As Afghanistan unravels, I am reminded of how dismissive the GOP crowd was back in 2004 when Kerry talked about letting that war slip away. Where are all of those critics now? From a Taliban spokesman today:
He added that the "independence and freedom of our country" was the goal of the Taleban and that they were repeating the same tactics used by insurgents in Iraq.
"A lot of people are coming to our suicide bombing centre to volunteer," he said.
Why? Because some moron at CNN hired this jerk and apparently is afraid to admit that he really screwed up. Sounds like some presidents we know (and some Americans who hired him). More via DKos.
Washington Post columnist David Broder used to be "the dean" of Washington journalism. That was before he lost his mind.
To be more precise, Broder hasn't actually gone crazy. He's gone Republican. You know, that shadow world between reason and insanity that George Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain and Joe Lieberman inhabit. It's a world of hyper-partisanship. A world in which Republicans lie, and lose wars, and Democrats get the blame.
I used to like Broder. Long after the blogosphere gave up on him, I still defended him. I've lived in Washington since 1985. Broder, like Cokie Roberts, has always, for me, been a hard-sell moderate. He was rock solid in the middle of American politics. The Peoria of journalism. If you could sell it to Broder, or Cokie, then you could sell it to middle America.
And while I still like Cokie, Broder has become a bit of a partisan jerk. His columns are now peppered with insults and personal attacks against Democrats and people on the left of politics. Union members, according to a recent Broder column, have no "sympathy" for our soldiers in harm's way. That they hate the troops will likely come as a surprise to blue collar Americans toiling away in factories and companies and sweatshops across America. I would imagine you couldn't find a more patriotic crew than a guy in a union bar. But David Broder tells us that union guys hate the troops, so who are we to question?
Much of American journalism has moved jarringly to the right. The Republicans have played the refs for years, and reporters in newsrooms across America are desperate to not be seen as "liberals." So they overplay their hand, over extend their bias, and skew to the right in the hopes that Rush and Michelle won't criticize them for simply doing their job.
But Broder is far worse. He doesn't lean right in an effort to overcompensate. His illness is far more serious, and symptomatic of the Republican party more generally. He's grown bitter, and angry. There has been a marked turn to the nasty among Broder Republicans in the past ten years. Take George Will. I used to love the guy. Made a great read, even if I didn't always agree with him. Now he's just angry. Charles Krauthammer, same thing - the guy was just brilliant. Now he's just mean. Whether they're the cause or the symptom, the rise of FOX News and GOP talk radio have led to a coarsening of Republican culture. Rush Limbaugh isn't the extreme, he's the new Peoria. If it plays on Rush, it'll play in the GOP.
It's no coincidence that the day after a leading Republican Senator calls Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) "un-American" and suggest that he be forcibly removed from office, and the week that another former leader of the Republican party, now under indictment, accuses both Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) of "treason" (implying they should be shot), David Broder is more concerned that Senator Reid once called George Bush "a loser." (Of course, Broder himself called General Wesley Clark a "loser" just two months ago. But just like his flip-flopping, hypocritical president before him, it's okay when he does it.) Sure, Broder's own vice president, Dick Cheney, told a sitting Democratic US Senator, on the Senate floor no less, to "go fuck yourself." Sure, George Bush and Dick Cheney both called a New York Times reporter a "major league asshole." Sure, George Bush routinely flips the middle finger to reporters and has been caught on film at least twice so doing. And sure, just this week, again, George Bush and Dick Cheney said that Democrats don't care about the troops (perhaps they thought all Democrats are union members).
But Harry Reid called George Bush "a loser." And Harry Reid is a bad, bad man.
David Broder, like much of Washington journalism, and much of the country, fell for the Republicans' lies over the past six-plus years. Broder drank the Kool-Aid, kicked Lucy's football, and came running when George Bush cried "wolf." And now, rather than slinking away with a terminal case of professional humiliation, Broder is still fighting the last war. No, not the war in Iraq. George Bush's other war. The war against the truth.
Howie Kurtz asked today: "Does everyone in the Bush administration have amnesia?" He then provides some striking examples of allegedly very smart people, who, by the way, are running the government of the United States, with some very faulty memories:
Alberto Gonzales kept saying he wasn't involved in any discussions about the firing of U.S. attorneys, but according to his former chief of staff yesterday, he was -- several times over.
Gonzales couldn't even recall a conversation with the president involving GOP complaints about some U.S. attorneys, although Bush remembered it.
In his Senate appearance yesterday, Kyle Sampson flatly contradicted his ex-boss's denials. As for himself, Sampson said that, whaddya know, he had forgotten some of the e-mails he sent and received when briefing the deputy attorney general about his appearance before Congress. At one point, Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) said: "We're trying to find out what in heaven's name he does remember."
GSA chief Lurita Doan, who testified Wednesday about a January videoconference in which a White House official briefed the agency about targeting congressional Democrats, said: "I'm a little bit embarrassed to admit this, but I can say that I honestly don't have recollection of the presentation at all."
She kept repeating the "do not recollect" defense until a Democratic congressman likened her to Sergeant Shultz, the see-nothing dufus Nazi guard on "Hogan's Heroes."
Scooter Libby is facing the prospect of jail because he told a grand jury he couldn't remember leaking Valerie Plame's identity to some reporters.
But the GOP amnesia isn't limited just to "loyal Bushies." Today's NY Times profiles Rudy Giuliani's forgetfulness about Bernard Kerik's alleged ties to the mob. Now, let's not forget that before Rudy was mayor, he was a hard-charging U.S. Attorney who famously went after the mob. Yet, asked whether he'd been told that his choice to run the NY Police Dept. might have some mob-related issues, Rudy couldn't remember:
At one point, a senior Bronx prosecutor, Stephen R. Bookin, asked Mr. Giuliani, “As you sit here today, your testimony is, and correct me if I am wrong, that you don’t recall ever being told that a close friend of your correction commissioner had been indicted in a federal case?”
Mr. Giuliani responded: “I don’t recall that until 2004. I can’t tell you that it wasn’t, but I don’t — I don’t — I don’t remember.”
Is it a lie to say you can't remember to avoid lying? Funny thing how most of these moments of forgetfulness happen under oath.
The furor is growing over John McCain's repeated statements to four media outlets (i.e., it wasn't just a slip of the tongue, McCain actually believes this stuff) over the past 24 hours that there are numerous "safe neighborhoods" in Baghdad where Americans can walk around in total safety. McCain even went one step further, in an effort to explain his support for the "surge," McCain lied about our commanding general in Iraq, General Petraeus - and Petraeus has now called him on it.
More from the DNC:
John McCain is in Florida today after igniting a flurry of controversy by claiming on Bill Bennet's talk show that, "there are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods today." [Bill Bennett's Morning in America, 3/26/07] Asked about McCain's blatant attempt to spin the facts on the ground, CNN's Baghdad correspondent, Michael Ware, responded with a quick "No" and said, "no way on earth can a westerner, particularly an American, stroll any street of this capital of more than five million people...You barely would last 20 minutes out there. I don't know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking about when he says we can go strolling in Baghdad."
McCain refused to back down from his comments, however, telling NBC's Today Show from Orlando this morning that there are "many signs of success...neighborhoods in Baghdad that are largely certainly much more secure," and telling ABC's Good Morning America that "you look at facts on the ground...there are neighborhoods that are calm." McCain's sprinkling of pixie dust in response to ABC came on a question about whether he has "to be looking at Iraq through rose-colored glasses to see progress" when one hundred people have been killed in "just the last day, [in] the same town the president used last year as an example of freedom taking hold." [NBC Today, 3/28/07; ABC's Good Morning America, 3/28/07]
"John McCain seems to think that walking through Baghdad is as easy as his march away from campaign finance reform and his image as a so-called 'maverick,'" said Democratic National Committee spokesman Luis Miranda. "With his rhetoric coming under fire, McCain had better hope the Double Talk Express got the armor that our troops have been forced to do without. Misrepresenting the facts on the ground in Iraq might be the latest tactic for McCain's do-anything-to-win campaign, but after hearing the same thing from the Bush Administration for four years, the American people would no doubt prefer a new direction."
Let me just add that these are the reasons McCain gave for supporting the surge. And his reasons are wrong. Is this the kind of quality, or lack thereof, that Americans want to see in a future war president? A guy who makes critical war decisions based on things that simply aren't true?
The local Moonie paper ("Moonie" as in the cult, the cult owns the paper) that the Republicans are all in bed with here in DC the other day printed a false quote that they attributed to Abraham Lincoln. The quote was used to bash Democrats who oppose the Bush/McCain escalation policy in Iraq.
Putting aside the irony of a lie being used, again, as the basis for sending our soldiers to die in Iraq, now that it's been proven that the quote is a fake, Republican members of Congress are still using it in their public speeches, and the cult's newspaper won't print a correction.
I'd like to say that I expect more of GOP congressmen than I expect from a cult, but that isn't really true. More from Editor & Publisher.
"The floating pleasure palace is a reconfigured Boeing 757 stored at Andrews Air Force Base with Air Force One and the rest of the fleet of executive aircraft."
"The aircraft has a game room, stateroom, showers, a communications center and seats 42 to 50 people, according to the Air Force."
"It costs taxpayers $22,000 an hour to operate, according to military and congressional sources."
So my question: why does the Air Force even have such a plane? Who uses this plane? Who has been using it? Forget what Nancy wants... why the heck are we taxpayers paying for a floating pleasure palace to begin with?
