We had eight years of gross government malfeasance, and now you get mad?

You didn’t get mad when… the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.
You didn’t get mad when… Energy company officials were invited to dictate energy policy.

You didn’t get mad when… a covert CIA operative got exposed out of petty political spite.
You didn’t get mad when… the Patriot Act got passed..

You didn’t get mad when… we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.
You didn’t get mad when… we spent over 600 billion (and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn’t get mad when… over 10 billion dollars, much of it cash, just disappeared in Iraq .
You didn’t get mad when… you found out we were torturing people.

You didn’t get mad when… the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.
You didn’t get mad when… we held back and let Bin Laden escape.

You didn’t get mad when… you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.
You didn’t get mad when… we let a major US city drown.

You didn’t get mad when… we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich.
You didn’t get mad when… the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark, and our debt hit the thirteen trillion dollar mark.

You didn’t get mad when… using reconciliation; a trillion dollars of our tax dollars were redirected to insurance companies for Medicare Advantage, which cost over 20 percent more for basically the same services that Medicare provides.

You finally got mad when… the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.

Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all okay with you. But helping other Americans… oh hell no.

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Right.

And the Republicans, including their aged candidate, blow their collective gaskets hammering at us over and over again with the idea that eloquence and good speechifying aren’t enough to qualify someone for a position in the Executive Branch or for President (and make no mistake, a VP better be qualified for that job or not get selected).

I’m just sayin’.

This rather interesting tidbit of news managed to rate mention in the bowels of that CBS news site. If you Google it you’ll find the only mentions of it is in obscure blogs (not as obscure as this one though) and if you search Google News you’ll find, as of 7:30 EST, a whopping two whole mentions, one of which is zdnet in the UK.

Yet read the comments after the linked article. You’ll see the rightwingers whining about being picked on by the “liberal MSM” because they mention that this guy has apparently made substantial donations to the Natonal Republican Campaign Committee and further claims to be a lifetime member of the National Republican Senate Committee’s Inner Circle, a rather select group of people.

Imagine if you will, the uproar, fueled by Drudge of course, had this been donor to the Democratic Party. There would be Breaking News! on the Fox Noise Channel, and speeches by outraged Republicans on the floor of the House and Senate and Tony Snow would pontificate from the podium that “of course we don’t think the Democrat(sic) Party supports terrorism but you have to wonder why they took this guy’s money”.

Oh yeah, they’d have a field day with that one.

But Right Wingnut whining in the comments section of that CBS News article about how picked on they are aside, this story has rated not a peep on any other mainstream site that I can see. We can only hope that others will pick it up and dream that someone might point out the logical inconsistencies in how the Right Wingnuts demonize their opponents versus the abject silence on the part of media and liberal politicians when something like this involves one of their own.

Now, do I really think the Republican Party supports terrorists? Of course not, what could ever give you that idea? Oh, that headline up there? Why, that’s just to get your attention and make a rhetorical point. I would never suggest such a thing. Never.

(and yes, I’m making a point there. To hear how a real Wingnut weasels out of his own words listen to Glenn Greenwald take apart Frank Gaffney and listen to how Gaffney whines and slithers out from under his own words, always refusing to be held accountable for what he said. )

Here’s Glenn’s new blog over at Salon. And yeah, I know it requires clicking through an ad but they make it pretty painless and the result of getting to read Glenn in a venue where he’ll get even more exposure is well worth it.

I saw a quote today and figured it was as good a candidate as any for a bit of a test. We’re hearing so much these days from the reactionaries on the conservative side about how Democrats and other assorted anti-Iraq Fiasco types are “emboldening the enemy” simply by pointing out the endless failures of this administration’s policies. It amazes me really. We can throw out the old Teddy Roosevelt quote (he being a noted America hater you know) where he said:

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole.

Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

but the fundamental message in this quote is apparently so abhorrent to the current conservative mindset that I’ve yet to see anyone actually address the substance of it. They merely do the virtual equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and squawking loudly so they won’t have acknowledge it.

Then of course there was the recent phony “Lincoln” quote drummed up by J. Michael Waller and regurgitated by Frank Gaffney in his Washington Times column to which I would link except it has now been removed from the WashTimes site because the glaringly obvious fraud it contains was apparently too embarrassing even for them. But that didn’t stop Rep. Don Young (R-AK) from repeating it on the floor of the House the other day. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, I always say.

But, like I said, I ran across this particular quote the other day and thought I’d post it so everyone (all three of you who might be reading this thing) could spend a day or so trying to guess who it might be. I have taken a slight liberty which will be explained later:

As to the mode of terminating the war, and securing peace, the President is equally wandering and indefinite. First, it is to be done by a more vigorous prosecution of the war in the vital parts of the enemy’s country; and, after apparently talking himself tired on this point, the President drops down into a half despairing tone, and tells us that “with a people distracted and divided by contending factions, and a government subject to constant changes, by successive revolutions, the continued success of our arms may fail to secure a satisfactory peace.” Then he suggests the propriety of wheedling the Iraqi people to desert the counsels of their own leaders, and trusting in our protection to set up a government from which we can secure a satisfactory peace; telling us that “this may become the only mode of obtaining such a peace.” But soon he falls into doubt of this too; and then drops back on to the already half abandoned ground of “more vigorous prosecution.” All this shows that the President is, in no wise, satisfied with his own positions. … His mind, tasked beyond its power, is running hither and thither, like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no position on which it can settle down and be at ease.

Again, it is a singular omission in this message that it nowhere intimates when the President expects the the war to terminate. … As I have before said, he knows not where he is. He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man. God grant he may be able to show there is not something about his conscience more painful than all his mental perplexity!

Have fun, I’ll post the correct answer in a day or so.

Michael Crowley, a political reporter who debunked all of Crichton’s spurious claims in a piece in The New Republic, has now been named, specifically, in Crichton’s new novel as a child rapist.

How lovely. Methinks Crichton, like much of neoconservatism and present day right wing corporatist thinking, has gone completely around the bend. This sort of thing is purely nuts and certainly not the behavior of someone with any morals or integrity of any kind.

If Crichton (or O’Reilly or Malkin or any of the other crazies who engage in this sort of character assassination regularly) had any integrity at all or any actual science of facts of any kind to support his original position, then he wouldn’t have any trouble replying with that information to his critics. But attacks like this by people like Crichton et al are simply more evidence that they have absolutely no fact behind their positions and little personal integrity. One would think that someone who is supposed to be fairly smart, as people often misguidedly think Crichton is, would recognize that simple reality and not stoop to such attacks.

But such is the state of today’s rabid, extremist corporate brand of conservatism that such frothing at the mouth is considered, by them, as reasoned discourse and legitimate responses to criticism.

Keep it up Crichton, the more you do this the more of a fool you make of yourself.

Most recently we had the Amish country school gunman in Pennsylvania. He had apparently, 20 years ago, molested young women himself then lived with the guilt and the desire until it drove him to pick a vulnerable school, in a vulnerable community, and visit his personal demons on more young women before also killing himself.

And then, of course, sandwiched in the middle, we had the horror of Florida Republican Congressman Mark Foley and his stalking and sexual predation on vulnerable young male pages in the halls of Congress, about which I’m sure we will hear even more and none of it good and none of it less horrific than what we’ve already heard.

These were hideous, unspeakable crimes against vulnerable children perpetrated by adults, in Foley’s case by someone in a position of great power and influence who was aided and abetted by his enabling House Republican Leadership in Congress, further adding to the depravity of it all.

But what I find most informative, about the media and about the state of conservatism in America, is the way these three stories are being spun (er, reported) by various media outlets. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial on this is especially odious and echoes the line that will be taken in the coming days by many on the extreme rightwing of Republican “thought”. What they are basically saying is that this is because we “coddle gays”, that his sexuality is what made him a predator because he’s gay and preyed on young males. It also suggests that House Republicans did not respond because they’d be seen as anti-gay in “today’s politically correct culture” and that somehow kept them from acting sooner.

But of course this horrendously written editorial is barking up the wrong tree. His behavior, like that of the two school shooting perpetrators, had nothing to do with his sexual orientation. Not even his target of choice, young boys, points to that because sexual predation against young boys is far more often committed by otherwise heterosexual men than by gay men. In addition, if one takes the WSJ’s twisted reasoning out to its logical conclusion then the two men who sexually assaulted and murdered young women this week did it because they were heterosexual and that “proves” the unacceptability of heterosexuality in today’s society.

But that of course is absurd and irrelevant, just as Foley’s sexual orientation is irrelevant to his crimes and to the crime of covering it up and enabling it by the House Republican leadership. As has just been announced in news reports, Foley admits to being molested by a priest in his own childhood (amazing how this knits together, isnt’ it?) and victims of molestation themselves have an increased likelihood of becoming molestors in adulthood, sexual orientation notwithstanding. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Pennsylvania school shooter, who already admitted to sexually abusing young female relatives as a young man was himself the victim of sexual abuse, the odds of that are quite high.

But all of this, along with Hastert’s bizarre interview with Limbaugh today, just shows how utterly devoid of credibility today’s Republican party has become. Enablers of crimes against children, both here and in Iraq and Afghanistan, perpetrators of illegal wars of opportunity, enablers and promoters of torture

Remember, these are the people who claim to be the adults, who say they can keep America “safe”. But they can’t even keep the children of Americans safe in the halls of Congress, they can’t clean up after a hurricane…hell, they can’t seem to do anything at all correctly. It’s mind boggling.

But the final absurdity, and it really is beyond parody, is that our fine President, George W. Bush, actually gave a speech today in the middle of all this and, as his party’s Congressional leadership is coming apart at the seams for failing to protect the children placed in their care, actually said: “Democrats Shouldn’t be Trusted to Run Congress“, which is probably the most tin-eared, idiotic statement any politician in high office has made yet and from a guy most people claim is a top-notch political strategist.

Pathetic.

Here’s an excerpt from an op-ed he wrote for the Boston Globe.

What I found provided a personal epiphany. Authoritarian conservatives are, as a researcher told me, “enemies of freedom, antidemocratic, antiequality, highly prejudiced, mean-spirited, power hungry, Machiavellian and amoral.” And that’s not just his view. To the contrary, this is how these people have consistently described themselves when being anonymously tested, by the tens of thousands over the past several decades.

Authoritarianism’s impact on contemporary conservatism is beyond question. Because this impact is still growing and has troubling (if not actually evil) implications, I hope that social scientists will begin to write about this issue for general readers. It is long past time to bring the telling results of their empirical work into the public square and to the attention of American voters. No less than the health of our democracy may depend on this being done. We need to stop thinking we are dealing with traditional conservatives on the modern stage, and instead recognize that they’ve often been supplanted by authoritarians.

Dean has hit the nail on the head. Let’s hope it’s not too late nor too easily dismissed.

The basic premise of the book is that the current crop of self-described conservatives have long since abandoned Goldwater conservativism, to which they may still pay lip service, for a worship of authoritarianism and he backs this up with research that shows conservatives today have a natural tendency to give themselves over to an authoritarian mindset, preferring to be led blindly by power rather than by an understanding of, and concern for, the issues of the day. Sounds about right to me.

Then there is this gem, written a few years back by a Maine sixth-grader about the flag.

The American flag stands for the fact that cloth can be very important. It is against the law to let the flag touch the ground or to leave the flag flying when the weather is bad. The flag has to be treated with respect. You can tell just how important this cloth is because when you compare it to people, it gets much better treatment. Nobody cares if a homeless person touches the ground. A homeless person can lie all over the ground all night long without anyone picking him up, folding him neatly and sheltering him from the rain.

School children have to pledge loyalty to this piece of cloth every morning. No one has to pledge loyalty to justice and equality and human decency. No one has to promise that people will get a fair wage, or enough food to eat, or affordable medicine, or clean water, or air free of harmful chemicals. But we all have to promise to love a rectangle of red, white, and blue cloth.

Betsy Ross would be quite surprised to see how successful her creation has become. But Thomas Jefferson would be disappointed to see how little of the flag’s real meaning remains.

And then of course there’s this gem from Think Progress:

LEAHY: The president has said very specifically, and he’s said it to our European allies, he’s waiting for the Supreme Court decision to tell him whether or not he was supposed to close Guantanamo or not. After, he said it upheld his position on Guantanamo, and in fact it said neither. Where did he get that impression? The President’s not a lawyer, you are, the Justice Department advised him. Did you give him such a cockamamie idea or what?

BRADBURY: Well, I try not to give anybody cockamamie ideas.

LEAHY: Well, where’d he get the idea?

BRADBURY: The Hamdan decision, senator, does implicitly recognize we’re in a war, that the President’s war powers were triggered by the attacks on the country, and that law of war paradigm applies. That’s what the whole case —

LEAHY: I don’t think the President was talking about the nuances of the law of war paradigm, he was saying this was going to tell him that he could keep Guantanamo open or not, after it said he could.

BRADBURY: Well, it’s not —

LEAHY: Was the President right or was he wrong?

BRABURY: It’s under the law of war –

LEAHY: Was the President right or was he wrong?

BRADBURY: The President is always right.

Which for those of us around during the Nixon administration rings especially loudly because it echoes so closely Nixons’ statement to David Frost “Well, when the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.,” which we all fondly remember as the beginning of the end for Tricky Dick.

Neoconservativsm is rarely defined but its central tenets are, by now, quite clear. At its core, neoconservatism maintains that the greatest threat to America is hostile Muslims in the Middle East, and the only real solution to that problem is increased militarism and belligerence, usually with war as the necessary course of action. Our mistake has been excessive restraint, a lack of courage, and a naive and cowardly belief that measures short of war and all-out aggression are effective in dealing with this problem. This threat is not just uniquely dangerous, but unprecedentedly so, such that Islamic extremists render prior American ideals and principles — both foreign and domestic — obsolete, and only radically more militaristic approaches have any chance of saving us from destruction at their hands.

This is the neoconservative mentality — the bloodthirsty, militaristic, largely authoritarian world-view — which has been driving not only our foreign policy since the September 11 attacks, but also the bulk of our most controversial domestic policies undertaken in the name of fighting terrorists. Over the last five years, neoconservatism has been the central force of American political life, and it has resulted in a fundamental ideological realignment. Far more important than one’s views on traditional matters of political controversy is the extent to which one supports or opposes neoconservative theories.

Excess militarism is not a sign of strength, it is a sign of weakness or at least a sign that those engaging in it or advocating it see no other option. Not the freedoms they purport to be defending, not our position as the largest economic, cultural and political power in the world nor our ability to persuade or influence the world. At the single moment in our history, the days immediately following 9/11, at the time when we had more worldwide support than arguably any single nation has ever had in history, the neocon agenda took hold of the reins of power in our government and rode roughshod over that support, trampling it into the dust of history as rapidly as it arose.

Real leadership, leadership that recognized and truly honored the basic values we purport to stand for, would have instead used that international support to address terrorism at its roots, to put in place the mechanisms to track down and capture terrorists before they could organize further or rally more support, and to name them as criminals, enemies of all rational States of the world and pariahs everywhere and then demand of our newly minted friends around the world that they cooperate and make it worth their while to do so.

Real leaders, who believed in American strength and the strength of real freedom, would have done that immediately. But the neocons aren’t real leaders and, by virtue of their actions and ideologies, obviously do not believe we are strong enough to battle a group of common criminals less well organized than the Mafia.

Here’s the Orwell quote that she highlighted.

“All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts,” said Orwell. “Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage-torture, the use of hostages, forced labor, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians-which does not change its moral color when committed by ‘our’ side.… The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”

The differences between the conservative patriotism of Paul Craig Roberts that drives him to write what I commented on in the last entry, and the Conservative Nationalism of Bush and his neo-con cronies and apologists are pretty well highlighted in that Orwell quote. It is no wonder that we cannot talk to bush supporters, their moral compasses are so screwed up by their jingoistic Nationalism that they cannot see what is before their own eyes.