"The issue is that she will bring in the middle America vote, the people who Josh refers to as the "Confederate Yokel and Backwoods Mouthbreather" folks. The thing is, these people are the majority. I don't mean the Democratic majority or the Republican majority....I mean the majority of American citizens. Most people aren't die hard home-schoolers (despite Josh's best efforts to fit all conservatives into the worst possible stereotypes)..."
Ron B. - August 29, 2008
Ladies and gentlemen, Middle America!
Aside from the thrashing Obama is giving McCain in the Electoral Vote polling (we're approaching "Nebraska v. Florida in the 1996 Sugar Bowl" territory), nothing is giving me greater joy than watching the Retarded Right come completely unhinged. Since the attacks of September 11th, 2001, and the subsequent decision by Karl Rove and his Mayberry Machiavellis to use fear as a political cudgel, these people have been the core support of a conservative majority bolstered by independents concerned about terrorism and national security. Now that security issues have faded in the face of an economic shock threatening the stability of the global economy, political independents have moved their allegiances and the facade of a Moral Majority has crumbled. These people are no longer having their outrageous social viewpoints unintentionally reinforced and they have no clue how to handle it. Well, they do have an idea: hatred and ignorance.
To put a finer point on it, today's most fascinating and awe-inspiring development wasn't the clip above from today's McCain-Palin rally in Minnesota where McCain gets booed trying to disabuse these people of the idea that Obama is an Arab terrorist. Nor was it the release of the Alaska State Legislature's report finding that Sarah Palin violated state ethics' laws in pressuring state public safety commissioner Walt Monegan to fire her ex-brother-in-law, State Trooper Mike Wooten. Today's most fascinating and awe-inspiring development was the announcement by Christopher Buckley that he is supporting Barack Obama in the Presidential election.
To clear that up for those of you who aren't political junkies, Christopher Buckley is the son of William F. Buckley, Jr. William F. Buckley, Jr., was the founder of the National Review, the arch-conservative political magazine. William F. Buckley, Jr., was the architect of modern American politcal conservatism. And his son, a lifelong conservative Republican supporter and former speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush, is reacting to McCain's campaign by supporting Barack Obama. The Republican candidate for the Presidency of the United States has lost the son of the father of modern American conservatism.
That, my friends, can only be described in two words:
So, to Jake, who here and in a conversation we had afterward expressed concern about the outcome of the election which I dismissed, and any others that may be worried, I say again, fear not. And here's why:
Obama '08: Hope, Change, Progress, and with any luck, a 60-seat Senate majority we can use to crush the Republican Party into a fine powder that we will then bake into a bread which we will wash down with the sweet, sweet tears collected on November 5th.
Friday, October 10, 2008
To phrase this delicately...
13 comments:
If you want to trade stories between the radical elements of both parties, I can spin the humdingers when the antiwar protesters bumrushed me while I was working at the administration building. Five were dressed up as Abu Grahib prisoners and most all of the crowd chanted "Bush is Hitler."
Are the people who McCain called out for equating much different than the people who for eight years have claimed that Bush is Hitler? The key difference is that the Republicans tell the "Obama is a Terrorist" folks to shut the hell up while the Democrats say "give me your money" to the "Bush is Hitler" folks.
I am increasingly thinking that WEB DuBois's idea of the Talented Tenth was not limited to the African-American race. There might only be 10% of the population capable of leading the nation and engaging in political discourse. Lord knows I haven't seen much discourse from either side this year.
And yes, I am still voting for McCain and I trust the Middle America I talked about in my post much more than I do the leftists who protest the war and want to soak the rich.
Let's compare: the Bush Administration lied us into an unjust war as aggressors which distracted us from our original, legitimate mission in Afghanistan and set up at least two extra-legal prison bases outside of U.S. territory where immoral acts were committed against prisoners of war that at best could be called "almost not torturous"; some of his critics, college-age youth notorious for drunken and rash goofiness, after six years of either being ignored or shouted down as "unAmurkin" for not "SUPPORTIN' ARE TREWPS," compared Bush to another war criminal and tried to bring attention to the disgusting acts committed in our name.
Barack Obama is the Democratic Party's candidate for President; some of his critics, grown-ass adults who ought to fucking know better, when faced with a Hawaiian-born black man with a funny name who is a sitting United States Senator, declare him an Arab terrorist.
I thought about being sarcastic and snarky here, but I'll skip that: we've been friends for a long time and I respect your accomplishments in academia, but I seriously question the intellectual honesty of anyone who thinks these two examples are even in the same sport, let alone ballpark.
Now, I don't think comparing Bush to Hitler is going to be particularly effective in making the argument that the Bush Administration has unequivocally violated the shit out of the Geneva Conventions and lied their asses off doing it, but it doesn't change the fact that they have violated the shit out of the Geneva Conventions and lied their asses off doing it. And violating the shit out of the Geneva Conventions while lying your ass off about doing it is probably going to lead to comparisons to notorious war criminals because, as you are certainly aware, the Geneva Conventions were a response and attempt to outlaw and hopefully curtail the inhumane actions of people that we had determined to be notorious war criminals. You may not like the comparison and I may not think the comparison is going to do much in the way of winning hearts and minds, but getting from "violating Geneva Conventions" to "war criminal" is a more viable leap than "black man with funny name" is to "Arab terrorist."
And tax rates projected to be lower than those of the Clinton years when we have a $10 trillion dollar deficit that probably needs to be paid back is "soaking the rich?" You people can talk about Jesus all you want, but He's gonna have some questions about the amount of time you people spent worshipping at the altar of Mammon. Although I have to say that I've really missed the Communist and Socialist Bogeymen that rile up the Republicans so much. The Scary Arab Terr'ist Bogeyman just doesn't have the same panache as "Commies" and "Red Diaper Babies."
The two examples are in the same ballpark because they are both way off-base and far from the truth. Do I think Obama is an Arab terrorist? No, absolutely not. Do I think there are McCain supporters who think Obama is an Arab terrorist? Absolutely. Is the GOP putting out the message that Obama is an Arab terrorist? Of course not. You act like Charlie Black and the rest of McCain's strategists are sitting there on their blackberries posting on right-wing message boards spreading that shit.
Does Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid disagree with Bush's administration. Yep. Do they call Bush Hitler? No. Do they ask the 527s that give them a majority of their cash to stop referring to Bush as Hitler? Nope.
The point I was trying to make is that the Democrats are much more willing to let their populist element refer to Bush as Hitler than the GOP is to let their supporters call Obama a terrorist. I have yet to see the Democrats come out and condemn groups like MoveOn.org for their "General Betray-us" ad or other such rhetorical flourishes that take place on the DailyKos or the Huffington Post. Is it shameful that a number of Republican supporters think that Obama is a Muslim terrorist? Absolutely. Can McCain be blamed for it? No. (The links to Bill Ayers, who is a legitimate domestic terrorist are an aside here...I'm focusing on the racial aspects of the discussion. When they attack Obama over Ayers it should be over his worldview, not any links to Al-Qaeda that don't exist). I don't think I'm being intellectually dishonest here at all.
If Obama gets in there and raises taxes (which is looking more and more like "when" instead of "if") I think it will throw another big ol bucket of cold water on the economy and prevent any kind of substantive recovery from taking place. I'm not denying at all that the 10 trillion dollar debt needs to be paid back, nor am I denying that most American CEOs are vastly undertaxed and overpaid. I am just scared that Obama is going to go in there and do something brash in order to make an example out of basically the entire American business community and that will end up being counterproductive in the long run. When Reagan, CLinton, and Bush cut capital gains taxes government revenues went up. We need a chance for the bailout to work before we get any reversal of that pattern.
I'm glad you decided not to go snarky and sarcastic here because we are friends. We should be able to discuss the issues rationally (which we are doing here). I am of the opinion that discourse is gone in this country. Neither side wants to talk, they just want to speak in general platitudes ("Change you can believe in") and soundbites ("He is unfit to lead") and refuse to engage in substantive issues. That is why we get shit like "He is a terryrist" (to use your language) and "McBush." Both sides are to blame for this. If you hurry out to a boat you might catch discourse somewhere around the horn of Africa.
Let's talk about the current state of discourse.
The first point I'll make is that while I don't think you believe Obama to be an Arab terrorist, I do have to ask if you are even paying attention to the McCain campaign. You don't think Sarah Palin accusing Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists" stokes this garbage fire and gives these bottom-feeding mouthbreathers the okey-doke to repeat this nonsense? Do you think her woefully ignorant and painfully uninformed ass discovered Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers on her own? She is nothing more than a talking-point spouting robot, as evidenced by her debate performance where she was jammed so tightly with canned responses and quips that she couldn't even manage a human response to Joe Biden's choke-up moment speaking of his deceased wife and daughter. And it's incredibly disingenuous to reference Charlie Black when the campaign is being run day-to-day by Karl Rove protege Steve Schmidt; it is certain that Schmidt and company gave her the line and the order to use it. She certainly didn't go off the reservation with this nonsense three separate times of her own accord, so let's not pretend that the McCain campaign is blameless in this mess. (And can we just agree that the Obama-Ayers relationship is a tenuous and unfortunate artifact of the reality of Chicago politics? Ayers is a dick; maybe his educational ideas are crazy but I don't know what they are. I heard they were radical, but the words "radical" and "elitist" ave been rendered meaningless synonyms for "something a liberal said or did" that usually don't even come close to "radical" or "elitist." Court adjourned.)
And let's be honest: Hitler and the Nazis have attained such a transcendent, almost absurd aura of pure evil that they've become a caricature of villainy that any comparison will come up short against unless the target is a thirty-foot tall bulletproof ogre lumbering madly among the populace eating people and destroying property indiscriminately. So obviously anyone in the position of Pelosi or Reid isn't going to try to make a serious argument against the Bush Administration at the national level by invoking Hitler. But on the point of MoveOn and their ads, sure, the DNC will give that money back and repudiate their support when the RNC gives back the money and repudiates the support of people like Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and the people they bring to party. Yeah, that's probably not going to happen, although I can guarantee that one party would suffer far more from the loss than the other. I'll leave it up to the reader to decide which one that is.
Wait; no I won't. It's no coincidence that the ascendence of the Republican Party, especially since 1994's mid-term elections, mirrors the rise of Rush Limbaugh and right-wing radio. And it is also undeniable that groups like MoveOn and people like Kos have taken their tone as a direct response to the continued success of the Right Wing Noise machine and the cottage industry they've built on constant smears and attacks. The increased rhetoric from the left over the last six years has also partially been a result of weak-willed Democratic leadership that laid down and rolled over after the attacks of September 11th, 2001. While Pelosi has stepped up her game, Reid has been a disappointment and I don't see him making it past the halfway point of Obama's first term as Majority Leader. But I digress. Traditional liberal commentators willingly bent over and took in the ass from lunatics like Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin so hard that I can't even remember their names. Two wrongs don't make a right, but at some point you've got to stand up and fight fire with fire.
And I'll also point out that 22 Democratic Senators voted in support of a Senate amendment designed to "strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus" and a similar House Resolution passed fairly overwhelmingly in response to the "Betrayus" ad. But not once during the Clinton Administration did Democrats nor certainly any Republicans waste the American people's time and money passing meaningless resolutions to "strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity" of President Clinton that came from the Right Wing Smear machine alleging his involvement in the "assassination" of Vince Foster or Ron Brown or any of the other numerous absurd accusations that were made by people that had a lot more cache with the RNC than MoveOn has with the DNC. And don't think these people and organizations sliming Clinton weren't having their contributions gladly accepted by the RNC.
While Kos has toned down his rhetoric and become a better, more useful advocate for the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party can live without MoveOn and similar groups. The same coalition of economic and social progressives have been united with a very similar, cohesive worldview under the Democratic banner for going on 80 years. The only arguments in the party are how much wealth to redistribute and how many abortions and gay marriages to make people have.
Can the GOP maintain a coalition of social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, warhawks, and isolationists that have almost nothing in common except for a shared disdain for liberals without Limbaugh and Fox News keeping the heat up and the rabble roused? I doubt it. Most social conservatives benefit not in the slightest from conservative economic policy and have gotten relatively little in the way of their social agenda after 30 years of turning out for the Republicans. A sizable portion of the Republican Party are Republitarians; fiscally conservative, but socially progressive and couldn't give a damn about legislating in any way against abortion or gays. At some point the James Dobsons and the Log Cabin Republicans are going to get tired of having to take a shower to wash off the stink of shaking hands with each other at the RNC convention. Not to mention the growing number of social conservatives concerning themselves with environmental responsibility. And warhawks versus isolationists? Now that's entertainment. Pat Buchanan hates at least half of the Republican Party on sheer fucking principle. Don't expect Paul Wolfowitz to shed a tear when Buchanan kicks the bucket, either. And I don't even have the time or the inclination to get into crazy, whack job secessionist and supremacist groups like the Alaskan Independence Party that come in out of the woods from time to time to pull the lever for the (R) candidate for reasons that Republican Party leaders don't even fully understand.
So what does all this have to do with the original argument, is "Bush=Hitler" the same as "Obama is an Arab Terrorist"? I spent a lot of time writing and tweaking and re-writing and re-tweaking what I wrote above because I want the table perfectly set for what I am about to say and I want what I am about to say to be laid out as well as I can. I may equivocate to some degree in what I am about to say, which is strange for me because I usually just come right out and say whatever crazy shit is at the front of my brain without regard for propriety or concern for people's feelings.
I may equivocate because the Bush Administration's ineptitude and dishonesty in handling the Iraq War, Abu Ghirab, Guantanamo Bay, and the general pursuit of the War on Terror has clouded the air and muddied the waters so much that the detached perspective of time will be needed for a clearer understanding of this debacle. We can quibble about the misuse of intelligence; were the architects of the war liars or illiterate, belligerent imbeciles? We can debate the reality of Hussein's strength; was he a militarily impotent mad-man substituting bluster for capability while surrounded by virulent enemies who would overrun him if they knew how weak he really was or was he truly capable of producing or acquiring nuclear weapons to threaten the safety of the Western world? Did we bring Democracy to the Middle East for better or did we destroy the archaic stability of a Despot for worse?
These points of contention will not matter because - barring some unforeseen development in the War on Terror and/or a massive sea-change in International standards for the Laws of War, the treatment of Prisoners of War, and Basic Human Rights - unbiased and honest historians, not in the coming years or decades but centuries from now, removed from the emotion of the present, will view the Bush Administration as the stewards of a power-hungry executive branch of government that trampled the rights of its own citizens; a government that misused incorrect intelligence repeatedly and without regard to coherency or the need for credibility in order to launch an unjust war of aggression against a much smaller, unprepared and virtually defenseless country. It will be said, without concern for political expediency, that this war resulted in numerous atrocities, both intentional and unintentional, both directly and indirectly, committed against innocent civilians and shackled combatants, combatants who will not be given the specious distinction between lawful and unlawful.
It has long been said that history is written by the victors, but that is a truism from a time where events were poorly documented and unpleasant reminders of misdeeds could easily be destroyed with a little fire, a few bullets, a few bombs. We now live in an era where the effort necessary to completely manipulate the evidence of one's actions, especially on a scale and with the visibility of the American government, is beyond known human capability. With copious journalistic accounts and explanations from sources as diverse as loyal allies and staunch opponents that contradict and disprove, to varying degrees, nearly every claim and justification the Bush Administration has made for and about the war against Iraq written and rewritten on paper and copied and recopied in electronic form, there will be no equivocation, no confusion, no misunderstanding. History will most likely regard George W. Bush and his administration as war criminals.
Barack Obama will clearly never be an Arab and hopefully never be a terrorist, but one day, long after we have become nothing more than dust and names in books long unopened and files long unaccessed, Bush will be equated with Hitler. It may not be a perfect comparison, but it will be at best a difference without much distinction.
And all the while we sat idly by. Half of our populace willingly and unquestioningly cheerleading the Administration along and challenging the patriotism of dissenters. The other half unwilling to speak out because they couldn't risk the political damage of mustering any more than a half-hearted criticism. Having to actually debate whether or not the harsh, unpleasant truth is the same as a hateful, ignorant lie, because the level of discourse has become so degraded that even attempting to assess the truth is a cure worse than the disease.
It sucks and I don't like it, either, but there it is. I'm glad I could clear that up for everyone.
OK then, let’s talk about it.
Paling around with terrorists is a shot at Bill Ayres, plain and simple. I do not seriously think that the McCain campaign, either through McCain or Palin, are trying to tie Obama to Muslim terrorism. If they were, then McCain wouldn’t have cut the woman off yesterday. We had an event Tuesday night and a person in the audience asked the Republican congressman on the panel if he thought people in Jacksonville chanting “terrorist” at a Palin rally were representative of the GOP and he said no. You may think that it is intentional that these guys are trying to conflate Ayres with Osama Bin Laden, but I don’t simply because that is bad political strategy. If the two become conflated, then it gives the Left a talking point to attack (The GOP is calling Obama an Arab terrorist!) that takes away from the real issue (Bill Ayres is a terrorist and is one of Obama’s closest and most influential supporters.) That doesn’t take away from the fact that the people who think Obama is a Muslim terrorist are seriously misguided, I just don’t think that was the intended consequence of the Ayres charges.
And no, we absolutely cannot agree that Ayres and Obama is an unfortunate aspect of Chicago politics. I think the Ayres issue is completely fair game, though, and I think it is much more important that you give it credit for. First off, a number of good reporters, including Drew Griffin on CNN, have determined that Obama and Ayres are much tighter than Obama has indicated. The defense of “I didn’t know his history” and “We barely knew each other” doesn’t stand up to the facts of their connections on the Chicago Annenberg project. It goes beyond simple Chicago politics. Second, why is this important? If you read any of Ayres writings, which I have done some of for my 1960s class, you will know that he was the far Left of the 1960s political spectrum, that he openly advocated and committed acts of violence that were well beyond simply property destruction, and that he still holds on to his core beliefs minus the violence. If this is the kind of person that Obama is getting his advice from then, in my opinion, it doesn’t bode well for his administration. The other party equivalent to this would be if John McCain got his advice from a 1965 Klansman in Mississippi who bombed some black churches. If McCain was in fact advised by a 1965 church-bombing Klansman, even if it was one meeting in 1995 about a budget bill, it would overshadow everything else in the campaign, including the sinking Dow, and likely derail his candidacy. I think you can agree with that, surely. Look at what happened to Trent Lott when he said a positive comment about Strom Thurmond when the old coot was turning 102 or some such. Obama, it seems to me, gets a pass on all of his associations, from Reverend Wright all the way through Ayres whereas McCain and Palin (who was criticized for supposedly wearing a Pat Buchanan button in the 1990s by the New York Times) get thumped for any minor association and endorsement.
I don’t see Rush Limbaugh as in the same ballpark with the absurdity of MoveOn. Michael Savage I agree with you on…the man is crazy. And I agree with Coulter and Mallkin. This goes back to my Talented Tenth comment in my first reply….only about 10% of the population can engage in any kind of constructive discourse while the other 90% listen to folks like Savage, Coulter, Mallkin, the Huffington Post, and MoveON. I only exclude Limbaugh because of his columns in the Wall Street Journal which are extremely lucid and well-argued, but I’m sure we can disagree about his inclusion in that list.
However, to blame the 1994 ascendancy on the Right Wing “Noise machine” as you put it, and to say that they were the ones who started this mess I think is historically inaccurate. The attacks on Reagan in the 1980s in the pages of left wing magazine and in books and monographs was on par with that of Rush Limbaugh and Savage on the radio, it just wasn’t as widespread and populist. Remind me to show you the 1982 book “What Reagan is Doing to Us” that I picked up for a quarter at the Friends of the Library book sale. The attacks in this book basically claim that Reagan is going to completely destroy the United States and make it impossible for anyone other than a Wall Street bigwig to survive which is, of course, utter tosh. You can go back even farther since this book was an updated version of the 1970 classic “What Nixon is doing to Us.” We can go back even farther than that with the New Left, who attacked people like Barry Goldwater (along with most everyone else). Limbaugh and company didn’t start this polarization. Limbaugh and talk radio popularized it and spread it beyond its normal base I will give you that, but at some point it has to stop from both sides. Traditional conservatives, though, would argue that they had to have Limbaugh and so on to get their points out because every regular commentator in the media, aside from niche conservatives, were liberal. I also think there is a good deal of truth in that too, as evidenced by the media coverage of Reagan’s first term in office.
22 Senators voted against the Betrayus ad? I thought they had 49 Senators currently in office. So over half of the Democratic Senators won’t sign on to condemning that ad? That statistic doesn’t help your case. I also am pretty sure that the Kos-MoveOn types carried the Democratic fund raising through the 2004 election cycle and, depending on how President Obama acts, will remain a cornerstone of the party. The coalition of economic and social progressives that you talk about being Democratic for the last 80 years hasn’t worked since the 1972 election when Nixon pulled the rank and file trade unionists off to vote for Law and Order. The New Deal Coalition didn’t really operate well during the 1940s and 1950s and I don’t think it is enough to build a solid majority on in this day and age. Your point on the instability of the Republican coalition is well-taken, though I think it is more cohesive than you give it credit for and is held together by much more than Fox News telling the sheep how to vote.
I disagree with your contention that the Bush administration will be regarded by history as war criminals, simply because of what has happened to history’s view of Nixon. Instead of viewing Nixon as a criminal mastermind who was oppressing civil liberties, as the members of the New Left and the rest of the liberal establishment saw him in the 1970s, Nixon is now regarded as a foreign policy genius who was sidetracked due to his personal faults. There is a big difference. History does not regard LBJ and JFK as war criminals for Vietnam, but rather a couple of good liberals whose pursuit of a foreign policy agenda derailed their Great Society. Perhaps history will be harder on Bush than they were on the presidents of the 1960s, but I doubt it. When the administration is taken as a whole it will become obvious that this was not the worst administration n history and while the war may be viewed as shameful it will not have the same level of emotion attached to it and maybe it will be viewed as good intentions run amok. To describe Iraq as you do as a small defenseless nation ignores that quality of its leadership and its treatment of its citizens. Maybe in the future historians will think it was a war worth fighting. That all depends on how it ends.
Thanks for clearing that up Josh.
It's tough to reply to this thread eloquently, as I'm typing on my Blackberry in a Best Western in Phoenix, but way to handle that discourse like gentlemen, gentlemen.
If only the remainder of our nation could get behind such a radical concept.
Sorry you are in Phoenix. That there Sky Harbor Airport is capital-T Terrible. Almost as bad as the big PHL.
A few points on Bill Ayers: yes, he did terrible things in the 1960s and 1970s. No one disputes this. And while there is some dispute as to how unrepentant he is about his previous acts, he has become, for better or worse, an influential player in Chicago politics and has done good work with both Republicans and Democrats in an effort to alleviate poverty and increase educational opportunities. In Obama's pursuit of the same goals, he found himself working with Ayers toward a common, noble end. It isn't as if Obama actively sought out a washed-up old impotent bourgeoisie terrorist to help guide him in his quest to become President. The reality is, if you're involved in local Chicago politics on either side of the aisle, you're probably going to cross paths with Bill Ayers. (If that's an indictment of local Chicago politics, then so be it; but, as evidenced by a recent piece by noted Republican waterboy David Brooks, the Republican Party needs to remember that the bill is coming due on the "us middle Americans vs. them elitist city folk" dichotomy the GOP has been running on for 30 years and it's looking costly.)
While Obama did make a mistake in initially downplaying his connection to Ayers, there is absolutely no evidence that Ayers is one of Obama's "closest and most influential supporters." This has been verified by CNN, the New York Times, Time Magazine, the Washington Post, and other news organizations. Even Stanley Kurtz, reporting in the Wall Street Journal from extensive research, found nothing more than what we already knew: Obama and Ayers held seats on the Annenberg Challenge and the Woods Group boards at the same time, incumbent State Senator of Illinois, Alice Palmer, introduced Obama as her chosen successorat a gathering at Ayers' home, and Ayers gave Obama's first campaign two-hundred dollars. It's also worth noting that the Annenberg Challenge is funded by the family trust of Walter Annenberg, a man very well-regarded and involved in Republican politics whose wife endorsed McCain, and that Obama's involvement on either board was not in any way at the behest or influence of Ayers.
And the idea that Palin's phrase "palling around with terrorists" has no toxic connotations given the context of the last seven years of terrorism being the exclusive domain of "swarthy brown people" is absurd. There's an article in Time today where the Chairman of the Virginia State Republican Party gave campaign volunteers talking points Saturday morning that included a connection between Obama and Osama bin Laden: "Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon," he said. "That is scary." The response from volunteers: "'And he won't salute the flag,' one woman added, repeating another myth about Obama. She was quickly topped by a man who called out, 'We don't even know where Senator Obama was really born.'" I know you want to match every example of this with a "so-and-so liberal said such-and-such," but it is getting harder and harder to separate these comments and beliefs from the Republican Party itself. John McCain himself may be blameless, but some that are involved with the campaign and others that have real pull in the party are not blameless and these cannot be merely isolated incidents.
Now, is the Ayers issue fair game? Yes; concern for involvement with a man whose personal politics led him to once commit heinous acts against his own country is reasonable. Was it dealt with seven months ago during the Democratic primaries and discovered to be tenuous and of little concern? Yes it was. So why bring it up again as if it's fresh news and present it as evidence of a strong connection that has already been disproven? This isn't a matter of debate and Obama wasn't given a pass; this is a matter of record which has already been resolved. As was Obama's involvement with Rev. Wright. Obama distanced himself from the comments and left the church. But do you really want to start comparing involvement with unsavory characters? McCain actively courted the support of Rev. John Hagee; I'm sure you remember that. McCain also quickly distanced himself after pressures applied in the wake of Rev. Wright's comments coming to light, but that shows a mistake of judgment on McCain's part in actively seeking the support of a man that called the Catholic Church "the whore of babylon," blames Jews for their own persecution and is yet another End-Times believer agitating for bringing about the Apocalypse by setting off the powderkeg that is the Middle East. How about looking into the fellow members of the board of the U.S. Council for World Freedom that McCain sat on even after the group was placed under watch by the Anti-Defamation League for being a collection of "extremists, racists, and anti-semites?" And since Sarah Palin has decided to jump in, let's have a look there, too. Alaska is the last refuge of some absolute fucking lunatics like the Alaskan Independence Party, a secessionist group founded by a man who was invited by the Iranian government to speak at the UN to agitate for separating Alaska from the U.S. Todd Palin was a member of that party throughout the 1990s and Sarah Palin sent a recorded speech wishing them well during their last party convention. And how about Palin being "prayed over" by an actual witchdoctor, the Rev. Thomas Muthee? Let's give that some serious airtime.
Or maybe we should do what the Obama campaign has seen fit to do and decide there is no "there" there on these matters and stick to the real issues. Sure, they made certain that the McCain campaign knew Obama would hit back by bringing up McCain's ties to Charles Keating, a timely issue given the nature of our current economic crisis, but rehashing Ayers and Wright in the 11th hour of the campaign is at best dishonesty; at worst it's "dogwhistle" politics. Either way, it's part of the reason why McCain is losing the support of people like Christopher Buckley and RedState.com co-founder Joshua Trevino.
I'll also point out that Trent Lott said one of the dumbest things I've ever heard a politician of his position say. I know it, you know it, and the American people know it. I don't think he meant to endorse segregation, but if you say "hey, if you'd won the election [back when you ran for President on the Segregationist ticket], things would be a lot better today," well, you're only getting re-elected in a couple of states and Mississippi is one of them. You can probably say complimentary things about Strom Thurmond without accidentally endorsing segregation and one of the things we should expect from our politicians is to figure out how to do that.
And the only case I was making in pointing out the votes of Democratic Congresspersons in the "Betrayus" ad issue is noting the inaccuracy of your contention that you had yet to see Democrats condemn MoveOn's ad campaign. But we can go tit-for-tat on unpleasant and unpalatable politcal comments and attacks all the way back to John Adams sending out horseriders to announce the death of his opponent Thomas Jefferson and probably as far back as when people first learned to talk and were sitting around the campfire deciding who was going to lead the morning hunting party. You admit that you make my point for me by noting that the leftist fringe was very, very under the radar and largely without influence. The same cannot be said, as you agree, for Limbaugh and company. And to separate the man who popularized the term "feminazi" from MoveOn because he occasionally wanders into lucidity is the height of hilarity. (I'm not even bothering with the "Liberal Media" nonsense. It is almost unquestionably conspiracy-minded gibberish. These news organizations are part of larger corporate entities that benefit far more from Conservative fiscal policy than Liberal fiscal policy.) As I pointed out, the Democrats will disarm when the Republicans disarm. You personally may not be concerned about that prospect, but I guarantee your chosen politcal party's apparatus feels differently.
The kind of historical distance I'm talking about on regarding Bush as a war criminal is far more than what we have from Vietnam, although the Vietnam Conflict gives me a good example. The kind of reflection I refer to is the kind of reflection that we now have for the reality of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and the legitimacy of it as a catalyst for the Southeast Asia Resolution, which granted President Johnson the authority to conduct military operations in Southeast Asia without the benefit of a declaration of war. Fortunately for LBJ and Nixon (JFK's assassination will leave him largely blameless in the whole of Vietnam discussion), their actions which bordered on criminal will forever be filtered through the prism of using containment as a foreign policy against Communism. Unfortunately for the Bush Adminstration, there are no enduring, pre-existing policy theories that justify any possible good intentions for the illegal pursuit of the Iraqi War. Given what we have learned about the Bush Adminstrations intent in targeting Iraq from day one of their adminstration, months before the attacks of September 11; given what we know about their misuse of intelligence; given what we know about their duplicity and deceit in the aftermath, it is hard to imagine that Saddam Hussein's atrocities will balance out the actions of the Bush Adminstration. I don't believe the benefit of the doubt that you and many others give the Bush Adminstration for "good intentions run amok" will be borne out.
Now I personally don't call Bush a war criminal for two reasons. The first is pragmatic; while I obviously think the logic is sound, the argument itself is not a political winner. Tensions are too high and divisions are already too inflamed. The second is that I feel I'm too close to the issue emotionally to make a fully rational decision. Those that do make the connection are taking the wrong tack, because any politcal argument that regardless of validity will only find reception amongst similar minded people is virtually useless. And they are probably no more able to separate themselves from the emotion of the moment than I am. But I have no moral qualms with standing on the same side as those that do make this argument. I'll leave it to you to make the same decision on your fellow travelers.
I believe you are misreading the Kurtz piece in the Wall Street Journal. The one I read in National Review (which I am sure was based on the same research) was that the two were intimately linked. Ayers was sort of a "godfather" figure on the Challenge project and Obama had to filter his decisions through Ayres.
We have yet to talk about Obama's ties to ACORN which is, as we speak, currently under investigation for voter fraud. Obama worked (worked being the operative word) and, while I have no doubt that he didn't tell them to engage in fraudulent practices, again if we are going to hold one sides followers as an "uneducated mob" then we are going to have to hold both. That is the issue I brought up originally....the end of discourse is that both sides are doing these sorts of things and no one (except for me and you it looks like) are actually talking through things. I really don't think one will back down unless the other one does first so we will likely end up with a Mexican standoff reminiscent of the final scene in Reservoir Dogs for another 20 or 30 years.
I don't think the leftist fringe is under the radar now at all and hasn't been for the last 8 years, and I think it has been the bread and butter of the Democrats from 2000 through the present day. If I implied that the MoveOn folks weren't important I apologize because I think they have been carrying most of the water for the Dems. The leftist fringe was also out in full force from the 1960s - the 1990s.
If the state party leader of VA gave that as a talking point then he out to be voted out and lose all funding for the state immediately after the election. I would expect the same thing for Democrats who now accuse the GOP of fostering hate or being racist, but I don't think either one of those things will happen.
On Hagee - McCain was stupid to get his endorsement, but he wasn't a member of that guy's church for 20 years, nor did that guy perform his wedding or give him the title of his first book. To equate Hagee with Wright is disingenuous. One was a political endorsement that was lunacy. The other was an example of someone being a full time congregant and sitting in that church for two decades and listening to his drivel. You can't equate an election cycle endorsement to sustained membership and support. That simply will not hold up.
Liberal bias isn't some figment of the right's imagination. One of the most incredible things I found in my research on the 1950s was a letter from the publisher of the NYT to Thomas Dewey which stated "Some people hate the devil. That is what I think of conservative Republicans." I have also found letters in the Joseph and Stewart Alsop papers referring to Sen. Bob Taft as a "fascist." Walter Cronkite was running around WTOP in DC spewing anti-Taft nonsense, referring to him as a "rat" on air when one of the majority shareholders of CBS was Prescott Bush, future Sen. from Connecticut and grandfather of W. These are in the record (I can produce copies for you if you like). The whole point of my research isn't media bias, it is factional politics, and the allies of the moderate wing of the GOP were these types of folks. Big media was, to use today's vernacular, in the tank for Eisenhower. They are in the tank for Obama now and that is why you see one side of the hateful mob story being brought out and used to score political points against the GOP even though the same thing is going on (at a worse level I would argue) on the left. You would think that the corporate owners of these media outlets would clamp down but they don't. This isn't conspiratorial at all Josh, it really does exist.
Thank you, also in all seriousness, for admitting that you are emotionally close to the issue regarding Iraq and the war criminal charge. I do think that over time, especially if things turn out ok in Iraq, that Bush will get more credit for doing good than doing bad. He did have a UN mandate and we did have a small coalition force. In a way, the parallel is closer to Korea than Vietnam in the regard. But regardless, I believe it will be a long time before we ever see the "preemptive war" doctrine invoked again in American foreign policy. If we do pull out of Iraq and the place holds together as a democracy, I do think history will look much more favorably on the Bush administration. With that being said, it will be a long time before we know that.
Bill Ayers having a central "godfather" role in the Annenberg Challenge which ended seven years ago still doesn't position him as one of Obama's "closest and most influential advisors" now. All Ayers' position as "godfather" tells us is that Obama suggested ideas to Ayers. Maybe Ayers rejected Obama's ideas out of hand because he thinks Obama is an uppity negro. Maybe Obama got tired of not getting any credit and decided Ayers is an arrogant cracker. Maybe things got heated when Ayers slipped up an and called Obama "boy," so Obama whipped Ayers old-ass six ways from Sunday in a meeting and they don't like talk about their work together because Obama feels bad for letting his emotions get the best of him and Ayers doesn't want to admit to getting beaten like Jimmy Snuka at Wrestlemania VII.
It's this simple: Ayers did terrible, bad, terribad things a long time ago. Obama worked on boards with Ayers that addressed community issues after Ayers had calmed down and joined mainstream society as a contributor that has drawn praise from people of all political affiliations and even the man who prosecuted him for his crimes. There is no evidence that Obama plans to nominate Ayers to the Supreme Court or Secretary of Education or even leave Ayers on the sideline while implementing an agenda of education reform consisting of teaching children to bomb the Pentagon. Let it go. This Ayers fixation is making your party look foolish at best and like insane race-baiters at worst.
ACORN is responsible for incidents of voter registration fraud, which is a distinction from voter fraud worth making. Just because some broke asshole getting paid for registering voters is turning in forms for "Mickey Mouse" doesn't mean "Mickey Mouse" is going to be casting a vote. And ACORN deserves credit for being proactive in exposing some of these incidents and helping to prosecute the workers that have been found responsible for it. It hurts ACORN's credibility to have these incidents crop up and it hurts them financially to have paid for falsified registration forms. That said, while ACORN claims to be non-partisan the reality is most of their programs are in line with progressive, liberal thinking so they do need to be more diligent in squashing this garbage before it starts so as not to harm the larger objective. Voter registration reform that makes voting more easily accessible for all citizens would go a long way toward reducing the need for programs like ACORN oversees that do provide opportunity for abuse.
And to be honest, the reason no one gives a damn about Obama's connections to ACORN is because the only arguments against ACORN that any right-winger ever presents is that they're loud and relentless in advocating on behalf of the poor. That's not a winning argument. I'm reading these articles by Stanley Kurtz and Sol Stern criticizing ACORN and after a few paragraphs my brain starts melting because they provide no context. Oh no, ACORN activists piled garbage up at City Hall in Baltimore to protest sub-par sanitation service to poor neighborhoods. Well, did Baltimore provide sub-par sanitation service to poor neighborhoods? Stern doesn't say. Am I supposed to assume that cities never ignore and neglect less affluent areas? The street my parents live on has two houses that are severe violations of zoning regulations and are incredible safety hazards, not to mention the damage they do to property values. Yet repeated complaints to the city gets no action taken. But I know what parts of town this shit wouldn't go unnoticed in. And you do too.
Look: this is what you need to do. Assume that Obama isn't a radical terror-minded communist that plans wholesale changes in the way our country is run. His economic policies differ from yours and that's a reasonable issue to disagree on. But this Ayers and ACORN gibberish is not going to get you anywhere.
And I'm out. You can have the last word if you want it.
This has been the most interesting back and forth exchange of ideas since the Federalist Papers. I'm not going to pick a winner, but I just have one question here. In the last few minutes I've been to msnbc.com, foxnews.com, cnn.com and the drudgereport. On every page, the stories are about the candidates trying to tell you about their lower taxes. So asking honestly as an Independent, I want to know why it's such a sin here in the USA to want to pay taxes. God forbid we actually paid for any of this shit. Two wars and Republicans want to cut taxes? They call the dems tax and spend liberals but is it any better to be a tax and borrow (from China usually) conservative? Didn't the Republicans just oversee the largest expansion of the federal government since pretty much ever? Why is it unpatriotic to want to actually FUND the soldiers fighting these campaigns we started? Timetables aside here. I mean seriously...To quote 'Ross Perot': Larry we all want war. But who's gonna pay for it?
THe issue isn't exactly revenue growth, but the rate of tax collected. Take the Bush tax cuts for instance. The rate collected actually dropped, which means that the government loses money. They theory goes that, once businesses and people have more money to spend because they are paying less tax, it will be invested in business growth or consumer purchases. These will grow the economy, meaning that more revenue will be produced. In theory again, more revenue at a cheaper rate will mean that the government revenue will increase even while the tax rate drops if the economy grows enough, which is the purpose of the tax cut.
It isn't that Republicans don't want to pay for things so much as Republicans want tax programs that keep the economy growing and aren't restrictive on private enterprise. JFK and Clinton both cut the cap gains tax to stimulate the economy as well, so this isn't really a party thing.
What I meant to say in the above post and completely left out (hence the reason my "take the Bush tax cut" set up doesn't work. Back in my previous career at the office supply place, when Bush's first tax cuts went into effect we had a corresponding bump of 20-30% in the furniture department where businesses took their tax rebate and bought new furniture. The bump was so big that I had the payroll dollars to hire another full timer in furniture. So on a micro level the tax cut theory works. If that was multiplied across all 800 stores that would be significant....and that is just the companies that chose to buy furniture.
Obama wants the tax cut applied to the lower classes and wants to raise the taxes on businesses and the rich. If the theory above works, that will actually restrict job growth because people will pay more in taxes and not have as much cash to invest in their businesses and payrolls.
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