Digby brought up Rob Dreher's op-ed column about reading All Quiet on the Western Front recently and having an epiphany about not trusting leaders and glorifying war and what not ... I wrote about that (and authoritarianism) last Friday, and I think what I wrote compliments Digby's post somewhat.

http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2007/07/what-we-have-here-is-failure-to.html

Khartoum's genocidal gov't has a lobbyist in Washington, too. It cost them 530,000 bucks ... and required getting a waiver from Condoleeza Rice.

Democracy for sale.

BGR helped start up former FEMA director (Bush family friend and Halliburton lobbyist) Joe Allbaugh's Iraq "consulting" firm New Bridge Strategies which is prety much a front group for BGR. Allbaugh's wife is a lobbyist (who worked for a Texas energy company that participated in Cheney's closed door energy meetings), too - and she happens to be an advisor to BGR.

Lanny Griffith - one of the founding partners - is a Bush "pioneer" having raised over 100,000 dollars for his campaign. He worked in the elder Bush administration.

Ed Rogers - the third partner - served in the Reagan and elder Bush adminstrations and started up another Iraq reconstruction company. Joe Allbaugh was made deputy chairman.

George Bush's brother Neil gets a consulting fee of 60,000 a year from New Bridge Strategies.

One could go on and on ... this stuff is only scratching the surface

Someone should ask Chris Mathews if he considers Perkins having purchased the mailing list of white supremacist David Duke as part of that family values.

My apologies if someone already mentioned this.

The FBI used information it had gathered on MLK to attempt to blackmail him into abandoning his cause and it was intimated to him that he should go ahead and kill himself. Truly contemptible.

It is quite frustrating that Democrats continue to run with their tails between their legs at the prospect of Bush accusing them of being soft on terror no matter how poor Bush's actual record on terror is.

In the interst of further informing people how counter-productive excessive secrecy and lack of oversight is, just look at the history of the CIA.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174824/chalmers_johnson_agency_of_rogues

That's Chalmers Johnson reviewing Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.

"He generally tries to return calls in the same week -- if not day -- they are placed"

Holy sh_t! He return call in the same day!!! Hot damn, I never knew that. If I'd known that I would have never gotten upset about the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity, faith-based initatives, the use of war as an electoral strategy, the fraudulent marketing of war, the crony capitalism and partisan spoils system, the accusing critics of loving al Qaeda, lies, the wasted billions, the torture, the NSA spying, the tax cuts for the rich sold as tax cuts for the working class, the near complete politicization of federal gov't at the expense of civic virtue in public office, et cetera.

That all seems to trivial in light of the fact that Rove returns David Broder's phone calls on the same day.

Neither Thomas Sowell nor this specific episode, standing alone, is particularly significant, but I cannot help being endlessly amazed by the capacity of right-wing authoritarians so blatantly to hold and espouse completely contradictory thoughts at once without realizing they are doing it.

http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2007/08/see-no-evil-hear-no-evil-call-your.html

While I imagine that there are some figures in the conservative movement who consciously make an effort to use such "projections strategy," it seems to me that most do so as a consequence of the arrested mental development that has resulted from their authoritarian mindset. If you remember in Chapter 3 of the The Authoritarians, Altemeyer points out that massive doses of double standard, hypocrisy, and self-blindness are norms of everyday life for authoritarians.

...

As I've said repeatedly, the self-blindness of these folks is unbelievable. And that's what troubles me. I find myself wondering where the threshold for them is - at what point would they not be able to rationalize anymore double-think. I'm sorry, but if I'm being honest I look at Coulter, Hannity, Limbaugh and Malkin and imagine that they could easily become the sort of people that turn into apologists for tyrannical rule, kind of like the characters in It Can't Happen Here who were apologists for the fascist regime of Buzz Windrip who went around saying you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, except instead of saying that they'd be saying the Constitution isn't a suicide pact.

Christopher Hitchens, while appearing with Coulter on Hardball was left with the same impression: "I’m appalled to see what kind of model citizen you’d make in a banana republic, Ms. Coulter. I mean, you’re just saying in advance that your credulity with respect to the president is infinite."

I'm not interested in testing whether or not that is so. Which means that it's vitally important to start building a coalition of people across the political spectrum who are not going to allow democracy to be voted away. I'll give Professor Altemeyer the last word...

The commander in chief of this nation's armed forces doesn't even known why or how the Iraqi military was disbanded at the start of the occupation.

There is something seriously wrong here that the man remains in power.

The commander in chief of this nation's armed forces doesn't even know how or why Iraq's military was disbanded at the start of the occupation.

That Bush remains in power is indicative that something is seriously wrong here.

"Liberal canard" = the president telling an interviewer he doesn't know how or why the Iraqi military was disbanded.

"liberal canard" also equals Paul Bremer disbanding the Iraqi military.

Stupid is as stupid says.

"Not to mention the constant antisemitic slurs regarding neoconservatism."

Yes, damn all those left-wing ron paul fans at Stormfront.