What do you think of the characterization of neoconservatism as American fascism? So many parallels: the militarism, the corporatism, the endless crude lying propaganda.

Shall we discuss them? It'll give you the opportunity to rant like a neocon.

i hate you

Do tell.

Let's get something straight, neocon. I don't regard you as anything but a loathesome criminal complicit in heinous crimes, deserving of nothing less than a life sentence in a very sterile facility where your soul can rot away with your hatreds at leisure.

I'll send somebody to gloat.

I honestly hope I'm wrong about how badly this move hurts the Times.

Which misses the point of this circumstance entirely. It's not about how it hurts the NYT. It's how it helps Bill Kristol and neoconservatism.

The Grey Lady has crapped on its credibility, to be sure, and will likely lose several thousand subscribers, enough to force the NYT to lay off two copy boys and a part-time janitor. But NYT columnists are still republished in several hundred small papers around the country, which gives Bill Kristol a very large voice to the US middle class, and a credibility by sheer context that he in no way deserves.

Would you give David Koresh or Tim McVeigh a column with a national newspaper? Well, there ya go.

The idea is to make purulent American fascism mainstream. The idea is to establish neoconservative principles as typical of public opinion, forcing that set point farther to the right, to militarism and corporatism, covered over by the usual elaborate lies and the scorn of scapegoats along the way.

They could have hired an intelligent moderate voice instead, or one of the more reasonable conservatives, but they didn't. It should be very telling that they instead hired a very dangerous high-end radical. This is how it's done. By degrees. That it may hurt the NYT has in no way concerned Bill Kristol in the least.

Know what depresses me?

Enough idiots have gone along with neoconservative propaganda for so long that it probably is no longer possible to stop it, and that things are nearly certain to get a lot worse.

What is it about free speech and tolerance that liberals don't understand?

Let's look at what neocons call 'free speech':

Propaganda = free speech

Promoting genocide = free speech

Lying your way into an illegal war = free speech

Death threats = free speech

Blatant lying = free speech

Smear campaigns = free speech

Blowing up federal buildings = free speech

'Nuff said.

Two-Thirds On Defense

Many Americans believe that 19 cents on defense for every 81 cents on non-defense is a reasonable way to spend a tax dollar. But by another calculation, the tax dollar splits 68 cents for defense and 32 cents on everything else. It is a common misconception that U.S. defense expenditure is equivalent to the Department of Defense outlays. Instead of $436.4 billion of defense expenditure, as Congressional budgeteers count, government statisticians in the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) counted $548.0 billion for calendar year 2004—a whopping $112 billion difference. And by our own calculations, U.S. defense expenditure is much higher than even the BEA's numbers suggest, namely $765.6 billion in calendar year 2004—about $330 billion or 75 percent more than the Department of Defense outlays . . .

On a per-capita basis, the average American in 2004 then did not pay $1,488 for defense but $2,605. In a word, the military ran on $217.08 per citizen per month, while the remainder of the federal government ran on $103.83 per citizen per month.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2005/06/10/twothirds_on_defense.php

Even that two-thirds amounts to an undercount, because it does not include military 'foreign aid' and several other categories of expenditures more indirectly related to militarism.

The real total is closer to 80% of the federal budget.

And you wonder why your taxes are so high.