Molly Ivins: Flim-flam and hoo-hah

Sometimes it helps to draw back from what's going on, to see if any patterns emerge from the chaos of daily events. In the news biz, attempts to see the Big Picture are known as thumbsuckers and regarded with appropriate contempt.

On the famous other hand, it's also sometimes the only way to see the much bigger stories that seep and creep all around us without anyone ever calling a press conference, or issuing talking points, or having gong-show debate over them.

Everybody and his dog in the political commentating trade now agrees the Bush administration is experiencing hard times -- the going is getting tough, and Bush is getting testy. Bush always gets testy under stress. This is not news.

It seems to me what we are looking at was put best by noted journalist Billy Don Moyers, formerly of Marshall, Texas, who was home last week and observed that the Republican right came to Washington to start a revolution and stayed to run a racket. It has become a game of ideological flim-flam, a scam in which all manner of distracting hoo-hah -- abortion, judicial activism, even "the war on terra" -- is used to obscure the fact that the government has been taken over by people who are using it to make money for themselves and their friends.

more...

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=19710

jin·go·ism
Pronunciation: 'ji(ng)-(")gO-"i-z&m
Function: noun
: extreme chauvinism or nationalism marked especially by a belligerent foreign policy
- jin·go·ist /-ist/ noun or adjective
- jin·go·is·tic /"ji(ng)-gO-'is-tik/ adjective
- jin·go·is·ti·cal·ly /-ti-k(&-)lE/ adverb

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=jingoism&x=17&y=11

It's tough being the voice in the wilderness, but thank goddess Molly is doing it!

You would think I would be use to the three name Texas form of address since Stevie Ray Vaughan is one of my favorite musicians. :silly: