From TPM Reader WH …

I thought I’d share this short connection I have to the late Rush Limbaugh:

Around 2014 I got a part-time job as a “linguistic annotator”. The employer was a language-related research and development nonprofit. I worked on a DARPA project called “DEFT Anomaly”, an “automated, deep natural-language processing technology … for more efficiently processing text information and enabling understanding connections in text that might not be readily apparent to humans” … in other words, helping computers learn to pick up nuance and implicit meaning in text.

From TPM Reader BC …

Hearing the news that Rush died struck me a bit differently because we worked together at KFBK/KAER in Sacramento. I was there from 1983 to 1990. Just before Rush, KFBK had Morton Downey Jr. in that time slot, who soon self-immolated via a “joke” about “Chinamen”. Mort was the oiliest, sleaziest human I have ever known. But Rush succeeded, and in part because meanness was just ramping up in conservative circles in the 80’s, and because he knew which people to stomp on.

The Trump presidency was chock-full of scandal, slimy misdeeds, worrying and outright deadly events that we still don’t fully understand. It’s hard to keep each straight in hindsight. There’s so much we didn’t know or couldn’t confirm as the events were unfolding in front of us — from the details of the family separation policy to Trump’s conversations with Putin to the government’s response to natural disasters such as Hurricane Maria.

But slowly and surely we will begin to learn more about some of the Trump era’s worst offenses. Coming soon: an official accounting of the jarring details behind the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

After the news of Rush Limbaugh’s death broke Wednesday, there was an immediate challenge for those who loathed the man: how to respond to his death at age 70. Many simply celebrated, which is … paradoxically, very much in the spirit of the man. I can’t celebrate anyone’s passing. Death is too central to the human condition. It casts too great a pall of grief over too many people beyond the deceased. The part of this I got involved in is noting that Limbaugh was a very talented broadcaster. He was also funny, though often in cruel and malevolent ways. Maybe not funny to you. But funny. Besides catching clips of his latest outrage from TPM or Media Matters I hadn’t listened to Rush in decades. But during his early years I listened a lot. I also watched his short lived TV show. Basically a failure. A face for radio. He was uniquely talented in his medium. This isn’t praise. These are facts. And they’re worth repeating because while they are certainly not the most important things about Limbaugh’s role in American public life you can’t really understand that role without recognizing these parts of it.

I raise these facts because they have an import beyond Limbaugh.

There’s always a tweet.

I believe I predicted as much in the latest episode of the podcast, which dropped yesterday evening. Mitch McConnell’s response to ex-President Trump’s screed? Apparently nothing. He doesn’t plan to respond to even talk to Trump again. That’s the power move. And that fits because he has the power in that relationship.

As Kate Riga reported yesterday, on the day of the insurrection, ex-President Trump’s more loyal right-wing media hosts and lawmakers in Congress were casting about for an explanation for how the violent attack on the Capitol could have happened that didn’t blame Trump.

They settled on a usual suspect: Antifa.

Before you get your hackles up, no … this isn’t a post inducting Mitch McConnell into the Resistance. It’s not a post painting McConnell as part of some institutionalist, non-Trump GOP. It’s none of those things. McConnell is just as awful as you and I always thought and in many ways critically responsible for sustaining Trump through his four years in office. My point is a different one, but I think important. I had writing this post in mind before ex-President Trump’s tirade yesterday. But his tirade for me cast the whole reality in a starker and clarifying relief.

The House GOP especially has had a series of weak, often feckless leaders, with Kevin McCarthy being just the latest, weakest and least fecked. But as I wrote back on the 11th, this isn’t really about bad luck or weak character. It’s built into the structure of the modern GOP. The GOP has weak leaders because weak, figurehead leaders are part and parcel of the GOP being a rightist, revanchist party while masquerading as a center-right party of government. The Jim Jordans and Steve Kings and Louis Gohmerts of the GOP prefer to run their party from the back benches or committee chairs under nominal leaders like McCarthy because it gives them power without accountability, a combination which is the mother’s milk of today’s conservative politics. McCarthy, famously and notoriously, went from privately telling colleagues that he believed Trump was literally on Vladimir Putin’s payroll to becoming one of Trump’s most committed and lickspittleyest toadies.

If you’ve been following Republican talking points closely, you’d assume the concept of “cancel culture” — not the pandemic or the uprising of violent domestic extremists — is the main threat facing the nation today.

Unsurprisingly, men who like to walk around civilian areas with long guns or semi-automatic rifles have a tendency to end up committing mass murder or other terrorist attacks. Back in 2016 we reported that a young man named Conor Climo was marching around a suburban Las Vegas subdivision kitted up in camo and carrying an AR-15. He told reporters he was there to patrol the neighborhood to deter crime. Three years later he was arrested for plotting either a mass shooting or a bomb attack on a Las Vegas area synagogue or gay night club. This is but one example and it’s certainly no surprise that someone who gets excited by terrorizing people – which the heart of open carry performance art – eventually progresses to mass violence.