"He’s [Saddam Hussein] got weapons of mass destruction. At some point he will use them or give them to a terrorist group to use…Look, if we free the people of Iraq we will be respected in the Arab world….France and Germany don’t have the courage to face up to the situation. That’s too bad. Most of Europe is with us. And I think we will be respected around the world for helping the people of Iraq to be liberated."-Bill K., 2003
"I managed to have my children go through the Fairfax, Virginia, schools without ever looking at one of their science textbooks.”-Bill K., in The New Republic
"The battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively and honorably."-Bill K., April 2003
“[N]o one knows what’s going to happen in 2008, …. [b]ut in the short term, 2006, and this is important for Bush’s chances of governing successfully, there’s very little chance the Democrats will take back Congress.”-Bill Kristol, 2004
"There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America ... that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular."-Bill Kristol, April 1, 2003
Recent events have conspired against my regular blogging time, the worst of which is that my home computer has been in for repairs for nearly two weeks now. Bummer...but in a way, it was a blessing. I have enjoyed blogging for about three years now, but the fact is that over the past few months I have been losing interest. I haven't posted anything on my Red Sox blog for a month! But I still enjoy writing and need an outlet, so for the next few weeks I will be devotong my energies to this project here. I know nothing about novel writing, never even attempted one, but it sounded like fun and definitely a challenge so I signed up. Will I finish? Who knows, but at least maybe I will be energized!
Once it starts, I will probably set up a separate blog site devoted to the process. Watch for it!
I don't have the same leverage to apply pressure on Olympia Snowe because I didn't vote for her and never would, but to all like Nancy who did-do you think we would be having this same conversation with our senator, begging him or her to support a publically available health insurance option, if it were Mark Lawrence or Jean Hay-Bright, her two most recent Democratic challengers?
But there is a national conversation we must have right now — the one about what, in addition to race, is driving this anger and what can be done about it. We are kidding ourselves if we think it’s only about bigotry, or health care, or even Obama. The growing minority that feels disenfranchised by Washington can’t be so easily ghettoized and dismissed.
I would be more inclined to believe this wasn't mostly about race if I had seen these monstrous fools shouting their slogans and drawing comparisons to Nazis when George Bush was president. They are no worse off under Obama than they were under Bush, and yet most of these morons were content to sit on their generous butts and cheer on the guy who was sending off THEIR KIDS-and it is always the children of the poor and disenfranchised, not the kids of the Glenn Becks of the world-to die for nothing in an ideologue's illegal war. They may be angry, but they weren't quite an angry when they thought they still had power at least over the niggers and other assorted brown people, that there was at least one group they were still better than. Now even that is gone, and what was just a simmering contempt and resentment toward the Other is now a boiling rage, irresponsibly stoked by snake oil salesmen like Beck-who could not care less about these people except for the money they make him. Yes, they were angry and resentful before, but clearly they can be pacified and mollified by lies from the right kind of people, their kind of people (the conniving, stupid and overtly racist Sarah Palin, for example), lies that whisper to them their lot in life is the fault of someone else, and it is ok to hate them and demonize them and fantasize about killing them all. They deserve it. At least, the people who have stolen all their money are, by and large...white.
The way to shut these people up? Make their lives better. In a different time and under a different set of circumstances, FDR tapped into that rage and used it to his advantage and the country's. Barack Obama needs to do the same and do it quickly unless he wants to end up less like Roosevelt and more like Garfieldn.
It is goddamn time somebody other then Keith Olbermann started taking these guys on. You go, Rick...
Right on, friend. I was especially giddy at the end when Sanchez called Fox out not only on the obvious lie of the ad-the event wasn't covered-but on the more insidious one: the truth wasn't told about the event, which, from a zombie Fox viewer's point of view, is this: America is seething with anger against it's new black president and his agenda for America, that the president is leading the country through the path to ruin (the average teabagger has no idea what socialism is, but if Fox says it is bad, then it is bad), and that their way of life is being slowly ripped from underneath them. Once again Fox is telling it's Nazi viewers, we are the only ones who have your backs. We are the only ones who will tell you the truth as you know it to be.
But as you can see, Rick is having none of it. GOOD FOR YOU. Takes a chance and takes a stand. I am willing to bet that we may start to see more of this as Fox and it's hate filled loonies become more and more unhinged.
In the meantime, the limps in the rest of the media treat this just like any other political story: waffle, obfuscate, be "fair." Here is David Zurawik at the Baltimore Sun:
"Take a look at this video of CNN's Rick Sanchez on Friday tearing into Fox for what Sanchez calls a lie that forms the basis of a national ad from Fox News about coverage of a march on Washington Sept. 12."
Of course, I could not let that lie...
This is why Rick Sanchez is becoming a folk hero, and the rest of you ball-less wonders. Not only does Sanchez "call" it a lie, he PROVES IT IS A LIE, but you are *still* too cowardly to just tell the truth. Jesus, if you went to cover a house fire, you would probably start with "firefighters say this house is on fire" even though you could see the flames blowing out the windows. It's no wonder nobody respects the mainstream and media anymore-you are gutless cowards. Newspapers can't die quick enough for me.
It is going to take more action from their peers to completely marginalize the hate machines at Fox, but as of right now, it is CNN 2 (Sanchez & Harwood), Fox 0. Is it going to be Rick Sanchez's new job to take on their lying right wing bully counterpart? Keith must be so proud...
In the last decade, Portland has undergone a controlled fermentation for culinary ideas — combining young chefs in a hard climate with few rules, no European tradition to answer to, and relatively low economic pressure — and has become one of the best places to eat in the Northeast. The most interesting chefs here cook up and down the spectrum, from Erik Desjarlais’s classically pressed roast ducks at Evangeline, to the renegade baker Stephen Lanzalotta’s gorgeously caramelized sfogliatelle (sold out of the back of Micucci Grocery, an Italian-imports shop), to Mr. Potocki’s simple but brilliant chili-garlic cream cheese and handmade bagels.
158 Pickett St, mentioned in the article, is one of my favorite places. I like Scratch Bakery, too. But where was The Good Table???
One of the first thoughts that popped into my head when I was watching the President the other night was "Why the hell didn't you give this speech months ago?" Thank you, Frank Rich, for putting into words what my uneasy feeling has been about this President and the Administration. Sometimes I feel like we are watching rank amateurs. It doesn't seem to me that anyone on the White House staff knows what to do--and what they should be doing is hitting back immediately when some of this outlandish nonsensical rabble rousing first hits the media sound waves. What kind of administration even thinks of allowing people to be carrying assault weapons into a crowd around the President? Why wasn't Joe Wilson hustled out by security after his outburst? Why is the media so enamoured of this Tea Party nonsense and giving the lunatic fringe so much air time? Where was the media when millions marched all over the world against the Iraq War? Why was dissent so squelched during the Bush administration to the point where the wrong T-shirt or bumper sticker could have you bounced by security at a town meeting? Obama needs to develop a stronger persona to deal quickly and sharply with those who are fomenting this craziness. There's a problem when you are too cool--you end up looking like a pushover. And unfortunately, the Glenn Becks and the Rush Limbaughs think that's just what the Democrats are at this point. Hit back and hit hard. That'll teach them.
And this one...
Though I'm loathe to admit you're right...you're right. A new tactic--one with some force behind it--needs to replace the current wait, tread water...then explain technique that plays into the hands of the opposition, who've launched an organized campaign to derail any progress towards reform and recovery.
The clarion call to do something different (re: the definition of insanity...doing the same thing and expecting different results)...before it's too late.
I love Obama's civil, balanced approach, but it's being shredded by the crazies. Please, ramp it up!
For sure.It is not enough to think you can give the unhinged right enough rope to hang themselves, because that is not going to happen. These guys are like Mickey's brooms-you cannot kill them, so you need to find a way to contain them. Thinking it will all just play out will just make them crazier (if that is possible), and it risks permanently alienating those of us who supported and worked for him with the idea that he would be a tireless spokesman for our interests. You *cannot* be constantly playing catch up and doing damage control and at the same time expect to dictate the agenda. If they want to keep control of their own presidency, then the White House to start pushing back soon and hard and often, and *stop* leaving it to Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.
"In 2003, Wilson voted to provide federal funds for illegal immigrants' healthcare. The vote came on the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, which contained Sec. 1011 authorizing $250 million annually between 2003 and 2008 for government reimbursements to hospitals who provide treatment for uninsured illegal immigrants. The program has been extended through 2009 and there is currently a bipartisan bill in Congress to make it permanent."
I guess when a Bircher president decides funding illegals is ok, the new prince of teabaggers doesn't MIND taking one up the pooper!
Unless you are a member of the GOP. Then it is every mother's dream.
Man, first Mark Sanford, now this . South Carolinians must be so proud this morning....I actually got through on Rep. Wilson's website tonight before it went down "for maintenance" (I lied on the form and said I was from Bamberg, SC). I don't remember my exact words, but they were to the essence of thanks for giving the nation a complete contrast in the nature of civility -the president praising the efforts of foes like McCain and Grassley, and you heckling him like a drunk guy at a bad stand-up. I also reminded him that the GOP was less popular than the bubonic plague right now, and his monstrously rude little stunt was only going to further remind people why that was.
Assholes. You wouldn't even be able to get away from them when you're in the grave.
You Republicans have to admit to yourselves that your key demographic now consists of white, ill-educated Southerners and plain staters. To put it bluntly, you are the bottom 10 percent of the high school class, the slackers. You talk about being "The Patriots" and "The Defenders", but somehow, despite all your labor, you always manage to squeeze in 8 hours of TV a day.
You're such...trash.
All on full frontal display by Rep. Joe Wilson tonight.
We here in the US like our wars sanitized. We want to see our dead soldiers as forever young and glorious, not as the bloody, mangled chunks of sacrificial flesh they really are. That would be “too graphic,” "too upsetting." We want look at purple fingers of the Iraqis and look past their other blown up body parts in the market where another suicide bomber took himself and a dozen other people out. Yeah, we’ll go to Saw 20,000 and laugh as people’s heads explode on the screen, but it’s just too much for us to take when it happens in a real war zone.
There is a way to fix this. There must be. I think every single jerk driving around with a “I Support President Bush” ribbon on their SUV should be forced to watch the aftermath and cleanup of every suicide bomber or IED since we invaded, including every one of those screaming neocon assholes over at the National Review.
Maybe then they would be less inclined to send other people’s kids to war for nothing.
Did we break some kind of fourth wall here? Is this going to lead to a deluge of real reporting of the state of the paranoid and murderous right wing these days?
I doubt it. But at least there was one less journalist sucking on the right wing dick yesterday.
"I'm not sure they're smart enough to raise those kids..." Probably because most of them don't even have Jethro Bodine's 8th grade education themselves. It's past time SOMEBODY in the MSMs started calling out these monstrous idiots and bullies, and for that, John Harwood, I salute you. Scchhhaaa-wing!
