Today's Empty Platitude Shaming Tweet

Empty Platitude Shaming is not Prayer Shaming.

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) December 4, 2015

As we noted in the aftermath of the San Bernardino shootings,  N.R.A.- paid- for right- wing pols were getting push back on their rote "thoughts and prayers" reaction to the frequent manifestations of gun violence in America, the same pols who continue to block even the most modest gun control measures, even after San Bernardino. The usual Republican hacks have tried to turn this into "prayer shaming," occasionally joined by embedded Republicans and "both siderists" in the "mainstream media."  Fugelsang's tweet is the most direct and accurate response to their false public piety and to those who would try to make this an issue of "prayer shaming."

BONUS:  Nice long read at Disaffected And It Feels So Good.

Your Right-Wing Cafeteria Catholic, Peggy Noonan

Ed Kilgore on Sister of the Order of the Three-Martini-Lunch, cafeteria Catholic and St. Ronnie of Hollywood idolator Peggy "Nooney Tunes"* Noonan:

One of the abiding wonders of the papacy of Francis is the deep dismay he consistently inspires among politically conservative Catholics, especially in this country. That dismay is likely to rise to significantly next week when he is expected to release an encyclical on global climate change as the opening bell for a high-profile papal campaign on the subject that will take him to the UN and to Congress this fall.

So it’s actually kind of useful to read the anticipatory comments of Peggy Noonan, delivered in her accustomed tone of distracted rambling, but unmistakably disrespecting Francis as a bit of a dullard who’s being used by secularists and anyway he’s still on Our Team on Abortion and Contraception!

Jesuit-trained Francis with an advanced degree in chemistry is a dullard compared to brilliant John Paul II??  Yeah, that's not going to fly even with the help of the canaries floating around Noonan's head.

Ed quotes the bibulous Noonan yapping about Pope Francis discomfiting "the church he loves" by speaking out on global climate change, "trickle down" economics, and income inequality, and then offers his rebuttal:

That’s entirely true if by “the church” which is being discomforted you mean those good loyal Catholics who have let themselves stray into the communion of the Golden Calf and its own line of pontiffs from St. Friedrich Hayek to St. Ayn Rand to St. Ronald Reagan (Peggy’s own Patron in more ways than one).

Please read the entire piece.   It's priceless. 

(Image:  Nooney Tunes - "Hmmm.  What would St. Ronnie do?")

* h/t Jon Stewart, Daily Show.

Letters We Wish We'd Written Dept., Followed By a Sad Trombone

From today's once great Washington Post Kaplan Daily:

Still another article in The Post ["House GOP bills intended to push White House on scandals," The Fed Page, July 10] used the phrase 'the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative political groups."

Notwithstanding IRS official Lois Lerner's disastrous and inexplicable "admission" to the contrary, there has been no evidence yet adduced that the IRS "targeted" conservative groups. To the contrary, the facts so far tell us that the IRS's exempt organizations division did exactly what it is supposed to do.  It must attempt to implement properly a 100-year-old provision of the tax code that requires the service to differentiate between organizations that are primarily "social welfare" organizations, hence properly exempt under the statute, from ones that are primarily political -- conservative or not -- and hence not exempt.

Regrettably, repeated use of phrases such as "targeting conservative organizations" and "IRS scandal" implants those notions in the public consciousness, and subsequent revelations are unlikely to change that.  The only scandal is the way the news media leap on incomplete "facts" and parrot unsupported accusations to churn controversy. Good people's jobs and reputations have already been damaged, if not destroyed.  Words matter.  But then you don't need me to tell you that.

Conrad Rosenberg,
Silver Spring
The writer is a retired branch chief of the exempt organizations division of the Internal Revenue Service.

Regular readers of the Kaplan Daily see this all the time in the reportage, not just with the IRS nothingburger, but with of every bit of undigested barf that it disgorged from the right-wing media and finds its way uncritically into "mainstream" outlets like the Kaplan Daily.   It's all about sales, hits, "winning the morning," whatever you wish to call it -- just don't call it journalism.

Of course, it's not just the print media that engages in this endless, mindless rock-turning.  Sadly, some deranged souls don't even remember rocks they turned over earlier.  Cue the sad trombone.

Get Thee to the Fainting Couch!

The always unintentionally amusing Peggy "Piggy" Noonan, former Ronnie Raygun wordsmith and current op-ed doyenne of the Wall Street Journal, had the vapors during ABC's This Week yesterday in describing President Barack Hussein Osecretmuslim's terrifyingly frequent appearances on TV. Check out Wonkette's coverage of Piggy's strained umbrage, and her exaggerated facial expressions and schoolmarmish "concerned" persona. What a hoot!

Yes, Piggy, Barack Hussein Blackman will be appearing frequently on your TV to remind you that the golden days of yore are no more (how poetic). The fact that your side lost the election big time last November gives him the right to torment "concerned" wingers like you by his frequent appearances. Deal with it.

Bwahahaha!!

(photo: Piggy striking a "thoughtful" pose. Keep pulling your chin, Piggy, it'll make you wise some day. . .)