Read This

The editors are at Rolling Stone are sadists, so they assigned Matt Taibbi to do a review of the new HBO hagiography of Senator John Sidney McCain III's life, and he is brilliant and savage:

I hope my editors boil in oil in the afterlife for asking me to review John McCain: For Whom the Bell Tolls, the new HBO doc that premieres Memorial Day and stars David Brooks, Henry Kissinger, George W. Bush and a succession of other wax-museum escapees who line up to evade and prevaricate about things McCain-related and not.

The review copy might as well have been titled, Go Ahead, Say Something Bad About a Terminal Cancer Patient. I felt like a monster 20 seconds in.

It is a beautiful take-down, with quotes like this:

So McCain brought in Sarah Palin, who was a hell of a change, all right, with the IQ of a cheese-wheel – she made Dan Quayle sound like Spinoza. McCain's campaign was cooked from that moment, because as the months passed, he couldn't conceal his growing contempt for his own decision, leading to a fracture within the party that has persisted to this day.

This review is a thing of beauty, and you need to read the whole thing.

Tweet of the Day

The lot pic.twitter.com/BWzS6fMNMU

— Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) May 17, 2018

Cynthia Nixon is campaigning at a subway platform.

This is the same subway that Andrew Cuomo has been under-funding for years.

This is what they are handing out to would be subway passengers who are wondering why their train is late ……… Again.

Nixon is a long shot, but it does look like she will be putting the kibosh on his Presidential aspirations.

H/t naked capitalism

Tweet of the Day

Unveiling slogans of #RealDemocrats for 2018 pic.twitter.com/OAhjtWkHVn

— 🌐IPM 💯🏧💍🌈🚀🚩 (@IPM_Prime) May 9, 2018

It's actually a tweet storm, and here are the a few more images.

The basic thesis is that the Democratic Party electoral motto, at least as put forward by the DNC, DCCC and DSCC, of, "Vote for us, we are marginally less contemptible," is not a way to win hearts and minds.

Capitalizing on the weak points of one's opponent is good tactics, but if you don't go beyond this, you have no strategy

My Childhood Is a Lie

Someone just did a quantitative analysis of Captain James T. Kirk, going through all the episodes of the original Star Trek, and rather than being the promiscuous and reckless character parodied in Futurama's Zapp Branigan, he turns out to be a lower key and far more cautious figure:

………

We reach the point of no return when the omnijerk (really I suspect there’s just one vast eldritch horror sitting in another dimension that extrudes its thousand tentacles into our own, and that each one of This Guy is merely an insignificant manifestation of the beast: they couldn’t all be so boring in precisely the same way by chance, surely) decides to voice some Dinner Party Opinions on original-series Star Trek. God knows why. It’s not five seconds before he’s on ‘Kirk and the green women’. He’s mocking the retrosexist trope, but smiling a little weirdly while doing it. His own insufficiently private enjoyment is peeking out, like a semi-erection on his face. A sort of Mad Men effect: saying, “isn’t it awful” and going for the low-hanging critical fruit while simultaneously rolling around in that aesthetic and idea of masculinity. Camp, but no homo!

“You’re thinking of Pike,” I say. “The captain in the unaired pilot. Some of that footage got reused for a later story, which made Pike into a previous captain of the Enterprise. And it never actually happened—it was a hallucination sequence designed by aliens who didn’t know what they were doing in order to tempt Pike. He rejected it.”
………

His [the loudmouthed boyfriend of a girl invited to the party] was a common enough error, and he can claim neither the credit nor the blame for the invention. The pop culture idea of Kirk, Captain of the Enterprise for the first Star Trek series (ST:TOS) and the original run of films, has become almost synonymous with Zapp Brannigan from Futurama. To quote Wikipedia,

[t]hough famed for his bravery and strategic genius, it soon becomes very apparent that [Brannigan] is sexist, vain, and often very cowardly and inept. […] Brannigan is also completely indifferent to military casualties. […] He is arrogant, completely incompetent, chauvinistic, and stupid.

Brannigan is supposed to be part comic exaggeration of the “real” Kirk, part reflective take-down of the source character ^[1] . Per wiki, in some ways the ultimate aggregator of the vox populi, “Kirk has been noted for ‘his sexual exploits with gorgeous females of every size, shape and type’ ^[11]; he has been called ‘promiscuous’ ^[66] and labeled a ‘womanizer’ ^{[67] [68]}.” (Note all those still-working footnotes for fan-publications and major papers and entertainment news sites.) The article “Captain Kirk’s 8 Most Impressive Love Conquests” gives us such bon mots as these:

For three glorious seasons, Star Trek‘s Captain James T. Kirk boldly seduced and explored women no Earth-man had been with before. Well, okay, some of them were from Earth, but Starfleet’s greatest discovery was that no women anywhere in the cosmos could resist the intense gaze and oft-exposed, tanned pecs of the Enterprise’s head honcho. Who can blame them, really? Of the many, many seduction [sic] committed by James T. Kirk, here are the 8 most impressive (not most exotic, which would totally include the green Orion Slave Girl, but this doesn’t, because Kirk had no problems getting under her Orion’s belt), which deserve to be recorded in the Captain’s Log for all eternity.

What follows is an inventory of Kirk's actual behavior, which is far milder, particularly by the standard of 1960's television, than I recall:

Let’s start, as people so often do, with those infamous Green Women.

Yes: one existed in ST:TOS. Sort of. It was a vision. On a planet Kirk wasn’t even on. A captain was there: it wasn’t Kirk. Captain Pike and this green, Orion woman ^[2] could literally never have done the deed ^[3].

(ADDENDUM: I should also mention here the first and only actual Orion woman we see in TOS, Marta: an inmate of an asylum who attempts to seduce a suspicious, wounded Kirk, who is himself interested in escaping dangerous captivity. She then immediately tries to murder him. Ah, l'amour.)

Over the course of three seasons and six films (though I hesitate to mention the films in the same breath as the series, because even the initial run of films represents a significant, reflexive re-working of the original material), we do meet some women Kirk has had romantic relations with. These previous relationships mostly seem of a type.

• Ruth (“Shore Leave”) was a college girlfriend of Kirk’s while he was at Starfleet Academy. The script implies she was also in Starfleet. We see only a facsimile of her.
• Dr. Janet Wallace (“The Deadly Years”) was a biologist, and she and Kirk broke up in favour of their respective careers.
• Janice Lester (“Turnabout Intruder”) was a Starfleet-trained scientist. Their relationship lasted at least a year, and was strained and broken by Janice’s violent resentment of Kirk’s ability to benefit from institutional sexism (check the tapes, I’m not exaggerating, that’s what she says).
• Areel Shaw (“Court Martial”) was a dedicated JAG attorney.
• Carol Marcus (The Wrath of Khan), retconned into the history of Kirk’s life by the films, was a brilliant, ground-breaking scientist. In one draft of the script, this character literally was the aforementioned Janet Wallace ^[4]

At some point during his time at the Academy, Kirk “almost married” a blonde lab technician (“Where No Man Has Gone Before”). It seems probable that she was one of the aforementioned women (all of whom but Lester were blonde, though dye exists, and all of whom but Shaw were scientists, though majors can change—I know an attorney with a biology degree myself).

With the exception of Lester, all Kirk’s relationships that we’re aware of seem to have ended amicably. He and the women involved have often kept up communication to some extent, despite the impediments caused by interstellar travel (Wallace, Marcus). The relationships all seem to have been of some duration, and characterised by fairly serious involvement on both parts. They were distinctly emotional affairs, and no one accuses Kirk of having “womanised” during them. They all involved competent people drawn to demanding, intellectually stimulating fields—usually science—and the service of something greater than themselves—almost universally Starfleet.

Kirk’s storied history of womanising seemingly consists of his having seriously dated a fairly small number of clever women in Uni. We’re even told Kirk had to be manipulated into paying attention to matters of the heart and/or loins during that period (and that Kirk’s into “longhair stuff” like 17th-century philosophy):

………

A tumblr fan essay [6] puts it well:

Nearly every instance of Captain James T. Kirk seducing an alien woman was not because he’s some randy alien shagger extraordinaire, but because he needed to distract the enemy of the given episode in order to save the Enterprise. In the same way we wouldn’t say a woman who uses her sexuality as a weapon (flirting with the villains to distract them and ultimately defeat them) is just some intergalactic bed hopper, neither is Kirk.

………

Masculinity is not a fixed construction: it evolves over time. When we view Kirk as Zapp Brannigan, actually we’re retconning a more current understanding of the male action hero and superimposing it over an era where it doesn’t have all that much business being.

So, Kirk is not the compulsive womanizer that we recall him to be.

You should read the rest, it is a long and well worth the read essay, but it makes clear, with extensive citations, that our image of Kirk is not a reflection of the character in the original series, but rather a reflection of the overtones that we have assigned, and his risk taking occurs only when there is no alternative.

Read it, and expect to lose a bit of your childhood in the process.

It's worth it.

Headline of the Day

Most “High Performers” Are Just Better Parasites

—Ian Welsh

Tweet of the Day

And as regards Britain, the facts are EU rules impede Corbyn’s program: you can’t properly nationalise if you can’t abolish internal markets, you can’t build public industry with its state aid rules, you can’t renationalise the NHS with its public procurement rules, etc, etc

— Ronan Burtenshaw (@ronanburtenshaw) April 30, 2018

The EU is an antidemocratic and neoliberal project, and until this is fixed, and until the Krauts hegemony of the union is ended, the problems of the EU are going to continue to get worse.

Quote of the Day

I have no idea if Sanders would have fared better against Trump than Clinton did. But I do know that Clinton was the worst possible person to answer the angry accusations of a populist insurgency from either the protectionist right or the socialist left. She was too much a contented representative and beneficiary of the very political and economic establishments against which Trump directed his fire.

—Damon Linker

Tru dat.

Quote of the Day

All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.

—John Kenneth Galbraith

These are truly words to live by.

The Judges Give a 9.6 for Snark

Alexandr Petri opens up a major can of whup ass on pundits who think that they have the right to be published no matter how contemptible they are.

It is, of course, an allegory about the case of Kevin Williamson, whose very short tenure at The Atlantic was a result of his extremist views, has been on a major whining tour about how his call for hanging women who have abortions led him to be persecuted.

Just read the article.

Yes, It Has Been a Strange Year, and It's not Yet May

.@jaketapper: The judge forced Michael Cohen to admit in court he has a third client. And the third client is Sean Hannity.

Go home 2018, you’re drunk. https://t.co/7McUZSjki8 pic.twitter.com/rXkx91hxCI

— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) April 16, 2018

2018 isn't just drunk.

2018 is locked in a closet, wearing two wet suits, hogtied, with a dildo up its ass. (What I am referring to)

We are living in the Chinese curse of interesting times. (Yes, I know it apocryphal, but give me this one)

Tweet of the Day

I don't get the sense that Cohen and Hannity have thought this all the way through -- the impact of their positions on the attorney-client privilege, and how they may be waiving and/or undermining privilege.

They need to be playing chess. They're playing Hungry Hungry Hippos.

— TheNewNormalHat (@Popehat) April 16, 2018

It's important to remember how this is different from Watergate. One of the big ways is that regardless of a generally similar level of immorality, Richard Nixon and his evil minions^™ were not stupid people who unmoored from reality, and Donald Trump and his evil minions^™ are stupid people who are unmoored reality.

Popehat owes me a screen wipe for the "Hungry Hungry Hippos" comment.

What He Said

I Don't Give a Damn about the First (Insert Identity Here) CEO or President

Asthe author observes, "It takes a stupendous level of cognitive dissonance to simultaneously celebrate the fortunes of someone from a specific identity while looking past the vast sea of people from said identity who are stuck in gut wrenching poverty."

Snark of the Day

In response to this tweet about an internet connected condom:

Here's a "smart condom" that tracks thrust speed and velocity and lets you share the data. But hey, no pressure! 🍆 https://t.co/zgFCsnQF1S pic.twitter.com/kpDF5bhcb1

— CNET (@CNET) March 2, 2017

Chrissy Teigen responded with the following:

“Hello name’s rob, id like to purchase a pack of “very bad at sex” condoms please” https://t.co/KMMIFh3ySa

— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) April 9, 2018

I have a feeling that this company's prospect just took a major hit, because now their technology is associated with coital training wheels.

Tweet of the Day

You know I try not to keep up with the latest happenings of ‘the resistance’ but am I to understand now they are protecting the powerless mom & pop business called *checks notes* Amazon from Trump? 💀

— DarkSkintDostoyevsky (@daniecal) April 4, 2018

Yeah, pretty much.

Amazon got where it was from a huge number of subsidies, like not having to collect sales taxes, and has shown itself to be a toxic workplace. (And that's not considering the tax subsidies that it gets for locating its warehouses, and the spectacle of them shaking down locan and state governments for a satellite headquarters)

If Amazon faces off against Donald Trump, I hope that there is a way that both of them can lose, but if not, I'd have a hard time selecting who I would want to be the victor.

BTW, also read Dave Dayen's take on this.  He does a good job of explaining all of this.

Tweet of the Day

Ooh, I'm Indiana Jones, imma ignore this monumental architecture that incorporates moving parts to create ingenious traps that still work after hundreds if not thousands of years and focus on this golden idol that literally any dumbass with a forge could make in a weekend.

— Living Marble (@living_marble) April 1, 2018

I am sure that all of the amateur and professional archeologist out there are cheering this right now, as well they should.

Craigslist Ad Of the Day

This guy needs to send his resume to Trevor Noa

Some wag posted a (now pulled) advertisement for a lawyer for Donald Trump:

This afternoon a hilarious classified ad popped up on Washington, DC Craigslist. It appears to now be taken down, but not before I snagged a copy of the text.

"Seeking Lead Attorney For Difficult Client" was the title.

The text read:

“Seeking a lead attorney to represent client involved in an ongoing Federal investigation. Must be familiar with laws and procedures around discovery, executive privilege, international financing of licensed real estate, election law and the Logan Act. Working knowledge of social media, especially Twitter is a plus, as is a better than average knowledge of the adult film industry and a collection of Playboy magazines from 1985-2010. Must look the part – Gregory Peck or Tommy Lee Jones type. Prior appearances on Fox News a huge plus.

No fatties.

Must be prepared to work with a client who is very forceful and opinionated about his defense and is his own best counsel.

Basically your job boils down to keeping him from testifying under oath and hoping the rest comes out in the wash.

Ask about our other openings on our staff and submit your resume to be considered for potential openings in the near future. Perhaps the very near future. Like, hit refresh on your browser now. Now again.”

This is f%$#ing beautiful.

Quote of the Day

People are still trying to blame Donald Trump’s surprise 2016 electoral victory on something, anything—other than America’s degenerate politics and a political class that has presided over a stunning national decline.

—Yasha Levine

5 of the past 6 elections have been about change, and how those in power have failed us, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2014, and 1016.

The thing is, as Mr. Levine notes, those who have profited from the failed conventional wisdom have no interest in changing things, "The keepers of conventional wisdom all insist in one way or another that Trump won because something novel and unique happened; that something had to have gone horribly wrong. And if you’re able to identify and isolate this something and get rid of it, everything will go back to normal—back to status quo, when everything was good."

This is why we are seeing people grasp at "Black Swans", Putin, Facebook, fake news, etc.

If there is meaningful change, those in power will lose to some degree, and they do not want to see that, ever.

Here is a good rule of thumb, if you have a seemingly intractable problem, the conventional wisdom is ALWAYS wrong.

If the conventional wisdom were right, then the problem would not be intractable.

In fact it would have already been solved.

Quote of the Day

Saying that Russia has undermined American democracy is like me – middle-aged, five foot nine, and unblessed with jumping ability – saying that the Brooklyn Nets Russian-born center Timofy Mozgov undermined my potential career in the National Basketball Association.

—Paul Street on Counterpunch.

If we are really worried about our democratic process being compromised, we need to look at the corporate media, the entrenched elites, the feckless punditry, and the political consultant class first.

They've done a way better job at compromising democracy than Vladimir Putin.

Hell, they may very well have done a better job at compromising democracy than Benito Mussolini.

This May be the Best Twitter Exchange Ever

In response to attacks from Chris Cuomo proxies yesterday, actress, and now candidate for the Democratic Nomination for Governor, Cynthia Nixon Tweeted the following:

“When I announced yesterday that I’m running for gov, one of Cuomo’s top surrogates dismissed me as an “unqualified lesbian.” It’s true that I never received my certificate from the Department of Lesbian Affairs, though in my defense there’s a lot of paperwork required.” 🤷‍♀️

— Cynthia Nixon (@CynthiaNixon) March 21, 2018

The response from Twitter user @mecreature was one for the ages:

You should take it. The oral exam is awesome.

— MeC (@mecreature) March 21, 2018

MeC owes me a screen wipe, and we owe MeC a major book deal.

Quote of the Day

Clinton’s boast that she won where the economy is vibrant partially explains why she lost: There are too few of these vibrant areas left to win national elections.

—David "D-Day" Dayen

He gives a pretty good explanation on why Clinton's open contempt for the Americans who have been left behind by the "new economy" touted by her husband and his ilk was so politically damaging.