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william.scherk

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Thank you for tuning in. This is my script for responding to a notion put forward on the front porch of OL. I use the blog to form arguments and to analyze statements. Much of my work here is done to pre-load some assumptions. In this case, the prelaoded assumptions are in the quoted material

First step, orientation and identification. Think of you and a map in hand, along with a remembered direction. You are in America, where opinions flow fast and hot.  Mark Levin is a radio-jock, a talk-guy, an author. Go look him up on Google. We can pause the tape.

Okay, we are back. Now you know about Mark Levin. Or so we thought. There isn't a single Mark Levin. There are three.

4 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

The Tale of Three Mark Levins:

Let's start with Mark Levin No. 1:

Mark Levin has been harsh on Drumpf, but at least he's not silly enough to think suicide is the best approach. If Drumpf is the candidate, after this video, does anyone have any doubt who he will actively support?

Okay, this is for You People. 
 

4 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

The headline says it all.   Roger accuses Levin and two other Hate Club folks of being paid off.  If you go deeper into the article, the warrants for the accusation against Levin are slim if not mere muck-spinning. 

Winnowed down, the Levin accusation is that money from Levin books is chunder. But here is is, excised from a Daily Caller article. In that article, bear in mind, the quotes are from Daily Beast and a blog-commenter at Conservative Treehouse. Chunder?

“The Senate Conservatives Fund (PAC) purchasing massive quantities ($400,000) of Mark Levin’s books in exchange for favorable candidacy political opinion. Conveniently hidden by the radio host who avoids mentioning the financial conflict created,” the blog pointed out.

On Jan. 13, Ben Jacobs in an article published by the Daily Beast headlined “Pay to Play?” noted that Politico, in an article that now appears to have been scrubbed from Politico’s website, reported on how the GOP establishment seeks to buy Levin.

The Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF), a “conservative” fund founded by former Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina that backed Cruz in his Senate fight against Obamacare, spent $427,000 to buy copies of radio talk show host Mark Levin’s four-year-old book “Liberty or Tyranny” to distribute to donors – a purchase that should have earned Levin approximately $1 million in royalties.

Despite his many diatribes against Drumpf broadcast to his national radio audience, Levin hid the fact the son of his fiancé is a full-time staffer for Cruz.

 

4 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

He's really pissed at Roger Stone. And he should be.

But which Mark Levin is the real one? The Mark Levin who claims that putting Hillary in office is the worst thing that could ever happen to America and whoever does this is not a conservative but a fraud (his term), the Mark Levin who makes gobs of money from pro-Cruz connections, including a job in the family (see here in case you missed the link above), which is sleazy but not treason to use a term he likes, or the Mark Levin who is now fine with Hillary over Drumpf? He said openly he is disposed to tell his audience not to vote for Drumpf if he gets the nomination. But he is fully aware this would elect Hillary.

Levin calls Stone Nixonian, which he is, but Stone's article is not. I'm not a fan of a lot of Stone's sleaze. I admit to the entertainment factor as I like gossip just as much as the next person (us primates love to stare at our celebrity monkeys :) ). But I always take Stone's stuff with a heaping helping of salt. 

In this article, I just don't see much here. Stone merely posted information on the Internet that he got from the Internet and commented about it. There was no wiretapping or made-up false rumors or anything like that.

Stone thinks the Cruz money connections taint Levin's integrity. Well Levin has been blasting Drumpf's integrity for quite some time now. There's nothing Nixonian about any of that. It's normal campaign bickering.

But more to the point. I don't think Levin understands yet what he just did to himself. He had a pristine image of someone who can't be bought because he holds his commitment to principles above everything else, especially his love of America. I don't think the article by Stone would have made any impact on that image. It didn't shake mine, although that thing about Levin's son-in-law being a Cruz staffer--and his posture of keeping this hidden until exposed--did a little. But he's human, I thought. He's not his family. Let it go.

Now, because of feeling personally insulted because his money got exposed to the light of day by a smear merchant, Mark Levin wants to trash America in exactly the same terms he cautioned against before. Principles be damned.

He also called Ann Coulter a pretty nasty name while he was at it, and started slinging crap against a bunch of conservative commentators and making veiled threats...

I'm not the only one who is looking at this and shaking my head...

The Mark Levin I used to look up to just lost his luster. It looks like his integrity does have a price after all...

Michael

Oh, my.  I will truncquoat a few pellets from this wreath.   The biggest boldest bold claim is this:

4 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Mark Levin wants to trash America

But, having said that, I must do a bit of recursion:

4 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Now we come to Mark Levin No. 3:

Are there three Mark Levins?  Are there really? Does making a list end the analytic moment?

Here is the truncquoated poetry from the above:

 

4 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

He's really pissed at Roger Stone. And he should be.

But which Mark Levin is the real one?

The Mark Levin who claims that putting Hillary in office is the worst thing that could ever happen to America and whoever does this is not a conservative but a fraud (his term),

the Mark Levin who makes gobs of money from pro-Cruz connections, including a job in the family (see here in case you missed the link above),

which is sleazy but not treason to use a term he likes,

or the Mark Levin who is now fine with Hillary over Drumpf?

 

He said openly he is disposed to tell his audience not to vote for Drumpf if he gets the nomination. But he is fully aware this would elect Hillary.

Levin calls Stone Nixonian, which he is, but Stone's article is not.

 

I'm not a fan of a lot of Stone's sleaze.

 

I admit to the entertainment factor as

 

I like gossip just as much as the next person (us primates love to stare at our celebrity monkeys :) ).

 

 

But I always take Stone's stuff with a heaping helping of salt. 

 

In this article, I just don't see much here. Stone merely posted information on the Internet that he got from the Internet and commented about it.

 

There was no wiretapping or made-up false rumors or anything like that.

Stone thinks the Cruz money connections taint Levin's integrity.

Well Levin has been blasting Drumpf's integrity for quite some time now. There's nothing Nixonian about any of that. It's normal campaign bickering.

 

But more to the point. I don't think Levin understands yet what he just did to himself.

 

He had a pristine image of someone who can't be bought because he holds his commitment to principles above everything else, especially his love of America.

 

I don't think the article by Stone would have made any impact on that image. It didn't shake mine, although that thing about Levin's son-in-law being a Cruz staffer--and his posture of keeping this hidden until exposed--did a little.

But he's human, I thought. He's not his family. Let it go.

 

Now, because of feeling personally insulted because his money got exposed to the light of day by a smear merchant,

 

Mark Levin wants to trash America in exactly the same terms he cautioned against before. Principles be damned.

 

He also called Ann Coulter a pretty nasty name while he was at it, and started slinging crap against a bunch of conservative commentators and making veiled threats...

 

I'm not the only one who is looking at this and shaking my head...

 

The Mark Levin I used to look up to just lost his luster. It looks like his integrity does have a price after all...

Michael

 

2 Comments


Recommended Comments

WSS,

Not a whole lot here.  Conservative Treehouse is entirely in Trump's pocket.

I guess we've reached the point where Jim DeMint (my former US Senator, and one I liked a lot better than Lindsey Graham) is a traitorous emanation of the Republican Establishment.

But the underlying logic divides Republicans into those who serve support Trump and those who serve the Establishment.  Mutually exclusive, jointly exhaustive.

Robert

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1 hour ago, Robert Campbell said:

But the underlying logic divides Republicans into those who serve support Trump and those who serve the Establishment.  Mutually exclusive, jointly exhaustive.

Robert,

LOL...

Servitude?

Not exactly.

It's a matter of getting a job done. If you anti-Trumpers start out by saying for example, "We need to stop illegal immigrants coming in NOW. It doesn't matter if Trump stops them, Cruz stops them, or, hell, even if Hillary stops them. So long as someone stops them," we would have a starting point to establish common ground.

But it's never that. It's always some weird other realm out in the Twilight Zone where if Trump stops them, it's evil, but if Cruz stops them, it's good. Then, if that gets agreed upon, after a lot of blah blah blah, folks start arriving at a conclusion that there are a hell of a lot of exceptions, so maybe not so fast... blah blah blah and off the job goes into the quicksand again. By the end of all the talking, the job does not get done, the Democrat "dependent voter" rolls get inflated and the Republican crony corporatists get more cheap labor. And the lives of millions upon millions of good honest hardworking Americans keep getting disrupted and damaged.

But boy are there a lot of pretty words said along the way. A lot of important sounding discourses and arguments. A lot of poetic soaring rhetoric. Logic galore. And talk about stats!

(You can feast on any words you want, so long as they're baloney... :) )

This same process holds for the job of balancing the budget.

Ditto for crony corporatism.

Ditto for winning wars when they have to be fought.

Ditto for ending the Endless War culture (which David says doesn't exist and William like to mock).

Ditto for fixing vet affairs.

Ditto for dealing with Islamic terrorism.

And on and on and on.

Right now, the establishment is totally discredited in my eyes for getting any job done that it has been elected to do, or is in authority to do. The establishment is not interested in doing these jobs, it is interested in serving its elite from rigging these jobs and stringing them along for as long as possible so long as the milk keeps flowing from these cash cows.

That's why I don't care what they say, or what those who support them say. It doesn't matter. Nothing about the jobs get done in the end. And it hasn't mattered for decades. Regardless of what they say, the result is always the same. Things gradually get worse. But the establishment insiders miraculously keep receiving payoffs...

So when establishment supporters show up and say Trump is the devil incarnate, that nothing he has done, does or ever will do has any value other than entertainment, and I know Trump is someone who gets large-scale jobs done right, what do you think I'm going to do? Listen? Go with the guy you suggest who has no track record of getting large-scale jobs done and is embedded up to his eyeballs in the backrooms with the worst of the establishment?

I've heard that story already. For decades.

This is not about servitude or following any messiah. This is about getting a job done.

That is the common thread that unites all Trump supporters.

Until that becomes a serious point of discussion and not a smokescreen for one more deception, the establishment supporters and Trump supporters will remain a mutually exclusive, and jointly exhaustive divide.

The way to fix that problem is to first admit the problem exists. And the problem is finding a person (or persons) who really--in reality, not just in words and gotchas--intends to do a series of jobs that need doing. Unlike the establishment, who had its chance and blew it for decades. Having a resume helps. All the rest is bullshit to a Trump supporter.

(Now I await for some establishment sympathizer to pop up and ask, "What exactly do you mean by "establishment"? Is that something that really exists or are you imagining things with a conspiracy theory? Exactly who is in it? Blah blah blah... :) )

Michael

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