New season of The Biggest Loser starting now — reality TV, DC style

The three main characters in the new season are Mitch the Turtle, Sieg Heil and Eddie Munster, as pictured from left.

The season, at the start, revolves around the plot twists over Obamacare, Ryancare, Trumpcare, the Affordable Care Act, and the American Health Care Act.

Besides the three mail main characters, waiting in the wings as the possible real Biggest Loser, all along, has been the American public. Within it, the potential Biggest Loser was a TrumpTrain core — older, lower-income white voters.

And, our story line develops from there

Besides reminding us of a classic classic rock song, here with a new cover by Reservoir Dogs:



"Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, Here I am, stuck in the middle with you" isn't totally true, per the pic, which I saw, with this caption, from a TrumpTrain rider on Twitter. Trump is actually as much a clown or joker than either of them.

And, he got punked, in part because between Nov. 8 and Jan. 20, he never stopped to realize that health care is indeed hard. (Well, if you have a single-payer system, with one set of rules, it's not quite so hard.)

Now, per some of the inside-the-Beltway chattering class postmortems, Trump may eventually learn more of a political game. Or, he may remain like a more narcissistic Ross Perot, thinking he can be CEO to Congressional mid-level business execs, with him just snapping his fingers and getting results. (That igmores that when Trump snapped his fingers in the business world the results were often bad, except in cases where he often allegedly had the help of organized crime.

But, Trump's going to have to do a lot more political learning.

His threat to primary House Republicans who wouldn't get on the Trump Train basically got laughed at by the likes of Gohmert Pyle and other teabagger members of the House Freedom Caucus. More quietly, House GOP non-wingnut conservatives (please, don't call them "moderates") laughed at Trump their own way.

Speaking of the House GOP, Speaker Paul Ryan has already been labeled a poseur and dilettante by the chattering class. More clearly, he's now damaged goods. Will he be considered damaged enough that Gohmert Pyle and other Freedom Caucus members threaten him with a leadership challenge, just like they did with John Boehner? It wouldn't surprise me. Breitbart already has out the long knives; stay tuned for what Faux News says in days and weeks ahead.

Question No. 2 and related — if this drumbeat against Ryan increases, will he stop kissing Trump's ass and try to find his own long knives? Or more subtle anti-Trump sicarii?

Next loser? Rinse Penis, that is Reince Priebus, is already getting dinged. Besides GOP civil war, Trump staff civil war will surely increase.  Eminence grisé Steve Bannon is already pulling out some long knives there, but more toward Eddie Munster, which is surely what's fueling Breitbart. That said, Bannon, contra his nominal buss Trump, is being honest that this was a big defeat.

Related to that, Bannon reportedly wanted to force a public vote, so that he had his own "enemies list" over the issue in the House.

Trump himself is reportedly boo-hooing over letting Ryan do the bill-writing. But, that's simply bullshit. Congressional GOP has been calling for more action, more leadership, from Trump for some time. If Bannon wants to play this game, at least some in the House are more savvy than Ryan in knowing who they're dealing with.

Winner of sorts? The Turtle. The bill never got to the Senate. He never had to threaten a nuclear option requiring actual stemwinder filibustering from Senate Dems. And, he can now play himself up to Trump as elder statesman, vs. Ryan. And, Bannon knows (I think) that even he can't mess with McConnell.

Tom Price, Trump's new HHS secretary, has been named in that last link above, as another loser. If so, that shows every Trump cabinet member who came from Congress is on some sort of hot seat. Given his role in many spots, OMB Director Mick Mulvaney shouldn't sleep easy.

Loser again? Trump. His own aides are all but calling him an idiot for trying to put blame on Dems for the bill's failure.

Loser again again? Trump. That info above is coming from a flood tide of leaks inside his staff.

That said, I disagree with the likes of Washington Monthly when it says Trump didn't care. No, he did care a lot — as long as it was easy. As soon as the going looked tough, and it looked like he could still blame Ryan et al, and not take too bad a hit himself, he bailed.

Don't forget, WM is part of the neoliberal wing of the Beltway chattering class — the type of folks who agreed with Hillary Clinton 12 months ago on trying to promote Trump's candidacy over other Republicans.

Mixed loser/quasi-winner? House Freedom Caucus. Trump himself called it a loser, as noted here, where its head, Rep. Mark Meadows, thinks O-care can still be defeated. That intensifies the loserdom, if he's that clueless. (And he is; none of the Freedom Caucus members chair any committees, let alone one in position to put forth O-care repeal bills.) But, it's a quasi-winner to its diehard wingnut supporters.

Meanwhile, the American public, even though not the Biggest Loser, remains a loser.

• The Congressional GOP stands officially exposed as having no desire to make Obamacare actually better;
• A full 25 House Progressive Caucus members have yet to cosponsor HR 676, John Conyers' single-payer bill;
• Bernie Sanders has yet to introduce a similar bill in the Senate, and his last excuse has now been removed.

None of these three will change soon. Sorry. Blogs like Down With Tyranny will keep looking for ponies while continuing to refuse to #DemExit. And nothing will change.

#Cosmos, creationists and Fox

I love it that creationists continue to whine about Cosmos (even as host Neil deGrasse Tyson blew it on Giordano Bruno).

That said, creationists, as part of the Religious Right, getting taken for a ride by Fox, aka Faux, and owner Rupert Murdoch is nothing new; just this round of complaining is.

Hasn't "The Simpsons" been a bastion of anti-authoritarianism for more than a decade? For several years, wasn't "Married with Children" arguably one of the best anti-family arguments you could have, not to mention one of the earliest entrees in Faux's general degrading of commercial network TV with yet more T&A suggestiveness, a bit more lewdness in language, and other things?

And, where was the Religious Right then? They were already mute, for the most part, even before Faux News made their wet dreams come true by slanting news the way they wanted.

So, suck it, creationists. This time, Murdoch's ride to the bank with your money is a bit more blatant, but not at all new.

Besides, creationists, Comedy Central's got your airtime right here.

That said, Fox is also laughing at you Cosmos geeks, rooting for "Team Science" in a knockoff of the original that apparently isn't sure whether children or adults are its primary target (the original was adult-focused), all while Fox, Neil deGrasse Tyson, or both, are laughing to the bank with a boatload of commercials and cheesy animation that's riding your tribalism for all it's worth.

Faux News, wingnuts leads "push-back" on #LeagueOfDenial; #NFL take?

There's yet another news story out today that claims that Dr. Ann McKee and colleagues at Boston University have drastically overstated the degree to which playing in the National Football League can cause chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

Funny thing? The first news story came out a month ago.

At Fox.

From a writer, Daniel J. Flynn, who had just written a book called "The War on Football: Saving America's Game." A book published by conservative press heavyweight Regnery. An author who has published books like "Why the Left Hates America," per his Amazon page.

Let me just do some pull quotes from the Fox News story that appears to be behind the "pushback" against Boston University and its CTE research.

First is this, laughable coming from Fox:

Cherry-picking data, mistaking speculation for science, and inventing studies out of thin air make us ignorant rather than enlightened.

Like you do with about everything there? Among that cherry-picking is taking a NIOSH study that compares **high school** football players with other high-schoolers for later-life possible neurological problems.

Here's another:

Accustomed to baseless claims becoming conventional wisdom, football’s complainer-chorus has begun condemning all of its players to a scrambled-brain existence.

Flynn's book, with the title "The War on Football," says it all in the title.

I'm surprised that Flynn doesn't call Dr. Ann McKee a communist and say that this is some secret Obama plot to kidnap American football and sell it to Muslims in Kenya. That's about how bad it is. Like any good stuff for the wingnuts, the book, and excerpts and reports at places like Fox News, cherry-pick statistics, send out dogwhistles (like the hint that "America's game" faces a librul "War on Christmas" type assault, led by trial lawyers wanting to sue, sue, sue) and more.

Beyond that, you know this is a desperation issue for a guy like Flynn if he's favorably citing a federal government study to try to score points, even with the massive misconstruing of it that he does.

Meanwhile, there's possible problems with the Randolph and Karantzoulis study cited by both Fox and CBS. The biggie is its time span: 1959-1988. The league was at just a 12-game season in 1959, with smaller rosters, and even more importantly, smaller and slower players without the same amount of steroids and other chemicals as today. I wonder what a study from, say 1974-1994 would have found?

Meanwhile, Deadspin has a solid piece on Flynn speaking about his book at a red-meat Tea Party event. Nuff said.

The biggest refutation of Flynn that an organization as hypercapitalistic as the NFL settled the lawsuit with former players.

It appears Flynn timed his book to come out at the same time, if not before, the book "League of Denial," and the PBS special. I wouldn't likely have seen this push-back had it only been on Faux. But, with CBS now doing some of the same uncritical reporting, we have an issue.

That said, tis true that the link between sports blows to the head and CTE is tenuous. But, McKee and others have had to bang the drum loudly because NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, and his predecessor, Pete Tagliabue, deliberately blocked viable research on CTE, stacked an NFL research committee with medical doctors ready to bend to the NFL's desired outcome and more.

So, until Goodell specifically disavows this book, at least, as being over the top, I'll believe it's the same old NFL.

Why the federal shutdown won't end soon

Reason 1: Posturing by tea party congresscritters, like this.

"We're not going to be disrespected," Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) told The Washington Examiner. "We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is."

Nuff said. (If you're unfamiliar, this Examiner is not part of the national chain of exploitive, "be your own publisher" blogs, but rather is one of the outposts of Philip Anschutz's money-losing wingnut papers. In DC, the Examiner arguably makes the Moonie-run Washington Times look sane on occasion. Anschutz also owns the Weekly Standard. Nuff said there, too.)

More posturing, by Rep. Tim Griffin, during the DC woman's strange behavior.

Griffin had tweeted, “Stop the violent rhetoric President Obama, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. #Disgusting” from his personal Twitter account, a few minutes into an active shooter situation on Capitol Hill that put the Capitol complex on lockdown.

Maybe we didn't have nuff said earlier, Timmeh?

Reason 2: The branding war has broken out. Faux News says it's a "slimdown" not a shutdown.

Yeah, right. But, let's follow up on Faux:

It's a slimdown. It's a slowdown. It's a dietary shake for the 47 percent who are getting fat of Obamacare!

Sincerely, Mittens A. Romney. 

Reason 3: Related to No. 1, the GOP can't agree on what the fight is about.

Reason 4: In standing up to tea party hardcore folks, Speaker of the House John Boehner at times has less gonads than President Barack Obama. That said, that's true of all the House GOP leadership. That's why Majority Leader Eric Cantor refused to challenge Boehner after last  year's elections.

Reason 5: Ted Cruz, who can't even apologize right, even when it involves World War II vets who are theoretically tea party constituency types in many cases.

Reason 6: Other Tea Partiers are blaming everyday government employees trying to do shutdown-related work for the problems this causes.

Reason 7: There's plenty of hypocrisy in politics in general, but Democrats proposing a bill to stop paying Congress' salaries during the shutdown is a great "callout" of the GOP. Let the branding war step up. Because, per that No. 2, and previous GOP messenging, from "death panels" to "death taxes" (add in gun violence and we could ask, "What is it with today's GOP and death?")

Reason 8: Based on 2 and 6, contra some media folks who still play the "equivalence" game, other Democrats, or so it seems, are not going to lay down in the road for Ted Cruz, Marlin Stutzman and other radicals. And, speaking of that, this is not "equal fault."

These folks, as I said in a comment elsewhere, are whiny titty babies who are apparently convinced they can't win the Senate to go along with the House in 2014, let alone win the presidency after that. They're holding their breath until they hope they can get the nation's collective face to turn red.

And, over what? Obama is not socialism, unless you want to talk about corporate socialism in a bill largely crafted by America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's lobbying agency. But, then let's talk about ethanol subsidies, oil depletion allowances and much more.

Reason No 9, IF it pans out: Boehner is now claiming that, at least, he won't let the government default. Well, let's see how many "attachments" he puts on a debt ceiling bill and if he can get enough "moderates" in the GOP to go along. 

However, "Tailgunner Ted" Cruz has already made his opposition to this clear. 

And, besides that, it turns out that Boehner was apparently lying about not letting the government default.

Reason No. 10: The back pay deal being approved. So, now that the GOP can say, "Hey, look, we'll take care of government employees," it has one less reason to compromise. That said, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid puts it at that link, you're agreeing to pay them, why not pay them now and bring them back to work?

Anyway, my over/under, currently, on when the shutdown will end? Oct. 23. And, that may be wildly optimistic. If there's no end to this inanity by then, Thanksgiving becomes my next over/under.

Dennis Kucinich, liar and Faux News 'token'

Dennis Kucinich/AP photo via Buzzfeed

Note to Denny the Dwarf. Be honest, take the Faux News money, and admit it's because you don't have a real job now since having been redistricted out of your Congressional seat and deciding not to run in Washington state.

Do NOT claim that you're not going to be a token. Because you are.

And, true progressives, who at one time wondered if you might run as the Green Party presidential candidate, are now, instead, watching your stature continue to shrink. So to speak. 

BuzzFeed itself is laughable in claiming that former Faux contributor Evan Bayh is a liberal. Even more laughable when it had to scramble for the name of Bob Beckel as another liberal to list alongside of Bayh.

Who? Yeah, I had to Google Bob Beckel myself. Anybody who wants to extrajudicially shoot Julian Assange, and is "red meat" enough to call someone not a citizen of the United States a "traitor" is no liberal.

You're a token, Dennis. (Of course, given the fold like a cheap suit nature of your House Progressive Caucus best buds, you're in good company with talking tough but selling short.)

Per claims about Beckel and Bayh pulling punches on Faux, let's see how short your arms really are. Heh, heh.

Gimme five years, and we'll be calling Denny the Dwarf a neoliberal. Even better, gimme five years and hopefully he'll be so faded off the radar screen we won't be calling him (for) anything.

Juan Williams knows who he was sleeping with

It looks like the birds have finally come home to roost for Juan Williams of Faux News, fired by NPR for violating company policy and directives for getting too close to Faux.

In South Carolina's debate last night, Williams asked Newt Gingrich if he didn't think his comments about having students work as janitors at school and other things might seem especially sensitive to minorities. When Newt said no, and Williams asked a follow-up, he got booed like hell.

Too bad, Juan. You could see this ugliness in the GOP, especially its Tea Party wing, when you got cozy with Faux in the first place.