Quithicks

Unemployable, blacklisted forgery-promoting fruitbat Dan Rather says the media cannot sully itself by association with fabricators like Ronna McDaniel!

Dan Rather
@DanRather

BREAKING: NBC News plans to drop former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor, per Puck News.

This is a good decision.

If you believe the corporate media must change to save democracy, I'd be honored if you'd subscribe to my newsletter. (Link in my Twitter biography).

If you can afford it, please consider upgrading as well. It allows me to keep critical pieces like this free for all. Thank you.

Andrew Stiles has exactly the same thoughts.

We regret to inform you that America's journalists are in the midst of another temper tantrum. This one is in response to NBC News's decision to hire former RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor. The network's own employees are in open revolt, incensed at the prospect of having to share screen time with a Republican who hasn't completely disavowed Donald Trump.
FreeBeacon

NBC chief political analyst Chuck Todd, a former Democratic campaign aide, slammed NBC executives for hiring someone with "credibility issues" and a history of "gaslighting." Democratic scion Mika Brzezinski urged the network to "reconsider its decision." Host Kristen Welker issued a trigger warning over the weekend before airing her interview with McDaniel on Meet the Press. Nicolle Wallace read a passage from a book about tyranny and bemoaned the degradation of "our sacred airwaves."

It wouldn't be the first time so-called mainstream journalists have revealed themselves to be hopelessly out of touch with the average Americans they claim to care about. The partisan tantrum over McDaniel's hiring suggests they are incapable of self-awareness.

Perhaps we can look forward to further discussion of this "scandal" on Inside with Jen Psaki, the MSNBC weekend show hosted by the former press secretary to Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Psaki could invite MSNBC contributor Robert Gibbs, another Obama press secretary, to share his thoughts on the matter. In the following segment, MSNBC contributor Ben Rhodes, the former Obama national security adviser who bragged about manipulating "clueless" reporters, could explain why McDaniel's hiring is good for Iran.

Better yet, MSNBC host Joy Reid could deliver an unhinged monologue denouncing the network for endorsing "white supremacy." Reid was promoted in 2020 to fill the time slot vacated by Chris Matthews, the former Democratic aide who argued it was racist to refer to Barack Obama as "Obama." Matthews resigned abruptly after being accused of sexual harassment, whereas Reid did not resign after online sleuths uncovered bigoted posts on her old blog. She blamed it on hackers. (It wasn't hackers.) She got promoted anyway.

Reid could continue the conversation with MSNBC political analyst Al Sharpton, the formerly obese racial agitator who instigated deadly anti-Semitic riots in New York City during the 1990s. Sharpton continues to use his platform on MSNBC to sow racial division. For example, he argued that criticizing Harvard president Claudine Gay, who resigned in disgrace earlier this year amid a flurry of scandals involving serial plagiarism and anti-Semitism on campus, was "an attack on every black woman in this country."

He then moves on to the rest of the "journalists" in the other "news" organizations. Read the article for more like this.

...

These are the people who are mad at NBC News for hiring a Republican. They still can't figure out why most Americans don't trust journalists to tell the truth. They don't deserve to be taken seriously. They are full of shit.

Correct.

Another House Republican -- Mike Gallagher -- has not only announced his resignation but decided to quit early to give the House to the Democrats.

The Republican advantage is down to three, which means we can only lose one vote before Democrats win (assuming they stay united, which they almost always do).

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.) is planning to step down from Congress in April, before the end of his term, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter, a move that will narrow Republicans' already razor-thin majority.

Gallagher, who chairs the House of Representatives Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, had already said he would not be running for reelection in November. But his decision to leave Congress early means the seat will be vacant for a time before the next election.

Spokespeople for Gallagher did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Republicans currently hold a 219-213 House majority. Republican representative Ken Buck, however, is due to step down on Friday, narrowing the majority to four seats.

When Gallagher steps down, that will narrow the majority further to 217-213, meaning that Speaker Mike Johnson can only afford to lose one vote in order to pass legislation if Democrats remain united in opposition.

It is becoming impossible not to imagine that these people are not doing this intentionally. Were they all allies of Kevin McCarthy?

In any case, they should all be absolutely banned by clear-eyed Republicans from every serving as an elected or appointed official again. No positions for deserters and traitors.

A leading Democrat candidate for Senate used a racial slur.

And why haven't you heard about this?

Because he's a Democrat.

Six House Democrats are spurning their colleague Rep. David Trone (D., Md.), the frontrunner in Maryland's Democratic Senate primary, after he used a racial slur to attack Republicans during a recent House hearing.

In the days after he used the slur, Trone's opponent in the Democratic primary, Prince George's County executive Angela Alsobrooks, received endorsements from Democratic representatives Barbara Lee (Calif.), Yvette Clarke (N.Y.), Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), Joyce Beatty (Ohio), and Jasmine Crockett (Texas), according to Axios. Lee described Alsobrooks's voice as "sorely missing in the Senate," while Clarke said, "Her vision and integrity make her the best choice to represent Maryland in the Senate."

Alsobrooks on Monday won another endorsement from Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.).

The endorsements came just days after Trone publicly used the term "jigaboo," an "insulting and contemptuous term for a black person" that dates back to the early 1900s, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. "So this Republican jigaboo that it's the tax rate that's stopping business investment, it's just completely faulty by people who have never run a business," Trone said while talking to a black federal official during the Thursday House hearing on President Joe Biden's 2025 budget request.

He said he meant to say "bugaboo."

Well that's fine and he probably did intend to say that. But here's the thing: There is such a thing as a Freudian slip. And when you mistakenly say one word instead of another, the word you say is one that is part of your active vocabulary, isn't it? If I have a speak-o I don't say "forsooth" instead of "forget," because "forsooth" is not part of my active vocabulary. These word-substitutions (and misspellings, for writers) occur when the brain is distracted and it just guesses what the more active brain intended. Thus people writing "hear" when they mean "here," or vice versa.

But no one writes "hoar" when they mean hear or here. That's a word you have to actively search your brain for, not part of the constellation of 5000 words that are always tip-of-the-tongue and likely to be used as verbal spackle when you can't find the right word immediately.

So how did this guy blunder into "jigaboo"? I haven't heard that since the Richard Pryor-Chevy Chase word association skip.

When's the last time this Fine Anti-Racist Democrat heard it? Or used it himself?

Why is it so, as the current trendy phrase among Democrat politicos goes, "top of mind" for him?

Supposedly this seat is actually in play, with liberal NeverTrump governor Larry Hogan running for the seat.

Democrats have long known that they face a daunting Senate map in the 2024 elections. While Republicans will have to defend only 10 seats, Democrats will have to protect 23 seats, including a number in battleground or red states. The margin for error is razor thin: Depending on who wins the White House, the GOP only needs to pick up either one or two seats to seize control of the Senate. If Republicans prevail, they could either thwart most of President Joe Biden's second-term agenda, or help Donald Trump unleash chaos upon his return to the presidency.

Recently, Democrats' path to retaining the Senate has become significantly more difficult. Last month, on the last possible day he could register, former Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan unexpectedly entered the race to succeed retiring Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md. Hogan's candidacy immediately turned what would normally be an extremely safe seat for Democrats into a genuine toss-up. And now a new poll shows the wildly popular former governor crushing his most likely Democratic competitors.

But while Hogan is not a MAGA Republican, he's far from a moderate -- and Democrats ought to hammer him for that.

A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll of Maryland registered voters conducted in March finds Hogan leading Rep. David Trone of Maryland 49% to 37%, and leading Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks 50% to 36%. Moreover, 64% of registered voters hold a favorable view of him (including 61% of Democrats in a heavily blue state). Just 33% of voters reported a favorable view of Trone, and 26% held a favorable view of Alsobrooks.

I generally don't support NeverTrumpers or moderates but in Maryland, I sure do. And before you complain -- if we have liberal NeverTrumpers as senators from Texas and Alaska and Iowa -- and we do -- then we can afford one in ultra-Democratic Maryland.

Not everything is about vindicating Trump.

Speaking of vindicating Trump:

Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy said Tuesday that former President Donald Trump was facing a "due process violation" in the prosecutions against him.

New York Judge Juan Merchan set an April 15 trial date for Trump on 34 felony charges from an indictment secured by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg stemming from a $130,000 payout to porn star Stormy Daniels during Trump's successful 2016 campaign for president. McCarthy said on the "Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show" that the real issue wasn't just one case, but the scheduling of all of them.

"The due process violation is the strategy to throw four trials at him under circumstances where these cases are so complex that in an ordinary defendant's case, you would get over a year to get prepared for trial and they're not only you know lining up four cases, they're making it impossible for him to prepare adequately for any one because of the quantity that they've thrown at him," McCarthy told Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.

...

"I think our tendency is that as we've gone through, because this is the only way you can go through it sensibly, is to go through each case, but I think sometimes we don't realize the cumulative effect of this is unbelievable and it will become unbelievable to people when they realized that in criminal trial, a defendant has to be present in court every day, every moment of the case," McCarthy continued.

...

"You're talking about taking the Republican nominee off the campaign trail and locking him in a courtroom basically for somewhere between three and nine months, depending on you know how efficient they can push these cases through," McCarthy said.

Video at the link.

And the due process violations keep on coming: The defendant is now forbidden to speak publicly about his innocence or the abusive behavior of the Soros prosecutor Alvin Bragg.

The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump's New York hush money case issued a gag order on Tuesday.

The order bars Trump from making statements about witnesses, prosecutors other than the district attorney, court staff, their families and prospective jurors. Judge Juan Merchan wrote in his order that Trump's "inflammatory extrajudicial statements undoubtedly risk impeding the orderly administration of this Court."

"Although this Court did not issue an order restricting Defendant's speech at the inception of this case, choosing instead to issue an admonition, given the nature and impact of the statements made against this Court and a family member thereof, the District Attorney and an assistant District attorney, the witnesses in this case, as well as the nature and impact of the extrajudicial statements made by Defendant in the D.C. Circuit case (which resulted in the D.C. Circuit issuing an order restricting his speech), and given that the eve 0f trial is upon us, it is without question that the imminency of the risk of harm is now paramount," Merchan wrote.

Biden's dementia was out of control all day:

Biden lost track of where Kamala Harris was on a stage on which there were only three people, one of whom was Biden.

"Economists aren't making fun of Bidenomics any more, they think that maybe it works." No they don't.

Not even former Obama economic advisor Larry Summers believes that:

No doubt you have seen all the arguments from the pundits that Americans are somehow wrong to believe that the economy sucks for them. Panicked administration officials and MSM folks keep telling everybody that things are great and point at all the economic numbers to prove that to be the case, yet nobody is buying what they are selling.

Summers explains why: the way the numbers have been calculated has changed so much since the 1970s and 80s that they don't capture the true misery that people are feeling anymore.

The difference? Rises in interest rates, which increase the cost of purchasing goods, if not the goods themselves, are no longer measured as part of inflation.

[From his National Bureau of Economic Research paper:]
Unemployment is low and inflation is falling, but consumer sentiment remains depressed. This has confounded economists, who historically rely on these two variables to gauge how consumers feel about the economy. We propose that borrowing costs, which have grown at rates they had not reached in decades, do much to explain this gap. The cost of money is not currently included in traditional price indexes, indicating a disconnect between the measures favored by economists and the effective costs borne by consumers.

We show that the lows in US consumer sentiment that cannot be explained by unemployment and official inflation are strongly correlated with borrowing costs and consumer credit supply. Concerns over borrowing costs, which have historically tracked the cost of money, are at their highest levels since the Volcker-era. We then develop alternative measures of inflation that include borrowing costs and can account for almost three quarters of the gap in US consumer sentiment in 2023. Global evidence shows that consumer sentiment gaps across countries are also strongly correlated with changes in interest rates.

People aren't upset about economic conditions because of undefined "vibes" after all. It turns out that increasing the cost of borrowing increases the cost of living, and if that isn't measured as part of inflation (it used to be), then the statistics simply miss out on vital data and mislead. It doesn't even take juking the numbers to come up with an entirely misleading picture; you don't see what you don't measure.

Gibberish from a demented brain that never worked well in the first place:

Stumblin' and mumblin' and losing his train of thought. And that's a shame, because Choo-Choo Joe really likes trains.

And rape.

Karine "Barbecue" Jean-Pierre can't blame her stupidity on dementia.