It has gotten pretty predictable–and a bit boring. The grifters are out in force and running the same old scams. Over and over and over. The Republican Party and conservative movement in America has been completely captured by grifters. It is just stunning to see a crook like Grover Norquist with more power than anybody on the Right. He is the triumph of single issue grifter politics.
And grifters plying their trade in Democratic and/or Progressive waters are jealous of Grover and his fellow traveler wingnut bandits. It was not a surprise to learn that apprentice grifters like Jane Hamsher have been working with Grover to learn the secrets of the trade: control the message, take ownership of an issue, develop “media” contacts to carry your message, and–most importantly–cash in.
A little item published earlier today in Pravda on the Potomac (no link for them) worked hard to sell the con:
We know how this will end and that the pattern will be repeated. The issue really doesn’t matter at all. It also doesn’t matter if the con is sold with a Conservative or Progressive frame. The pattern is always the same and it is all so predictable.
A trigger is published in the media from a speculative source. It will outrage the single issue grifters. Anything that happens or doesn’t happen will will be used to pimp the urgency of their rage. Any thin reed of speculation will be sensationalized with text crafted to maximize search engine optimization, buzz and clicks. The gullible will believe the lies and give the grifters their emails and their money. Almost everything said to promote the outrage will be wrong, but that will not matter if the grifter can control the narrative. Fools will parrot their outrage talking points, give them money and some small measure of political power.
Eventually, reality will settle in and only the extremely stupid will still buy the con hook, line and sinker. But by then, the grifters will have move on to another manufactured outrage and mo money for them from the fools among us.
John is right in his earlier post. Summer is the season of stupid in America–August especially.
Today it is the negotiations on the debt. When it is resolved, a fresh appeal to fear and rage will be manufactured. The outrage industry is absolutely boring and predictable. I consider these grifters from Grover to Jane and find myself thinking of tar and feathers as I stake my tomato plants. And yet, what the world really needs is another Open Thread. Please use this one to correct all the mistakes made on the internets.
Cheers
Corner Stone
She’s pure evil you know.
And more powerful than that asteroid that was going to kill us all in the movie Deep Impact.
ruemara
Cue Obama vs DFH thread in 1…2…3…
People want to believe. They agree with me on stuff, is that so bad? Yes, because no matter how ‘liberal’ a blog or news aggregate site is, it is up to you to fact check. Outrage=eyeballs=money. Information is boring and requires work. It will be the same thing 200 years from now if we haven’t freemarketed ourselves into oblivion.
Evolved Deep Southerner
What’s with this “August sucks” stuff today? Have I missed a month?
August may be lively as hell this year depending on how this debt ceiling shit shakes out.
taylormattd
A-fucking-men.
jonst
Cue the Obama/Clinton Marketing Strategy: ‘I’m above it all….those crazy two sides down there’. Yep. Sure. This is most reliable sign that the middle class is going to take it some more in the you know what. And lo and behold, I see the average hourly wage going down this past month.
Yep….triangulation is back.
Trentrunner
So…meaningless deficit trolling and advocating contracting government in jobless, anemic recovery is not worth fighting against?
Wait…what?
Poopyman
Well summed, Dennis. Yesterday I mentioned this bit of outrage from FDL called “The Breaking point”. Note that on the right side of the page there’s a “Pledge to Protect the Social Safety Net”. Or perhaps it’s better you don’t click. Anyway, just another ask there.
Lolis
Yep, my inbox was full of fundraising emails yesterday. I even got one from NOW that said the president had proposed “deep cuts” to Social Security. No news source was provided. I can’t handle these left wings freakouts anymore. I am not giving them any of my money ever again.
El Cid
As a person who never reads either (FDL or WP, well, almost never), at least this is empirical evidence of prominent citation of Hamsher. When fruitcakes here spend every 3rd comment obsessing (abscessing?) about her/FDL, it seems more of a monster under the bed fear.
But anything the WP can do to portray liberals and liberalism as hopelessly fractured*/ wrong/ unrealistic/ anti-American/ Hugo Chavez-loving/ Saddam baby-having, they do it.
* More so than in any particular real situation…
Sentient Puddle
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
Jay B.
The jobs report is a fucking disaster — and it’s a real one, not some Summer of Sharks stupidity — the GOP is ginning up a Constitutional crisis over the debt ceiling in order to gut the safety net and everyone is still talking about “austerity” as the path to economic growth. Meanwhile, the President is useless in every conceivable way. But yes, Jane Hamsher. And Politics sucking.
kindness
I don’t think Jane is jealous. I think she really believes what she says and is horrified by conservatives. While I don’t agree with everything Jane says, I do agree with that much of what she feels (or i think she feels). The modern Republican party and their apparichniks are an abomination to man kind.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Dennis, I think you should use “The Goons of August” as a tag.
BTW, if you didn’t my comment a couple of weeks ago: After spending my entire life thinking that all of my ancestors save for the Native Americans came to this country after the Civil War, it turns out that I’ve got both a Revolutionary War and Civil War vet back there. Don’t know much about the former, but the latter was in the 17th Michigan Volunteer Infantry- the Stonewall Regiment that routed Drayton at Fox’s Gap in the Battle of South Mountain. He was seriously wounded a few days later at Burnside’s Bridge, but came back after two months and served out the war.
Take this as a hint: More Civil War posts, please. :D
SenyorDave
Grover Norquist is truly evil, and is one person to whom Godwin’s Law should definitely not apply.
And Jane Hamsher is learning her trade from that maggot? Clearly, Norquist and Hamsher deserve each other. Too bad the country gets screwed in the process.
Yutsano
On another tangent, can I haz my apple pie now plz?
Joel
I’ll donate money to FDL if they start fundraising for a pirate ship to attack the NRO cruise boat.
Downpuppy
Pirate ships are supposed to be self-funding.
jwb
I swear I saw a reply button on a previous thread.
@Corner Stone: Yes, this would all be so much better if we knew we were living an action film.
Josie
Thanks, Dennis, for this bit of intelligent discourse. All fund raising e-mails are going into my spam folder at this point and will be ignored from now on. They are all out for the dollar, and I have none to spare.
Jeff Boatright
I may be misreading you, but you seem to dismiss how successful the grifters on the right are in pushing the agendas of, for want a better phrase, their base. That is, the grifters of the right are pushing individual “outrages” that fit a larger narrative that a group of people (conservatives, reactionaries, etc.) generally subscribe to. Though painful to see and hear, the end result is a furtherance of the goals of this group.
Thus, I am not upset if the price of liberal or progressive policies eventually being enacted is the rise in fame or fortune of Hamsher or Greenwald or any of the other ‘grifters’ of the left. If the screeching of the harpies is what it takes to get people to write, call, or email their elected officials about the need to protect The New Deal or the need to enact single payer or the need to enact XY&Z, then so be it.
And you know what? There’s nothing innately wrong with that. It’s part of how a representative democracy is supposed to work. From what I’ve read, many of his contemporaries thought Thomas Paine was a charlatan and humbug, too.
RalfW
Wait, Obama is responsible for the average hourly wage going down? What’s the cause and effect relationship here?
Huh?
Joel
Even the best pirates needed a little start-up capital. Consider Francis Drake.
RalfW
So we’ll savage Obama. QED.
pika
@Joel: That made me laugh, which I needed after receiving in the mail my New York Magazine takedown of Obama. It features quotes from Romer and Summers, and from that article, better sourced than a lot of the freakouts, I am finding reason to freak out. Did anyone else read it?
pika
Gah–link got eaten:
BR
Besides the deficit-reduction nonsense that’s currently dominating the discussion in Washington (which will only hurt the economy, not help it), the real big issue is oil and energy. The economy can’t grow with oil prices this high. Period. And this is a fundamental, geological limit: peak oil. Sec. Chu knows this – he used to give talks about it before he was Energy secretary. The DOE had a great study, the Hirsch Report, in 2005 that the Bush admin tried to cover-up because they didn’t like its findings.
This is absolutely essential, and electric cars or biofuels or whatever are not the answer – no set of alternative fuels will solve this problem. (They can help, but they’re maybe 5% of the answer – not enough to make a difference in time – and alternative energy like solar, wind, etc. will only be a small part of the picture too. Not that we shouldn’t try, just that we need to understand the real physical limits we face.)
Despite how unpopular everyone thinks Carter’s programs were, they were the right approach – massive conservation, public transit, etc. I think Obama is much better at connecting with the American people than Carter, and he could come up with a 21st century version of Carter’s plan and sell it to us to get us on the right track. A massive energy plan would also be a huge jobs win. And an environmental win.
Without it, though, we’re going to see no end to the recovery that never got off the ground.
cleek
I WANT MY WAY AND I WANT IT NOW!
pika
Ok, I give up. The link button is vanishing the link. The article is titled “Something Rotten,” it’s Frank Rich’s first column, and it’s here, but you can’t click through: http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/obama-economy/presidents-failure/
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Note to the Grifter in Chief
.
.
pika
Oh, look, you can click through. Nice that my biggest commenting jag is about my failures.
jwb
@kindness: If Jane is as you say, why would she be working with Grover fucking Norquist. She should be putting shivs in him; instead she’s doing his work for him. (Nothing serves his goals better than a left attacking itself.)
El Cid
Godwin’s Law wasn’t a Law or prescriptive. It was a humorous description of what happened in comment fora.
Any more than the throwaway joke epithet (often summarized as) ‘Never ascribe to maliciousness that which can be explained by stupidity’. People treat that as though it’s a sage insight and a guide to rational analysis.
Or “unintended consequences.” As though if you don’t write down on a flowchart “hurt people” or “kill people,” the consequence is “unintended.”
‘Oh, I removed this safeguard protecting someone from death, but when I did I didn’t plan on someone getting killed.’ Unintended, Godwin’s Law, stupidity and so forth, right?
I don’t know how many evil, rat-fucking, peasant-slaughtering foreign policy programs from the US were protected from being characterized as the murderous malicious consciously planned things they were due to these 3 hack phrases.
mk387
Bravo, Dennis.
It is amuzing though to watch con artists like Hamsher.
You can then get your kicks out of reading the FDL comments on threads like those which are regurgitated over & over.
You know them all: “Obama is a sell-out”, “I’ll never vote for Obama again”, “Where’s my hope & change”, la la la …
liberal
Lolis wrote,
Yawn. As if we don’t also get the same kind of emails from Obama. I sure do.
Martin
Maybe those whale guys, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, could take that up as their new cause if Japan really gives up their whaling thing? I’d tune in to watch them siege a galtian cruise ship.
liberal
pika wrote,
I’m not sure I read it, but I read similar recent quotes from Summers.
My reaction was “Jeesus, Obama’s current crew is now making Larry f’ing Summers look good. We’re screwed.”
Southern Beale
Right, everything becomes an outrage for both right and left, and every outrage becomes a fundraising opportunity for both right and left, and every fundraising opportunity is turned into a massive ad buy.
So who is really winning? The media, of course. And you know, aren’t they the ones ginning up all of these outrages to begin with?
jl
I think we will soon see the finale of these harmful debt ceiling negotiations. I have noted that key GOP pols are attempting a synchronized pivot, like a group of exhausted elephants clumsily attempting to attempt a coupé jeté en tournant.
Note: ‘coupé jeté en tournant’ means some kind of fancy turn in ballet. I don’t know anything about ballet and looked it up in a dancing glossary, and put it in there to class up the blog.
McConnell is suddenly ‘hopeful’, and noted that Obama has suddenly done something or other (completely unspecified) that indicates he might be ready to play a Constructive Leadership Role.
And now Boehner is getting all grown-up about the importance of raising the debt ceiling.
So, maybe the trail balloons about ‘doing something’ on Social Security is some kind of BS PR ploy by Obama to make the GOP look like incoherent inflexible vicious destructive loons (which they are). I heard a report this morning that the GOP is balking at the latest really big and comprehensive long term debt reduction strategy. I guess the idea is to get as many contradictions and embarrassing statements out of them as possible before the GOP big business funders force them into line.
For the big money finance people, there actually is a looming Social Security crisis: the government will have to start paying all the Social Security trust fund money they borrowed, which they are hoping to steal instead.
It is a very odd situation where about the only major federal program that can easily be made financially sound with minor tinkering is repeatedly portrayed in the media as a catastrophic deficit issue that must be solved first, by slashing benefits.
So far, only substance I have heard reported is that the Social Security cutting proposed has been changes to the COLA.
liberal
Josie wrote,
And those solicitations from Obama?
El Cid
I don’t see evidence yet on what the administrations or leading Democrats plan to do regarding Social Security or Medicare, whether protective or harmful or not.
liberal
jl wrote,
Which is why, as a tactical matter, moves to “strengthen” Social Security which end up making inflow – outflow greater than it is currently are foolish. Why make the pot of gold they want to steal bigger?
Of course, I’m sure Martin will now chime in and explain why a cut isn’t a cut.
liberal
BR wrote,
I’m pretty sure I read that a large amount of the stuff for nascent projects in this regard is being built in China. I’m pretty damn sure that lots of CFLs are.
liberal
Tim F. wrote in another thread,
Does that make him a grifter, too?
Josie
liberal @39: I wrote all fund raising e-mails, and that is just what I meant. At this point, considering my Texas teachers’ retirement salary, they all have more money than I do.
BR
I’m not talking about supply-side solutions – I’m taking about demand side solutions. As in, using way less energy. For much of that, it’s less about manufacturing things (though we need some – insulation, etc.) – and more about changing local policies to make carpooling, public transit way way more financially worth it. Even more than that, rebuilding our rail system.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Translation – Rahm Emanuel is a sleazy and corrupt Democrat embraced by President Obama, so Jane Hamsher must pay.
.
.
eemom
@ 29
Unk, Samuel L. Jackson you ain’t.
Jay B.
@ BR – July 8, 2011 | 3:11 pm
That makes total sense to me. And I know Obama had mentioned “green jobs” a few times lately. It would transform and reinvigorate the economy while reigning in energy costs over the long term. It would help us geopolitically and allow a much greater sense of self-sufficiency while developing a stronger tech-savvy greener workforce.
You think Obama will stake his re-election on it? Obviously, nothing will happen now, but if he wanted — and the Democrats would actually coordinate a campaign which is already too much to believe in — they could actually run a campaign based on a visionary transformation.
But that would take cooperation, a vision and shared values. Plus tons of government expenditure. It’d be a great thing to support. I’m way too burnt out on these losers to think that they’d ever dare to take on something big and important because at heart, they are risk-adverse cowards.
cleek
@Southern Beale:
the grifters, the USPS, the mailing list and envelope industries.
shortstop
Damn straight! Why don’t you BJ front pagers ever address the debt ceiling, GOP safety-net attacks or the stupidity of deficit hawking? It’s not like you ever write about those! Wait, what?
BR
I think there’s a different, simpler explanation. It’s that the one thing Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives agree upon is growth. They want it. They disagree on how to achieve it, but they don’t realize it isn’t possible anymore.
We’re at the Limits to Growth.
MomSense
I loved the coupe jete en tournant reference but then I was a ballet dancer in a former life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmj8H0waXyQ&feature=related
These are not the best I’ve seen but you will get the idea. First set of turn/jumps performed in a circle.
Southern Beale
This is true. For example, Tennessee bagged a massive Hemlock Semiconductor plant which opens next year and now their suppliers are moving to the state, too.
Yeah a bunch of stuff is made in China but there’s no reason we can’t make it here, just like with everything else.
September
Politics by nature is inefficient, consensus-based. Inefficiency attracts corruption, which means grifters. The progressive movement has become a cash machine, a mirror image of Freedomworks and the like. You just replace “Tea Party” with “Netroots” and it’s all really the same.
James E. Powell
Submitting the following for open discussion: Assume the debt-ceiling is resolved in a week or so. What will the right-wing do for the rest of the summer?
different church-lady
The August issue of Balloon Juice is now on newsstands everywhere.
Yes, but let’s be fair here: Jane Hamsher is also useless in every conceivable way.
He refused to signing statement the bully pulpit. QED.
nancydarling
Southern Beale, Can you tell me if the state of Tennessee gave Hemlock any sort of sweetheart deal like tax breaks, free land, etc. This is a big topic of conversation here in your neighboring state of Arkansas. Just wondering how Tennessee did it.
novum
so, tom, i guess i’m supposed to sit around quietly and then accept any ‘deal’ which greatly impacts my life and my future, without attempting to influence it at all? am i a grifter if i call my reps and senators and tell them NO cuts to SS or medicare? i am in the wrong for sending the white house a fax saying the same thing? or calling the DNC and expressing my feelings on this.
gosh, what kind of horrible person am i for daring to express my thoughts to my elected officials about legislation that will impact me.
different church-lady
@ novum (#58): Well, it all depends: how much money did you give bloggers this year?
kc
No, you’re not supposed to sit quietly, you should CLAP HARDER for Obama!
Marc
novum: it helps quite a bit if the threats that you’re discussing are real ones and the way that they’re being characterized is true.
The professional left is currently engaged in drawing a series of preposterous lines in the sand: no changes in entitlements at all (whether these changes are actually a good idea or not is irrelevant); all government spending is good; shouting at 3 AM out the window scares away the pink elephants, and their absence is proof that it works.
Why not put pressure on the wingnuts instead?
Scott
Unk @ 29: Was that a threat to shoot the president?
Dennis SGMM
@Southern Beale
True, but who wants to be like ze Germans? I mean, all they have is a robust economy, strong labor laws, a positive balance of trade and their form of UHC. Do their CEOs have Gulfstreams? Nuh-uh! Do their CEOs make several hundred times the wage of their workers? Nuh-uh! It’s obvious that they’re doin’ it wrong.
arguingwithsignposts
@nancydarling:
Well, if it’s like most states, by promising sweetheart tax deals to the companies in a right-to-get-shafted environment.
murbella
have you seen the atheoskeptic blogstorm over Dawkins vs Rebecca Watson?
its amazing.
Tonal Crow
It sure is. Is this the 500th, or only the 499th, BJ diary going emo about Jane Hamster? How’s the ad revenue divvied up between the frontpagers here?
Anya
Kindness @12
If Hamsher was truly bothered by the psychopathic actions of the Republicans, she would have focused her ire and outrage on them. Instead, she partnered with the king of psychopaths, Grover fucking Norquest to defeat the Affordable Care Act. On top of that she uses every right wing meme to attack the President.
I don’t mind if she attacks him, when he’s wrong on issues and supports him when he fights for things that should interest a liberal, such as green jobs, infrastructure investment, gay rights and other issues. Instead, all she does is attack the President. Why doesn’t she focus that venom on republicans? She doesn’t because she’s a grifter and she knows the media will not call if she’s not a reliable Obama hater.
Dennis G.
This may be a bit off point, but FYWP. My Word Press interface is seriously fucked up. The reply to comment link is gone. A weird font has replaced a familiar one and, as always, I cannot post video.
All in all it makes it hard to respond to specific comments, but some great points were raised. The pirate ship is a nice idea, but I agree that it should be self-funding.
Dennis G.
Tonal Crow: John sends us brown liquor, but the bottles are now those small ones that the airlines and hobos use. Perhaps there is a message there that I keep missing…
nancydarling
I put up a post earlier in response to Arguingwithsignposts @64 and it got eaten FYWP. Here’s the gist of it.
Much of what passes for job creation in red states is simply poaching jobs from blue states. Since Hemlock corporate headquarters (or at least a large part of their operation) used to be in Michigan, I wonder if the plant in Tennessee is an example of this.
It’s kinda sad that blue states, which are net losers in the return of federal dollars paid in, should be losing jobs to red states which are net gainers. I’m pretty sure that Tennessee, like Arkansas, is a right to work state.
I may still be smarting from Nissan’s move to Smyrna, TN from Torrance, CA where I lived at the time.
SiubhanDuinne
Apologies if someone else already posted this (I’ll go back and check comments shortly) but the WaPo’s afternoon politics feed had as their lead headline:
(The article, which has a marginally milder headline inside, was by Felicia Sonmez, a writer whose name I have not previously come across.)
So…yeah.
@nancydarling #71: yes, Tennessee is a “right to work” state.
vernon
Christ this post is retarded.
Yeah, it’s all just a cycle on the old Outrage Machine! The one that got us all worked up so many times in the past! And remember how we all came to our senses once Obama really DID push for a public option, really DID allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, really DID take on the telecoms, really DID roll back the surveillance state AFTER ALL? Etc, etc, etc? How silly of us to get so worked up over false alarms and Hamsher-made outrages!
When I’m spending my twilight years eating dog food, I will be so grateful for all the Dems who pointed out that Jane Hamsher was imperfect (possibly fat?) rather than even thinking of rallying to oppose the biggest attack on American liberalism in living memory.
Bruce S
Carney could have put the nail in this at his press conference. He didn’t – used the word “cuts” vs. “slash.”
How could the validity of concern over this be any clearer?
Maybe it’s eleventy hundred dimensional chess, but my assumption is that if they’re that smart they’re factoring in jitters from the “base” as part of their brilliant plan, so I do not want to disappoint.
That said, Jane Hamsher’s “wing” is off my radar. I could care less about her and have felt that way since during the ’07-’08 campaign. (If people like Hamsher had their way, we’d have been saddled with John Edwards, who had the glow of Phony as far back as ’04 IMHO.) But that doesn’t mean I’m in a coma regarding the way the “center” in this deficit debate is so skewed to the Right that the White House isn’t reliable in taking my side of most economic/budget issues.
Bruce S
Maybe I’m stupid and don’t understand this post, but I went to this article in WaPo and saw no mention of Jane Hamsher, but a conference call with Bernie S, Sheldon Whitehouse and a bunch of mainstream liberal groups being vocal about no cuts to SS, etc. If that’s seen as phony outrage, it’s now completely clear to me why the Tea Party has dominated the phony “deficit” debate and liberals are trying to “hang tough” defending a “centrist” plan that conforms to the outline of a budget deal authored at the American Enterprise Institute (15% revenue increases, 85% budget cuts – it was actually up on Boehner’s website at one point.)
Unless and until the liberal base is as vocal and aggressive as the Tea Partiers, we are going to be the ones gamed. I have no idea whether “cuts” – Jay Carney’s word – means anything dreadful is actually on the table or if Obama is simply engaged in some Yoda strategy because he’s ten times smarter than I am (not meant sarcastically – he really is), but having people make noise on his left flank, when all of the “grassroots” spew has been coming at him from the opposite direction can’t be a bad thing for the President. He asked for folks to hold his feet to the fire and stay engaged to “make him do it.” Nothing is perfect, so I’m sure we can find something to criticize in the context of Bernie’s speeches and conference call. I don’t like Jane Hamsher even a little bit. But I’m not going to let myself pick nits on the left as the most appropriate response to a damned steam-roller that’s been unleashed on the Right. I don’t want to join a circular firing squad – a la Chris Hayes witless tweet – but if it’s not worth it to make noise in defense of Social Security and Medicare UNLESS AND UNTIL it’s actually been cut or cuts are being proposed by MY GUYS as part of some Grand Bargain, what the hell is worth it? Snarking Jane Hamsher on the internet? Wow – that’s a plan to strengthen the Democratic Party and build a more engaged base….
sneezy
Dennis G. @ 69:
Yeah, it’s been gone long enough that folks are devising their own workarounds. If I’ve understood correctly, Cole installed some sort of new, improved reply button, which is notable mainly for the fact that it doesn’t freakin work.
Why he hasn’t backed this change out and gone back to the old reply button is anybody’s guess. I don’t know what benefits the new, improved reply button was supposed to have, but they can’t be very important — you can only improve a reply button so much, after all.
Tonal Crow
@Bruce S. I agree. It’s up to us to keep the pressure on Obama and congressional Democrats to do the right thing. I think one of the main reasons the wingers get their way with the GOP is that they show up and shout. That’s one thing we would do well to emulate.
AxelFoley
@kindness:
Yeah, so horrified she’ll get in bed with one of the worst ones out there. LOL, gimme a break. Jane is all about Jane. She’ll do what she can to get her grift on.
boss bitch
Gah, some of you deserve to be duped. Stop sending your damn money to people who make a living keeping you pissed off! These grifters ain’t doing shit for you. You slam the right wingers as being stupid for believing what Palin and Rush tell them but you sit there and defend the grifters on the left.
AAA Bonds
I agree, coming here and seeing pages from a single archenemy blog as posts has gotten both predictable and boring.