Trust Me, I'm The Newsletter Of Record
Some people see clouds; others, a blue sky opportunity
Links are at the end, or possibly not; it would be irresponsible to speculate.
Yesterday’s newsletter was the 200th since the doors opened mid-August last year, which makes me feel a little better about missing a day or four here and there.
Los Bitchos is an instrumental British band with surf noir (maybe?) chops. Surf chops of some sort, anyway, and incorporating musical influences from near and afar.
Bipartisanship is sex for the political press. You can hear them getting more and more excited as the deal approaches, and rolling over to light a ciggie after. Bipartisanship is a drug, a dream, both the rabbit and the hound. And if the bargain sheds blood, it’s just worthy people making the hard choices.
FAIR has a roundup of some among the stupidest both-sidesing from the press, featuring notable efforts from NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and more. These are all putatively liberal outlets hewing to the conceit that hostage taking is a legitimate tactic requiring a ransom, and that negotiating the ransom down is a victory for Democrats, while Republicans still get paid.1
When the Times reports that the “far right” and “hard left” both oppose something, that’s a sure sign that the paper thinks it’s a good thing. Another front-page piece in the paper, by Jim Tankersley (5/29/23), went out of its way to argue that not only was it good that the White House made a deal, but that, all in all, it was a good deal:
Economists say the agreement is unlikely to inflict the sort of lasting damage to the recovery that was caused by the 2011 debt ceiling deal—and, paradoxically, the newfound spending restraint might even help it.
“The economy could actually use a mild dose of fiscal austerity right now,” Tankersley reported economists were saying; the cuts will throw people out of work, so the Federal Reserve won’t have to. In the 23rd of 25 paragraphs, after presenting the Republican argument that the deal “will help the economy by reducing the accumulation of debt,” the reporter acknowledged that the cuts “will affect nondefense discretionary programs, like Head Start preschool, and…new work requirements could choke off food and other assistance to vulnerable Americans.”
Republicans wanted measures they knew they couldn’t get in the normal course of business, and Democrats gave them enough of those to satisfy their majority and keep Kevin McCarthy in the Speaker’s office. Democrats either got nothing or, for the skeptics, stuff both sides wanted, like Manchin’s pipeline deal and a massive war department funding boost, at the low low price of some unimportant human sacrifices.
This is what the Bidennaires are calling a victory, while the press view it as the Triumph of the Centrist Will, implying that Republicans have centrists. And Democratic partisans are well pleased to learn that what they had initially been instructed was a successful effort to minimize damage, which is something of a limp biscuit with which to feed the masses, had transmogrified into outright triumph.
In not unrelated news, the OG chucktodd is leaving his Sunday talkie to take a perch as his network’s senior political analyst, with the “Meet the Press” vacuum to be filled by someone who regards Todd—who thinks himself an iconoclast but is instead a grotesquely misshapen mould—as a mentor, which bodes ill for Kristen Welker’s chances of filling the internal “Meet the Press” vacuum created by Todd’s presence all these years.2
Todd is quoted in the story as saying that “We didn’t tolerate propagandists, and this network and program never will,” so he’s going out on a lie, which is appropriate.
Henry Kissinger, friend and advisor to an endless succession of secretaries of state and global corporations, war criminal extraordinaire, genocide abettor, propagandist nonpareil, celebrated his 100th birthday this past week to cheers and praise from people who hold significant sway over our country. Jacobin has (unexpectedly mild) words.3
As Richard Nixon’s national security advisor — and then secretary of state, a role he took on without giving up his original job — Kissinger personally oversaw a bombing campaign that killed 150,000 civilians in Cambodia. And among many other atrocities he abetted, he helped overthrow Salvador Allende, the democratically elected socialist president of Chile. Kissinger notoriously said that he didn’t see “why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people.”
The evidence for these crimes has never been in doubt. It’s all a matter of public record. So why hasn’t “Dr K” ever seen the inside of a jail cell?
The ugliest truth about Kissinger is that he isn’t a unique monster. He is an unusually plainspoken representative of a monstrous system of US global hegemony.
One of the few delightful moments in the 2016 debate twixt Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton sits with Clinton’s shocked face after she touted her association with Kissinger and Bernie vigorously rejected the squat merchant of death. Unspeakable!
The story does open with the late Anthony Bourdain’s memorable Kissinger quote: “Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands.”
Easier now than ever, for anybody whose tastes run toward that kind of thing.
Matthew Duss has Kissinger-related words in The New Republic.
Obviously, U.S. corporate and government power have always been closely mingled in both foreign and domestic policy. The United States was knocking over governments for the benefit of the U.S. financial sector while claiming to defend freedom and stability well before Kissinger ever gained influence. But Kissinger was the first to really show how the celebrity bestowed by government power could be parlayed into a massively profitable post-government career as a paid adviser to powerful multinational corporations and foreign governments.
Describing the thinking behind the new phenomenon in a 1986 piece, Les Gelb, a former U.S. official turned New York Times national security correspondent who would later serve as the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote, “Many of these former Government leaders asked themselves, why not capitalize on our stardom, international contacts, and inside knowledge to make large incomes on our own?”
They answered their own question by going out and doing just that, and Henry the K led the pack. “Kissinger’s 41 years of consulting service include American Express, Fiat, Rio Tino, Lehman Brothers, Merck, Heinz, Volvo and JP Morgan,” Ben Judah, a leading expert on kleptocracy and anti-corruption, tweeted recently. “His business career was truly pioneering in Washington.”
Tentacle porn for sociopaths.
The ultimate diet and relationship advice:
Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking had a radiation theory named after him that dictated that all black holes will eventually evaporate. This theory extended to all large objects in the universe, like the remnants of stars, stating that they too will come to dissipate.
Researchers have verified some of what Hawkings predicted, and add that it basically applies to vaporizing everything, everything. Belly be gone.4
As you may have noticed, Los Bitchos are a new hit here at the newsletter, as are Regina Spektor, a long time favorite, and U.S. Girls. All worth a listen.
Los Bitchos, “Let the Festivities Begin!;”5 U.S. Girls, “Half Free;”6 Regina Spektor, “11:11.”7
That, Comrades, is all I got. Jello-brain is receding. As always, I appreciate you sharing what I do when you like it, and also when you subscribe, which is free unless you want to pay, at which point it’s $5/month or $50/year.
Take care, be well, lay off the jello.