this paragraph, for you knew this was coming — that the slimmer rather than broader anti-ISIS coalition in the Middle East exists "because there's no [U.S.] leadership." Of course one could argue that greater U.S. "leadership" — meaning our planes in the air and our boys on the ground — would only relieve regional coalition partners from doing their part. But I suppose that argument would trouble not the neocons. To waste a good war is a terrible thing.

Marco Rubio, being Marco Rubio, unleashed a powerful fusillade of impressive tweets: We must "increase our efforts at home and abroad, to improve our defenses, destroy terrorist networks, and deprive them of the space from which to operate." Space, in that one, unaccommodated the notation of absent U.S. leadership. Worry not. By day's end, responsibility for the Paris attacks will lie arrestingly at President Obama's leaderless feet.

Jeb Bush's remarks were the most intriguing. Brother George's dunderheadedness preempted Jeb's natural reaction: the simultaneous U.S. invasion of Monaco, Belize, and "probably" Cuba. The poor man was trapped, neoconservatively besieged by haunting familial imbecility. Jeb can't possibly propose a good war as a presidential candidate — that would be bad — so settle he must for cranking up counterintelligence. That dreadful Obama, you know, has "diminished our capabilities at the wrong time."

Donald Trump was mysteriously silent (mostly) last night, but this morning his Twittering fingers have come to life. "We need much tougher, much smarter leadership - and we need it NOW!" And "President Obama said 'ISIL continues to shrink' in an interview just hours before the horrible attack in Paris. He is just so bad! CHANGE."

Never mind that Trump's considered opinion, 24 hours ago, was that Vladimir Putin was welcome to the whole Syrian-ISIS mess, even though Trump concurrently advocated bombing ISIS's oil fields. Whatever his position might have been, Trump is now sure to become more jingoistic, for these are times that call for all that American demagoguery can give. What's more, Trump's fury at Obama's weakness and the obviously resultant Paris attacks move his Iowa meltdown to the back pages.

Were any of these clowns in the White House, we'd be boosting our 50,000 troops in Iraq and Syria to 100,000, with W.'s Iraqlike results. As it is, Republican parents should get down on their knees and thank God they have Obama as president.

 

"It remains incomprehensible still"

Writing for Politico magazine, writer and television producer Chris Whipple provides more intel on the Bush administration's pre-9/11 mindset — of criminally negligent indifference:

[CIA Director George] Tenet vividly recalls the [July 10] White House meeting with [National Security Adviser Condoleezza] Rice and her team. (George W. Bush was on a trip to Boston.) "Rich [Blee, of the CIA's al Qaeda unit] started by saying, 'There will be significant terrorist attacks against the United States in the coming weeks or months. The attacks will be spectacular. They may be multiple. Al Qaeda's intention is the destruction of the United States.' [Condi said:] 'What do you think we need to do?' [Cofer Black, the CIA's counterterrorism chief] responded by slamming his fist on the table, and saying, 'We need to go on a wartime footing now!'"

"What happened?" I ask Cofer Black. "Yeah. What did happen?" he replies. "To me it remains incomprehensible still. I mean, how is it that you could warn senior people so many times and nothing actually happened? It’s kind of like The Twilight Zone."

The real Twilight Zone is the one in which millions of Republicans believe that the Bush administration "kept us safe."

 

The "perfect" modern conservative mind, perfectly expressed

If you are a regular reader of this site, you no doubt have noticed that I almost invariably stay out of the comment section. I do so not because I don't wish to engage, but because I think it unfair of me to have the top post all to myself, and then meddle in the comment section below, which is yours. If I have been unclear, misguided or just plain wrong about something in the principal post, well, I had my chance, I blew it, and readers should have the unmolested opportunity to note it. If a comment is written out of mere disagreement with one of my posts, then I should assume I have failed to marshall a properly convincing argument. That's on me, so again, in the comment section, the disagreement should rest unmolested.

A comment came in this morning that calls not for an exception to my general non-meddlement rule with respect to the comment section. It calls instead for a countering post, which is even rarer than my meddling. I make the exception because this particular comment has manifold appeal: it is amusing, it is disturbing, and it's magnificently revealing — for it is this:

Always fun watching you lot swat away at all those annoying GOP candidates even if I have the feeling that you could simply write the insults first and then just draw the names from a hat! Even so, I am disappointed that this high-minded, critical blog has failed to comment on 'HillBilly's' repetition of an old lie from times past that she once tried to enlist in the US Marine Corps! Oh my giddy aunt, it's the way she tells 'em!

The first part of the comment is the amusing part. There is scarcely room for outsiders to hurl insults at Republicans, what with Republicans clogging the atmosphere with their own at each other. Still, I try, even though my "insults" are mere reality thrown against the wall. But let us not dwell on this, for this is not what calls for a counter-post. What does call for a counter-post is the rather disturbing and clearly revealing second part of the comment: that this "high-minded, critical blog" is blind to the faults of Hillary Clinton. (True, I have not commented on her Marine story. I have also not commented on 99 other dubious-to-idiotic things said by Republican candidates in the last 15 minutes.)

What's disturbing about that? What's so revealing? For months — nay, years — this blog has been critical of Hillary Clinton. I have criticized her as a poor politician, I have blasted her as a conniver and cold calculator, I have denounced her as a hypocrite deceiving her own supporters, and I have repeatedly offered my fears of a Hillary Clinton presidency, mostly because of her frightening hawkishness. And yet this commenter, a self-proclaimed conservative, can innocently suggest — and I do believe in the commenter's innocence — that this blog is harsh on Republicans' flaws, but mute about Hillary's.

Is that not the perfectly disturbing and impeccably revealing comment from the modern conservative mind? — one so utterly blinkered, it can witness months of Hillary-blasting yet self-honestly testify to nothing but Hillary-protectiveness?

Never have I seen the right's pathology expressed so — there is just no better word for it — perfectly. It soars beyond "epistemic closure" and meets the outer limits of an epistemological vacuum. It is a total shutdown of cognitive processes; it is 1984 doublebabble; it is a stunning blindness to all that is real, verifiable, and undeniable.

In brief, it is what the conservative mind has, at long last, come to. And it's a sad ending.

 

Trump's "rant": At least they weren't sleeping

Dear Jeb:( 

This is shock and awe, all in one "speech":

He would "bomb the shit" out of ISIS.

The "geniuses at Harvard" have endorsed his Gestapolike deportation plan.

One potential opponent is playing the "woman's card"; a very real opponent is "weak like a baby."

Another opponent (whom he recently "wished well" and now compares to a "child molester") is "pathological" and "damaged" — and leading in Iowa.

Which caused the shock-and-awer to ask, "How stupid are the people of Iowa?"

He promised to be a "unifier."

Reports the Washington Post: "As Trump skewered Carson in deeply personal language, a sense of discomfort settled on the crowd of roughly 1,500. Several people shook their heads or whispered to their neighbors."

Still, he shocked and awed them, all right.

If Trump fails to plunge in the polls after this "95-minute rant," then Jeb:( and the GOP establishment might as well go home, and stay there.