David, OT, but I couldn't find your email address. I also wanted to ask you about the Sanatorum "nazi" quote, specifically the reaction.
It seems to me to be counter-productive and even dangerous for so many us on the left to condemn the quote BECAUSE of a comparison to the nazis.
Allow me to explain. This seems to be part of a larger pattern that I have noticed that the Republicans are able to pre-empt criticism of what they are doing by accusing the other side of precisely what the Republicans are doing.
Bush promoted a series of highly partisan hacks into important national security positions and, when any opposition came up warned the Democrats not to "play politics with national security".
In the runup to Bush nominating crazy right wing activists judges we see an enormous, well organized campaign against activists judges.
Now, with the Republican making an extrodinary power grab where they are willing to ignore all rules, precedents and tradition in order to achieve unchecked power we have Sanatorum in what I'm sure was a deliberate and rehearsed statement comparing the Democrats to nazis for trying to stand in their way.
His remarks are hypocritical, for sure, and pointing that out is fair game, but I've seen a lot of commentators on the left say things like comparing your opposition to nazis is out of bounds. It is not. I've read your excellent Pseudo Fascism essay and while you took great care to make sure it is clear how the movement conservatives differ from fascists in very big important ways, you also seem to understand that there is nothing to prevent it from happening again. When these similar tactics are used to gain power at all costs it should be pointed out (much like Robert Byrd did and took a lot of heat for it).
Well, that's all I've got. I've just been waiting to see some commentary on this paticular issue from you since you seem uniquely suited for it. HaloScan.com - Comments
update: I could add that Bush attacking Kerry for his military service and the smear meme of Kerry = bin Laden also fit this MO.
You scored as Materialist. Materialism stresses the essence of fundamental particles. Everything that exists is purely physical matter and there is no special force that holds life together. You believe that anything can be explained by breaking it up into its pieces. i.e. the big picture can be understood by its smaller elements.
Daily Kos: "Bill Maher appeared to be channeling Kos Friday night...
New Rule: The people in America who are most in favor of the Iraq war must now go there and fight it. The Army missed its recruiting goal by 42% last month. More people joined the Michael Jackson Fan Club. 'We've done picked all the low-lying Lynndie England fruit.' And now we need warm bodies. We need warm bodies like Paula Abdul needs...warm bodies.
... Now, I know you're thinking, `But Bill, I already do my part with the 'Support Our Troops' magnet I have on my Chevy Tahoe. How much more can one man give?' Well, here's an intriguing economic indicator. It's been over a year since they graduated, but neither of the Bush twins has been able to find work. Why don't they sign up? Do they hate America or just freedom in general?
And that goes for everybody who helped sell this war. You've got to go first. ... Ann Coulter, darling, trust me, you will love the Army. You think you make up shit... But mostly, we have to send Mr. And Mrs. Britney Spears. Because Britney once said, 'We should trust our president in every decision that he makes, and we should just support that and be faithful in what happens.' Okay, somebody has to die for that. Or at least go. ... And think of the spiritual lift it will provide to troops and civilians alike when actual combat smacks the smirk off of Kevin Federline's face and fills his low-hanging trousers with dootie."
My prediction was wrong. So now I'm like 0-500 in the prognostication business. Super bowls, elections, whodunnit tv series - doesn't matter. One would do very well if they were to pay attention to my predictions and then put all their money on the opposite.
My wife, however, correctly predicted the killer. I'd like to think that my mind is too pure to have possibly guessed the perverted truth, but the smart money says that that just isn't true.
Empire Notes: "SENTRY: We spotted an Arab female about 100 meters below our emplacement, near the light armored vehicle gate.
HEADQUARTERS: Observation post 'Spain,' do you see it?
OBSERVATION POST: Affirmative, it's a young girl. She's now running east.
HQ: What is her position?
OP: She's currently north of the authorized zone.
SENTRY: Very inappropriate location. [Gunfire] OP: She's now behind an embankment, 250 meters from the barracks. She keeps running east. The hits are right on her.
HQ: Are you talking about a girl under ten?
OP: Approximately a ten-year-old girl.
HQ: Roger.
OP: OP to HQ.
HQ: Receiving, over.
OP: She's behind the embankment, dying of fear, the hits are right on her, a centimeter from her.
SENTRY: Our troops are storming toward her now. They are around 70 meters from her.
HQ: I understand that the company commander and his squad are out?
SENTRY: Affirmative, with a few more soldiers.
OP: Receive. Looks like one of the positions dropped her.
HQ: What, did you see the hit? Is she down?
OP: She's down. Right now she isn't moving.
COMPANY COMMANDER [to HQ]: Me and another soldier are going in. [To the squad] Forward, to confirm the kill! CC [to HQ]: We fired and killed her. She has...wearing pants...jeans and a vest, shirt. Also she had a kaffiyeh on her head. I also confirmed the kill. Over.
HQ: Roger.
CC [on general communications band]: Any motion, anyone who moves in the zone, even if it's a three-year-old, should be killed. Over."
The Washington Monthly: "WHITE CHICKS....Former Bob Dole press secretary Douglas MacKinnon writes a column in the Chicago Tribune about a subject that came up in conversation just last night here at chez Drum:
Note to the news media — with an emphasis on the cable networks: Enough is enough.
Your continual focus on, and reporting of, missing, young, attractive white women not only demeans your profession but is a televised slap in the face to minority mothers and parents the nation over who search for their own missing children with little or no assistance or notice from anyone.
....I have a number of friends at the cable networks (or at least I did), and I have spoken to some about this very subject. While all professed disgust with the underreporting of missing minority women and young adults, most were very uneasy with the thought of shining a spotlight on their own management to ascertain an answer. 'Besides,' one of them told me, 'you've already figured it out. We showcase missing, young, white, attractive women because our research shows we get more viewers. It's about beating the competition and ad dollars.'"
The Harvard Crimson Online :: Opinion: "Thirty years ago, President Bush was my student at Harvard Business School. In my class, he called former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, Class of 1904, a “socialist” and spoke against Social Security, unemployment insurance, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other New Deal innovations. He refused to understand that capitalism becomes corrupt without democratic civic values and ethical restraints.
In those days, Bush belonged to a minority of MBA students who were seriously disconnected from taking the moral and social responsibility for their actions. Today, he would fit in comfortably with an overwhelming majority of business students and teachers whose role models are celebrated captains of piracy. Since the 1980s, as neo-conservatives have captured the Republican Party, America’s business education has also increasingly become contaminated by the robber baron culture of the pre-Great Depression era.
Bush is the first president of the United States with a Master’s of Business Administration (MBA). Yet, he epitomizes the worst aspects of America’s business education. To privatize Social Security, he is peddling a colossal lie about its solvency. Furthermore, Bush, along with today’s business aristocrats, shows no compassion for working Americans, robbing them to benefit big business and the very rich. Last year, due to Bush’s tax cuts, over 80 of America’s most profitable 200 corporations did not pay even a penny of their federal and state income taxes. Meanwhile, to pay for his additional tax cuts for the very rich, Bush is drastically cutting back several social services, such as federal lunch programs for poor children."
05.05.05 - AUSTIN, Texas -- When the history of this administration is written, I suspect the largest black mark against it will be wasting time. The energy bill just passed by the House is a classic example of frittering away precious time and resources by doing exactly nothing that needs to be done about energy. The bill gives $8.1 billion in new tax breaks to the oil companies, which are already swimming in cash.
ExxonMobil's profits are up 44 percent, Royal Dutch/Shell up 42 percent, etc. According to the business pages, the biggest problem oil executives face is what to do with all their cash. So why give more tax breaks to the oil companies? Makes as much sense as anything else in this energy bill. Nothing about conservation, higher fuel efficiency standards or putting money into renewable energy sources. It's so stupid, it's painful.
And their genius answer to 'energy independence'? Drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Look, the total oil under ANWR is 1 billion barrels less than this country uses in a year, according to Robert Bryce, the Texas journalist who specializes in energy reporting. The bill is just riddled with perversity: We continue to subsidize people who buy Hummers, but no longer grant tax rebates to those who buy hybrid cars that are more than six times as fuel efficient. This is not how you get to 'energy independence.' The United States hit its oil peak back in 1970 -- domestic production has been declining ever since."
The Washington Monthly: "It's because unions are the only truly effective check on the sine qua non of modern conservatism: corporate power. For all their faults — and they have plenty, just as corporations do — unions are the only organizations that have the power to bargain effectively for the interests of the middle class. Union power in the private sector began to wane in the 1970s, and it's not a coincidence that this was exactly the same time that middle class wages began to stagnate, CEO pay began to skyrocket, and income inequality began increasing inexorably.
Many liberals seem to believe that these grim trends can be fought with tax and regulatory policy, but those are blunt instruments with plenty of drawbacks and unforeseen consequences. Collective bargaining, which is essentially a market based approach in which the government's job is simply to make sure that unions have enough authority to ensure serious bargaining and then get out of the way, is far more reliable, effective, and flexible. It actually works, which is why conservatives have always hated unions so bitterly.
Despite this, there are plenty of cocktail party 'new' Democrats who blithely think of unions as just another dinosaur special interest unsuited to politics in the 21st century. They should think again. Republicans understand the stakes a lot better — and so should we."
The Poor Man: "I’m not very comfortable about making this connection, but reading this horseshit the day I find out about the death of David Hackworth really burns my ass. And it’s not just a fatuous Little Lord Fauntleroy keyboard kommando saying that people who said Vietnam was a bad war were the real reason we lost, although that’s not a very happy juxtaposition, either. I never even met Hackworth, I don’t know much about him personally, or what his political views were, and - not to put too fine a point on it - I don’t see much of a reflection of myself in him. (Much more of myself in Goldberg, I am sad to report.) But we live in a very cynical age, where when people use words like “honor” and “sacrifice” and “patriotism” and “commitment” you can comfortably assume they are bullshitting you. Politicians don’t just lie, they lie absurdly, they steal and threaten, they debase themselves and debase our country, and are applauded for it. Maybe all ages are like this, I don’t know. The point is, it is very important to keep in mind that there is a lot of decency in people, too, and that there are some people - not many, nowhere near enough, but a few - who can talk about “honor” and these other hollowed-out meaningless words and have them mean something again, because these are things they really understand and live. Which is not to say that they don’t fall short of perfection or do wrong and/or stupid things with the same frequency as the rest of us - of course they do, they’re human, and that’s the point. It’s so tempting and easy to just be horribly cynical about your country and/or people generally, and just say “fuck it, who cares, the world will get what it deserves”; but people like Hackworth who don’t throw up their hands and make some weary wise-crack but just keep fighting no matter how hard or futile the fight, because it is right, their example is our hope.
I have no claim on Hackworth, but he was a person who stood for something to me. And he was a man who was poisoned by the country he loved in a war he knew should never have been started, and that’s why he’s not around anymore. He was a generation or two before me. My generation, by contrast, offers Jonah Goldberg, copying out the same mimeographed war fanboy talking points from 35 years ago which kept us fighting that war for so many needless years, and making it that much harder to come to grips with and learn from that bloody mistake. This is not progress."
USATODAY.com - 2 in GOP to skip DeLay ethics probe: "WASHINGTON — Two of the five Republicans on the House ethics committee will not participate in any investigation of potentially improper travel by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the panel's chairman said Wednesday.
Lamar Smith of Texas and Tom Cole of Oklahoma contributed to DeLay's legal defense fund last year, creating what outside ethics experts regarded as a conflict of interest."
