It was 62 years ago today when Senator Joseph McCarthy was famously rebuked by Joseph Welch, chief counsel for the United States Army, which was under attack by “Tailgunner” Joe during the height of the Red Scare of the ’50s:
“You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
McCarthyism led to many good people being blacklisted in their chosen professions, including the most well-known, the Hollywood 10. The WikiWackyWoo has a list of the Victims of McCarthy, which is still not exhaustive. You may not know many of the names on that list, but it includes such notables as Lucille Ball, Elmer Bernstein, Leonard Bernstein, Bertolt Brecht, Luis Buñuel, Charlie Chaplin, Aaron Copland, Howard Da Silva, Dolores del Río, W.E.B. Du Bois, Albert Einstein, John Garfield, Jack Gilford, Allen Ginsberg, Ruth Gordon, Lee Grant, Dashiell Hammett, Lillian Hellman, Lena Horne, Langston Hughes, Sam Jaffe, Danny Kaye, Gypsy Rose Lee, Burgess Meredith, Arthur Miller, Zero Mostel, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Dorothy Parker, Linus Pauling, Paul Robeson, Edward G. Robinson, Pete Seeger, Artie Shaw, and Orson Welles.
Speaking of no sense of decency: In 2016 we have entered a new era of
McCarthyism, with GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump lashing out
indiscriminately at Mexicans and Muslims. George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
As a public service the Not Now Silly Newsroom wants to remind everyone of that ugly era in ‘Merkin history in an effort to wake people up to the evils of Trumpism.
Remember this trio of tweets and posters to promote a book?
Sensing her ongoing total irrelevance, Alaskan grifter Sarah Palin latched onto the +Donald J. Trump gravy train-wreck this week. With predictable and HIGH-LARRY-US results, it didn’t go well.
As much fun as we on the Left are having — make no mistake: the return of the Palin Word Salad is comedy gold — we should never forget what a vile creature she really is, along with the family she rode in on.
Remember: It would be BLOOD LIBEL if you were
to even suggest that Sarah Palin was using gun sight
logos on this poster to suggest 2nd Amendment
solutions, especially after Gabby Giffords, one of
those in the sights, was shot in the parking lot of
an Arizona supermarket in an assassination attempt
that left 6 dead and 13 injured 5 years ago this month.
On Tuesday, as whispers of Palin’s potential Trump endorsement were starting to blow up the internet, two other stories were bubbling under news cycles’ Hit Parade.
The first was that her abstinence-avert daughter Bristol, taking precious time away from diapering her 2nd baby born out of wedlock, defended Mama Grizzly from an accurate attack from the Ted Cruz camp over her Trump endorsement.
Then came the not-as-surprising-as-you-might-think reports that Palin’s eldest son Track — left home alone — had been arrested the night before for [alleged] beating up his girlfriend and then threatening to shoot himself.
According to the police report:
She and her boyfriend of one year, Track Palin, left a different residence together and were arguing the whole way home. Once they got to his home they argued in the car, then in the driveway . They were screaming and he was calling her names. [Redacted] told Palin that she had called the cops even though she had not, in attempt to calm him down and to scare him away from “touching her”. Palin approached [Redacted] and struck her on the left side of her head near her eye with a closed fist. [Redacted] got on the ground in a fetal position because she didn’t know what else he would do. Palin then kicked [redacted] on the right knee. [Redacted]’s phone was sitting on the ground in front of her. Palin took her phone and threw it across the driveway. She retrieved the phone and went inside the house. Palin was already inside and holding onto a gun, yelling “do you think I’m a pussy?” and “do you think I won’t do it?” [Redacted] stated Palin “cocked the gun” and was holding the rifle out next to him with the his right hand near the trigger and his left hand near the barrel, with the barrel just away from his face pointed to the side. [Redacted] was concerned that he would shoot himself and ran outside and around the house. She didn’t see where Palin went, so she went inside and up the stairs, where she hid under a bed. Shortly after, she heard Palin walking around inside looking for her. Palin left after not locating her.
However, the news that Track [allegedly] beat up his girlfriend didn’t hit the TRENDING lists until after Sarah Palin’s loony toon speech in Trumpville, USA.
That news revived earlier stories about the Punch Drunk Palins. In 2014 the whole famn damily got into a donnybrook with some of their neighbours. Then, as now, the police were called. Combining several written reports, my editors at PoliticusUSA wrote in 2014:
According to the grapevine Track had some altercation
with a person who may or may not have once dated one of the Palin girls.
That led to some pushing and shoving, which escalated somehow to the
family being asked to leave the premises.
However before that could happen a certain former abstinence
spokesperson unleashed a flurry of blows at some as of yet identified
individual before being pulled off by by another partygoer, after which
Todd apparently puffed up his chest and made some threatening remarks.
(The “C’ word may have been uttered at one point.)
In the end the cops were called, order was restored, and the Mama Grizzly made sure the whole thing got swept under the rug.
The owner of the house gets involved, and he probably wished he
hadn’t. At this point, he’s up against nearly the whole Palin tribe:
Palin women screaming. Palin men thumping their chests. Word is that
Bristol has a particularly strong right hook, which she employed
repeatedly, and it’s something to hear when Sarah screams, “Don’t you
know who I am!”
And it was particularly wonderful when someone in
the crowd screamed back, “This isn’t some damned Hillbilly reality
show!” No, it’s what happens when the former First Family of Alaska
comes knocking.
Wonkette confirmed with the PoPo that the brawl really happened.
My fascination with the Palin Family is nothing new. Read:
According to PoliticusUSA, there are 2 competing stories about why Track Palin served in the military in the first place, which, incidentally, was during George W. Bush’s incumbency:
Barack Obama didn’t send Track Palin to the Middle East. Depending on
whether or not one believes the Palin family version of the story Track
Palin was either forced by his parents to enlist after getting
arrested, or he volunteered to go. Either way, the responsibility for
Track Palin’s arrest belongs solely to the man himself.
I do not wish to make fun of anyone who has PTSD. I’ve seen its
effects first hand. If Track has PTSD, I hope he is able to get
the help he needs. [On a tangential note: I hope somone is smart enough
to take away his guns.]
Having typed that, if Sarah Palin says Track has PTSD it needs to be checked with a higher authority because: 1). Palin’s relationship with the truth has been bitterly strained over the last decade, or so, and; 2). There is no one she wouldn’t betray — including using her son and a medical diagnosis — to score points with the “Right wingin’, bitter clingin’, proud clingers of our guns, our god, and our religions, and our Constitution.”
For further proof there’s no one she wouldn’t throw under the wheels of a campaign bus: Despite the fact that:
John McCain elevated Sarah Palin to national recognition when he tapped her to be his Veep, and;
+Donald J. Trump famously attacked John MCain as a loser who was captured and the compassionate billionaire doesn’t like people who were captured.
Sarah Palin betrayed previous BFF Ted Cruz, Conservatives, religious fundamentalists and Tea Party-types in order to Scream Stump for Trump.
I rest my case. Now watch this bucket of crazy, which MoJo introduces with the headline:
Sarah “Skagway” Palin, the quittingest governor in Alaska history, gave birth to a waste of flesh named Bristol, who made averitible fortune promoting abstinence despite having had 2 babies out of wedlock.
Bristol Palin proves — once again — that she’s a fucking hypocrite, which is the very best kind of hypocrite. Today she wrote [all ellipses in the original]:
The President should be worrying about the radical jihadists in ISIS
who are gaining land and power everyday as they enslave, rape, and
murder their way through the Middle East. He should be worrying about
Pastor Saeed and the other Americans held hostage in Iran while we send
billions of dollars to them in a horrible nuclear deal. He should be
worrying about the economy, which still hasn’t fully recovered. You
should be worrying about our broken immigration system.
The list goes on and on. But instead he worries about renaming a mountain.
Mr. President, stop playing political games and start doing your job.
That’s what Alaskans really care about.
By
the way, no one is buying the “Denali is what the Alaskans have called
it for years” line. I’ve never called the mountain Denali .. and neither
does anyone I know …
It’s Mt. Mckinley [sic] … It always has been and always will be to most of us…
Sarah PalinAnd, getting up here, I say it is the best road trip in America. Soaring through Nature’s finest show: Danali, the great one. Soaring under the Midnight Sun.
Hi, Headliners! Today’s birthday boy: W. C. Fields, who climbed to the top of Broadway, movies, and radio after starting as a lowly, mute vaudeville juggler. Here are some other Headlines Du Jour of yesteryear:
1834 – US President Andrew Jackson orders first use of federal soldiers to suppress a labor dispute.
2015 – Malaysia has officially declared the disappearance of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 an accident and its passengers and crew presumed dead.
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1980 – Through cooperation between the U.S. and Canadian governments, six American diplomats secretly escape hostilities in Iran in the culmination of the Canadian Caper.
Headlines Du Jour is a leisure-time activity of Not Now Silly, home of the
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After a hiatus of a few weeks, Headlines Du Jour is back, babies!!! Today’s birthday belongs to Alexis de Tocqueville, who coined the phrase ‘Merkin ‘Ceptionalism and it wasn’t meant to be a compliment. Here are some other Headlines Du Jour of yesteryear:
Hello, Headliners. Today’s birthday is celebrated by Little Walter, considered one of the greatest harmonica players of all time. While I try to keep the Headlines Du Jour of yesteryear to less than 10, this is a big day in history:
1915 – The RMS Lusitania departs from New York City on her two hundred and second, and final, crossing of the North Atlantic. Six days later, the ship is torpedoed off the coast of Ireland with the loss of 1,198 lives, including 128 Americans, rousing American sentiment against Germany.
1930 – The dwarf planet Pluto is officially named.
1945 – World War II: A German newsreader officially announces that Adolf Hitler has “fallen at his command post in the Reich Chancellery fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism and for Germany”. The Soviet flag is raised over the Reich Chancellery, by order of Stalin.
1945 – World War II: Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda commit suicide in the Reich Garden outside the Führerbunker. Their children are murdered by Magda by having cyanide pills inserted into their mouths.
1991 – Rickey Henderson of the Oakland Athletics
steals his 939th base, making him the all-time leader in this category.
However, his accomplishment is overshadowed later that evening by Nolan Ryan of the Texas Rangers, when he pitches his seventh career no-hitter, breaking his own record.
Headlines Du Jour is a leisure-time activity of Not Now Silly, home of the
Steam-Powered Word-0-Matic, and your rest stop on the Information
Highway. Use our valuable bandwidth to post your news comments in
today’s open thread.
Headlines Du Jour is a leisure-time activity of Not Now Silly, home of the
Steam-Powered Word-0-Matic, and your rest stop on the Information
Highway. Use our valuable bandwidth to post your news comments in
today’s open thread.
Hello Headliners! It’s the King of Jazz’s birthday. Paul Whiteman is the orchestra leader who commissioned George Gershwin to write Rhapsody in Blue and hired Bing Crosby as his boy singer back in 1926. George, along with his brother Ira, loved the Headlines Du Jour of yesteryear:
845 – Paris is sacked by Viking raiders, probably under Ragnar Lodbrok, who collects a huge ransom in exchange for leaving.
1969 – The McGill français movement protest occurs, the second largest protest in Montreal’s history with 10,000 trade unionists, leftist activists, college students, and some McGill students at McGill’s Roddick Gates. The majority of the protesters are arrested.
Headlines Du Jour is a leisure-time activity of Not Now Silly, home of the
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Hello Headliners! Today would have been Sonny Bono‘s 79th birthday, had he not died — as a Congressman — in a tragic skiing accident in 1998. Among Headlines Du Jour from yesteryear are:
Headlines Du Jour is a leisure-time activity of Not Now Silly, home of the
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