these neoconservatives and neoconservative sympathizers are making it too easy for you, Glenn?

Very nicely put, Bullsmith. We are now at the point where we see clearly how they have approached and implemented this strategy, what exactly they are hoping to accomplish with this projection, and how it has (unfortunately) succeeded in bamboozling a compliant press, and by extension much of the population. We can identify and decry it. But what I am still grappling with is The Next Step. Namely, how to fight back and turn the tables so that when the other side engages in this behavior, we can flip it back on them and send them scurrying. And conversely, how do we pro-actively change the atmosphere so such behavior is dismissed and ridiculed outright by the media and population when attempted. Any solution I may think of involves rational explanation or logic – two things that’ll get you ignored and drowned out real fast. So I am curious to any thoughts out there on what we can do.

Clownsense – I can use one of your blueberry cocktails…

There isn't much you can do to defeat an opponent that refuses to reason. You do need to be just as vocal as they are, and you do need to ask all the right questions. I was struck by the issue made the other day that Al Gore is now a limousine liberal, and how quickly they come together on issues, developing talking points in just minutes to put out to the press.

One of the blogs I visit regularly, Sadly, No! mentioned that Cheney ran up a $186,000.00 energy bill in 2001, and that the Navy was required to bear that expense in the future. Coincidentally, the issue came to the floor of the house yesterday, and the Republicans made a huge stink that we brought the issue up. Funny that no one questioned how can you use that much energy even in a 30 room mansion or how easy it might be to pad an extralegal fund to sponsor covert activity.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/03/howard_kurtz_pi.php

The Horse's Mouth
A blog about the reporting of politics -- and the politics of reporting.
By Greg Sargent
Howard Kurtz Publicizes Malkin's Efforts To Tar Left -- Even Though He Thinks They're "Absurd"

This is a good one. Washington Post columnist Howard Kurtz today gives top billing to Michelle Malkin...

...Kurtz knows exactly what Malkin is up to here. She's doing the very thing he said was "absurd" -- but he went ahead and publicized her efforts, anyway, while ignoring their true nature. Kurtz says that tarring an ideology with a few vile comments is an absurd tactic in general -- without noting that this is exactly what Malkin is doing...
-- Greg Sargent

http://mediamatters.org/items/200703020002

Thu, Mar 1, 2007
Kurtz glossed over Malkin's attack on "left-wing patriotism," despite asserting that "rantings of the fringe ... shouldn't be used to tar an entire ideology"

. . . But while Kurtz quoted from Malkin's original post on the subject, he failed to include her suggestion that the remarks were characteristic of "left-wing patriotism and compassion." As blogger Greg Sargent noted, Kurtz's omission is particularly noteworthy because later in his column, Kurtz specifically disavows exactly what Malkin does on her blog -- without noting her doing it: "[I]t's absurd to view these assassination fantasies as anything other than the rantings of the fringe, and ... they shouldn't be used to tar an entire ideology." . . .

. . . At no point in his column did Kurtz mention that Malkin was engaging in the exact behavior he criticized. . . .
-- J.M.

Kurtz may be predictable, but he is certainly well skilled in his craft. He knows that most people will only see how he promoted Malkinism, not how he pretended to disclaim it. And if anybody objects, he'll point to his implausible disclaimer and he'll deny that he was promoting Malkinism.

A very good rundown. I have an example of this going back to late childhood (being, as it were, a pink diaper baby). When I learned about the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hounding people for their political beliefs (in obvious contempt for the First Amendment), I took to calling them the House Committee of Un-Americans.

I was anything but alone in thinking like this. As the earliest Baby Boomers (just a few years older than me) came of age for political action, HUAC crumbled like a house of cards when people simply stopped cowering before it.

This is what it takes, really. Nothing elaborate, sophisticated and nuanced. Just utter ridicule and contempt.

Twenty years later, they made a comeback in a different form, racist Southern white preachers with an extreme makeover, passing themselves off as moral authorities--heading up the "Moral Majority" no less. And they've been at it ever since. Now with "left-wing" reinforcements from the likes Jim "John Locke Has Cooties" Wallis.

What these folks all have in common is that they are nothing but flat-out con-men, the exact opposites of whatever they claim to be--and what they claim to be is the very embodiment of the strengths they lack, whether those be patriotic love of America, Christian morality, common sense, tolerance, rationality, or even a sense of humor.

I used to try to explain to people that what we were up against were reactionaries--and reactionaries originally earned that name because they were reacting against the Enlightenment. Although this is historically true, it seemed a bit much to most folks, even folks on the left. But the wholesale attack on science we've seen erupt in the past 10 years pretty much proved my point, until....

Until Bush upped the ante by talking off after the Magna Charta. Which pretty much made the term "reactionary" too tame to describe what we're up against.

Which is why, for now at least, I'll go with "con-men." It doesn't take a college course in Western History to explain. It's short, and to the point. And everyone, unfortunately, has first-hand experience to draw on, so they know exactly what it means.

So, you want to know who we're ruled by in America today? Simple: it's a cabal of con-men.

And what's really pathetic is that every single one of their cons has already been exposed. Just look at them now, running the exact same con they used to get us to invade Iraq, with only one letter changed.