Letters to the Editor
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Uptoolate
How did that happen? It's been a great jiu-jitsu against democracy to denigrate responsiveness to democratic demands as being "poll-driven". We've been led to believe that the worst thing that a politician can do is listen to the foolish demands of their constituents!
But since folks believe it, it actually does make it true. If the constituents are so foolish as to believe that their opinions are foolish and worthy of disdain, then the public is correct.
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Constitutional Crisis?
Why are people referring to the possibility of our country entering into a "constitutional crisis" just when it appears as though our government is finally starting to work properly?
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US Individualism Run Amok
It's all about you, George. Half a million dead in Iraq, a country in ruins, international law flushed down the toilet with a Koran and all that matters is how YOU feel about it!
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The Problem With The Neo-Cons is . . . [ part mmmcxxviii ]
Financial Times
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/709d908e-a4d8-11db-b0ef-0000779e2340.htmlThe neo-cons’ route to disaster
By Gideon Rachman
Published: January 15 2007
...Some believe that the real problem is that so many of them are Jewish – this is an alarmingly popular theme, to judge by my e-mails. But the problem with the neo-cons is not that so many of them are Jews. The problem is that so many of them are journalists. In making this point, I hope that I do not come across as some sort of self-hating journalist......The current debacle in Iraq is what you get when you turn op-ed columns into foreign policy. Does that conclusion strike you as simplified and exaggerated? Maybe so – but that’s journalism.
-- Gideon RachmanRachman gives plenty of examples to illustrate his point about the punditocrisy.
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bush & his god
I can not believe it?
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Sysrprog, have I told you you're my hero?
Op ed as foreign policy is a succinct an apt a criticism of what has gone wrong as I have heard. Worse, it applies equally well to domestic policy.
ps. To Frankly... I honestly believe there is less than zero chance that George W. Bush will attemt to personally retain the Presidency beyond his second term. Even if the most authoritarian nightmare power grab were to happen, there would still be a symbolic hand-over to a new, carefully chose President.
I'm sorry, to me the idea that Bush will try to stay in office himself is simply paranoid and pretty silly. Of course, if I'm wrong, we'll find out all too soon.
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"as succinct and apt"
Man I have GOT to start using preview. Sorry.
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Anti-semitism jujitsu
1) If you claim that criticism of the most inhuman of Israeli government actions (bulldozing inhabited neighborhoods and centuries old olive groves, building fences through arab villlages, etc.) is anti-semitic, then...
2) You are saying that engaging in such activities is characteristic of 'semites' (minus the arabs, of course, though they are semites, too).
3) #2 is truly the most anti-semitic claim one could ever make.
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Intimidation Redefined
"The President was not at all intimidated by his fifteen or so guests"
No, he was just intimidated by the hundreds or thousands of his fellow-citizens who wanted to ask him unscripted questions at his performatronic Town Hall Meetings and who weren't allowed to do so.
Fortitude was never such a cinch. No reputation for hard-assédness (factitious or not) can ever have been so easily achieved, nor can it have cost the man who obtained it so little.
Would that America's real enemies were "not intimidated" after the President's manner!! The most we'd have to fear in that case would be that they wouldn't be afraid to do lunch with their acolytes and flunkies (it's hard to discern from Greenwald's account who's toadying to whom: Bush's political gurus to Bush or Bush to his preceptors; but then I don't suppose it matters)---nor, having eaten, to wind up the chowdown with a sermon.
Unfortunately for us all, they're much less virtuous characters than Bush and the things they're "not intimidated by" are bombs and guns.
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please don't be misled, jeb
... and do not let your guard down for an instant (well, short holiday to the beach is ok every now & then)!
The mid-term elections and the recent scandals are mere reflections of incompetence. The good folks who brought you Cheney & Bush and Wolfowitz & Perl (the "neoconservative tutors") have an apparatus in place which they have been constructing for decades (since the resignation of Nixon). The recent turn of events is not about ideas. [I say again: incompetence... failure of execution.] It's about appearances.
The noble-elite-liars will simply bide their time (easily affordable with the profits from the no-bid contracts in Iraq), re-consolidate their resources, regroup, and rise again another day. About 8 years at most, I would guess.
Too much wine,
Gordon
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jojo
Sure sure sure.
BONK (hits self in face with large red inflated ball)
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I can't remember when
I heard the Bush was reading A History of the English Speaking Peoples and like I hope some English Speaking People, thought, wow, ok, but gees I read that in high school, only to be informed later by a librarian friend, that no, it wasn't Churchill that Bush had read, but some Brit who thought he was the heir to continue recording the history that Churchill had begun.
Boy did I feel STUPID. (Like I did the other night when I didn't "get" the troll who has been around since October 2005 and responded to him.)
Does anyone know if there is a way to suggest books to Rove for the "club"? My suggestions: The Road, Lovely Bones, and Chile, by Jacobo Timerman.
I'm done. Carry on :)
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And so, jojo...
wtf does Heidegger have to do with BushCo? You know better, I think. There is no useful purpose served by hauling him in to look for an analog.
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Madder Than Hatters: What's Crazier Than Lunch Chez George?
Dinner, chez AEI.
JP2, seven years ago :
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0003/12/sm.06.html
March 12, 2000 ... Pope John Paul II makes an unprecedented apology for a laundry list of transgressions. The pontiff apologized for the way the church has treated Jews, the use of violence under the guise of religion, the Crusades and the Inquisition and for the disrespect it has shown to women and minorities...GWB, four years ago :
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030226-11.html
February 26, 2003
THE PRESIDENT: Thanks for the warm welcome. I'm proud to be with the scholars, and the friends, and the supporters of the American Enterprise Institute. ... I see many distinguished guests here tonight -- members of my Cabinet, members of Congress, Justice Scalia, Justice Thomas, and so many respected writers and policy experts. I'm always happy to see your Senior Fellow, Dr. Lynne Cheney. ... Thanks for fitting me into the program tonight. I know I'm not the featured speaker. [ * * * note: that's true! * * * ] I'm just a warm-up act... At the American Enterprise Institute, some of the finest minds in our nation are at work on some of the greatest challenges to our nation. You do such good work that my administration has borrowed 20 such minds...Neo-con Central Station, last week :
http://SLATE.COM/id/2161800
AEI's weird celebration.
By Jacob Weisberg
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
...The day after the Libby verdict, AEI held its annual black-tie gala at the Washington Hilton, and for some reason, they invited me......It had not been a good week, year, or second term for any of these people, and I thought a few cocktails might provoke them to consider their predicament. This was fantasy on my part...
...What did surprise me was [Bernard] Lewis' denunciation of Pope John Paul II's 2000 apology for the Crusades as political correctness run amok. This drew applause...
Were you to start counting the ironies here, where would you stop? Here was a Jewish scholar criticizing the pope for apologizing to Muslims for a holy war against Muslims, which was also a massacre of the Jews. Here were the theorists of the invasion of Iraq, many of them also Jewish, applauding the notion that the Crusades were not so terrible and embracing a time horizon that makes it impossible to judge them wrong. And here was the clubhouse of the neocons throwing itself a lavish 'do, when the biggest question in American politics is how to escape the hole they've dug. Reality seemed to have taken up residence elsewhere for the evening.
But whether or not the neocons are ready to face it, their moment has passed...
-- Jacob WeisbergHas there moment passed? Not according to their pocketwatches, which are running slow, despite the best butter.