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Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
Little Brother
Published Letters: 1750 Editor's Choice: 3
Yes, but according to Alberto Gonzalez, George Washington fed his troops shit sandwiches at Valley Forge!
And two kinds of fruit.
Guess that pretty much undermines your whole premise, eh?
Oh, please! Arlen Specter is a wily old fraud who has posed as a Moderate Republican Who Places Respect for the Constitution Above Party Loyalty for his entire career. You can fool some of the people all of the time.
Call me a bitter lunatic, but only a fatuous dupe or dope would fail to see through his predictable scam. It's always the same: the Executive Branch syndicate commits still another constitutional travesty in their relentless quest to eviscerate the work of the Founding Fathers; Snarlin' Arlen harrumphs and gravely allows that he's not altogether happy with this fresh outrage, and intends to press for a thorough investigation, or the questionable act is opposed, or whatever the circumstances demand. He is the very picture of the concerned solon who appears ready to sacrifice his very career on the altar of principle.
Then time passes, and when push comes to shove Arlen folds like an origami swan and merrily surrenders to the prevailing wind. Maybe that Magic Bullet he dreamed up for the Warren Whitewash of JFK's assassination left his conscience paralyzed.
Oh, this cartoon is clever in its own way. But any attempt to expose the transparent hypocrisy and mendacity of the ruling party will be seen by patriotic citizens capable of reading cartoons as an attack on the Commander-in-Chief who's been successfully keeping us safe for the past six years.
The Democrats will be forced to frantically disassociate themselves from both the cartoon and the philosophy it espouses-- and that can only be a good thing for the Republican Party!
Before reading Conason's piece, I posted the following comment on The Huffington Post, a site that publishes some worthwhile analysis and commentary despite its peculiar aggressive trash-tabloid ambience:
"I'm not a Democrat; I'm a progressive independent who's held his nose and voted Democrat too often. I truly don't think I'll do that any more.
But I regularly visit a progressive website with a large bloc of progressive Democrats. Like women who are desperately fighting to remain faithful Roman Catholics in the face of its embedded sexist bigotry, these Dems have been urging the rest of us to be patient until the newly-empowered Democrats in Congress take office.
Out of respect to these good-hearted, well-meaning folks, I'm really trying. But my crap detectors started bleeping as soon as Pelosi made her infamous statement about impeachment being "off the table"-- which has been echoed by other Dems and pundits agreeing that "the people won't support impeachment".
And then Harry Reid casually reinforced Pelosi's other disturbing position-- that the Dems would essentially give President Unitard™ a blank check to continue the bloody Iraq debacle. Supposedly it's a sensible "give him all the rope he wants to hang himself" strategy-- as if the rope wasn't made of bleeding flesh!
After this last election, which was certainly good news, yet didn't really trigger that hoped-for sustained elation, I reflected that the Democratic Party may have thrown out the baby of social justice with the "government IS the problem" bugaboo popularized by Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton and the DLC managed to co-opt this seemingly-settled precept and parlay it into a successful grab for power. The Democrats retained the concept of social justice in the form of rhetoric supporting "human rights"-- but the corporatized version didn't include preserving and protecting the rights and wishes of We the People. I fear that the unfairly-maligned Mr. Nader is right to observe that our two-and-only-two parties allowed in our political system are quasi-conjoined twins, even if they are twins who quarrel constantly."
I appreciate that political junkies deal exclusively in strategy and the mechanics of party and government; like serious card playing, to pure politicos, it's all about what cards you've got, what tricks you can take, etc. Still, I'm bothered by Conason's failure to even mention the outrageously wrong-headed Pelosi/Reid positions noted above.
BTW, speaking as a hapless dreamer & fool, I think Murtha would have been an appropriate choice; I recognize that he's far from "liberal" or "progressive", but he surely has the qualifications for the job. And he deserved to be rewarded for his ice-breaking outright condemnation of the Iraq debacle, and being publicly vilified by the likes of that pissant Jean Schmidt and a host of wingnuts. To suggest that his ABSCAM history branded him with a scarlet "A" is a scarlet herring, IMO. On the contrary, only opponents and right-wingnuts would harp on that long-ago event; most people, I believe, would take Murtha's appointment as proof that the new Dem leadership champions a long-overdue realistic and rational course-reversal in Iraq.
Yes, structural and procedural reforms are urgently necessary. But I disagree with Mr. Conason that We the People share his wonky mindset. I feel that what is most discouraging are the indications from the revived Dem leadership that the mandate to end the Iraq misadventure now and aggressively investigate the multifarous wrongdoing of the present corrupt and criminal maladministration will be blown off in favor of a modest scaling-back of the worst of the Executive Branch's depredations to our Constitution and political process.
Sure, it will be nice to get habeas corpus back-- but that ought to be only the beginning.
Hey, it's hard work being a member of the next Greatest Generation and doing one's bit to support President Unitard™'s Global War on a Noun on top of doing what it takes to acquire membership in one's country's social, financial, and political elites-- Mister Smarty-Pants.
Oh, and someone needs to tell "prof" that "jumped the shark" jumped the shark about two years ago. Love the sweater-vest, though!
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
Once one obtains Seriousness credentials in the Washington media, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct.
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