The current surreal scenarios are the desperate ploys of a very scared bunch of Republicans.

Lyin' Ryan, Dustbin Nunes, RonJon, et al are committing Obstruction of Justice. They in in legal peril, and only making it worse every day. They're taking an enormous gamble.

every thing they do ends up making them look guiltier and guiltier.

was still taught when I was in high school.

One day schoolchildren will be learning about an even greater scandal, the installation of dump and concurrent traitorous acts and unpatriotic deeds of ryan, mcconnell, et al. History will not be kind.

We (the American people and American democracy) had better be the victors!

This fall's election will be the most important in American history.

This goes way beyond mere garden variety political corruption.

that the Constitution is just "a Goddamn piece of paper), in Bush 43's words, and that Trumpy can commit crimes with impunity because he owns Congress and the Justice Department. IOW, these GOPers are betting on a fascist revolution strongly supported by Putin.

If they're wrong and the coup crumbles, they're all subject to the charge of Conspiracy against the United States.

We could also agree that the conglomerates are trying to do the same - buy up as many media outlets as possible and feed them all from one hub.

Again, so far I can get 95% of my info (right or wrong) from the internet. If they have their way, that won't keep going. Nationalized 5G being proposed!

that they willingly drink deep from the cesspool of anti-American propaganda that is Fox News and right wing talk radio. Probably started back with the Nixon's Southern Strategy.

They've spent 30 years painting themselves into a corner, but now the paint has been replaced by gasoline, as Shitstain and his capos toss out burning rags.

All they have left is

What we're seeing now is what happens when you let the inmates out of the asylum.

once the full scope of the crimes that tRump has been revealed they can then all it a "fake investigation".

more over, those trying to discredit the FBI are the very ones scared shitless because they are deeply connected to the russians.

They've been digging themselves deeper into insanity for many years, promoting ever crazier conspiracy theories and discrediting any legitimate information as fake news.

I have been nashing my teeth over right wing fuck wittery my entire adult life, going back to the early 90s.

They have skull fucked themselves for so long they don't know how crazy they are, and as you noted, the rationalizations to support their crazy just have gotten more and more distanced from reality as they have gone along.

This was part of the danger of letting them spend 8 years doing their Obama derangement things unchecked - they were allowed to paint a decent, honorable, capable man as a the worst thing to every happen to the country completely unfettered, laying the groundwork to inversely rationalize a complete ogre as being perfectly acceptable.

Your entire adult life has been an era in which new mass media, including the internet, have been weaponized to prevent united electoral majorities from forming, and of course turn to half into attack dogs for the right. By people who'd fight any attempt to pass laws to control it.

Over the past 30 years, hugely significant, planetary wealth has quadrupled, most of it accruing to new centimillionaire and billionaire classes and most of whose conservatives resent answering to "the people." Same for laws controlling them.

Problem is, through this era Democrats and a few Republican believers have never had sufficient power to pass the hugely important and controversial laws needed to combat this. To put it mildly, the battle to stop any limits set would have been ferocious, every one fought up to SCOTUS, even if we could somehow have arrived at consensus on what needed to be done before events proved predictions. A brief mandate for net neutrality has been repealed.

I've become a very strong believer in the need for "no yelling fire in a crowded nation" laws. The dissemination of verifiable political lies and deceptions to large numbers of people for purposes of mass persuasion needs to be illegal, determined of course by special courts also committed to scrupulous protection of free speech of the citizenry. And legally mandated provision of informative daily news by all major media, as we once had when it was only broadcast news.

Existential needs. Because you're right of course, "letting" them is threatening to destroy our republic.

I agree with your over arching points about the media and wealth.

The thing is that Democratic politicians and party members are to blame for playing the role of the Washington Generals to the Republican's Harlem Globetrotters.

While Republicans have spent over a quarter century now YELLING complete bullshit, democrats have cowered in the corner afraid of the shadow 99% of the time.

This was my reference to "letting" them negatively cast BHO for 8 years. Republicans have Ws back 100 percent, you don't DARE criticize the COC with troops in the field! That of course was never to be heard again the moment BHO took a seat in the Oval Office.

For 8 years Republicans screamed whatever complete nonsense popped into their minds about him, and congressional dems just let him out there to take hit, after hit, after hit.

They get to spew whatever bullshit they spew completely unchecked.

Hell, they are out and out acting in treason, and Dems can't bring themselves to do more than some passive, gentlemans rules, "gee, golly, what they are doing is just so unusual ..." while the treasonous bastards are the ones playing the VICTIM to treason with all of their "deep state bullshit."

There is no pushback, and when you have one side screaming the most wild eyed things possible with no pushback, it leaves the mushy middle to think there is something to it.

We have the GD high ground here, clear as day.

And, Dems won't take it and defend it.

and anti-government gas in the 1980-2018 miasma we all breathe.

You know, back in 1996 a friend and I took some boys to an afternoon showing of Independence Day, theater filled with kids, of course. When the aliens blew up the White House, most of the kids, shockingly, cheered. They were also growing up breathing that poisoned miasma.

You ignore the realities of power. The nation started shifting right around 1978. With the election of Reagan and more conservative Republicans to office in 1980, a new conservative-dominated era began. Since then, massive wealth and increased desire by wealthy conservatives to be able to use it to buy governments grew, and then they acquired legal ability to buy governments. And own hundreds of newspapers, radio stations and other media to continue shifting voters farther and farther right.

If you read what political scientists studying Democratic and Republican party ideological behaviors say, you'll find that, yes, there're way too many opportunities for corruption, even pressures. But although Democrats elected to office also often benefit from this personally, huge differences are

1. Most Democrats are liberals who still BELIEVE in the need for good government and enter office wanting to use government to serve the people. (The best conservatives shared many of these beliefs with Democrats, even if they saw it done somewhat differently, but most of those were driven out of office long ago.)
2. The degree of corruption, both materially and of purpose and ideology, is far less than what has happened on the right, where it has taken over. We really are far more principled.

I was just reading this in The Atlantic, so will toss it in, a little view into a different, though very imperfect Democratic-dominated DC at the end of the liberal New Deal era.

It happened, it happening and its a fact.

BHO was left to take a millions cuts and was left almost no defense from dems in congress.

We are seeing it now, we have the high ground on the russia issue and you have a handful of dems pussy footing around it, most not even stepping up to take the right.

You can BOTH be principled, belief in the need for government AND Fight the fight at hand.

The point stands - the country gets influenced by Rs screaming their bullshit with no pushback next to no pushback from Dems.

Part of the tragedy of Franken, one of the handful of dems who had balls and took the fight to Rs, like Warren, Bernie (who isn't even a dem) ...

Endless stream of Rs in congress screaming their lunacy, crickets for the most part from dems.

Though not their drug of choice, marijuana makes R's excessively paranoid, even more so than they normally are.

What is their drug of choice? Take your pick:
1. Illicit gay sex with their pastor
2. Tax cuts
3. Sniffing the lighter fluid for their torches

Right out of college cocaine was the rich Republican drug of choice. Pot was for hippies and draft dodgers.

and thinking people can sit back and watch it and laugh but it's going to help them delay, influence juries, intimidate judges, and get concessions from dems who will just want to get it over with. then they'll get us to blame 'spineless' dems.

they know they can get away with just about anything as long as they keep 30% living in an alternate reality

and if there's some national emergency it will help them even more

but they can't sell this without the massive propaganda monopoly that dems ignore

They really increased when President Obama was elected and reelected. The difference is that, secure in the comfort of a wonderful President, first family and an idealist administration, we ignored the growing sewer.

What is chilling in retrospect was how the weirdest fringe moved from being a fringe that even the right wing tried to separate themselves from to part of the right wing and then part of even the majority of people identifying themselves as Republicans. We thought we had won, but ignored that over half the Republicans thought there might be a question as to whether Obama was Muslim and whether he was born in the US. Consider also the very strange Jade Helm conspiracy theories that grew strong enough, Obama personally denied them . (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jade_Helm_15_conspiracy_theories ) This was NOT normal politics -- and we were complacent, thinking it was just the loony fringe. Loony it was, but with social media, talk radio and allied media, it became bigger than what could be characterized as a fringe. We were complacent then, but how do you deal with such a huge group of people not just willing, but eager, to believe this alternative reality. (Throw in white nationalism that used these people.)

It was with this backdrop that these people believed that the extremely warped reading of Podesta emails dealing with getting pizza were turned into a pedofile ring operating out of the basement of a DC pizza place - that did not even have a basement!

The question is how can we walk this back? Why were so many susceptible to believing things that were - for all of us -- not even remotely likely. Also how do we argue with people exposed to -- and believing that there is some sort of "deep state" that is planning a coup? When I first heard the phrase, I naively thought they could be speaking of career professionals in the Defense and State departments and the intelligence agencies. This group previously kept foreign policy relatively bipartisan and made it unusual for any President to change foreign policy quickly.

Here are 7 things people can do to democratize the propaganda monopoly that is talk radio:

7 is probably the most important.

1) Give Republican talk radio the credit it deserves: Limbaugh is point man for the talk radio propaganda operation. Trump needs a RUSH tattoo on his forehead, as do all Republican politicians and media hacks who repeat the Republican lies. As does Hannity and every other Fox ‘News’ liar. Trump even studied talk radio to prepare for the elections. They all ride the talk radio bandwagon and feed from the daily prechewed smorgasbord of lies, distortions, and rationalizations. Democrats in media could accurately preface any answer to Trump supporters with “That’s what limbaugh says but...” It does no good to keep blaming Fox and Breitbart for everything.

2) Poll for talk radio: Media and political scientists need to be encouraged to poll Trump support for talk radio. Talk radio is a major factor on its own and too much analysis ignores it or lumps it in with other right wing sources. When Trump watches Fox, he’s often getting a sanitized, censored summary of what’s being created with talk radio repetition first. Talk radio dominates massaging in many parts of the US but there are probably no political science departments in any US university that considers talk radio as a unique factor.

3) Record and transcribe talk radio: It is easier and much cheaper now than a few years ago to automate recording and transcribing the main RW talkers so people can search and monitor it without listening to it.

Urge the Democratic Party to make transcriptions of the major national and state level talkers available for searching.

Republican politicians and candidates and their allies will say things on friendly fact-free talk shows that can be used in debates and advertisements against them. Callers can lie about Democratic candidates and not be challenged. And Republican radio is known to use paid callers.

When media and politicians repeat Republican talking points they need to be reminded that unchallenged repetition on Republican radio stations does not make them true.

Knowing about it before it shows up in editorial pages means not always having to play catch up. Most of those new Democratic Party candidates are going to get swiftboated from their local RW radio stations coordinating with Republican-allied think tanks and they and their supporters will have no clue.

4) Investigate it: How long has Putin been using talk radio? By influencing the talk radio gods the Kremlin can steer the Republican Party, just as Republican think tanks have. Did the Kremlin use talk radio to push Palin on McCain in 2008? ‘Climategate’ (2009), which was used to derail President Obama at the Copenhagen climate conference, was created largely with talk radio and started from a Russian hack. Republican radio has pushed for debt default in the past. The Kremlin would like that, but probably not the Kochs. Did the Kremlin find a way to feed and coordinate with top radio hosts? Was Breitbart used for that purpose? Are any of them being paid freelance money? Trump guy Sam Nunberg analyzed 1000s of hrs of RW radio & reported to Trump in 2014. Was that to coordinate with Russian ops?

5) Boycott all advertisers on RW radio stations. ‘Thank’ all local businesses that advertise on RW radio: It can be easy and fun to listen to a few minutes here and there and get a few email addresses for thank-you emails that have a good chance to get to bosses/owners. Thank them for Trump, Trumpcare, global warming, privatization of public education, voter suppression, deregulation, tax breaks for billionaires, making racism and sexism ‘acceptable’ again, etc.

A few days ago in about 90 minutes of a Limbo show attacking Mueller on a Missouri station there were three ads for the St.Louis Blues hockey team and several ads for CBS TV shows. Sometimes those are ads for universities and university sports teams.

6) Protest it: Include the radio stations in any progressive protests. They may be better places to protest than capitols. Protestors need to know that if their protests get attention those radio stations will be minimizing protest size, attacking protestors, and mischaracterizing their objectives so that they are more easily ignored or attacked by politicians and media.

7) Push the 88 universities that endorse 260 limbaugh stations to stop crapping on their mission statements and start looking for apolitical alternatives to broadcast sports on.

Maybe their political science faculties and students can start studying the most dominant political factor in the US the last 30 years.

No publicly funded university has any excuse not to tell their licensing company to begin looking for apolitical alternatives to broadcast sports on.

If the KKK bought the station the school broadcasts sports on what would the school do? 30 years ago it might as well have been the KKK, the NRA, and Putin who bought up 1000 radio stations to create a propaganda monopoly.

What excuse does a publicly funded university have for letting Republican radio stations use its community credibility, athletes, and logos to:

— deny global warming?

— try to defund public education and oppose student debt relief?

— attack black athletes who kneel?

When one or two university communities begin discussing this absurd situation others will be shamed into following. The GOP and those stations will scream “What about free speech!” Media and politicians that have been enabled and intimidated by those stations for decades will notice. Advertisers will flee Republican talk radio. Some stations will have to switch to other programming, like music or sports talk, and some may offer to balance their talk shows with liberal content. As the Republicon talk radio monopoly falls apart stations will open up for liberal talk.

Some things you suggest are easy, while others would take a very concerted effort, but in the end, we see where NOT countering this cancer has gotten us.

I remember reading in the last few days before the Macron election in France, that a huge Russian effort to harm his election failed and that the difference between France and the US is that there is no similar right wing media echo chamber in France to amplify the lies.

The churn of AM radio started the process of disconnecting 1/3 of the country from reality decades ago, and this process has gotten exponentially more pervasive with the prevalence of social and digital media.

Nwet Gingrich was a sick bastard, but he had NOTHING on the modern republican's. They know, from it working as well as it has, all they have to do is keep their base in a constant state of agitation and separation from reality, they are meaner and scream louder, and they can bully their way through anythings.

The other factor is the "middle" 1/3. They hear the crazy shit Rs scream, and the odd times our 1/3 goes of a rails a bit, and sit in the corner sucking their thumbs babbling "they are both the same ..."

We are just going along for the ride at this point.

Your opponent of crimes you commit. Goebbels would be proud.

how some anti-Trump texts between two FBI employees is proof of some kind of bias or plot against Trump when other Republican presidential nominees were calling him unfit during the campaign. Did I imagine the "Never Trump" thing?

but the two agents also made disparaging remarks about Bernie and Hillary, so it seems like it would be pretty hard to argue that they were "in the tank" for Hillary.

they are desperate and having to make up bullshit

And Mueller is the light.

The evil Trump and his party do in the dark is about to be brought into the light so they scurry about with their wild eyed conspiracy theories.

the predicament behind the cartoon is true