VIDEO: "An Alamo moment for the First Amendment" - Matt Taibbi

At the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, award-winning author Matt Taibbi spoke passionately about government efforts to censor free speech. Here's what he had to say.

Just because Donald Trump won the election [honestly! Ed.] doesn't mean that the fight against the Deep State and its controlled media is over.

VIDEO: Matt Taibbi and Walt talk about Tampon Tim and man stuff

This is a follow-up to "The video challenging 'real men' to vote for Harris", WWW 11/10/24. It seems that the Awalz part of the Dumbocrat campaign is tasked with bringing in the vote of "real men" -- blue-collar workers with hairy chests and sweaty balls. Joe Sixpack, the Marlboro Man, Dirty Harry -- those guys. That was what that "Man enough" ad was all about.

Now there's another one, produced by the same people, called "And Tim", featuring Tampon Timmy Walz, the Great Manly Hunter. It's even funnier than the previous one, and in this vlog, Matt Taibbi and Walter Kim [no relation to Walt Whiteman. Ed.] explain why.  It's a looooong video, but after five minutes you'll want to watch the whole thing.

I wondered, as I watched it, if there's something wrong (physically) with Matt Taibbi. (His mental acuity is obviously fine.) I stopped following MT when he wrote Smells Like Dead Elephants, but have started paying attention again now that he has come over to our side.

I note that Mr Taibbi is wearing a baseball cap, and his voice sounds kinda shaky. I wonder if he is suffering from some disease. Could be cancer. Chemotherapy would cause him to lose his hair. Or, given his sexual orientation, it could be HIV-AIDS. Hmmm. I wouldn't wish such things on anyone, and wish Matt a good recovery from whatever's ailing him.

Matt Taibbi stands up for free speech at "Rescue the Republic"

"...every American has a little bit of asshole in him. William Blake said, 'Always be ready to speak your mind and a base man will avoid you.' Some struggle with this concept. Americans are born knowing it.... Propaganda is...always someone trying to make you feel bad for their weakness, their mistakes. Don’t be ground down by it. Stand up straight and give it back."

Matt Taibbi, speaking at Rescue the Republic, 29/9/24.

How I wish I'd been there! Rescue the Republic was a one-day celebration of freedom, organized by jointheresistance.org, yesterday in Washington DC. The event featured an all-star cast of musical artists, comedians, and thought leaders, including Dr Jordan Peterson, Tulsi Gabbard, Russell Brand, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Matt Taibbi.

Yes, it's the same Matt Taibbi who wrote Smells Like Dead Elephants and several other good books of social and political commentary. He used to be a raging liberal. In recent times, he has had his eyes opened and now subscribes to the Rescue the Republic credo, which you'll see below. Click here to read the complete transcript of Mr Taibbi's speech. 

In the promotional material for Rescue the Republic, the organizers say, "Let’s come together to celebrate the essence of what makes America and the West so special." Walt says AMEN. Wish I'd been there....

Matt Taibbi on "Justin Trudeau's Ceauşescu Moment"

When one of my favourite political writers -- the one who called Donald Trump the "insane clown president" -- likens Justin Trudeau to Nicolae Ceauşescu, the late Communist dictator of Romania, I take notice. And that's what Matt Taibbi did in his Substack blog TK News yesterday. Under the headline "Justin Trudeau's Ceauşescu Moment" is the subhead "Denouncing truckers for 'unacceptable views,' Canada's Prime Minister skipped town rather than face evidence of his own unpopularity. Is neoliberalism finally cracking?"

For those who have forgotten, Nicolae Ceauşescu was President of Romania from 1974 to 1989. His second decade was characterized by an increasingly erratic personality cult, nationalism and a deterioration in foreign relations with the Western powers as well as the Soviet Union. In December of 1989, in the face of something like the Canadian truckers' freedom rally in the city of Timișoara, the Communists gathered a rent-a-mob in Bucharest to show their presumed support for the régime. Then this happened.

   

For three minutes (2:45 to 5:45) the crowd shouts insults and deprecations at the President. (I don't understaned Romanian, so am not sure if the F-word was used or not.) Mr Ceauşescu offers the people a generous bribe -- a 10% increase in the minimum wage -- to be quiet and cease their opposition. And he urges them to rise up to defend Romania against the intervention of "foreign agents". 

"Better to die in battle, in full glory than to once again be slaves upon your ancient ground, and we must fight to live free and independent!" Someone in the crowd responds, "He's right. Let's rush the stage!"

   

Even if you don't understand Romanian, you can hear that at about the 8-minute mark of this video (the second part of his speech) people are starting to shout back at the Communist dictator. Just before the clip ends, you can see him waving his hands in gestures that clearly say "no, no, no! I don't want to hear that!" After this speech he ran away, but was caught and was executed four days later, still wearing the same clothes. 

I would be surprised if Blackie McBlackface knew anything about the Communist tyrant's fall from power, but he has smart people pulling his strings, who certainly advised him that it was better to go to ground -- an "undisclosed location" in the Laurentians? -- rather than risk a similar confrontation with Canadians who were already waving "Fuck Trudeau!" flags on Parliament Hill.

That's Matt Taibbi's point. For neoliberalism or  "liberal democracy", the bloom is off the rose. The real people (as distinguished from the liberal elites who rule Ottawa, Washington, Paris and London) are fed up. But, just like Ceaușescu, the rulers don't want to admit or even hear that. Mr Taibbi writes:

There may be no real-world comparison between a blood-soaked monster like Ceaușescu and a bumbling ball-scratcher like Joe Biden [I love that phrase!], or an honorarium-gobbling technocrat like Hillary Clinton [that one too!], or a Handsome Dan investment banker like Emmanuel Macron, or an effete pseudo-intellectual like Justin Trudeau. 

Still, the ongoing inability of these leaders to see the math of populist uprisings absolutely recalls that infamous scene in Bucharest. From Brexit to the election of Donald Trump to, now, the descent of thousands of Canadian truckers upon the capital city of Ottawa to confront Trudeau, a consistent theme has been the refusal to admit — not even to us, but to themselves — the numerical truth of what they’re dealing with. 

Trudeau is becoming the ultimate example. Truckers last month began protesting a January 22nd rule that required the production of vaccine passports before crossing the U.S.-Canadian border. Canadian truckers are reportedly 90% vaccinated, above the country’s 78% total, a key detail that’s been brazenly ignored by media in both countries determined to depict these more as “anti-vax” than “anti-mandate” protests (which seem to be about many things at once, but that’s another story). 

When an angry convoy descended upon the capital, Trudeau dismissed them in a soliloquy that can only be described as inspired political arson: The small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa, who are holding unacceptable views that they are expressing, do not represent the views of Canadians…who know that following the science and stepping up to protect each other is the best way to ensure our rights, our freedoms, our values as a country. 

 A near-exact repeat of the “basket of deplorables” episode, Trudeau’s imperious description of “unacceptable” views instantly became a rallying cry, with people across the country lining the streets to cheer truckers while self-identifying as the “small fringe minority.” Everyone from high school kids to farmers and teachers and random marchers carrying jerrycans of fuel joined in as Trudeau’s own words were used to massively accelerate his troubles.

I'm tempted to copy and paste the rest of Mr Taibbi's article but imagine I'd hear from his lawyers. Suffice to say that he has hit the liberal nail right on its pointy head. The people are speaking. Will the liberal elites listen? They'd better, lest they wind up like Mr Ceaușescu.

Further reading: "The Week Canada Liberated the United States", by Joel Pollak, Senior Editor of Breitbart News, 11/2/22.

VIDEO: Matt Taibbi talks about "education" in Loudon County VA

I kind of lost track of Matt Taibbi, whose political analysis I always enjoyed, even when he was calling President Trump the "clown president". He can be found now on Rumble.

In this video he discusses the ongoing battle between the "educators" of Loudon County VA and the parents who don't want their kids to be brainwashed with Critical Race Theory (CRT) and other hard left propaganda. Mr Taibbi makes the case that if Democrats don't change their tune on parental influence in school curriculum, they're doomed in 2022.

   

Nice to be able to see and hear Mr Taibbi. I'm one of those who always wonders what the writers look like. That's why I put my picture on WWW, not because I'm vain. [??? Ed.] But I digest.... 

I want to recommend, highly, Matt Taibbi's 2019 book Hate, Inc, reviewed on WWW in "From the inside: Matt Taibbi explains why the media want to keep Americans perpetually at war...", 28/6/20. Mr Taibbi is mentioned in several other posts, which you can find by using the "Search this blog" window at the bottom right corner of this page.

Matt Taibbi: the Sovietization of the American Press (link)

Sometimes Walt finds it difficult to follow the numerous commentators on matters political, religious [and hockey! Poor Len] who I ought to read regularly. One such is Matt Taibbi, sometime writer for Rolling Stone, and creator of his own Substack blog, TK News.

I've been waiting to read Mr Taibbi's analysis of 2020's stolen election, but if it has appeared, or is in the works, I haven't heard about it. I should keep up with Mr T, and have now resolved -- my Saint Patrick's Day resoluytion -- so to do.

Thanks to Agent 3 for giving me the wake-up call [e-mail actually. Ed.]. What prompted him to do so was  Mr Taibbi's March 12th column, headed

 "The Sovietization of the American Press".

The subhead is: The transformation from phony "objectivity" to open one-party orthodoxy hasn't been an improvement. This photo pretty much sums up the content.

Lack of space [and lack of permission! Ed.] constrains us from reposting the entire piece, or even excerpts. Suffice it to say that Walt recommends strongly that you click on the link above and read the article for yourself. 

You'll find it isn't just your imagination. The lamestream press really has become the lickspittle press. Mr Taibbi concludes thus: "What is this all going to look like in four years?"

At last people are starting to speak out vs "progressive" intolerance

Imagine that! Just a few days ago Walt posted a very positive review ("Read the book!") of Hate, Inc., in which Matt Taibbi criticizes the narrowing of the parameters of debate on social and political issues, and the culture of conformity being imposed by the political, business and media elites.

Now comes news* that dozens of artists, writers and academics have signed "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate", published in Harper's Magazine, decrying the weakening of public debate and warning that the free exchange of information and ideas is in jeopardy amid a rise in what they call "illiberalism."

J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood are among dozens of writers, artists and academics to argue against ideological conformity. Another signatory is cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky, whose interview with Matt Taibbi forms an appendix to Hate, Inc. We posted a couple of pithy excerpts in "Noam Chomsky on the 'Crisis of Democracy'", WWW 1/7/20. Included in that post is a video in which Prof Chomsky's book Manufacturing Consent is summarized in under ten minutes!

Academics on the list of more than 150 signatories hail from American universities such as Princeton, Yale, Harvard Law, Brown, Rutgers and more. They wrote (collectively) that the "needed reckoning" regarding racial and social justice "has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity."

"More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms," the letter continues. "Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes."

The letter says, "The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world.... But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion.... The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides."

*Just Fancy That Dept.: When Ed. went to Google to research this story and get the Harper's URL, the top three returns led to The Grauniad, New York Times and WaPo.

According to Matt Taibbi and Dave Rubin (in Don't Burn This Book) those are the three papers most guilty of pushing the kind of forced ideological (i.e. left-liberal) purity of which the signatories to the letter complain. Probably just a coincidence.

Further reading: "Learn How to Spot Fake News", Chapter 8 of Dave Rubin's Don't Burn This Book (Signal, 2020). Excerpts:
Newsrooms are now filled with progressive activists who bend the truth, as opposed to old-school professionals who feel a duty both to themselves and their audience.... News is a business like any other. Although we'd like to think that the business it's in is to inform and enlighten, we should always remember that it's really in the business of keeping our eyes on the TV or our fingers clicking.
Matt Taibbi's point exactly! Hey, you don't have to read only Chapter 8. Read the whole book!

Noam Chomsky on the "Crisis of Democracy" + VIDEO

Here is an excerpt from Matt Taibbi's interview with (((Noam Chomsky))), "Appendix B" to Hate Inc., which I reviewed last the weekend.

The Crisis of Democracy, which came out in 1975 [was] the first publication of the Trilateral Commission, which is a group of liberal internationalists from Europe, United States, and Japan, three main centers of capitalist democracy.

...The "Crisis of Democracy" is that in the 1960s, all kinds of sectors of the population that are supposed to be passive and apathetic begin to try to enter the political arena to press for their own interest and concerns, and that imposes too much of a burden on the state, which becomes ungovernable. So, what we need is "more moderation in democracy." That's their phrase. People should go back into their corners and leave it to us.

In fact, the American rapporteur Samuel Huntington looked back kind of nostalgically to the Truman years. He says Truman was able to govern the country politically with the aid of just a few Wall Street bankers.

Then we had democracy. But he goes after the media. he says the media have bcome too adversarial, too independent. We may even have to institute government controls to try to contain them, because of what they're doing.

That's the liberal position. The Trilateral Commission also went after what they called the de-legitimation of the universities. They said that the institutions -- and this is their phrase -- these institutions responsible for the "indoctrination of the young" -- are being de-legitimized.

We've got to have more indoctrination. Remember, that's the liberal end of the spectrum. Over to the right wing, you get much harsher things... but that's the intellectual background. We've got to stop "too much democracy," "too much freedom."

The 1960s were always called the "Time of Troubles". That was a time when all this started.

The emphasis is mine. I've been saying as much since the hippy-dippy `60s, which I remember well. Just because Prof. Chomsky is a leftie peacenik doesn't make him wrong. I'm putting Manufacturing Consent, recommended by Matt Taibbi, on my reading list. Oh... wait...



You can stop listening at 8:35 when the speaker starts talking about the Iowa primary (although it's a good example of the media manipulation under consideration.) What precedes that part pretty well sums up what both Noam Chomsky and Matt Taibbi are saying. It all has to do with money. Surprised?

From the inside: Matt Taibbi explains why the media want to keep Americans perpetually at war...

...with each other!

In fact, "Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another" is the subtitle of Matt Taibbi's latest book, Hate Inc. (OR Books, 2019), which I have just finished reading and recommend highly. Mr Taibbi's political views are quite different from mine, but I always enjoy reading his accounts of what's really happening in American politics. He is a worthy successor to Dr Hunter S. Thompson.

Hate Inc. is something of a confession, a mea culpa for the part Mr Taibbi played in creating and feeding Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), both before and after the revolution of November 2016. See Walt's review of Insane Clown President, WWW 10/8/17.

The author now admits having been deceived by both the Trump and Clinton campaigns, and having deceived himself into being part of the "groupthink", the "conventional wisdom" purveyed by the lamestream media, which held that someone as worthy as Hellery Clinton couldn't possibly lose to such a patent phony as the Donald. To his credit, Mr Taibbi gives numerous examples of where he went wrong, while at the same time pointing out that he wasn't the only one.

But Hate Inc. is not an apologia for the honest mistakes of the media, because very little of the "news" they fed us was "honest". Mr Taibbi argues that what they gave us, and are still giving us, is a twisted and highly hyped form of the kind of entertainment epitomized by a WWE wrestling match! It wasn't an election, he says, but the grand finale of Wrestlemania, complete with a "babyface" (Mrs Bill) and a "heel" (Mr Trump) straight out of a reality TV show.

The "face" was supposed to win, but somehow managed to defeat herself, and that's a story already told by Mr Taibbi and countless others. The real story of Hate Inc. is why the media did it, and how they are still doing it. The answer is simple. Anger and hatred attract more viewers/readers than sweetness and light. More viewers/readers means more advertising revenue. More advertising revenue means more profit! Especially when you don't have to pay for the content! In fact, election advertising is a hyuge revenue stream for the meeja. The more elections, the more hotly contested, the more money they make.

And you, fellow "news consumers", are swallowing every drop of vitriol, every morsel of loathing, and begging for second and third helpings. In Hate Inc. you will find countless examples of the media's most egregious manipulation of your ignorance, prejudices, and fears. They whipped you into a frenzy, gentle reader, and want to keep you there so you won't log off their websites or turn off your TV, even though "some viewers may find this disturbing!"

I would like to post some excerpts, but Ed. tells me I have gone on long enough and must find just one for the conclusion of this review. Here `tis:

News consumers on both sides today behave like cultists; self-isolating intellectually, kept that way with a steady diet of terrifying stories about fellow citizens. Red-staters are told liberals are terror-sympathizers, desperate, out of white guilt, to eviscerate American cultrure from within.

Blue-staters are peppered daily with stories of fellow travelers and traitors in their midst, an incredible example being NBC's effort to paint presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard as a tool of the Kremlin.... 

This deeply paranoid view of the human experience, telling all America it lives on a violent invisible influence battlefield, is the opposite of what the news used to be.... We are trying to keep your brain locked in conflict, not just for the grubby commerical reason that it keeps people tuned in, but because it prevents them from thinking about other things.

What other things? Read the book! If doing so causes you to stop reading WWW, I won't be offended, as long as you also stop watching The View and Rachel Maddow and [That's enough biased "news" sources! Ed.]

Footnotes:
Hate Inc. doesn't have an index (tsk, tsk) but it does have an appendix entitled "Why Rachel Maddow is on the cover of this book". Enough said?

A second appendix is an interview with Noam Chomsky, co-author (with Edward S. Herman) of Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988). Walt recommends reading this appendix first, before the book itself, to understand where Matt Taibbi is coming from. In the interview, he says to Prof. Chomsky: The main idea of Manufacturing Consent is...that it looks like we have a vigorous system of independent journalists, but the debate has been artificially narrowed. Why that is so is what Hate Inc. is all about.

Michael Matt VIDEO: Only America stands against the New World Order

We've been reposting videos by Michael Matt, editor of The Remnant newspaper, regularly, lately, because he's one of the very few talking sense about the paroxysm of fear and anger that has been sweeping the Paranoid States of America (and spilling over into other Western countries) for nearly four months now. More importantly, for us traditional Catholics, he relates the Dempanic, the race riots, and the breakdown of law and order to the crisis in the Roman Catholic Church, which started over half a century ago, with the Second Vatican Council.

In this video, Mr Matt tackles the question of rising racial tension in America and its impact on the 2020 presidential election. And, in the wake of the brutal murder of George Floyd*, Michael takes a closer look at police brutality, race relations now and in the past, and suggests that our "leaders'" war on God and Christian morality needs to be reconsidered immediately! He calls on all Americans -- black and white -- to stand together against those who would manipulate us into turning against each other and tearing our country apart.



But wait... there's more! Mr Matt asks what part the revolution in the Catholic Church plays in the loss of America's moral compass? Where is Pope Francis in all of this? Why is the Church no longer part of the solution for a society in turmoil? Where have all the Catholics gone? Why are the priests and bishops so terribly silent? All very good questions... Now is the time, Mr Matt says, for all Americans to come to the aid of our "one nation under God." The biggest question of all is: Do we have the courage to do it?!

*Footnote: At the time Michael Matt recorded this video, news had not yet broken of the shooting, in Atlanta, Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old black man. Mr Brooks had apparently fallen asleep behind the wheel of a car at a Wendy's drive-thru. A call to the local constabulary resulted in a lengthy confrontation during which Mr Brooks was fatally shot after he resisted arrest and stole an officer's Taser. The officer in question was... wait for it... white. In response, "protesters" torched the restaurant and shut down an interstate highway in both directions. Police arrested at least 36 "protesters".

Further reading: Speaking of Matts... let me recommend most highly a piece published on Friday by Matt [geddit? Ed.] Taibbi. Mr Taibbi suffers mightily from TDS, but he's still, IMHO, the best writer on American politics since the late Dr Hunter S. Thompson. Here's an excerpt from "The American Press Is Destroying Itself".

Each passing day sees more scenes that recall something closer to cult religion than politics. White protesters in Floyd’s Houston hometown kneeling and praying to black residents for “forgiveness… for years and years of racism” are one thing, but what are we to make of white police in Cary, North Carolina, kneeling and washing the feet of Black pastors? What about Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer kneeling while dressed in “African kente cloth scarves”?

There is symbolism here that goes beyond frustration with police or even with racism: these are orgiastic, quasi-religious, and most of all, deeply weird scenes, and the press is too paralyzed to wonder at it. In a business where the first job requirement was once the willingness to ask tough questions, we’ve become afraid to ask obvious ones.

Click here to read the whole thing. Even if you're a big fan of Still-President Trump, you'll find yourself doing a fist-pump and yelling "Right on!"

Why Matt Taibbi thinks the deep state coup vs Pres Trump is dangerous

It's been a while since we quoted Matt Taibbi here, not because of his leftish political views [Free speech for everyone! Ed.], and certainly not because he's not funny. He is a fine writer and I can't help but chuckle as I read something like Insane Clown President. The thing is that I wait for Mr Taibbi's books to appear, because I refuse to read Rolling Stone. So I was pleased to discover, today, that Mr T pens (or types) Untitledgate, a newsletter (or "serial book", as he calls it"), which will be delivered to you by e-mail... if you subscribe, of course.

Even better news is that some parts are available to cheap Charlies [like Walt! Ed.] who want to read before they shell out the spondulix. The most recent offering, headed "We're in a permanent coup", is subheaded "Americans might soon wish they just waited to vote their way out of the Trump era". Eh? Must read! Here are some excerpts.

We have long been spared this madness [change of government by coup] in America. Our head-counting ceremony was Election Day. We did it once every four years. That’s all over, in the Trump era....

The men who are the proxies for Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani...are asserting that "official channels" have been corrupted. The forces backing impeachment, meanwhile, are telling us those same defendants are obstructing a lawful impeachment inquiry.... We are speeding toward a situation when someone in one of these camps refuses to obey a major decree, arrest order, or court decision, at which point Americans will get to experience the joys of their political futures being decided by phone calls to generals and police chiefs.

My discomfort in the last few years, first with Russiagate and now with Ukrainegate and impeachment, stems from the belief that the people pushing hardest for Trump's early removal are more dangerous than Trump. Many Americans don't see this because they're not used to waking up in a country where you're not sure who the president will be by nightfall. They don’t understand that this predicament is worse than having a bad president.

The Trump presidency is the first to reveal a full-blown schism between the intelligence community and the White House. Senior figures in the CIA, NSA, FBI and other agencies made an open break from their would-be boss before Trump's inauguration, commencing a public war of leaks that has not stopped....

The agencies' new trick is inserting themselves into domestic politics using leaks and media pressure. The "intel chiefs" meeting was just the first in a series of similar stories, many following the pattern in which a document was created, passed from department from department, and leaked. [Examples are given.] ...

I don't believe most Americans have thought through what a successful campaign to oust Donald Trump would look like. Most casual news consumers can only think of it in terms of Mike Pence becoming president. The real problem would be the precedent of a de facto intelligence community veto over elections, using the lunatic spookworld brand of politics that has dominated the last three years of anti-Trump agitation.

CIA/FBI-backed impeachment could also be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If Donald Trump thinks he's going to be jailed upon leaving office, he'll sooner or later figure out that his only real move is to start acting like the "dictator" MSNBC and CNN keep insisting he is. Why give up the White House and wait to be arrested, when he still has theoretical authority to send Special Forces troops rappelling through the windows of every last Russiagate/Ukrainegate leaker? That would be the endgame in a third world country, and it's where we're headed, unless someone calls off this craziness. Welcome to the Permanent Power Struggle.

Book review: "I Can't Breathe", by Matt Taibbi

It's been difficult for me to read I Can't Breathe, by Matt Taibbi (Spiegel & Grau, 2017). Not that it is poorly written; it is quite the opposite. Nor was it because I don't see eye-to-eye with the author on the issues. Mr Taibbi is reliably liberal, as you would expect of a writer for Rolling Stone. If anyone is entitled to put the letters "SJW" after his name, it's Matt Taibbi. My discomfort stems from being reminded that those advocating "Justice for Eric Garner" and other victims of police killings are not always wrong, as some on the right say. That's what I Can't Breathe is about.

For those who don't remember, Eric Garner was a petty criminal who eked out a subsistence living for himself and his wives and children by hawking untaxed cigarettes around Tompkinsville Park, in Staten Island, a borough of New York City. On 17 July 2014, a cop named Daniel Pantaleo, already the subject of numerous complaints, put a chokehold on Mr Garner during an arrest for allegedly selling "loosies" -- single cigarettes.

The final moments of his life were captured on a video shot by Ramsey Orta, another small-time miscreant and Mr Garner's friend. What millions saw in the video was Officer Pantaleo killing Eric Garner. In spite of the video evidence, Officer Pantaleone was never indicted, let alone convicted, nor was he punished in any way for anything.

The case was presented to a grand jury by the then District Attorney (now Congressman) Dan Donovan. Mr Taibbi suggests, as have numerous lawyers, that Mr Donovan "threw" the grand jury hearing, focusing on exculpatory evidence and the unsavoury background of Eric Garner, rather than trying to get an indictment. We will never know, because the authorities have stonewalled the release of any details of the grand jury hearing.

I Can't Breathe focuses chiefly on the death of Eric Garner and the subsequent denial of justice by the so-called "justice system", but Matt Taibbi also canvases some of the many other extra-judicial killings -- police murders -- which have occurred in today's "postracial America" (as the Prez would have it), in Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland, Ferguson MO and Star City AR. The author makes a powerful argument for the proposition that the "criminal justice system" is (a) racist and (b) broken.

Having been caught up in the system myself, I cannot but agree with (b). The system is FUBAR. For me, (a) is the hard part. But the evidence is there, in black and white (if you'll forgive the pun). I don't believe that anyone, of any colour, no matter how much of a lowlife he may be, deserves to be killed or even physically assaulted by cops who believe their badge gives makes them judge, jury and... yes... executioner. If you think Eric Garner and the others who met death at the hands of the police "just got what was coming to them", please read I Can't Breathe.

Further reading: "Prez calls for 'soul searching' in wake of Baltimore race riot", WWW 28/4/15.

Book review: "Insane Clown President" by Matt Taibbi made Walt LOL

Ed. here. In "Hellery Clinton's 'Mannequin Challenge' campaign fail" (WWW 5/8/17 - includes video), Walt promised you a review of Insane Clown President, Matt Taibbi's book on the 2016 presidential election (Spiegel & Grau, 2017). This is it.

It's a pity that the original -- make that unique -- Doctor of Gonzo Journalism, Hunter S. Thompson, offed himself before US politics sank to the dpeths of the 21st-century campaigns for the presidensity. How he would have enjoyed last year's down-and-dirty slugfest between The Donald and Crooked Hillary. "Fear and Loathing in the Beltway, 2016" would have been a great title for one of HST's no-holds-barred tirades against the swine that comprise the American political and media establishments.

Matt Taibbi covers politics for Rolling Stone, and, when he's in form, is capable of just as much indignation and rancour as HST. In Insane Clown President, Mr Taibbi reveals a blind spot when it comes to Barack Hussein Obama, who, he reckons, will be adjudged a great president, compared with those who preceded and followed him. QED.

Although he makes mock of the "Mannequin Challenge" -- see above, Mr Taibbi also averts his gaze, for the most part, from the glaring defects in Hellery Clinton's campaign and the manifest flaws in her character. He seems unsurprised by La Clinton's answer to a question about why she took $675,000 for casting a few pearls before select groups of bankers. What Crooked Hillary said was "Well, that's what they were offering." So that makes it OK, then.

Very little of Insane Clown President is about Secretary Clinton or President Obama. Most of the book -- a collection of articles written for Rolling Stone, with some footnotes and hindsightful comments -- deals with the Republican primaries of 2016 and the subsequent campaign which resulted in the election of President Donald J. Trump.

Matt Taibbi's average as a prognosticator was not nearly as good as Walt's (lifetime pct .986). Mr T batted only 1 for 2. He called the primary result way back in February, labelling Mr Trump as "unstoppable". But he drank the lamestream media Koolaid on the election itself, believing right to the end that there was no way a majority of Americans would vote for the "lunatic Trump". He was wrong, and, to his great credit, admits it.

Mr Taibbi provides a cogent analysis of how he, the DNC, CNN, MSNBC etc etc blew it -- by ignoring the opinions and feelings of the American people in the flyover states between the Blue Coasts. It is from that analysis, contained in the introduction, that I excerpted the bit about the "Mannequin Challenge". It's worth repeating.

As a metaphor for an overconfident and incompetent ruling class that was ten miles up its own backside when it should have been listening to the anger percolating in the population, the "Mannequin Challenge" is probably unsurpassable. Here was a planeload of effete politicos making a goofball video when they should have been frantically bailing water to stave off maybe the most disastrous loss in the history of American presidential politics. If those people had known the election was even going to be close, they would have outlawed smiling on that plane, let alone making nutty souvenir videos. But they had no clue what was coming.

There's a lot of very serious commentary in Insane Clown President, but it's leavened with humour, dripping with sarcasm, and larded with LOL put-downs like this description of "Rudy Giuliani...his eyes spinning and arms flailing like a man who'd come to a hospital lost-and-found in search of his medulla oblongata."

I laughed, loudly and often, at the invective the writer hurls at everyone except the Prez and Hellery. But our laughter at the clowns who dominate American politics and media should be tempered by recognition of the ugly truth that we are being led (laughing all the way) to the end of the "American era" -- the time when the US of A was arguably the best country on earth. I've selected two more excerpts from Insane Clown President which should sober you up, no matter whether you're a "progressive", like Mr Taibbi, or a conservative-cum-libertarian, like Your Humble Servant.

[We are] facing a future in which national elections will no longer be decided by ideas, but by numbers. It will be a turnout battle between people who believe in a multicultural vision for the country, and those who don't.
     Every other issue, from taxes to surveillance to war to jobs to education, will take a distant back seat to this ongoing, moronic referendum on white victimhood.

Way back in February...I thought Trump had a real chance at the presidency. But later I made the same mistake most every other reporter did. I listened to polls and media outlets, instead of people. I thought Trump's maladroit and ridiculous general-election campaign, in which he went back on virtually every major primary-season promise while being revealed through seemingly hourly scandals as one of the world's most corrupt and personally repulsive individuals, would do him in. He would lose and lose huge, ending up a footnote to history, having served no purpose beyond the destruction of the Republican Party. Conventional wisdom said so, and wasn't conventional wisdom always right?
     Not quite. We journalists made the same mistake the Republicans made, the same mistake the Democrats made. We were too sure of our own influence, too lazy to bother hearing things firsthand, and too in love with ourselves to imagine that so many people could hate and distrust us as much as they apparently do.

Summary: If you're only going to read one book about the 2016 election and how The Donald became President Trump, don't waste your time on self-serving trash like La Clinton's What Happened (already reviewed for you right here on WWW). Make it Insane Clown President. You'll laugh and you'll think, and what more can you do, now that it's happened.

Footnote: The illustrations for Insane Clown President were done by Rolling Stone artist Victor Juhasz. Just as Matt Taibbi is no Hunter S. Thompson (and admits it), Victor Juhasz is no Ralph Steadman. The drawing above is supposed to show Mr Trump emerging from the anus of an elephant. Subtle enough for ya? But that's quite in keeping with the spirit of  '16.

VIDEO: Hellery Clinton's "Mannequin Challenge" campaign fail

Yes, yes, I know the election is over. (Memo to the New York Times: President Donald Trump won!) Now we're seeing a spate of books telling us how and why it happened. I've just finished reading Matt Taibbi's Insane Clown President (Spiegel & Grau, 2017) and will have a review for you very soon. Reading it, I've picked up on a couple of incidents I missed. One such was La Clinton's "Mannequin Challenge". Here's what Mr Taibbi has to say.

"Watch as the camera pans over the plane full of photogs, aides and pols, proudly clutching their tablets and pens and pizza boxes, all dressed in blazers and 'smart glasses' and crisp gingham shirts and buzzed at being on the same plane as two Clintons and Jon Bon Jovi.



Mr Taibbi continues: "As a metaphor for an overconfident and incompetent ruling class that was ten miles up its own backside when it should have been listening to the anger percolating in the population, the 'Mannequin Challenge' is probably unsurpassable. Here was a planeload of effete politicos making a goofball video when they should have been frantically bailing water to stave off maybe tghe most disastrous loss in the history of American presidential politics."

That's from the Introduction to Insane Clown President. I went from there to the Epilogue in less than 24 hours.

Republican voters are suckers! MattTaibbi nails it again

Ed. here. Since I am the real power behind Walt Whiteman's World (!!!) I am thinking of borrowing a phrase from the Donald and telling Walt "You're fired!" Why? Because, while Walt may be quite sound on matters religious, his thoughtful analyses of American politics are dishwater dull compared with the writings of commentators like Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, who is rapidly filling the very large shoes of the late Doctor of Gonzo Journalism.

Here's a quote from Mr. Taibbi's recent evisceration of the Republican Party and those who support it.

In the elaborate con that is American electoral politics, the Republican voter has long been the easiest mark in the game, the biggest dope in the room. Everyone inside the Beltway knows this. The Republican voters themselves are the only ones who never saw it.

Even if you're not a conservative or cuckservative or Tea Partier, you will find it well worth your while, not to mention a great amusement to read all of "The Republicans Are Now Officially the Party of White Paranoia".

If you like it -- and I know you will -- please send a donation to the usual address. When enough money has been received, I shall make Mr. Taibbi an offer he can't refuse.

[Wanna bet? Walt]

Book review: Matt Taibbi explains why, in the new American ghetto, voting doesn't matter

In "Why Hong Kong's 'umbrella revolution' matters", Walt said The people of China would love to have the freedom of the ballot. Some are prepared to die for it. If you have it and don't use it, don't be surprised if one day you lose it.

Seemed like an irrefutable argument to me, until Agent 3 thrust into my hands a copy of Griftopia, by Matt Taibbi (Spiegel & Grau, 2010). In this eminently readable book, Mr. Taibbi dips his pen in vitriol and deconstructs the financial crisis of 2008-9 in language that even a non-economist like Walt can understand. He shows how the rise, fall, and rescue of Wall Street was the work of the network of crooks, grifters and looters who sit at the nexus of American political and economic power.

However, Griftopia is more than an angry condemnation of the past. The author predicts that, with the grifters even more in control now than ever before, the whole maggot-gagging scenario is bound to be repeated again -- an argument that Walt finds thoroughly convincing in light of this weeks gut-wrenching ride on the Wall Street roller coaster.

I don't normally copy lengthy quotes from books I recommend, but I found the description and explanation of the new American ghetto -- the one Mr. Taibbi says we are powerless to change -- so compelling that I'm going to break my rule [You mean my rule! Ed.] Here are more than a few choice words from the introductory chapter.

In the new American ghetto, the nightmare engine is bubble economics, a kind of high-tech casino scam that kills neighborhoods just like dope does, only the product is credit, not crack of heroin. It concentrates the the money of the population in just a few hands with brutal efficiency, just like narco-business, and just as in narco-business the product itself, debt, steadily demoralizes the customer to the point where he's unable to prevent himself from being continually dominated.

In the ghetto, nobody gets real dreams. What they get are short-term rip-off versions of real dreams. You don't get real wealth, with a home, credit, a yard, money for your kids' college -- you get a fake symbol of wealth, a gold chain, a Fendi bag, a tricked-out car you bought with cash. Nobody gets to be really rich for long, but you do get to be pretend rich, for a few days, weeks, maybe even a few months. It makes you feel better to wear that gold, but when real criminals drive by on the overpass, they laugh.

It's the same in our new ghetto. We don't get real political movements and real change; what we get, instead, are crass show-business manipulations whose followers' aspirations are every bit as laughable and desperate as the wealth dreams of the street hustler with his gold rope. What we get, in other words, are moderates who don't question the corporate consensus dressed up as revolutionary leaders, like Barack Obama, and wonderfully captive opposition diversions like the Tea Party -- the latter a fake movement for real peasants....

The new America...is fast becoming a vast ghetto in which all of us, conservatives and progressives, are being bled dry by a relatively tiny oligarchy of extremely clever financial criminals and their castrato henchmen in government, whose main job is to be good actors on TV and put on a good show.

This invisible hive of high-class thieves stays in business because when we're not completely distracted and exhausted by our work and entertainments, we prefer not to ponder the dilemma of why gasoline went over four dollars a gallon, why our pension funds just lost 20 percent of their value, or why when we do the right thing by saving money, we keep being punished by interest rates that hover near zero, while banks that have been the opposite of prudent get rewarded with free billions.

In reality political power is simply taken from most of us by a grubby kind of fiat, in little fractions of a percent here and there each and every day, through a thousand separate transactions that take place in fine print and in the margins of a vast social mechanism that most of us are simply not conscious of.

Wow! Scary. And depressing. All the same,Griftopia is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the labyrinthine inner workings of politics and finance in the Excited States of America. If you read it, at least you'll understand what's going on as the country discovers it can't awaken from Mr. Taibbi's nightmare.

Also recommended: On the same general theme -- why America is going to hell in a handbasket -- Walt recommends Mark Steyn's After America (Regnery Publishing, 2011). He and Matt Taibbi were writing at almost the same time, about the same subject. Although they approach the issue of America's decline and fall from opposing ends of the political spectrum, they reach the same depressing conclusion. Could they be wrong? Can Americans give their heads a shake, get rid of the grifters and restore the nation to its former greatness? Walt wouldn't be on it. Lifetime pct .947.

Ex-shoes me?

Please enjoy this video, an ad for the “ShoeDini” shoe-horn, with voice-over by Gilbert Gottfried. Matt Taibbi calls it "the best film I’ve seen this year."

Yes, me too...infinitely funnier than Grown Ups, which you should avoid like the plague. Seen the trailer on TV? Like the scene where the fat guy swings out over the ole swimming hole and crashes into a tree? Just like in America's Funniest Home Videos? Well, dear reader, that is the only ONLY funny scene in the whole damn movie. Forget it! But I digress...

Much in all as I enjoyed this commercial, something bothered me about it. Something besides a suspicion that this has to be a spoof. How could there be such a product, for real? But then it dawned on me...

There IS a real ShoeDini. Trust me, I checked. But the target audience is not the actors you see in the commercial. Those feebs and geezers look pretty slim and fit to me. I'm sure the target audience is the millions of American (and Canadian and British) men and women who are too fat to see their feet...never mind putting shoes on them!

Walt predicts the ShoeDini will be an even greater marketing success than the Slap Chop!