When I'm not buying up foreclosed properties and putting families out in the street, taking milk out of the mouths of babes, and generally pillaging the poor, I enjoy a good bookburning. Amen.

Yeah, never mind those nattering nabobs of negativism. Shooter offers you employment at Wal*Mart and Enron, 401K retirement plans funded entirely by stock in your mismanaged company, no health care, hedge fund specialists who pull down three billion dollars for betting that you can't pay your mortgage -- which you can't, of course -- and gas north of four bucks a gallon. If that's not enough for you, how about the glory of an endless war against Islamofascism. Whoopie!

You forgot to add death and taxes.

None the less it's a good example of how to dwell on stereotypes designed to be pejorative. After a while you start believing your own PR and then it's sackcloth, ashes, and standing in Times Square with a sign that says "THE END IS NEAR".
There is more to life than cataloging each and every way, humanity fails to meet perfection.
But hey, keep up the good work,

You're such a kindly fellow, shooter. A lover of furry animals and children as well, just like your predecessors.

A propagandist who eats his own dog food, though, is by definition a hapless sort of creature. If you want to control the future, you're gonna have to fight for it, and underestimating your enemy is a terrible way to start. Look at General Petraeus.

Oh, and boo! Us liberals are everywhere.

None the less it's a good example of how to dwell on stereotypes designed to be pejorative.

Ever wonder why Warren Buffett claims that he pays a lower tax rate on his earnings than his secretary does?

http://tinyurl.com/67hkwu

Mr Buffett said that he was taxed at 17.7 per cent on the $46 million he made last year, without trying to avoid paying higher taxes, while his secretary, who earned $60,000, was taxed at 30 per cent. Mr Buffett told his audience, which included John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley, and Alan Patricof, the founder of the US branch of Apax Partners, that US government policy had accentuated a disparity of wealth that hurt the economy by stifling opportunity and motivation.

There's nothing wrong with retired flag and general officers discussing purely military questions (i.e., the intricacies of land, air, or naval warfare). However, if the officer is there just to proselytize for war, then the program should have antiwar guests as well.

Greenwald's article in "The Public Interest" discusses the "pundits," those self-styled founts of wisdom who know The Big Picture. They're all bought-and-paid-for types who represent the Establishment to Joe Sixpack, not Joe Sixpack to the Establishment.

Re: Interview with Aaron Brown

1.) Have to give him props for at least engaging your questions in a somewhat reasonable manner. I was expecting at some moment to bring out the canard of how many years experience he has and how dare you (mere blogger that you are) ask such imperious questions. Thankfully that did not occur. That sort of manhood measurement I've seen in response to what you've written and know how fundamentally dishonest it is.

2.) I was fascinated, and would like to know your thoughts on his response to one of your last questions. Specifically, his take on the question of polls and how they reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of basic facts. e.g. seventy percent surveyed believe Hussein was directly involved in 9-11. His response was, in my mind, unabashedly that it really is, by and large, the fault of the public. That he accepts some responsibility, minimized by a great degree by the willful ignorance of the public.

3.) This interview reminded me of your blogging heads thing with Ben Smith. The topic being a certain hair cut on former senator and "coverage" afforded by the Politico. There appears to be a rationalization that mainstream journalists employ mostly by having caveats at the ready to explain why their coverage was adequate and fair and have an example or two they can point to that counteracts inquiries into their motives. In Smith's case, taking trivial non-story stories repeated over and over again but being able to point to other product of theirs that would weigh against criticism for repeating the vapid (love that word, thanks for adding it to my vocabulary) Drudge type attacks.

In Brown's case, he was able to continually point to his show being less popular because they dealt with more Iraq issues than others, he had on opposing view points etc.

Both of those interviews show (along with other examples of your interactions with journalists) a bit of a pathology. "I do balance opposing views, see..." "I'm a bit cranky and challenge at times..."

They don't see themselves as a part of the problem yet they acknowledge their is a problem.

Anyway, thanks Glenn. For everything.

Rice. Guess happy days are here again, eh? (Damn those liberal pessimists ayway.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/24/food.usa

DCLaw... The American political/ideological landscape has changed so much since then. Right-wingers used to stand for "isolationism," or at least non-intervention. They could not have done a more dramatic about-face.

I think this is an all to convemient false dichotomy, and it still persists in the press. The dynamics of the interplay between American Foreign policy and domestic partisan politics has to be more complicated and involved than that. Perhaps that's why it is reduced down to this simple formula for mass consumption: antiwar on one side and prowar on the other, or maybe there is another reason. It's too early for me and I haven't had my coffee. Maybe sharper minds and morning people can figure it out. Maybe this national security and defense apparatus, what we used to call The War Dept., really is a separate entity that guides and steers whatever faction is in power. I do know that the leftists who preached isolationist in WWI, like the I.W.W. and Big Bill Haywood ended up in prison or on the lam to Russia. Garrett got a job at the Saturday Evening Post and Lindbergh is a hero. This prompts the question of what is conservatism and who is a conservative.

I will grant you that these people were right wing. Perhaps true conservatism, like liberalism, is really a left of center ideology. (I'm reading about Harold Walsby, George Walford - what I can find on the web - and systematic ideology).

Walford is of particular interest because he was writing about the myth of the freedom of the market back in the 70s and I'm sure George F. Will had been reading him when he declared capitalism was a government program (without attribution) in 2002.

Che... What's more, if the polls are to be believed, most of this propaganda doesn't work for more than a short time. Surely the overwhelming lack of support for the neocon wet dream of glory should be a sign to The Powers That Be that their program of deception is faltering badly. Ordinary people may not know what the Truth is, but they know full well they've been lied to over and over and over again.

William F. Buckley, Jr. once defined conservatism as the willingness to “stand athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who do." I guess it all depends on what you are trying to stop and whether it is a worthwhile endeavor or grave threat. Or maybe he wasn't a true conservative after all. In any case, if the goal is to just stall until all the witnesses die off or forget the facts of the case, the effect is the same. Have you ever been involved in protracted litigation?