You
see it was all about State's Rights. The State's Right to condone lynching
of 'Nigras.' If only Strom had won, and Truman's anti-lynching law hadn't
passed, we wouldn't be having all these problems. Simple.
Look! John Kerry got a haircut!
From the Dixiecrat Platform, regarding their opposition to the poll tax:
The
negro is a native of tropical climate where fruits and nuts are plentiful
and where clothing is not required for protection against the weather ...
The essentials of society in the jungle are few and do not include the production,
transportation and marketing of goods. [Thus] his racial constitution has
been fashioned to exclude any idea of voluntary cooperation on his part.
Here is what Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi,
said yesterday at Senator Strom Thurmond's birthday party, according to ABCNEWS'
O'Keefe. "I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for
president we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country
had of followed our lead we wouldn't of had all these problems over all these
years, either."
Since political correctness is the scourge
of society, I won't mention that the problems Lott is referring to are the
Civil and Voting Rights Acts.
UPDATE: To be fair, as people have
pointed out, Lott is also likely referring lots of other horrible things
like the Brown decision as well.
UPDATE 2: Cut the crap my friends on 'the other side.' Tim Noah reminds us exactly what Strom was running on, and what Lott was saying he was proud his state supported:
"I
want to tell you, ladies and gentleman, that there's not enough troops in
the army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit
the Nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes,
and into our churches.
I'm sure Lott's frightening comments will get at least much coverage as John Kerry's hair.
We also need to recognize that some members of Bush's economic
team simply do not inspire confidence in the markets nor carry weight on
his behalf on discussions in Congress, the Federal Reserve, the business
community and economic policy makers in other countries - and they need to
be replaced.
<...>
the December 8 deadline is so important. It's the first clear trip-wire for
war. (pant pant pant) What if Saddam produces a list of mainly civilian-use
technology and the Bush administration declares that it knows it's incomplete.
What then? (grooannnn, oh yeah) <...> If his December 8 declaration
is a lie, then Saddam is clearly violating (unnhhhh!) the terms of the 1991
truce and the U.N.'s last chance option. So we declare war (oh God yes, YES!!).
We could be on a direct war-path by next week (Ohh FUUCCKKKK YEAH!!!!). In
fact, I think it's highly likely we will be. (oh yeah, c'mon, GIVE IT TO
ME!)And then the counter-strikes (ngh ngh UNH UNH ) in Northern Lebanon and
throughout the West may well be ramped up. (AAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!) This is the
calm before the storm. As snow blankets much of us, we should savor it while
we can.
It
turns out that the Republican leadership had an informal agreement to let
the families of 9/11 attack victims approve one of the five Republican committee
members (with Sens. McCain and Shelby, who have close ties to the families,
acting as their agents). Which is particularly significant because the commission
will require six votes to issue a subpoena --- so if all five Republicans
are beholden to the White House, then Dubya and co. will be able to squelch
any inquiry which threatens to make them the least bit uncomfortable.
And
the families have made a perfectly respectable choice, former Republican
Sen. Warren Rudman. But that's not enough for Trent Lott, who has refused
to agree to the appointment. The families claim he's being pressured by the
White House, but it can't be --- Ari Fleischer said explicitly that the White
House, having chosen Kissinger would have no voice in the selection of the
other committee members. And if that's a lie too, then Fleischer had better
be careful. If he keeps this sort of thing up, he may wind up with a reputation.
Fleischer actually accuses Helen Thomas of siding with Iraq:
Q
Ari, two questions. What was the President thinking when he appointed an
alleged war criminal to investigate a war crime? What was he thinking?
MR. FLEISCHER: Who are you thinking of?
Q Chile, Allende, Cambodia, Kissinger.
MR. FLEISCHER: Would he appoint --
Q Kissinger.
MR. FLEISCHER: Oh, I see what you're saying. Everything
that I said when Henry Kissinger was appointed two weeks ago, about the outstanding
integrity of Henry Kissinger and the high regard in which he's held. You
should have been here two weeks ago; you missed that one.
Go ahead, you get a follow-up because you haven't been here.
Q You said Iraq has lied in the past and its continuing
to lie. Kissinger lied to Congress about Cambodia. Kissinger lied to Congress
about Chile. How do we know he's not going to lie about his investigation?
MR. FLEISCHER: I think that if you want
to compare what Tariq Aziz said last week to what Henry Kissinger, who has
ably served the United States and who continues to ably serve the United
States and is held in very high regard by people in both parties, including
the families of 9/11, that's your judgment, your business. The President
rejects that line of thinking.
Q Where does
find these great men? Where? Every one from the Iran-Contra scandal has been
named to this administration. (Laughter.)
MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, tomorrow I announce your appointment. (Laughter.)
Does this mean Hitchy-poo is siding with Iraq too?
The White House has lately been citing such Iraqi actions
such as the snotty letters sent to the Security Council to protest the terms
of the new inspection regime and the fact that Iraqi anti-aircraft gunners
continue, as they have for the past five years, to fire at planes patrolling
the "no-fly" zone maintained by the U.S. and Britain as signs of Saddam's
continued defiance.
I'm
sure Judy Woodruff will report it tomorrow. Let's at least hope she can explain
what the issue is. I'm sure it'll just be "Gore...China...reminds us of
fundraising scandal...Clinton..blowjob.."
Wonder why Drudge changed "Mr. Moon" to "one source."
Neal Pollack wrote and offered to split his $10
million advance if I advertised his new book. I demanded he also let me
borrow his manservant, Roger, for a month, and he agreed.
So, please pre-order Beneath the Axis of Evil , which
has already been hailed as the definitive work of 21st century war journalism,
narrowly edging out Geraldo Rivera's foray into this genre. If you don't,
the Islamic Fundamentalists and their supporters at the New York Times have
already won.
And, speaking of The Times and Howell Raines' campaign
of terror against the poor beseiged Augusta Golf Club, a recent report on
CNN highlighted the rank hypocrisy that has infused those politically correct
Stalinists. Apparently a woman has qualified to enter into a PGA tournament
for the first time. You see, while the PGA is quite happy to admit women
into their tournaments, the LPGA does not allow men to play in theirs. Why
hasn't Raines condemned this sexism? Hmm? Hmm?? Apparently it is okay for
lesbian feminist golfers to exclude men, and perhaps even to have them killed.
I should be used to the double standards of the sexist Left by now, but I remain enraged. Perhaps Roger can help me to relax.
That
said, we have absolutely no excuse for publishing a writer of Mr. Pollack's
low character. Here is a man who once referred to Howell as "ass-monkey of
the week" in an article in The Weekly Standard. Here is a man who writes
favorably in major magazines about the Swiss company that manufactures the
testosterone-enhancement substance to which he is addicted. He also regularly
kicks his beleagurered manservant in public, a practiced despised in these
pages since 1961. Here, in other words, is a man.
Being, roughly speaking, on "the left," I have
of course been accused many times, one way or another, of "hating America."
You know, me and my good buddy Chomsky who I apparently worship though I've
never really read. I've never quite known what this meant, actually. It's
easy to dismiss it simply as rhetorical bludgeoning by one's political opponents,
I suppose - a pee-wee league version of a Hitchens polemic. It is more than
that, of course. I've posted before about the underlying source of this
belief - roughly, conservatives believe they have a unique claim on the "true
America" which has been tainted economically by that liberal FDR, politically
by activist judges and states' rights violating Civil Rights and Voting Acts,
and socially by homosexuality. Or something. If only one could remove the
stain of the liberal legacy, we could truly return to the glory days of our
untainted past.
But,
still, what does it mean to "hate America?" I'm sure David Horowitz would
inform me that by voting for Democrats I was advocating a Stalinist takeover
of America. Or something. But, assuming there are some marginally more reasonable
person than the fuzzy loveable Horowitz who would accuse me of hating America,
what is it they think I desire to happen to my country? Presumably to hate
it is to desire, in some sense, its destruction. Maybe that simply means
a destruction of those values which in their minds ARE America.
Jokes
aside, however, could there be anything more "America hating" than the desire
for its political disintegration -- a desire for a segment to secede? Aside
from wishing its physical destruction, could anything be more anti-American
than the belief that it had gone so far astray that the desired political
change from within was impossible? That the only hope was to end the Union?
Turd Blossom Eventually I met with Rove. I arrived at his office a few minutes
early, just in time to witness the Rove treatment, which, like LBJ's famous
browbeating style, is becoming legend but is seldom reported…. I squeezed
into a chair near the open door to Rove's modest chamber, my back against
his doorframe.
Inside, Rove was talking to an aide about some
political stratagem in some state that had gone awry and a political operative
who had displeased him. I paid it no mind and reviewed a jotted list of questions
I hoped to ask. But after a moment, it was like ignoring a tornado flinging
parked cars. "We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will
ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him ."
The fraudulent story of Iraqi soldiers throwing Kuwaiti
babies out of incubators during the occupation of Kuwait in 1990 is depicted
as if it were true in "Live from Baghdad," the HBO film premiering on the
cable network this Saturday that purports to tell the story behind CNN's
coverage of the Gulf War.
In the months before
the Gulf War began, media uncritically repeated the claim that Iraqi soldiers
were removing Kuwaiti babies from incubators. The story was launched by the
testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl before the Congressional Human Rights
Caucus in October 1990. Eventually, as repeated in the media by the first
President Bush and countless others, it blossomed into a tale involving over
300 Kuwaiti babies.
What was not reported at
the time was the fact that the public relations company Hill & Knowlton
was partly behind the effort, and the girl who testified was actually the
daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington. Subsequent investigations,
including one by Amnesty International, found no evidence for the claims
(ABC World News Tonight, 3/15/91).
In the film,
the story is turned upside down, portrayed as a deft public relations move
by the Iraqi government, who grant CNN access to Kuwait in a calculated attempt
to discredit the rumors that their soldiers were pulling babies from incubators.
CNN reporters are ushered to a hospital in Kuwait, where a doctor, under
obvious pressure from Iraqi soldiers, tells the reporters that no babies
had been pulled from the incubators.
The CNN
team does not believe the obviously nervous doctor is telling the truth,
and the Iraqi officials pick up on this, promptly cutting the interview short.
The scene ends with the doctor being led away by Iraqi officials. Moments
later, the CNN crew listens to a BBC report on the radio that suggests that
CNN had debunked the story of Iraqi soldiers killing Kuwaiti babies, and
CNN's reporters are upset that they've been used by the Iraqi officials.
corybantic \'kor-e-'ban-tik\ adjective (1642) Like or in the spirit of a Corybant; esp; wild, frenzied, delirious, frantic, frenetic
Usage example: And just when the two hot young Wiccan lesbians on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" kissed, Lynne
Cheney let out a piercing screeching howl and fell into
yet another fit of adorable corybantic spasms, crying out for
her Johnny Ashcroft, love sausage, to come medicate her and
tell her it's all right, the world is still run by pale sniveling overweight rich white impotent men.
The
issue isn't Landrieu's purity as a Democrat. The question is whether the
political calculation she's made - court "moderates" in her state, and in
doing so alienate black voters - is a winning campaign.
If she loses,
there are two possibilities - 1) There was nothing she could do to win.
Or 2) The strategy she chose of fellating Bush and causing "the base" to
stay home actually cost her the election.
I don't know whether if
it'd be 1) or 2). BUt, for those of us who suspect that maybe, just maybe
2) would be the answer I hope the right lessons are learned. Even, or maybe
especially, in the South you can't win as a Democrat by running as a Republican.
Maybe you can't win as a Democrat either, but at least you can lose and
stand for something.
In
a recent letter to League of the South members, Dr. Michael Hill wrote: "The
day of Southern guilt is over -- THE SOUTH WAS RIGHT -- and let us not forget
that salient fact. NO APOLOGIES FOR SLAVERY should be made. In both the Old
and New Testaments slavery is sanctioned and regulated according to God's
word. Thus, when practiced in accord with Holy Scripture, it is NOT A SIN.
Our ancestors were not evil men because they held slaves. This issue is our
Achilles Heel, and the only way to deal with it is to confront our accusers
boldly and without guilt. After all, what we are really upholding is GOD'S
WORD. Let us fear Him, and we'll fear no man."
The
League of the South seeks to advance the cultural, social, economic, and
political well-being and independence of the Southern people by all honourable
means. Thus, the central idea that drives our organisation is the redemption
of our independence as a nation. We envision a free and prosperous Southern
Republic founded on private property, free association, fair trade, sound
money, low and equitable taxes, equal justice before the law, secure borders,
and armed and vigilant neutrality. Self-governing states and local communities
invoking the favour and guidance of Almighty God. A bold, self-confident
civilisation based on its cultural and ethnic European roots.
...
Once
we have planted the seeds of cultural, social, and economic renewal, then
(and only then), should we begin to look to the South's political renewal.
Political independence will come only when we have convinced the Southern
people that they are indeed a nation in the organic, historical, and Biblical
sense of the word, namely, that they are a distinct people with a language,
mores, and folkways that separate them from the rest of the world.
UPDATE: Just want to add that Southern Secession is essentially the goal of this organization. Do they hate America?
WOODRUFF:
Just two days after moving closer to a presidential race, John Kerry already
is in denial mode. His office says the senator does not pay $150 to get his
hair cut, as claimed by Matt Drudge on the Internet. "The Boston Herald"
quotes a source as saying that Kerry pays more like $75 to get what some
have called the best hair in the Senate.
"The Drudge
Report," which we've not yet confirmed, says Kerry's do is the work of a
stylist at the chic Cristophe salon. And you may remember Cristophe from
the $200 trim that he gave Bill Clinton on board Air Force One while it sat
on the tarmac at LAX in Los Angeles. Clinton learned then what Kerry may
know now. Even hair can be a cutting issue when you are or want to be president.
American citizens working for al Qaeda overseas can legally
be targeted and killed by the CIA under President Bush's rules for the war
on terrorism, U.S. officials say.
The authority to kill U.S. citizens
is granted under a secret finding signed by the president after the Sept.
11 attacks that directs the CIA to covertly attack al Qaeda anywhere in the
world. The authority makes no exception for Americans, so permission to strike them is understood rather than specifically described, officials said.
Oh Lordy. First Bush screws the civil service
by denying them their regional COL equalization raises, and then he restores
the cash bonuses for the political appointees.
One
could take the 'two wrongs don't make a right' argument more seriously if
more people would acknowledge that the first wrong was still a problem.
And, the fact that 40% of Alabamibans (haha I'm so Punny) voted against removing
a symbolic ban on interracial marriage tells us that the first wrong is still
with us. And, no, I don't think the South has a monopoly on racism. But,
as ex neo-con darling Glenn Loury realized after the conservative embrace
of the Bell Curve and The End of Racism, it wasn't that the Right had different
solutions to racial problems in this country - it's that they (at best) just
didn't give a crap.
The
paleocons are (thankfully) a dying breed. The GOP won because they took their
message to the center. Trying to lump these nutballs in with the current
conservative movement is like trying to say that the Shining Path is representative
of contemporary liberalism.
Not sure he's correct, but I do appreciate his condemnation.
Anyway, check out this lovely Freeper commenting on an article by Derrick Jackson.
Jackson says:
In
profiles, Rice talks about being hollered at as a child by a white store
clerk for touching a hat. Rice's mother told the clerk ''Don't you talk to
my daughter that way!'' Her mother then said, ''Now, Condoleezza, you go
and touch every hat in this store.''
That reminded me of around 1965
when I was about 10. I bought comic books and ice cream in a drug store in
DeKalb, Miss. Later, my grandfather informed me that was the ''white folks''
drug store. He could have berated me for breaking white folks' rules. Instead,
he smiled and said, ''Good.''
In
some small towns and rural areas, much informal segregation remained after
1964. But Jackson's anecdote doesn't demonstrate that he was the victim of
segregation. No one at "the white folks drug store" prevented Jackson from
entering the store and making a purchase. Perhaps the store was locally known
as "the white folks" store, but contrary to the idea of Jackson's grandfather,
this did not mean the store was unwilling to sell to blacks.
I am
disturbed however, by Jackson's idea that "breaking white folks' rules" was
somehow inherently just. Did not the white folks of DeKalb, Miss., also have
laws against murder, rape, robbery? If rules were to be broken merely because
they were work of white folks, then hasn't Jackson gone a long way toward
explaining the explosion of black criminality that began in the 1960s?
This shows how the civil rights movement, to a great extent, represented
a direct assault on tradition and law. It is all well and good for the liberal
to say, "Well, some laws and traditions are unjust." But who is to say which
laws are unjust? Was it not true that the civil rights revolution was an
exercise in pure political power, and that every measure from Brown v. Board
to the 1965 Voting Rights Act was merely a function of the national majority
imposing its will? If a bare majority is sufficient to strike down the laws
of 15 states, and this be called justice, why then should we complain when,
in 1973, a 7-2 majority of the Supreme Court declared void the laws of 49
states restricting or prohibiting abortion?
Perhaps Jay could weigh in on that one too. Always nice to hear the other side's perspective.
(actually, if true, it sounds like sexual assault to me..)
I'd
like to joke that conservatives never heard a sexual harassment charge that
they believed, but sadly I'd be wrong about that. There was at least one.
Meanwhile,
which do you think is more dangerous to American democracy: the perceived
cult of liberalism that supposedly envelops The New York Times, or the actual
cult known as the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, which envelops
The Washington Times?
I bring this up because Andrew Sullivan likes to focus on the
evils of Howell Raines’ New York Times, but he’s now working for Moon’s Washington
Times, aka the Moonie Times. It’s true–though he’s kept it quite on the down
low. He now has a sort of cut-and-paste job of a column there: items he writes
on his website are given a new sentence or two to make them seem fresh. (Who
said conservatives aren’t into recycling?)
Sullivan has been spending lots of time
lately railing against Islamic fundamentalists’ ugly views on America and
the West, but as the blogger named Roger Ailes (no, not that Roger Ailes–this
one can be found at rogerailes.blogspot .com)
pointed out, Sullivan is now silent about what his new employer, the Rev.
Moon, has to say about us heathens in the West, which eerily doesn’t sound
much different from Osama bin Laden’s thoughts on these matters:
Kevin Raybould writes about Kaus. I have one major quibble with this statement:
The
only questions are whether or not the mainstream press will allow those hacks
to dictate the coverage of Kerry as they allowed them to dictate coverage
of Gore, and whether Kerry can effectively fight back.
The hacks
ARE the mainstream press. Don't think they're a bunch of good folks being
bamboozled by the likes of Kaus and if only we can get them to see the light
they'll be okay. They ARE Kaus.
"Islam
is at war against us," Paul Weyrich, an activist who is influential in the
White House, wrote last week. "I have had much good to say about President
Bush in recent months. But one thing that concerned me before September 11th
and concerns me even more now is his administration's constant promotion
of Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance just like Judaism or Christianity.
It is neither."
Bush's remarks came after religious broadcaster Pat
Robertson was reported as saying that "Adolf Hitler was bad, but what the
Muslims want to do to the Jews is worse." Another religious conservative,
the Rev. Jerry Falwell, referred to the prophet Mohammed as a "terrorist";
Falwell later apologized. The Rev. Franklin Graham, who spoke at Bush's inauguration,
has called Islam "evil." Lesser-known religious leaders have been downright
vulgar in their descriptions of Mohammed.
I think conservatives have found Fox, like it and are going to stick with it. FoxNews’ highest rated program in October was a President Bush speech. It got a 4.2. The speech wasn’t among the top five on CNN. People who enjoy listening to the President naturally turn to Fox. CNN’s highest ratings came from its sniper coverage. The only good news for CNN was on the commercial front where Fox’s second most played commercial was for Barbara Bush’s Points of Light Fund. It’s a Public Service Announcement (PSA) and ordinarily they’re carried on the air free.
DiIulio denied that his exchange with author Ron Suskind, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner who wrote a piece last summer about the power of departed adviser Karen Hughes, included such comments. DiIulio also stated that Suskind's piece contained factual errors, mentioned exchanges that never took place and attributed comments to DiIulio that DiIulio denies having made.
While DiIulio (quoted by them) says:
"My work schedule being too packed to permit sit-down interviews ... I gathered up [Suskind's] questions and responded in a single long memo in late October 2002. However, several quotes and anecdotes concerning or attributed to me in the article are not from that response," DiIulio said in a written statement.
"Obviously, I cannot speak to the veracity or accuracy of comments in the article by numerous named and unnamed others, but, in my opinion, the article is unjustly hard on Mr. Rove and over-the-top complimentary to me, thereby creating a too-pat contrast that is, I feel, most unfair to Mr. Rove," he wrote.
"I regret any and all misimpressions. In this season of fellowship and forgiveness, I pray the same."
He
didn't say that anything in the article was incorrect - that he didn't say
or write the things that were attributed to him - just that there are things
that were written that weren't in the specific response he's referring to.
TAPPED
misunderstands Katha Pollitt's point in her Nation column in which she says
that Hitchens should be arguing with people like Kushner, Williams, Cooper,
and Willis instead of Cockburn and Vidal . The discussion was not about
who was representative of the politics and ideas of the "serious left"
as Eric Alterman discussed in his column, but rather which writers for the Nation should be representative of The Nation's politics.
As Katha says:
As
Nation readers know only too well, I am always complaining about the magazine.
It isn't perfect. Still, why single out as representative of our politics
Alexander Cockburn, Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer (who, a search of our archives
reveals, has never appeared in our pages) and not, oh, I don't know, Tony
Kushner, Patricia Williams, Marc Cooper or Ellen Willis?
Moonie Monday "Part of our strategy," Moon said, "must be to make friends in the
FBI, the CIA, and the police forces, the military and business community.
. . as a means of entering the political arena, influencing foreign policy, and ultimately of establishing absolute dominion over the American people. "
Bush
then travelled with Moon to neighboring Uruguay Sunday to help him inaugurate
a seminary in the capital Montevideo to train 4,200 young Japanese women
to spread the word of his Church of Unification across Latin America.
Moon
already owns a major newspaper, bank and hotel in Uruguay and is buying up
land in the Argentine province of Corrientes, where he plans to construct
what his followers call "ideal cities".
"I want to salute Reverend
Moon who is the founder of the Washington Times and of the new paper here,"
said Bush, who was reported by the Washington Post to have been paid $100,000
for his Buenos Aires appearance.
"A lot of my friends in South America
don't know about the Washington Times but it is an independent voice," said
Bush. "The editors of the Washington Times tell me that never once has the
man with the vision interfered with the running of the paper, a paper that
in my view brings sanity to Washington DC."
"I am convinced that
Tiempos del Mundo is going to do the same thing," said Bush, who managed
to avoid being photographed with the 76-year-old South Korean evangelist
during his whole stay in Buenos Aires.
It didn't take long, of course, for Al Gore to be proven 100% correct. Remember when he said:
"That’s
postmodernism," he offered. "It’s the combination of narcissism and nihilism
that really defines postmodernism, and that’s another interview for another
time, if you’re interested in it.
Link-whore Mickey Kaus steps up to the plate with (go find it yourself if you want the context).
What is it that makes so many people, myself included, intensely dislike Sen. John Kerry?
Of course, by 'so many people' he simply means the press corps and the pundits.
While
it is easy to sit around and make statements like "well, I support choice,
but I don't support it for birth control", the reality is that once you support
choice you can't control the factors or the reasons that dictate a woman's
decision to have an abortion. This is a simple yes and no question. If you
support the rights of women to make a choice for themselves, then you have
to trust them to make the right decision for themselves.
There is no middle ground.
Yes. And it is the failure of some in the electorate to understand this basic point that is a problem.
The Washington press corps doesn't much like John Kerry. And, as we learned with Al Gore, that's important.
Actually,
it isn't important. The Washington press corps won't like any Democratic
candidate. What is important is that said candidate realizes that fact sooner
and not later and stops trying to please them.
I'll admit that for
a few very brief moments in '92 the press had a bit of a "Clinton Buzz" but
that too was overwhelmed by their willingness to report any horseshit dished
up to them about him. Dem candidates will always get a bum rap from the
Alpha Girls. We can discuss why, but frankly it doesn't really matter unless
we can figure out how to change it. Fact is, the Spite Girls will knock
whoever the the Dem candidate is. That's the hand we've been dealt and it's
time to figure out how to deal with it.
