Go Home NY Times, you're drunk

Lindsay Graham tries to rehabilitate Trump, and James Carville reminds us how irrelevant he has become.

lindsay graham and james carville in a cuddle

Last week, I took the Grey Lady to task for their insane decision to lend their platform to Rich Lowry, the Editor in Chief of The National Review, a conservative rag that is waning in subscribers even more than the Times, so that he could rant about some bullshit.

This afternoon, once I came up for air after my 7 hour stretch of meetings (being a boss sucks) I see this pair of guaran-damn-teed blood-pressure spiking headlines:

What the actual fuck is this shit? The hate around Lowry wasn’t enough, that you felt the need to give column inches to these fucking guys?

First up is Lady G Lindsay Graham, the senior Senator from the epicenter of culture and grace, South Carolina, with a column titled “How Trump Can Improve His Chances of Winning”

He leads with …

The presidential race is virtually tied in all the major swing states. Last month’s Democratic National Convention was both a hate fest directed squarely at our former president and also a fawning coronation of Vice President Kamala Harris, the nominee who didn’t win a single primary in 2020 or 2024. Every day that the candidates trade insults is a good day for her because it’s one less day that she has to defend the failures of the Biden-Harris administration.

Precisely what are these failures that she is avoiding defending? Reining in inflation? Halting the horrendous escalation of Covid, navigating a soft landing to the economic chaos that Trump and Covid left for the Biden administration? We don’t have to guess, he blurts out

First, consider Ms. Harris’s and President Biden’s dismal record: According to a recent Harvard-Harris poll, 60 percent of voters view the economy as weak. What’s one of Ms. Harris’s big proposals? Government-led price control measures. During her time as vice president, Americans endured crushing 5 percent annualized inflation, cemented by two partisan spending bills costing trillions. She cast the tiebreaking votes on both — the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said they wouldn’t have happened without her. Ms. Harris may try to pass the blame, but she and Mr. Biden own the high prices at grocery stores and utility meters.

Imma gonna go out on a limb and bet that if I looked for stories and videos of Graham taking credit for the IRA aka the infrastructure act, I would find Graham gleefully cutting ribbons or turning over a shovelful of earth.

And the grocery prices? How about if the last 20 years the FTC and Justice Department didn’t greenlight the mergers of regional grocers into like 3 dominant players, granting them regional monopoly power. At least Lina Kahn is beginning to instill fear in some of these corporate robber-barons.

And then he trots out the tired trope that her portfolio was to “handle immigration” at the border.

From the beginning, immigration was the cornerstone of Ms. Harris’s vice-presidential portfolio, yet the situation at the southern border has severely deteriorated since she took office. As The New York Times reported last year, illegal border crossings surged in 2021 and hit records in 2022 and 2023. Fentanyl and other drugs are flowing across our borders. In 2020, Ms. Harris wrote, “Trump’s border wall is a complete waste of taxpayer money and won’t make us any safer.” Now she supports a bill that includes funds to build the wall. Three and a half years ago, where was she?

Uh, no my dude, she was the envoy from the Biden administration charged with meeting with the Latin American countries where the bulk of the asylum seekers began their journey. No matter how much you and the right-wing echo chamber want to pin the title of “Border Czar” on her stylish lapel, that dog don’t hunt.

Then he goes full Simple Jack on her evolution on fracking, and the contortions she made to placate the electorate in 2020’s primary.

Today Ms. Harris claims she won’t oppose fracking, but as a senator she cosponsored the Green New Deal — a declaration of war on fossil fuels that would deliver a deadly blow to Pennsylvania’s economy if it ever came to fruition. Her campaign says she doesn’t support single-payer health insurance, but as a senator she cosponsored a Medicare for All bill written by Bernie Sanders, the most left-wing member of the Senate. Ms. Harris has talked about being the last person in the room when Mr. Biden made the disastrous decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan, a botched withdrawal leading to the death of 13 of our brave service members and emboldening terrorists throughout the world.

And have you noticed that they keep trying to hang the Afghanistan debacle on her shoulders? Yeah, it was not smooth, but it was negotiated by Yam Tits, including the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners, including the person who detonated the suicide bomb that killed the thirteen soldiers that the tangerine hippo muscled his way onto Arlington National Cemetary for a campaign video.

But what does the self-loathing closet dweller say about his golfing buddy?

Now, consider Mr. Trump’s record: He left office as one of the strongest supporters of Israel since its founding. Iran was boxed in and his brokering of the historic Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab nations held out the promise of lasting peace in the region.

Seriously, I got nothing more than that in response.

He follows that up with this gem:

When it came to our allies and adversaries, Mr. Trump led from a position of strength and bad actors took note. Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un had a crystal-clear understanding of where he stood and knew what lines they could not cross. He hosted Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago but wasn’t afraid to be tough on China when he had to be.

Trump who took Putin’s word over our intelligence community? And the pair of dictators knew where the lines to not be crossed were. Are you fucking kidding me? They played Trump for the chump that he is and beat him like a rented mule.

Then he goes full economy. I will spare you the bullshit paragraph to get to this nugget:

When he left office, mortgage interest rates were below 3 percent. He cut taxes and slashed red tape, unleashing American productivity. He has promised to end federal taxes on tips — an idea so good that Ms. Harris copied it.

Uh, no fuck-o, the mango Mussolini browbeat the FED chairman to keep interest rates at 0%, and that poured gasoline on inflating asset prices, drove money into whimsical vehicles like Crypto and NFT scams, and then added eight trillion dollars to the national debt. It is almost like he bought his economic results with future generations being led to the salt mines to fill those chasms of debt.

Last pull quote:

Like sports, politics has a lot to do with momentum, and Robert Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement of Mr. Trump brings momentum in a race where every percentage point matters. Equally important is Gov. Brian Kemp and Mr. Trump working together in Georgia — an essential pickup for Mr. Trump on his march to 270 electoral votes. Mr. Kemp’s enthusiastic support and the activation of his ground operation on behalf of Mr. Trump will seal the deal in Georgia.

Mr. Trump has a long record of accomplishments on behalf of the American people. The more he compares his successes with Ms. Harris’s failures, the more likely it is that he wins.

I don’t think I need to type anything in response to this twaddle, do you?

Jimmy Carville, the Cajun should just go to the bayou and never return

In a piece that is less objectionable (by FAR) than the Linsday Graham piece, this post by Carville, titled “Kamala Harris’s Best Strategy to Defeat Trump” is much more anodyne.

Since the early 1990s, political history has shown us that when a popular incumbent president is not on the ballot, we have a de facto change election. If Bill Clinton prevailed in 1992 on a message of change versus more of the same, if Barack Obama won in 2008 on the audacity of hope and even if Mr. Trump eked it out in 2016 on a blank promise to revive a relic of America, 2024 will be won by who is fresh and who is rotten. It’s quite simple: The shepherd of tomorrow wins the sheep.

But what’s not simple: We have an incumbent vice president running against a former president in a change election. From Labor Day to Election Day, to clinch victory and drive a nail into Mr. Trump’s political career, there are three imperatives Ms. Harris must pursue successfully to become the certified fresh candidate at the ballot box in November.

Here, he’s somewhat flummoxed, because it is a change election, but Harris is part of the current administration. But what does a VP do? How involved are they with policy? Do they really bear the burden of the incumbent?

No, Carville is a creature of his past, his claim to fame is that he was part of Bubba Clinton’s run in ‘92, and he’s been riding those coattails since.

He continues with a handful of things to do. But guess what? The Harris campaign is already doing these things, so you are just being a pundit, crassly teaching Grandma Harris how to suck eggs.

Seriously dude, go back to your coasting tour on the Never Trumper outlets (cough The Bulwark cough) and get the fuck out of my face.

Lastly, the NY Times should be ashamed

Seriously, platforming these three hacks, in an effort to be “objective” and “balanced”. How did that work out for Adolph Ochs and Sulzberger’s grandfather when they ignored the Nazi’s atrocity against the Jews in Europe. I recall reading that it was because Hitler was dealing with those poor Jews in east Europe, not the Cosmopolitan elite Jews in New York¹.

No, you are clearly positioning yourself to be the paper of record for the Trump Reich should he win in November.

Tons of people are canceling their subscriptions; all you need to figure out why is to read your own fucking headlines.

You have not just lost your way, but you are actively working to normalize an authoritarian, and I have to presume that this is a conscious choice by your owners and editorial staff.

I know, why don’t you hire Chris Cilizza, I am sure he would fit right in.

And I hope that Kamala continues to give you the middle finger.

1. Yes, that is part of the calculus that the Times made covering the rise of the Nazi’s and the persecution of the war and the “final solution”. Check out the Behind the Bastards podcast I referred to a few posts ago

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