In Case You Missed Trump's Tariff Bullshit...

No Half Measures

The Third Body Problem

If two's a disaster, three's a pan-dimensional clusterfuck.

From Politico: 

Musk said Wisconsin would decide the fate of Western civilization. 

Now he says he ‘expected to lose.’ The Musk-backed Brad Schimel got thumped Tuesday night.

No Half Measures

Professional Left Podcast Episode 888: Suffering No Fools At The Cornfield Resistance!

"I do what must be done. That is what I know how to do."  -- Kurt Muller, Watch on The Rhine.

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Bogart Explains Republicans, Short and Sweet

No Half Measures

It Was 20 Years Ago Today...

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." -- William Faulkner

In keeping with the tenor of our times, I'm not going to apologize in advance for what I am about to do. 

Apologies are so 2012.

Instead I'm going to focus on how perilous this post is about to become.  

Will it be as dangerous as the Triple Lindy?

Possibly.  Because today I'm going to try the rare 20th Anniversary Fundraiser Double Post, and feat which has driven men mad in the attempt.  Others have had to be hospitalized with severe leg cramps and loss of object permanence.  

But for you good people, I'mma give it a go.

First, some business.  This is part of my 20th blogiversary thing, so here's the tip jar if you feel so inclined.  

Burn The Lifeboats

With that out of the way, next up is this bit of prose.  If you're so inclined, let me know what you think of it down in the comments:

Every few years some new, soulless, ambitious goon clambers out of the moral sewer of the Party of Personal Responsibility to seize control of the vocabulary of Hate Radio and appoint himself the party's Demagogue-in-Chief for the moment, harvesting the ever-ripe-and-ready paranoia and rage of the GOP base and dragging us all a little further down the road the Hell.

Checks a lot of boxes, doesn't it?  The depravity of a party that just keeps spawning monsters.  Hate Radio vocab being the Mother Tongue of the party base.  The party's lust for an authorization strong man who would harvest the preexisting rage and paranoia the Republican voters.   

Pretty standard stuff these days, right?  Nothing you wouldn't hear on any given day in 2025 from any MSNBC Never Trumper, or in any essay at The Bulwark, or on any Lincoln Project podcast.  

Bold.  Edgy.  Truth-Telling.

Except its not from 2025.  And it's not from an MSNBC Never Trumper, or a Bulwark, or a Lincoln Project podcast.    In fact, it's from 2013.  That's two years before Trump even existed in the Republican firmament.  And it's from me.  And I can tell you that, back in 2013, such talk was not greeted as Bold, Edgy, Truth-Telling back by all those Republicans would later respawn and re-emerge as MSNBC Never Trumpers and Bulwark publishers and Lincoln Project advertising moguls. 

In fact, such talk was mockingly dismissed by such people as ... 

Liberal. Crackpot. Alarmism.  

In fact, many of those same people have blamed people like me for conjuring Trump into existence So you can maybe kinda see why actual Liberal voices are not welcome on the largest Liberal and/or Resistance media platforms.  Because we remember all the inconvenient things which those platforms are designed to erase of the memory of man.    

Back in 2013, the Republican thug de jure was a fella named Ted Cruz, and while he had been a darling of the moutbreathers and Khaki Klansmen who make up the base of the GOP, his doomed strategy of trying to filibuster and shutdown Barack Obama and Democrats into defunding Obama's signature health care reform flopped hard.  And almost overnight Republicans who had sworn fealty to Canadian-born Zodiac killer prime suspect, Raphael Edward Cruz began to bail:

Again, from 2013:

Now that Republicanism Personified Ted Cruz is starting to rot from the amygdala down, members of the still-batshit-crazy-but-not-quite-that-batshit-crazy sub-genus of the Stupid/Crazy Party are stumbling over each other to score their "I've Been Against Ted Cruz Since..." Red Badges of Political Courage.  For example, here is what confidence trickster Peter King -- a man who was perfectly happy tossing gobbets of red meat to the teabagger crocodile until it turned on him -- now has to say about his competition for the hearts and wallets of the rubes:

“I took a chance when Ted Cruz was the darling of the Republicans,” King added. “It was only two weeks ago, but he was the darling of Republicans. I was the only guy taking him on nationwide.” 

Brave, Brave, Brave, Brave Sir Robin...

But, as I warned back in 2013...

Of course, Cruz and King and all the rest of the Koch brothers' hired help are not the problems: they are merely the latest and most stomach-churning surface manifestations of the long, deep, Conservative rot that has been eating at the heart of the United States for generations:

...

Unfortunately, the calamity of a potential default has tempered neither judgment nor passion. On Saturday, Ted Cruz—the man who lit the match, won the Values Voters Straw Poll with 42 percent of the vote. Channeling her inner Glenn Beck, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) concluded that the President “committed impeachable offenses.” Bachmann also proclaimed that civil disobedience was a potential response to Obama’s “thuggery,” and compared the Obama presidency to Egypt’s deposed Muslim Brotherhood...

Yep.  Still more stuff which all of your favorite Never Trump teevee and podcasting celebrities dismissed at the time Liberal. Crackpot. Alarmism.  

In fact, you'll never guess what former Bulwark employee and frequent Bulwark returning guest Amanda Carpenter was doing for a living back in 2013 as I was writing this.  From Wikipedia:

In January 2013, Carpenter became senior communications advisor and speechwriter for Senator Ted Cruz

Wowsers.  

But hang on, because here comes the second part of the extremely difficult 20th Anniversary Fundraiser Double Post.  

Because that 2013 post warning about the rise of Republican demagogues and how Cruz very publicly screwing the pooch it was making life difficult (with the emphasis on "cult") for Republican quislings and collaborators who had gone along with Cruz, in turn referred back to a post I had written during my very first few days as a blogger.  

Back to April 1, 2005, to a post that had originated as a comment over at the late Steve Gilliard's News Blog as I believe was the impetus for Steve kicking me out and insisting that I start a blog of my own.  

Which, clearly, I did.  

From me, 20 years ago, back when the Republican thug de jure was a fella named Tom Delay:

Rep. DeLay Preps the Beds for the GOP's Big Sleep

(This particular bit started life as a comment in Gilliard's Shoppe but has been Repurposed to better serve You, The Customer :-)

The little-“p” politics of this is fascinating.  [The fact that] Over the long run that the GOP is demographically/electorally doomed to become the minority Thurston Howell Party again. Either when the Fundy Shining Path Rebels that make up their margin of victory make one too many batshit demands, or are are told “No” once too often.

(If you want to get a clear picture of how this will look, rent “Fatal Attraction” or “Play Misty For Me”. I’m not going to be ignored, George!)

So either they take their bat and ball and stomp disgustedly back to Mordor, or a handful of moderate Republicans get so freaked out by the Randall Terry Wing of the Party that they bolt or stay home.

But short run…Tom DeLay is now a Household Name. Been waiting 10 years for that to happen and always amazed that Republicans had no fucking clue who he was, even though you’d tell them five or a hundred times. Sheesh. All RAM and no Hard Drive with some people.

Every GOP Leader knows the Gingrich Lesson: No matter how much the membership owes you, they’ll go absolutely Lord of The Flies on your Piggy-ass the minute you becomes a measurable liability. Newt was so completely “I Am The Reich” that he would have been perfectly happy to go into the bunker and fight it out until the GOP was razed to rubble had he not been stopped by his own House Republicans.

And since the Suddenly Huge Liability named Tom DeLay is now just “Tell Tale Heart”--thundering away under the GOP floorboards, threatening to drown out everything else, the question is, will that same dynamic play twice?

Well DeLay ain’t Gingrich. He learned from that episode, and they don’t call him The Hammer for his shipwright skills. He spent a decade forcibly collecting GOP testicles and caching them in his private Crown Royal bag. At the slightest provocation he will to politically and personally destroy anyone who doesn’t bend a deep knee to His Gorgon Awfulness.

And both the Texas and National Republican parties have shown absolutely craven willingness to rewrite the Rules on the fly any time the Beast’s wet-bar needed to be restocked with virgin’s blood, or whenever a law or policy might make threaten to cinch-in the bottomless lust he and his stooges have for Power, Money, Trinkets and Perks, even a trifle.

So (hahah!) they’ve kinda disarmed themselves to accommodate him, and now they’re stuck very much up on that very windy gibbet with him. So if you were running in 2006 and playing How Do I Save My Pink Republican Skin while DeLay is holding your ass held hostage, what do you do?

Got to time it juuuust right. Jump away from Herr DeLay too soon and he’ll blow your head off. Jump too late, and your face will be morphed into Tom DeLay…into Randall Terry…into, I dunno, Osama Bin Laden? in every ad, every day, for the entire election cycle.

My simple suggestion for voters in 2006?

Shoot the hostage ;-)

I concluded my 2013 Ted Cruz post with this:

For the record, to my knowledge not a single Conservative politician, professional Both Sider or mainstream media creature who has ever even briefly awakened to the fact that the GOP is run by monsters has ever acknowledged that the Left was right all along.

And damn if it this isn't still 100% true.

Finally, a sincere "thank you"  for your readership, support and (mostly) kind words lo' these many years.

And if you missed the tip jar at the entrance, for your So convenience the staff has helpfully placed one nearby which you can see as you exit through the gift shop.  Sorta like ATMs at casinos: :-)

Write if you get work,

Your pal, 

driftglass

I Am The Liberal Media

Ethical Movie Titles

Call Things By Their Right Names

DOGE In Action

Except for the fig leaf of a warrant, it's all there.

The smarmy, arrogant ignorance.

The dismissal of all warnings that what this idiot is about to do will cause a disaster.  From Wired:

DOGE Plans to Rebuild SSA Codebase in Months, Risking Benefits and System Collapse

Social Security systems contain tens of millions of lines of code written in COBOL, an archaic programming language. Safely rewriting that code would take years—DOGE wants it done in months.

And, of course, after the disaster, this idiot blaming the people who tried to stop him from blowing everything up.

Also my 20th blogiversary tip jar remains open.  

And don't forget to...

Burn The Lifeboats

Monster See, Monster Do

This weekend is my 20th blogging anniversary, so I'm putting the tip jar right up-top should any of you feel inclined.

Burn The Lifeboats

Hurricane Katrina wasn’t enough.  

Terri Schiavo wasn’t enough.  

Torture revelations were definitely not enough.  Hell, scum like Hannity and Limbaugh celebrated it, and torture architect John Yoo is now the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley.

Even Iraq falling apart in a welter of lies, corruption and incompetence probably wasn’t enough.  

It took all of that plus the collapse of the world economy under MBA president George W. Bush to finally break the brains of the Republican base. Because, finally there was no place left for them to hide.  Finally, there it was, right in front of them, every day: the irrefutable proof that everything they believed was bullshit, and everyone they had trusted had lied to them because they’re such gullible chumps.  

And right then, in that awful revelation, they could have had a moment of clarity.  

They could have repented.  They could have atoned.  At the very least they could have done the grown-up thing and apologized to those of us who tried to warn them, and whom they had spat upon and called traitors.

They could have tried to figure out where they had been led astray.  

But they didn’t do any of that, because a Republican would rather die a thousand painful deaths than ever admit they had been wrong, and that we America-hating, terrorist loving Libtards had been right.

Instead, as I wrote 16 years ago, all the way back in 2009, like German soldiers after the fall of Berlin, they have stopped running away from the catastrophe they created only long enough to burn their uniforms.

 

Instead of changing their ways and waking the fuck up, they got themselves some stupid hats and little flags, stepped through the Fabulous, Tea-Baggulous Bush-Off Machine, and voila!  Just like *that* they were no longer Republicans.

No siree!  Now they were  the Tea Party!  Independents!   Independent Constitutional Conservative Originalists.  Or whatever.   And instead of learning from the catastrophe they had created, they threw themselves into the arms of any crackpot who would tell them that none of this had been their fault.  And that everyone should just forget the entire Bush administration anyway, because this new scary black guy named Obama was a million times worse than any president ever.  

So they embraced still-living sleazy con men like Glenn Beck:

And the very-dead sleazy con man Andrew Breitbart, speaking here at CPAC in 2012:

And, of course, they fell madly in love with the snarling, racist King of the Birthers:

So deeply in love with him that they nominated him for president and put him on the debate stage next to Hillary Clinton:

If you watched those debates you know that Hillary Clinton absolutely wiped the floor with him, but you also know that it absolutely didn’t matter, because during the Clinton years and the Dubya years and the Obama years, the Republican base had learned the most important lesson of all.  They learned that if they all locked arms and screamed loud enough through their Hate Radio and Fox News megaphones, they could make a craven legacy media drunk on Both Siderism go along with them in pretending the Bush administration sorta kinda never happened, and that Republican base voters weren’t really responsible for anything they said and did, and that the Republican lies about Obama being churned out a mile a minute by Fox News and Hate Radio were all legitimate news stories, and that lockstep Republican congressional obstruction and sabotage were actually Obama’s fault.

And that is the power of lying en masse.  

And an ignorant, racist mob that demands to be lied draws con men, grifters and demagogues like shit draws flies.  

And the King of Shit Mountain is now the president of the United States.  

Again.  

So now we have a genuine scandal that ticks every box of every issue Republicans were swearing five minutes ago that they cared about.  National security.  Handling classified material.  Transparency.  Competence.  Freedom of speech. And the reaction from MAGA-land has been uniform and entirely predictable.

From MAGA Twitter, this is a small representative sample from the literally thousands of nearly identical reactions:

Karoline Leavitt, the actual White House Press Secretary:  The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT “war plans.” This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.

This was followed by some mope named CECE who got hundreds of enthusiastic responses:   Why isn’t anyone calling out Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic for not announcing himself when he landed on a private Signal call he wasn’t meant to join? Journalistic ethics demand transparency, but he stayed quiet, copied the texts, and published them, to the world all to make the Trump administration look bad.  Where’s the outrage over a reporter exploiting it for a hit piece?  The focus stays on the mistake, not his ethical lapse. Why? 

Katagaruma: He should be hauled in for questioning and his devices seized for analysis. 

Gary D:   Was it just a set up to create a MEDIA fire storm? Asking for a friend. 

SweetPeaBelle: He is unethical and out for the BIG story.

Janet1489534061: It was Planned  

realredsd: He should be facing punishment.

EJGSH: They were counting on him being a piece of garbage. 

jnottah  He's a Radical douchebag and The Atlantic is a PROPAGANDA RAG .

HJ4719125173895:  Maybe he is a spy guilty of treason ! 

SSgt Mark USMC:   I really think he should be charged with sedition or espionage. He knew he was going to be on that. He did unexpectedly land on it. It was arranged. We need to find who arranged it. Charge them for treason and charge him for sedition. 

They're all speaking the same language.  They're all goose-stepping in the same direction.  Deny.  Deny.  Deny.  Except at this point the base doesn’t know which lie to tell, and Conservative media hasn’t reached a consensus on which lie to tell them to tell, so they're putting out a buffet table of a dozen different, contradictory lies and letting the base play Choose Your Own Lying Adventure until they figure out which one(s) works best.  

From Axios:  

The MAGA media ecosystem "has splintered into a series of competing theories to try to explain away the scandal." 

But at the end of the day it really doesn’t matter which lie or lies they settle on, as long as it accomplishes two objectives:   First, their Dear Leader and his people must be blameless, and second, somehow, some Liberal somewhere is pulling the strings.  

However I can tell you this.  I did not have “Quoting Friedrich Hegel” on my bingo card as part of this mad scramble for the perfect lie, but guess what?  It has happened.  

But for that story I have to back up just a bit and check in to see how poor ‘ol Jeff Bezos is doing with that little newsletter of his.   And right off the bat we find that three headlines at three different media outlets are all telling the same story.  

From Fox News :

Trump claims Bezos fretted to him about 'out of control' people at Washington Post

President Donald Trump said in a new interview he was optimistic about his working relationship with Jeff Bezos as well as the future of the Washington Post, claiming Bezos had even disparaged the newspaper's staffers to him.

"They actually did a couple of bad articles on him (Bezos)," Trump said in an interview with OutKick's Clay Travis. "He said, 'This is crazy, I lose my fortune running this thing and they (Post newsroom employees), you know, they're out of control.' These people are crazy. They're crazy people. They're out of control."  

From The Hill : 

Trump: Bezos a ‘good guy,’ trying to be ‘more fair’ with Washington Post coverage.

“I think it’s great,” Trump told conservative commentator Clay Travis of Outkick during an interview aboard Air Force One over the weekend. “At length, I talked to him about it. He’s a good guy. I didn’t really know him in the first term. I mean, it’s such a difference between now and the first time.” 

And from the New York Post :  

Trump claims Jeff Bezos complained to him about ‘out of control’ Washington Post staffers: ‘They’re crazy people’

“They actually did a couple of bad articles on him (Bezos),” Trump said in an interview with OutKick’s Clay Travis. 

All three headline stories, but none of those media outlets did the original reporting.  They’re all citing the same source:  Trump talking to Clay Travis of Outkick during an interview aboard Air Force One

So let’s go there.  

This is the OutKick blurb at OutKick:

Clay Travis is the founder of the fastest growing national multimedia platform, OutKick, that produces and distributes engaging content across sports and pop culture to millions of fans across the country. OutKick was created by Travis in 2011 and sold to the Fox Corporation in 2021. One of the most electrifying and outspoken personalities in the industry, Travis hosts OutKick The Show where he provides his unfiltered opinion on the most compelling headlines throughout sports, culture, and politics. He also makes regular appearances on FOX News Media as a contributor providing analysis on a variety of subjects ranging from sports news to the cultural landscape.

And here’s more about them.  

He and Buck Sexton host The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, a three-hour weekday conservative talk show which debuted on June 21, 2021 as the replacement of The Rush Limbaugh Show on many radio stations. 

Ah!  Ideological continuity!  So important in keeping the reprogrammable meatbags from getting all confused and cranky.

And sure enough, for decades, from 11AM - 2 PM every day, you could find Rush Limbaugh or one of his lackeys on local radio station WMAY right here in Springfield, Illinois.  But Limbaugh is dead now.  Dead and buried in what I believe may have become the largest impromptu public urinal in St. Louis, Missouri.  

So now, where once you would find Limbaugh, you can listen to the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show right here in Springfield, Illinois on WMAY.  And on any of hundreds of other radio stations across the country, because the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show is part of a national syndication package, so that hundreds of thousands of Republican base voters are all hearing the same message at the same time.

As part of that syndication package, Before them on WMAY, from 9 AM to 11 AM,  you’ll find Fox News' very own Brian Kilmeade.

After them, from 2 - 4 PM, comes The Dana Show.  That's Dana Loesch.  And after her, for three more hours, The Erick Erickson Show.

But wait!  There's more!  

Within the OutKick platform you'll find the OutKick Show with Clay Travis.  No surprise.  But you'll also find 13 other shows.  There are gambling tips.  Sports news.  Politics and culture with Tomi Lahren!  

Dan Dakich has a show called "Don't @ Me" and he is billed as "an American basketball sportscaster. He is a former player, assistant coach, interim head coach for the Indiana University Hoosiers 

American basketball player".  But here he was on Twitter yesterday. "NPR's Katherine Maher admits outlet failed to cover Hunter Biden laptop"

Then there's the Ricky Cobb show.  Here's that blurb:  "Ricky Cobb show will offer fans that magical blend of insight and humor into current sports topics along with his deep passion for sports, culture and humor from the 70’s and 80’s."  Recent topics were, let's see, "Tesla terrorists attempt to go mainstream,” and "Tim Walz Fans The Tesla and Elon Hate", "DEI officially done at Disney, are there any masculine Democrats?" 

There's Gaines for Girls With Riley Gaines.  From the blurb:  "Riley Gaines has emerged as one of the most powerful voices in the fight to save women's sports and spaces, but the fight is far from over!"

Three episodes from last year:  "She Was FAILED For Using 'Biological Woman", "Protecting the integrity of women's sports with Tommy Tuberville" and "Josh Hawley Confronts NCAA About Trans Athletes In Women's Sports"

FOX59 Sports anchor/reporter Charly Arnolt now has her own show.  Recent episodes include  "DOGE Superstar", "Have Any Woke Companies Actually Bounced Back?". "The Woke Push To Keep Men In Women’s Sports". "Canadian Sports Fans Continue To Boo The US National Anthem!", "Can Men In Women's Sports Have Enough Impact To Flip Democrats"

The latest episode of Hot Mic w/ Hutton & Withrow is "No Woke Basketball"

Fox News' Tyrus has his own place there.  Recent episode asks "Can Wrestling SAVE America From DIVISIVE Politics?!"

Then there is the Will Cain Show.  That's Fox News' Will Cain.

Are you noticing the pattern here yet? 

The lead sentence coming out of Will Cain's mouth on his show yesterday was literally, "Why are women so woke?"  

After that it was on to the "so called" war plans with lots of scowling and air quotes around everything.  Then he brought on some obscure visiting professor named Gad Saad from Northwood University who blathered on about two French philosophers who wrote books about how human reasoning didn't evolve to find the truth, but just to win arguments.  And that somehow proves that Jeffrey Goldberg clearly wrote his Atlantic article just to hurt Republicans.  

Gad Saad:

"He's not a true journalist.  He's not pursuing objective truth.  He simply wants his team to win an argument by making the other team look bad.”

For the record, Northwood University is "a private university focused on business education".  Its most popular undergraduate majors according to 2021 records were things like Business Administration and Management, Marketing/Marketing Management, Vehicle & Vehicle Parts & Accessories Marketing Operations and Sport & Fitness Administration/Management, so I have no idea what a visiting philosophy professor has to do there, except that whatever he does leaves him with enough spare time show up on The Will Cain Show when summoned.

Late breaking news from Gad Saad on Twitter -- 11:40 AM · Mar 27, 2025 "My appearance tonight on Jesse Watters is going to be rescheduled to another date."

Oh.  He's that guy!

And then we're off to, as promised and no kidding, Hegelianism.  You know, sweeping, big-word musings on what even is knowledge?  How can anyone really know anything?  All of which amounted to nothing but a job-lot of big smarty pants words from a Real Philosopher to reassure the MAGA meatheads that they’re really the smart ones and the Signal scandal is really some kinda Liberal plot against the Dear Leader.

For the record, today’s top essays at OutKick are

Some Environmentalists Could Give A Rip About The Environment by Tomi Lahren

Trump Pokes Fun At Reporter For Still Wearing A Mask by Ian Miller

Yes, Red State Voters Helped Tank 'Snow White' Box Office by Ian Miller

And do you know who advertises on OutKick?  Everybody.  In fact, I might have missed the crucial 99th Lifetime teevee episode, about Gypsy Rose, Life After Lockup if I hadn't been tooling around over there.  And this was Season 2, Episode 99:  The Unseen Footage!!!

This is the universe in which MAGA Republicans live all day, every day now.  It’s safe there.  Reassuring.  And the bargain they’ve made with their media is their eternal financial and electoral loyalty in exchange for protecting them from ever feeling stupid or wrong.  And for that reason, those people are now permanently lost to reason and unreachable, and it is a waste of time and energy to continue to try. 

From Greg Sargent at The New Republic: 

In Signalgate, Trumpworld is demonstrating exactly what's wrong with authoritarian populism: Refusal to admit error, walling out of constructive criticism and the cult-like defense of the leader at all costs.  

And it is a very profitable business.  Which is why, just down the street, yet another for-profit MAGA propaganda shop is opening for business, with some depressingly familiar faces.

From The Hollywood Reporter:  

Former Fox News primetime star Megyn Kelly says that she is launching MK Media, a video and audio podcast network that will work with creators and journalists in the news and entertainment space. The first three shows will be hosted by journalist and 2Way founder Mark Halperin, Daily Mail culture columnist Maureen Callahan, and influencer and political commentator Link Lauren, and others will follow.

Media Matters has the larger picture:

The right dominates the online media ecosystem, seeping into sports, comedy, and other supposedly nonpolitical spaces

A new Media Matters analysis found 9 out of the 10 top online shows assessed are right-leaning,

...This analysis was based on 320 online shows with a right-leaning or left-leaning ideological bent. We found that right-leaning online shows dominate the ecosystem, with substantially larger audiences on both politics/news shows and supposedly nonpolitical shows that we determined often platformed ideological content or guests.  

And it works.  From CNN:

The biggest scandal of Trump 2.0 is no scandal at all on MAGA media 

So, as legacy media is slowly dying, and the Conservative media ecosystem continues to expand exponentially, the Liberal media, such as it is, is stuck where blogging was in 2007.  

Back then, blogging was exciting and vital; some of us are still at it.  In fact, this Monday will be my 20th anniversary of blogging, which is part of the reason I have the tip jar out at the top this time.  But back in 2007,  just as we seemed to be coming together, a number of A-List bloggers decided that the internet was full.  That there wasn’t room for all of us noobs, and if you hadn’t started blogging in 2003 and weren’t part of their crew, you should just give up and do something else.  

And since blog traffic was the lifeblood of blogging (and later revenue), this was also right around the time of the infamous Blogroll Amnesty Day!  That day when, a handful of A-List Liberal bloggers finally got tired of us smelly little lesser blogging monkeys amongst whom they had been trapped.  So they purged their blogrolls of anyone who wasn’t them, and made sure that they only linked to each other and drove traffic among themselves.

And now, as we look at the podcast world that we’ve been a part of for more than 15 years, it sure looks like that’s what’s happening with what’s left of Liberal media.  Increasingly the Centrist/Center-Right Bulwark that has grown thanks to MSNBC relentless sponsorship, and the Centrist/Center-Left Pod Save crew who made it big on the strength of their inside contacts with Barack Obama and Democratic leadership, are only talking to themselves and each other.  

The Signal Scandal (or Whiskey-Leaks as some wags have called it) may be so bad and have such sprawling implications that the one-third of the country that is completely oblivious to politics might actually hear about it as it is spread by word-of-mouth.

Of course, no one is going to go to jail for this, and given the wall-to-wall corruption and incompetence of the Republican-controlled government, it's likely there will be no serious investigations, which is a tragedy.

But just imagine if we had a Liberal media anywhere near the size, scope and level of message discipline as the Right has. 

Imagine if we had the depth and reach to compel the legacy media to make this the story for months on-end.  To compel them to go after this actual scandal like a dog worrying a bone, just like the Right intimidated the legacy media into pounding non-scandals like "Her emails..." and Benghazi and Whitewater and on and on and on into the ground