...never read. Your story reminded me that I forgot to mention another source for those bulk buys: all the moronic right-wing networks, magazines, and book clubs. I know that NewsMax, WorldNut...er...WorldNetDaily, and similar "news" purveyors were giving out lots of those right-wing books with subscriptions. I'm sure they still are.

...started placing a little symbol next to certain book titles. It was a little cross or dagger, as I recall. The NYT apparently has sources at book sellers which report large bulk sales to them, which obviously do not represent grass-roots book buying. All too often what's going on--especially with the moronic books "written" by Donald Trump Jr, etc.--is that "think" tanks, right-wing foundations, and Republican party organizations are buying massive quantities of books and then giving them away at their rubber-chicken fundraising dinners. Anything they can't give away either goes to the dollar stores or is shredded.

Drumpf made a number of remarks over his term about his deference to the radtrad fanatics, but I had no idea there was someone like Leo at the Federalist Society, which had always been more focused on installing "Neanderthal justices" (Ted Kennedy's term) than anything else. If anything, the Federalist Society seemed like one of the more secular right-wing "think" tanks, or at least generically Protestant. Clearly many of us were mistaken.

The Catholic Information Center had quite a role in politics in recent years, including very public conversions of Robert Bork, Laura Ingraham, Newt Gingrich, Robert Novak, and others I can't recall. The CIC is basically a front for Opus Dei, although I'm not sure you can call it a "front" when it's as open as it is about its affiliation. The CIC is located on K Street, which is some of the most expensive real estate in the US, if not the world.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216710987#post1

...especially the perpetually smug visage of EWTN "news" anchor Raymond Arroyo. He's going to have a much more difficult time keeping that smug look plastered on now that their culture warrior archbishop just got pantsed. Cry harder, Ray.

It is a constant theme of most reactionary "thought".

Crisis magazine is a really hacky neocon Catholic journal that had a scandal back in the W Bush years (2004) when its editor and publisher (Deal Hudson) was fired for having covered up a serious indiscretion that cost him a teaching career at Fordham. Until the 2004 scandal, Hudson made constant appearances on radtrad Catholic networks like EWTN. He had a comeback recently as a Drumpf adviser.

This is the kind of nonsense you get on Catholic radtrad radio and TV: (Ir)-Relevant Radio, EWTN, etc. Trending With Timmerie is a moronic show on (Ir)-Relevant Radio that I fortunately had not heard of before yesterday. Timmerie's Twitter page makes it clear that most of the time, she's obsessed with abortion and pelvic issues, standard-issue fare for the talkers on radtrad networks. But today, she's got the answer to ending all the school shootings.

https://twitter.com/Timmerie/status/1529885195213713418



I listened to this segment of the show while driving and found it hard to believe what I was hearing. These radtrads are so intellectually lazy that they can't understand the difference between an assertion and an argument. This is what you get when you silo your kids off in phony "higher learning" institutions like Franciscan "University" of Stupidville...er...Steubenville and John Paul the Great Catholic "University" (Timmerie's alma mater).

A couple more picayune (and perhaps petty) criticisms follow.

First, the Hays Code didn't actually end until 1968. Like most social conservatives, the radtrads love to invert cause and effect. The Code was rescinded because long before its demise in the late '60s, its restrictions on content and contradictory nature were causing it to fracture on a daily basis. Anyone ever heard of film noir? Most of the most celebrated films in that genre were being made at the same time the Code was being implemented. Also, the Hays Code did not apply to "the entire entertainment industry". It applied to motion pictures, and not even all of them. And also not records, concerts, novels, etc.

Second, Timmerie loves to let everyone know on her Twitter and Instagram that she has a Master's degree. Apparently she missed out on grade-school English grammar. It's 1960s, not "1960's".

Also, Timmerie's picture on her Twitter is at least a decade out of date. No vanity there at all, no sir. (Compare it with her latest Instagram photos). The radtrad networks are now up to the same thing Fox has been doing for at least 20 years: hire lots of photogenic women and airbrush and Botox them until they look like statues--or as Randi Rhodes calls them, the "right-wing Fembots".

That last bit was a cheap shot, but Timmerie deserves it.

...diagnosis of what ailed the country looks more and more prescient with each passing year. If Americans would have listened and acted on his advice, we would be a much different and better country.

...WorldNetDaily, and now even more insane "news" sources like LindellTV--Fox News is considered liberal. There's no way through to these people short of a cult deprogramming. LindellTV now has a daily show with the execrable Emerald Robinson, who got fired from NewsMax for being too extreme in her antivax activism--which is really saying something.

...with them. When they were the Tea Party--when they were being transported from protest to protest on Koch-brothers-funded tour buses--and acted like more "normal" reactionaries, dressed up in tricorner hats and Pilgrim outfits, they were fine. Once they got their own nutty ideas and started making Q websites (after they got booted from Reddit) and talking about how Da Jooz Be Controlin' Da World, that was a bridge too far.

I'm willing to cut Sippy Cupp some slack here; I believe she is disturbed by these reactionary and fascist movements. But she doesn't seem to get that what happened is that the GOP lost control of its base. The constant push toward one-upmanship on the part of everyone from their candidates to radio talkers led directly to this. How could she not see this coming nearly two decades ago with Michael Savage et al?

...of this country's history, as industry after industry outsourced its production abroad. Hint to MTG: it didn't have anything to do with "regulation".

I work in the electronics field (don't want to dox myself beyond that), and I can tell you that the most advanced semiconductor production is now done in exactly two locations on the planet. It is possible that we are now far enough behind that we can't catch up.

MTG being elected in the first place is evidence of the decline that she so strongly avows.