When you enter the alternative universe of Politico, it’s always a good idea to steel yourself against infantile false equivalencies, stunningly obvious conventional wisdom, and drearily repeated Republican talking points.  That way, you’ll suffer through far fewer poorly written articles that, like watching Fox News, will make you dumber than if you’d spent your time lighting farts.

Naturally, I go to Politico a lot, because, every once in a while I’ll happen upon something so transcendently idiotic that it makes the whole trip worthwhile.  Just now, the top story announces, without a race of irony, that Sarah Palin is Newt Gingrich’s “secret weapon.”  Given that Newt is plummeting in the Florida polls and all the Republican moneymen are openly after his scalp, one wonders what, exactly, Palin is going to do about his flagging political fortunes.  Shoot a moose?  Better yet, the “writer” quotes ol’ Caribou Barbie at some length, effectively refuting the whole premise of her story by reminding readers that the woman is, well, dumb as a post:

In her latest appearance, Palin stated: “Look at Newt Gingrich, what’s going on with him via the establishment’s attacks,” she said, though the original question was about Ron Paul. “They’re trying to crucify this man and rewrite history and rewrite what it is that he has stood for all these years.”

Palin then called conservative writer Peggy Noonan “hypocritical” for recently calling Gingrich an “angry little attack muffin.”

“They maybe subscribe such characterization of Newt via words like that, but they don’t subscribe those to say Mitt Romney when he or his surrogates do the same thing,” she said. “That’s that typical hypocrisy stuff in the media that I’ve lived with over a couple of decades in the political arena. So I’m used to it.”

“But in order to help educate the rest of the American public, I’ll articulate that it is hypocritical of the media to subscribe to one candidate and not another, that kind of angry attack muffin verbiage to one and not the other.”

News Flash:  Palin has picked up some new words, and has chosen to start using them, repeatedly, without grasping their, uh, meaning.  “Subscribe.”  “Via.”  “Articulate.”  “Verbiage.”  As Paul Krugman said about Gingrich, “He’s a stupid person’s idea of what a smart person sounds like.”  Palin, on the other hand, is what four-year old sounds like when they’ve learned a new word.  Some secret weapon: idiotic word salad blurted out by an addlepated harridan way past her political, if not Fox, sell date.

Romney must be quaking in his Gucci loafers.

The good part, though, is that as usual, Jim and Mike always accidentally include real information in their zeal to get every word right, and better yet, have to resort to such weak evidence to back up the inanities they’re propounding, that they do achieve a sort of low comedy.  In a breaking news article entitled, “The GOP’s Winning Streak,” we learn from Karl Rove himself, among many others, that the only thing standing in the way of his Permanent Republican Majority is a need for a little “education” targeted at unbelievers.  Remember when Condi Rice wanted to “educate” people about weapons of mass destruction?  Of course you did, because you aren’t Jim and Mike.

A few juicy tidbits:

—Deficits are all the rage on Capitol Hill, and will be until Congress wends its way through the debt limit fight and the next budget. The word “deficit” appeared in 470 documents in the Congressional Record between the beginning of January and the end of March, more than in any session’s opening since 1995, according to a review by POLITICO. And Americans listened: Asked by Gallup to identify the most important problem facing the nation, 13 percent said “federal debt” in March of this year, up from 8 percent a year ago.

Is it me, or is it pretty pathetic to claim that a rise from single to low double digits in the face of a 24/7 media barrage is something to crow about?  Thirteen percent?  Twice that many people, at least, think the moon landing was a fake.  Hint to Jim and Mike….  Don’t confuse us with the facts, as they tend to make the story fall apart.

—The broader budget debate is now fought on the tea party’s terms: It’s not whether to reduce government, it’s by how much. This helps explain why serious centrist commentators and even some liberals PRAISED a $6 trillion budget cut plan proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.). Remember how a similar plan was received two years ago?

Yippee!  People have gotten stupider, which must mean more of them are reading Politico.

—Thanks to a pickup of 675 legislative seats in 2010 – many because of these budget principles — the most sweeping work is getting done in states. Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana are now working, real-time labs for discovering how much the party can cut government – without cutting off the support of independents. A GOP senator told us the party studies what happens in these state showdowns to test the limits of what will work here. One early finding: Many think Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) went too far, too fast by gutting union power without first educating the public.

Ya think?  How did these guys get jobs?

“The country knows it’s in serious trouble,” Gingrich said. “You see this with Scott Walker, you see it with John Kasich [in Ohio], you see it with Rick Scott [in Florida], you see it with Chris Christie [in New Jersey], you see it with Mitch Daniels [in Indiana].”

Ah, the most hated politicians in America look popular to Newt Gingrich, and the Bambi-like reporter goes ahead and types.  Better yet, he doesn’t get the unintentional hilarity of this morsel from John Thune, and thus makes his irredeemably boring and hackish little puff piece funny (emphasis mine):

“If you overreach too far, you can get a backlash,” Thune cautioned. “We have to sound reasonable. But the reason the president moved so far is that he has recognized that the government has gotten much, much larger, and that most independents in the country are very uncomfortable with that.”

No follow-up question, natch.  After hearing from Karl Rove about how we can cut “trillions” later, easy, we get more choice blather from Newt Gingrich, and then another word about how people just need the be “educated,” from, improbably, Tim Pawlenty, to wrap the whole thing up with a bow:

Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor and 2012 presidential candidate, said by phone from San Jose, Calif., that fiscal arguments have given the party a broader appeal as more people “became aware and educated that it’s not just a matter of political rhetoric – it’s a matter of sixth-grade math.”

No, in sixth grade they explain some of the crucial differences between a Family Budget and the Federal Budget, which is one reason Republicans are so hot on home schooling.  Later, you learn that everything Republicans say is the opposite of the truth.  But not at Politico, despite all evidence.

“We are in for a sustained period of structural reform,” Pawlenty said. “The country is prepared for the change. The public deserves the truth. They can handle the truth. … Given how deep the hole is, I’m not worried about overreach. I think we should try to be as bold and courageous as the American people will tolerate, and we need to lead them there.”

That sounds like rhetoric to me, and of a kind of scary sort…  Reminds me of this:

Unwittingly or not the Politico story that resulted was interesting…  Who knew that the Koch brothers hate liberals with a fresh vengeance, now that the subversive hippies found out who bought the 2010 elections, when such a thing is none of their damned business?   Hell, these guys have spent decades hiring expensive lawyers to sue environmentalists, labor groups, and communities into submission, and used to be satisfied with that, when all the kings think tanks couldn’t move the peasants’ opinion fast enough, but things have clearly changed since Citizens (!) United.  Remember, the last time these two heard the word “no” was perhaps from a girlfriend in high school, and it shows.  Thus emboldened (and enriched by the Bush years), a few unaccustomed peeps of public criticism  sent them into overdrive; they went ahead and brought in their own military to essentially occupy the city of their choosing, just like the other third world plutocrats with whom they’ve grown so chummy.

Me, I’ve decided that if you want to avoid living under a kleptocratic dictatorship and/or military occupation, stay away from places with date palms and/or camels.  This decision is especially difficult for a cocktailhag like myself, but I think it’s worth it.  Seriously though, the “optics” of holding a confab of larcenous political and financial elites to explicitly plot how best to exploit the recent, self-aggrandizing Supreme Court decision they flagrantly bought themselves, and then do so under quasi-military “security” are more than usually astonishing.  It’s painfully obvious that they just don’t give a damn anymore, and I find that unsettling.  They know, now, that while some hippies can hire a blimp or so, together they can “hire” the US military, and best of all, without paying, and do so repeatedly.  They’ve already found the guy who leaked the invitation, and are presumably rendering him someplace where the broomstick will fit his butt. With that kind of private sector efficiency, why not just let the Kochs take over “security” here, too?  Put Dick Cheney and Rudy Giuliani in charge, unless they’re too liberal by now, thanks to the cuckoos the Kochs have lovingly groomed since then.

This isn’t the first time, and it’s unlikely to be the last, that shadowy, private security firms will sweep in to tame uppity Americans, but at least in this case it was nonviolent and a bit comical in its own way.  Best of all, it indicates that even such would-be potentates as the Kochs have found that after the first billion, money can only buy you the opposite of love.  Is it worth it?

They could, if they wanted, emulate normal Americans, who follow laws, pay taxes, and earn something closer to their worth, relieving themselves of the bother and expense of having their own military.   But they’ve chosen a different path, and expect the rest of us to pay for it, as soon as they figure out how, down in Rancho Mirage.  If I were them, I’d want my privacy, too.  Fortunately, I can’t afford it, so I’ll never end up like the Kochs.

Lucky me.

Naturally, if you read the MSM or watched TV, you’d have missed this priceless moment, which I have to say, in my unprejudiced opinion, was first time I saw President Obama pretty much be an arrogant asshole. Helen, with her uncomfortable truth, cracked the code, and while I suddenly liked my President, whom I supported and continue to support, albeit intermittently these days, a lot less, my crush on Helen only got worse.  So I typed.

Behold the following, which may be slightly better written than Gov. Sanford’s work, but is essentially the same thing.

Dear Ms. Thomas,

Amid the maelstrom over the deeply compromised folks over at the WaPoo and Politico whining about how uppity “bloggers” were taking over the Obama press conferences, it brought a smile to my face that you so ably disrupted the scripted operetta with your question about the torture photos.

As usual, and I don’t mean to insinuate that you do it deliberately, you made your “colleagues” look like the motley peanut gallery of fawning, social-climbing nincompoops that they are.

Thanks again, for reviving for me the fading memory of what journalism was intended to be.

Glad to see you back at your game.

Cocktailhag

Her response?

Kind words- We are being treated like trained seals. helent

Today’s the day.  We should all stand with Helen against torture.  Some seals can’t be trained.

Of course, they were the same  stories he’s been telling for years, and pretty much no one on the planet believes, but the Politico boys just never get tired of this stuff.  Pity their readers.  Cheney, to their apparent surprise, “was in a self-vindicating mood.”  (Knock me over with a feather, but do go on…)  He also helpfully explained that his upcoming memoir, which will  assuredly have Americans queuing up around the block at Barnes and Noble,  would also set the record straight, once and for all, and was merely held up until the “statute of limitations has expired.”  Of course, none of these wide-eyed moppets looked up from their crayons long enough to to query that such a statement could only come from a criminal, one who during the same story hour reminded them, as though it were necessary, that protecting them from the monsters under their beds was “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty, business.”  Lying to credulous reporters is evidently the easy part.

Indeed, it was little more than a Dick Cheney’s golden oldies rehash, with all the usual bits about how “turning the other cheek” is a chump’s game when dealing with “evil,” “hardened,” terrorists, with a new yarn, cribbed from Condi Rice, about how, natch, no one could have predicted the economic collapse.  (with the possible exception of Dick himself, who has been moving assets offshore for years, but that detail never came up.)

Having read the article, twice, backwards and forwards, I was unable to find anything in it that could conceivably be called news, except the fact that the story was written at all.  Although it mentions airily, almost in passing, that Dick is less popular than the clap in a whorehouse, it fails to explain why the fact that Dick is, all these two weeks later, still a fear-mongering, delusional, lying sociopath is considered news.  Everybody already knows about the Legacy Project, and what its tiresome talking points are, but Politico seems to understand that some things are just so startlingly unbelievable that there’s no repeating them too often, so they’re giving Uncle Dick a hand.  Catapulting the propaganda is tough on a guy who’s had a few dozen heart attacks and just got another boo-boo when his tie got caught in the shredder and he hurt his leg on the man-size safe….  But I digress.

One piece of charming atmospheric detail did manage to sneak in some actual “news” that I found heartening, and unintentionally telling.  In mentioning a recent phone conversation with his similarly despised ex-boss, Dick said, “We’re both citizens…  civilians.”  What, in heaven’s name, Mr. Five Deferments, were you before?

Unsurprisingly, Politico didn’t ask that, either.  Steven Colbert would be so proud.  The rest of us, somewhat less so.