New York Times Columnist Maureen Dowdwonders: Is There a Real McCain? — John McCain is no longer the media’s delight and his party’s burr, bucking convention with infectious relish. The man used to be such a constructive independent that some of his Republican Senate colleagues called him a traitor. Now he’s such a predictable obstructionist that he’s in the just-say-no vanguard with the same conservatives who used to despise him.
After he lost to W. in a nasty primary battle in 2000, McCain delighted in poking at the new Republican president. But he was a trenchant critic of W.’s budget-busting tax cuts and other policies because his objections were consistent and honestly felt. (Or so we thought.)
Now he delights in attacking another man he ran against and lost to: a new Democratic president who had once hoped, based on McCain’s past positions, that his former Republican rival might be of help in such areas as the economy, national security, immigration and climate change.
With President Obama, McCain’s objections seem motivated more by vendetta than principle.
Part of his sharp turn to the right may be motivated by his primary challenge for a fifth term from J.D. Hayworth, a conservative, anti-immigration talk-show host and former Republican House member (who has also been anti-Times at times). [ READ MORE ]
“When it turns out that there are no death panels, that there is no bureaucrat between you and your doctor, when the ways that your health care changes seem like a pretty good deal to you and a smart idea — when the American public sees the discrepancy between what really is and what they were told by the Republicans, there will be a reckoning. There will come a day of judgment about who was telling the truth.” — Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, (D-RI)
“….Far from appealing to the better angels of our nature, too many colleagues are embarked on a desperate, no-holds-barred mission of propaganda, falsehood, obstruction and fear. A well-regarded Philadelphia columnist wrote of the ‘conservative paranoia‘ and ‘lunacy‘ on the Republican right. The respected Maureen Dowd, in her eulogy for her friend, William Safire, lamented ‘the vile and vitriol of today’s howling pack of conservative pundits.‘ — Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, (D-RI)
“….And why? Why all this discord and discourtesy, all this unprecedented destructive action? They are desperate to break this president. They have ardent supporters who are nearly hysterical at the very election of President Barack Obama. The birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Barack Obama should exist. That is one powerful reason. It is not the only one.” — Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, (D-RI)
“….But when the bill passes, and this program actually comes to life and it is friendly — when it shelters 33 million Americans, regular American people in the new security of health insurance, when it growls down the most disgraceful abuses of the insurance industry, when it offers better care, electronic health records, new community health centers, new opportunities to negotiate fair and square in a public market, and when it brings down the deficit and steers Medicare toward safe harbor, all of which it does, Americans will then know, beyond any capacity of spin or propaganda to dissuade them, that they were lied to. And they will remember.” — Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, (D-RI)
[ LISTEN TO THE BRILLIANT SPEECH BELOW ]
THUG-LIAR Republican Reactions To Last Night’s Vote
Tantaros on WH stance on health care bill: “[T]hey have a gun in the mouths of the U.S. Senate right now“
MediaMatters: FoxNews.com falsely claimed CBO said “Senate health bill won’t reduce deficits” — A headline posted on FoxNews.com falsely claimed, “CBO: Senate Health Bill Won’t Reduce Deficits.” In fact, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) concluded that the bill would reduce federal deficits by $132 billion over 2010-2019 and would continue to reduce deficits in subsequent decades. [ READ MORE ]
Shedding Crocodile Tears: Republicans express ‘OUTRAGE‘ about charges that their attacks on Obama are racist. It is laughable when you hear HATE MAGGOTS like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck call Jimmy Carter’s assertions “disgusting smears,” “a sign of desperation,” and “despicable tactics.”
There is an African saying that states: “If you are dunked into a pool of human faeces for long enough, you stop smelling it!” That’s what’s happening to these Republicans. To them Racism is perfectly normal.
Mediamatters: Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity criticize Democrats for saying attacks are race-based — but they’ve also leveled charges of racism.
Conservatives in the media have recently criticized congressional Democrats, Jimmy Carter, Maureen Dowd, and others for suggesting that attacks on President Obama are racially motivated, saying, for example, that it’s a “disgusting smear,” “a sign of desperation,” and ” despicable tactics.” However, conservative media figures — including some who are now decrying the accusations — have themselves used charges of racism when discussing Obama and his policies. [ READ MORE ]
Limbaugh’s and Beck’s racially charged remarks activate “hate criminals”
Limbaugh: “[I]n Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering”
Even SERIAL ‘Pitch-Fork’ BIGOT, White Nationalist Pat Buchanan is in serious denial. He called Carter’s assertion that some attacks on Obama “based on racism” “malevolent and ignorant“. He is joined by Joe “Dead Intern” Scarborough and his blond “airhead” co-host, Mika Brzezinski, Daughter of Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski [ WATCH BELOW ]
Sufferers of this incurable illness twist Bill Clinton’s moving rescue of two journalists into something ugly. Gordon Liddy, the demented felon and radio bigot cackled about “Ling Ling and Wee Wee being locked up for nine hours in an airplane with Bill Clinton.” Rush Limbaugh, the obsessive guttersnipe wondered aloud whether Clinton “hit on those two female journalists on the long flight home,” and Andrea Peyser, the curdled tabloid columnist insisted that the whole shebang was nakedly scripted and staged as a device to help rehabilitate the image of former President Bill Clinton.
By: Joe Conason Like a seasonal flu, the verbal virus that is sometimes called Clinton derangement syndrome has struck again, beginning only moments after the 42nd president of the United States appeared on television screens around the world with the two journalists he had helped to rescue from prison in North Korea. And like certain viruses, the syndrome tends to hit hardest among a very specific segment of the population. Most Americans appear to be immune most of the time, as do the majority of human beings on the planet, so this pathology will probably never become a global pandemic.
But pundits everywhere — from the newsrooms of the “liberal media” to the blogosphere to the Republican noise machine — seem to be the preferred hosts of the pathogen. While not lethal or physically disabling, it troubles their minds — and strikes the same people over and over and over again. Symptoms include the recitation of dull sexual japes, sour reflections on celebrity, mindless pronouncements on foreign policy, false accusations of grandstanding, and even furious attacks on innocent individuals who dare to express admiration or gratitude to Bill Clinton (on this particular occasion for saving their lives).
On display in the wake of his successful effort to secure the release of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee is the purest and most virulent form of a disorder all too familiar to anyone who lived through the Clinton presidency.
Here was an effort that exemplified the best of America — a society that values the lives of its citizens enough to send a former head of state, with all the power of government behind him, to the aid of two women in distress. Here was a happy reunion, bringing wives home to their husbands and a mother back to her little girl, that surely uplifted the spirit of anyone who actually believes in family values. Here was a moment of pride and joy.
But not for Gordon Liddy, the demented felon and radio bigotwho cackled about “Ling Ling and Wee Wee being locked up for nine hours in an airplane with Bill Clinton.” Not for Rush Limbaugh, the obsessive guttersnipe who wondered aloud whether Clinton “hit on those two female journalists on the long flight home.” Not for Andrea Peyser, the curdled tabloid columnist who insisted that “the whole shebang was nakedly scripted and staged as a device to help rehabilitate the image of former President Bill Clinton” (and who neglected to mention that Clinton did not speak to the eagerly waiting press corps and has given not a single interview on the North Korea mission). Not for Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who predictably seized on Clinton’s mission as an opportunity for gratuitous and ugly insults to his wife, weirdly imagining that the prisoner release was “some clever North Korean revenge plot, giving the limelight to Daddy to punish Mommy.” And not for the editors of the Huffington Post, who posted a very strange headline — “Bill Upstages Hillary … Once Again” — on an Associated Press story that didn?t mention her at all.
Liddy tells joke about “Ling Ling and Wee Wee” “being locked up for nine hours in an airplane with Bill Clinton”
Here is Watergate THIEF G. Gordon Liddy: Obama Was Born in
The Kenyan Slum of ‘MUMBASA.’ Mombasa! ..Idiot!
On Greta, Eagleburger chides Fox coverage of Clinton’s North Korea visit: “I thought they were going to wet their pants”
Analysts have long speculated on the sexual envy that may or may not predispose the syndrome’s sufferers to say these things. What seems clear, however, is that no matter what humanitarian acts Clinton may perform in his post-presidency, he cannot do anything without provoking such inappropriate and embarrassing outbursts. The result, of course, is that their remarks always reveal more about them than about their intended target.
Consider the reaction of the former president’s former advisor Dick Morris, who still pontificates on the Fox News Channel airwaves as a Clinton expert, although he hasn’t spoken with either of them for more than 10 years. Denouncing Clinton’s trip as “awful” and “ridiculous,” he suggested with a sickening grin that Ling and Lee should instead have been left to “live with the consequences of their acts” — essentially a death sentence in a hard labor camp. (Is that what any Fox commentator would say in the unlikely event that any of their colleagues had the guts to try to report on life in North Korea — and got arrested?)
John Podhoretz didn’t go quite that far in Commentary, but he too felt deeply disturbed by Clinton’s achievement. As a “journalist” who spends most of his life watching television and eating ice cream, he felt moved to mock Ling and Lee for seeking to expose the dark side of the North Korean regime — and to throw in a few bitter words about Al Gore for employing them at Current TV. If that sounds bizarre coming from a self-styled hard-liner, it is simply another symptom of the mental imbalance induced in some people by the sight of Clinton (and Gore).
Finally there are the “serious” commentators, most notably former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, the former diplomat best known for disdaining diplomacy and rattling the atomic saber until he was mercifully relieved of public responsibilities. In him the syndrome’s most noticeable effect is a severe case of amnesia. On the pages of the Washington Post, he complained that despite “decades of bipartisan U.S. rhetoric about not negotiating with terrorists for the release of hostages, it seems that the Obama administration not only chose to negotiate, but to send a former president to do so.” Leaving aside the question of whether this situation in any way fits that description, Bolton has clearly forgotten the Iran-Contra affair, when his colleagues in the Reagan administration, all the way up to and including the president, negotiated with Iran’s leaders to release hostages in exchange for deadly missiles — violating statute and policy. He also seems to have forgotten how he tried to help cover up that outrage as an assistant attorney general.
But perhaps this latest outbreak should be considered mild, when compared with the devastating episodes of years past. Nobody is claiming that Clinton murdered or drugged anyone on his trip to Korea, that he profited by selling a real estate parcel there, or that he is a secret agent of the Dear Leader.
They’re saving all that for Barack Obama.
About The Author(s): Joe Conason is national correspondent for The New York Observer, where he writes a weekly column distributed by Creators Syndicate. He is also a columnist for Salon.com, and the Director of the Nation Institute Investigative Fund.
His writing and reporting have appeared in many publications, including Harpers, The Guardian, The Nation, and The New Republic. He also appears frequently on television and radio (notably as a regular Friday guest on Air America’s The Al Franken Show). He lives with his wife in New York City.
Pat Robertson Denounces Rush Limbaugh: In an interview with U.S. News & World Report, conservative Christian leader Pat Robertson denounced talk show host Rush Limbaugh for saying he wants President Obama to fail.
Preamble: Pat Robertson “Predicted” WWIII before last November’s election
… and here is “Man of Faith” Robertson Urging Bush and Cheney To Take Out Venezuela’s Chavez!
“So you don’t subscribe to Rush Limbaugh’s “I hope he fails” school of thought?” asked interviewer Dan Gilgoff.
“That was a terrible thing to say,” Robertson responded. “I mean, he’s the president of all the country. If he succeeds, the country succeeds. And if he doesn’t, it hurts us all. Anybody who would pull against our president is not exactly thinking rationally.”
After the election, Robertson pronounced himself “remarkably pleased” with Obama and not so happy with President Bush. Robertson told Gilgoff that Obama hasn’t been “as skillful” since taking office but that he wants “to give him the benefit of every doubt, and I definitely hope he succeeds.”
Limbaugh has repeatedly expressed his desire to Obama and the stimulus package to fail.
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Meanwhile ‘Dicky‘ Cheney is firing at Bush for not pardoning his FALL-GUY Scooter Libby: The former vice president repeatedly pressed President Bush to pardon Scooter Libby, “arguing his ex-chief of staff and longtime alter ego deserved a full exoneration — even though Bush had already kept Libby out of jail by commuting his 30-month prison sentence.”
However, the “unsuccessful full-court press left Cheney bitter.”
Said one source: “He’s furious with Bush. He’s really angry about it and decided he’s going to say what he believes.”
“Bush’s Brain” Karl Rove on Stimulus and Scooter Libby
Epilogue on the “Goat Devil” Dick Cheney – By Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: “One of the great mysteries of the Bush presidency is whether W. ever had an epiphany when he realized that he had been manipulated by Dick Cheney, whether it ever hit him that he had trusted the wrong father figure.” — [ READ MORE ]
Like a seasonal flu, the verbal virus that is sometimes called Clinton derangement syndrome has struck again, beginning only moments after the 42nd president of the United States appeared on television screens around the world with the two journalists he had helped to rescue from prison in North Korea. And like certain viruses, the syndrome tends to hit hardest among a very specific segment of the population. Most Americans appear to be immune most of the time, as do the majority of human beings on the planet, so this pathology will probably never become a global pandemic.
