I offer you an honorable compromise. Give us the fuel and just walk away.

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 2 Comments
Speaker John Boehner addresses the House.

Speaker John Boehner addresses the House.

Even as Congressional Republicans insist they are willing to negotiate—as if the other side had any demands—the federal shutdown drags on. Although previous reports from anonymous moderates held that John Boehner was determined to pass a clean debt ceiling increase, the Washington Post reported yesterday that he is willing to risk default. “That’s the path we’re on,” Boehner said on ABC’s This Week, unless President Obama offers some undetermined concessions on the Affordable Care Act or federal spending. Page 2 of the same article contains this paragraph:

Some Republicans argue that missing [routine Social Security payments] would not amount to a governmental default. They say that would occur only if the Treasury Department fails to make interest payments to investors.

It’s good to see the GOP’s priorities remain intact.

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Is Bill O’Reilly fucking with us?

By Dan Brooks in lying 6 Comments

Those of you both of you who read Combat! blog regularly know that we grapple with a perennial question around here: do demagogues like Michele Bachmann or Bill O’Reilly actually believe what they say? It’s an unanswerable question, like the exact velocity and location of an electron. To know whether a Bill O’Reilly’s insane falsehoods are delusions or lies is, first, to know whether they are actually false, or if we are the ones who are deluded. Even if we mustered the certainty for that, we would have to further parse whether his audience believes him, or if they view the O’Reilly Factor as an ideologically thrilling romp along the lines of Taken—and if we think we’ve pinned that down, we incur the sub-question of whether O’Reilly is participating in the joke or trying to deceive them. Uncertainty of uncertainties—all is uncertainty. Then I saw this.

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Newsmax on why we need an independent press

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 5 Comments

"All right, but if I'm gonna put my name on this thing, I want it to be (expletive) classy."

Good news, you guys: “Newsmax Media and ION Television are moving forward with The Newsmax ION Television 2012 Presidential Debate moderated by Donald Trump, a great American success story.” Can you spot the deviation from traditional journalistic ethics in that sentence? It comes from Newsmax, the conservative sort-of-news website sponsoring that debate. You may remember the Trump/Newsmax debate from this extremely fun series of events, or perhaps this one. You may remember Newsmax from the most pernicious lie of the last few years, which also happens to include a lot of Donald Trump. But you don’t need to remember any of that stuff to understand the importance of The Newsmax ION Television 2012 Presidential Debate, because Newsmax has helpfully reminded us. “The debate has gained huge support from the country’s largest and most powerful conservative groups and voices,” Newsmax Wires writes, “but several candidates have declined to join the debate, including Mitt Romney, whose poll numbers have been sliding since his refusal of Trump’s invitation.” Now that is some maximum fucking news, right there.

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That was fast

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 2 Comments

And they wouldn't let them eat there? Even though that cut into profits? Sorry, that just doesn't sound right.

Good news, everybody! Non pixel-mosaic photographs of Rand Paul are now available on the internet. As usual, “good news” is shorthand for “good news for everybody except for Rand Paul,” since the sudden ubiquity of his image is due to his briefly held and brutally corrected position on the Civil Rights Act. In his first dive into public discourse, Paul executed a series of contortions before landing on his neck, becoming only the third person ever to cancel an appearance on Meet the Press. Rand Paul has met the press, and they are dicks. All he wanted to do was make a generalized point about his political views, and everybody treated him like he was talking about applying those views to specific laws. Can’t a man run for the Senate in peace?

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Feldblum “story” captures the transcendent genius of Fox News

By Dan Brooks in Rhetoric 0 Comment

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission appointee Chai Feldblum, who got her Gmail address without having to add any numbers or anything.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last week, completely cut off from television, the internet, talk radio, newspapers, Twitter, coffee shop conversation and the mumblings of homeless people now, you’ve probably heard about Chai Feldblum. No? Obama’s controversial recess appointment to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission whose support for gay rights makes her a terrifying mystery to mainstream America? Ring a bell? Anything? That’s weird, because according to Fox News, the Obama Labor Pick’s Support For Gay Rights Worries Conservatives. Props to Ben “Yes, Folds—I Am Telling You an Anecdote That Rests On My Being Friends With Ben Folds” Fowlkes for the link. Just who these conservatives are or how Fox News became aware of the story that is their worry remains unclear, but that sort of vague sourcing is Fox’s modus operandi. It’s also the secret to the network’s genius fusion of editorial and news.

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