July 26 Open Thread: Media Falls for Yet Another GOP Stunt

Filed in National, Open Thread by on July 26, 2018

Media fecklessness has been on full display since yesterday as outlets fell over each other to breathlessly report that the Freedom Caucus moved to impeach Rod Rosenstein. Very few of them bothered to point out that it’s a mostly symbolic effort with no chance of succeeding, or that it was done mostly to get Jim Jordan’s name in the headlines for something other than pretending he didn’t know about all the nutsack-fondling in the Ohio State wrestling program.

David Cay Johnston has been reporting on Trump since the ’80s, when Johnston worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Trump was getting into the casino business. So when Johnston says, as he did yesterday, that there are a lot more payoffs for affairs than those we know about, he’s almost certainly right. Some of them, Johnston says, are “brand-name women,” meaning women whose names the public would recognize.

Kirsten Gillibrand is the Kathy McGuiness of national politics, a weathervane who changes positions depending on the wind direction. The New York Times profiles her sprint leftward. “Labels are hard,” Ms. Gillibrand said in a wide-ranging interview about her agenda. “But I’m comfortable with ‘populist.’” I’d say “chameleon” would be closer to the mark, though it should be noted that only squid and octopi can change colors as quickly as Gillibrand has.

How scared are Republicans about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Watch Meghan McCain’s now-viral panicked freakout on “The View” to get some idea. She babbles every right-wing trope about socialism, shouting over her colleagues until they cut to commercial. Too bad Whoopi Goldberg didn’t remind the audience that Meghan’s mother is worth $200 million that Meghan stands to inherit someday.

Anybody with two brains cells and a synapse has figured out Trump’s MO by now: Talk big, then chicken out. Fortunately, that sometimes works in everybody else’s favor, as it did yesterday when Mr. Tough Guy backed down from a trade war with the European Union. Sadly, he was not punched in the mouth, which is what he’s needed since he was about 14.

Conservatives love to rail against alternative energy, mainly that it shouldn’t get government welfare. Guess what? The amount alternative energy gets is dwarfed by the largesse shown to fossil fuels, which this study pegs at $20 billion a year.

Quote of the day, from comedian Lewis Black:

What I’ve always said about the Democrats is that, if they’re given a sword or a spear, instead of using it their immediate instinct is to fall on it.

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