Conason: Rip van Brooks awakens to this cruel, cruel world MUST READ

Smokin' Joe hits another one out of the park!

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2003/09/30/brooks/index.html


...what troubles Brooks is that liberals are finally answering his movement's attacks on their patriotism, character, morality and honor. It doesn't seem to have occurred to him that sooner or later, unrelenting viciousness would provoke an angry response.

...

Expressions of hatred toward the president are deplorable, of course, no matter how obscure. It was also deplorable when right-wing propagandists were spewing pus at the last elected president, his wife, mother, daughter, brother, friends, associates, employees, as well as his cat and dog. Nobody on the right seemed too worried about that. (Just yesterday, Times Op-Ed sage William Safire took yet another obsessive, gratuitously personal shot at Hillary Clinton. He must be frustrated that she's in the Senate rather than in prison, as he so recklessly predicted.)

and just wanted to throw the newspaper across the room.

Brooks sets up a totally false argument, which is that those of us who abhor Bush do so for personal reasons...

as though his policies are not failures across the board.

and Bush has had near full rein to do what he wants with a repub-controlled leg.

maybe Brooks is too stupid to realize that it isn't a difference in "the way we approach problems" to note that Bush is putting the economy in the toilet to benefit his corporate contributors,

he has total disregard for the realities of working people, as noted by his refusal to use funding for family med. insurance for the unemployed when he could use that same amount (8 billion) to bail out the insurance cos at 100% when dems wanted to go for 80% --which is the same amount of money that families could have used.

not to mention his horrific handling of the entire Iraq issue..

not to mention his crony crook coddling from Ken Lay to Cheney to the bin Ladens and the House of Saud (they would be war criminals, maybe...)

on to the present moment, in which Bush refuses to put the well-being of this country, once again, before his political cronies and his ambitions.

there are so many reasons to oppose Bush.

however, the repukes are the ones who have set the tone, and let them bitch and moan all they want because I have had it with them and I'm not going to let them destroy this country without a ferocious fight.

And right now, I'm hoping Rove is practicing picking up his prison soap with his butt cheeks.

Brooks is an idiot and the NYTimes should be ashamed of themselves for hiring this hack.

But then, the Times should be ashamed for what they have helped bush* do for the past 3 years, and for their constant bashing of Bill Clinton.

...something I've posted in a few threads recently. To wit, this new meme--"All Shrump critics are Bush-haters!"--is making the rounds of the reichpundits recently as a trial baloon for election politics. And it is one that Wesley Clark has innoculated himself against by speaking polite nice things about *admin figures. Not about their policies, but about them as being decent people. Now I despise these scoundrels at least as much as the next guy, but I also recognize sound rhetorical strategy. There's a reason standard debate practice calls for maintaining a polite decorum toward one's opponent and avoiding ad hominem attacks.

I believe it was Dan Burton in 1998 who declared the President of the United States a "scumbag."

These people are thugs--they behave like thugs and talk like thugs. There is no debate when they control the hall.

This "Bush-haters" stuff is a ploy to gain sympathy votes for Bush, who deserves no sympathy for what he's done to the country.

Daschle's been polite, and what kind of press did that generate?

In other times, yes, I'd agree with you. But those times are long gone--along with people like Sam Rayburn and Everett Dirksen and Ben Bradlee. Now, the debate is controlled by people such as Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, and their policy is to hammer the opposition, don't let `em get a word in edgewise and belittle them at every opportunity.

Besides, describing these people as "decent" is a lie in itself. They are not "decent people." Decent people don't do what they've done.

Cheers.