Monday, January 17, 2005

Looking in on the Lefties: Missing the Forest and the Trees

I'm contemplating a regular feature that focuses on what the 'progressive' community is wasting breath and paper over at any given time. I just don't know if I can stand it. Case in point: Dave Zweifel at Common Dreams is STILL arguing that the Memogate documents may be authentic. Earth to Dave: hello?....

Paid Dean shill Markos Moulitsas at the Daily Kos
rejects Martin Frost as DNC chair because he isn't partisan enough...

BuzzFlash.com has an interview with former Weekly Jackass Gore Vidal, whose cluelessness never disappoints. Here's Vidal (the interview was published November 1st) on election 2004:

John Kerry will win it. Oh, but put the question the other way around, because Americans never vote for anybody -- whom will they vote against? They will vote against Bush, which means Kerry will be elected by the popular vote. The problem is that Kerry may never be allowed to be president. All of the plots that were in line during the 2000 election are still there, from the purge list of supposed felons to computer touch screen voting and so on. There could be a series of lawsuits going on for 10 years after this election, during which time they will probably declare martial law and we�ll just all try to get along together, and we�ll keep everybody in office the way they are...

...he [Kerry] is far more intelligent than the average American and has read many, many, many more books than the average American professor, much less citizen, and...the other one is as close to a cretin as has ever served in that office, then of course, there�s no choice between them. Obviously it�s Kerry. He is intelligent...

Dean knew that the American people are anti-war. We had to be dragged into World War I. We had to be dragged into World War II and told a lot of lies.

...Even if Bush loses, he�s going to try to stay in office. I think the first thing he�ll be faced with will be the revolt of the generals. They don�t like seeing the troops thrown away, and they certainly don�t want to be thrown away. And they�ve been ignored by this fool Rumsfeld, and they�ve allowed a little group to misdirect American foreign policy and have us invade innocent countries, and make ourselves hated by the world. I think the military will be the first to blow the whistle.

BuzzFlash: Would you say that George Bush�s presidency is the embodiment of everything that the Founding Fathers feared when they drafted the new Constitution?

Gore Vidal: I have never myself put it so baldly, but I accept your definition. They are turning in their graves...

[Under Bush], the litmus test for a judge is Roe v. Wade and they ought to be anti-black -- you see the NAACP has been under questioning from the Department of Justice, wondering about contributions to it and so on -- I mean, look, we�re up against despotism. And whatever rhetoric they want to use and say, oh, we�re not despots, we�re good Americans -- well, everybody says that. But they�re not. They are the enemy. And they have targeted the American people. They don�t like them. They don�t care anything about them.

BuzzFlash: The best example of the Republican "target" on America is their own admission that the Republicans want to suppress the vote, especially among African Americans in certain states and districts.

Gore Vidal: Oh, they�re not just suppressing African American voters. The old Jewish ladies in Miami, Florida, have been made to stand for four hours in the sun, having a heatstroke, while they�re being given their ballots or their registration papers, or whatever it is. No, no �- this is a war on all the people, all the time. I mean, if we had a responsible media, we�d know something about it, but we don�t.

Simply breathtaking...

At TalkingPointsMemo, I was alerted to the death of Marjorie Williams at 47 to liver cancer. The Washington Post columnist was the wife of Timothy Noah at Slate. Noah's Slate pieces never fail to get my blood boiling, but events like this should serve to remind us all that even our worst political enemies are just flesh and blood. Deepest sympathies to the Noah and Williams families for what must be a heartbreaking loss...

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