Here we have a judicial nominee who is somewhere to the right of Darth Vader (at least on the gun issue), who backs strip searches for little 10-year-old girls, who believes the word "women" is a contraction of "wombs for men," and who would probably approve of a corporate employment policy that required black men to dress up in jockey costumes and stand outside on the lawn holding little lanterns. And the DNC has to drop hints that the bastard is too soft on the Mafia?
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November 1, 2005
WB: Borking Does Not Equal Sliming
Comments
Immediate thought:
Videos over the transom. “Fake” records. “Bugged” offices.
Inoculation??????
Posted by: eftsoons | Nov 1 2005 9:03 utc | 1
Geraldine Ferraro, yes. And if we go back further, they tried the same stunt with Peter Rodino.
Posted by: RT | Nov 1 2005 10:45 utc | 3
As soon as I saw this mess I thought about the Geraldine Ferraro thing which was yet another despicable stunt from ReaBushCo the people who bought you IranContra.
It really amuses me when people think that the current band of assholes and murderers broke the mould because this shit has been going on for years. The only difference I can discern is that the demopublicans are getting worse at dealing with it.
This blindingly moronic list of ‘talking points’ will have originated at dem party HQ. What was it the Woodstock album had on the liner?
“The sound imperfections should be regarded as scars on antique leather, proof of the object’s bona fides”
It was something like that and I would contend that the clumsiness of this hit job combined with its pallid imitation of RoveMethod guarantees its provenance as being demopublican.
If I sound gleeful I apologise that isn’t my intent. The only reason I am raising this problem is it needs to be properly examined and a solution worked out and implemented. Else there is no hope whatsoever of slowing down this murderous rethug regime on it’s stomp across the heads of the humans of the world.
Why has it got this bad?
Was Clintonism the cause or just another symptom?
A bit of both but one thing is for certain; left of centre political movements usually get their impetus from two quite diverse groups within the community.
The baby kissing hand shaking and hard sell is normally undertaken by a pragmatic careerist who may have began his/her personal odyssey with some idealism but that was left behind a long time ago.
The hard work of designing strategies, push polling, pamphlet dropping, and yes; talking point meming has ‘traditionally’ been done by the lefter more idealogical party activists.
Although the demopublicans still have plenty of the ‘pragmatic baby kissers’ hanging around the place like flies around dogshit, the activists are very thin on the ground and those that are still in the building appear to have weird personality disorders.
There are actually legion reasons for this. Yes the pragmatists have made assholes of themselves. Their continual defection to the opposition on issues they didn’t understand enough to care about has destroyed team spirit.
Though realistically the activists happily fell into victim mode . We can still see elements of this at MoA where where on occasion the foul misdeeds of the Clintonites are recalled with more vehemence than BushCo is rejected with.
Anyway that is all water under the bridge. I really don’t have as much interest in the wellbeing of some mundane humorless geek who has had his feelings hurt than I do in the poor buggers who got their house blown up last night.
However saying that doesn’t get anyone any closer to cranking down the death and destruction by subjecting the BushCo lowlifes to the sort of scrutiny that only a well organised opposition can provide.
My prediction is that the repugs will lose their majority in the midterms but the demopublicans won’t feel or seem to have won shit even if they do have the majority.
Amerikans just have to make a decision and time is running out.
They have to either get wholeheartedly involved with the demopublicans which will inevitably involve eating the likes of Joe Lieberman’s shit in the short term so as to hang him out to dry in the long term.
Or they have to get a third force up and running quickly to try and get the balance of power in the Senate and/or the house of Reps.
My personal plan would be for a piece of political jujitsu where the demopublican destruction of the Green Party was used as an opportunity for developing a viable Red/Green Alliance. I mean red in the sense that most of the rest of the world consider red, that is leftist.
Whatever is decided time is running out.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 1 2005 11:04 utc | 4
Following on from Debs:
Capitalism leads to a ‘winner takes all’ scheme.
People follow the winner. (E.g. Elected Democrats.) Trickle down is arranged for them, temporarily, to keep them about, posturing.
To continue winning, it is necessary to have war.
Billy C. managed to stave off various matters, promising to hand over in excellent conditions (e.g. war against terrorism well prepared for, full coffers, etc.)
Globalisation means that the elite no longer needs the Nation State. They can concentrate on numbah one and forget everyone else.
–> Cheap labor in Asia and elsewhere, credulous populace in the West; some will produce guns to kill others.
However, they still need the nation state to get the peons to properly use the weapons they are given. The US is demonstrating that that can actually be accomplished. (That is why there were those huge demonstrations before the invasion.)
All this is not necessarily a nefarious plot, hatched in dark corners by powerful conspirators, a road map written in stone. Nor does Israel play a determining role, though it is useful.
It is the way of the world. (I’m feeling blue.)
Oil is the lynch pin. Without it, the whole scheme collapses, and another world (perhaps brutish!) comes into being.
So controlling oil is key; but so is consuming it endlessly, and not just for war, but for cars, heat, medecines, agriculture and all the rest. That energy fix, along with the semi-myth of technological advance (increase in productivity in historical terms, etc.) provides both the rationale for war, and the tools to implement it.
Posted by: Noisette | Nov 1 2005 14:32 utc | 9
Maybe it was “first” because the list was composed chronologically? His career as a prosecutor proceeded his career as a judge. Failing to get a conviction in this circumstance would seem to be a signature failing as a prosecutor.
And then he became a judge. Lawyers often do say that judges are failed lawyers who know a politician. Certainly you could make that point by noting his greatest failure as a prosecutor at the top of your list.
And Matthews is just trying to win back the wingnuts he lost over the past couple of weeks with his traitorgate coverage. Without mentioning Hillary.
The criticism the DNC is getting on this from its supposed allies is a real head scratcher.
Posted by: bcf | Nov 1 2005 15:56 utc | 10
From MyDD.
“The underlying hilarity of this is that of course the idiot right would think the nickname ‘Scalito’ is racist. Why is that? Only the idiot right would view Italians as a separate race from other, more WASPy Europeans like themselves.”
Posted by: beq | Nov 1 2005 16:13 utc | 11
The way we live in America requires cheap oil.
Lacking it, we must either:
contract our suburbanized setting down into ‘small town’ conclaves that can feed themselves locally, or
go get some cheap oil by taking it from them who have some. War.
As the old saw says, Either get busy living, or get busy dying.
America can put all we’ve got into remaking ourselves for a world without cheap energy.
Or we can die while committing international armed robbery.
Costs the same, in lives and money either way.
Different results.
Posted by: Antifa | Nov 1 2005 16:45 utc | 12
Too soft on the Mafia?… Too soft on the Mafia?… How is he on “Agents Provocateur”?
Posted by: pb | Nov 1 2005 17:15 utc | 13
It’s just a standard deflection strategy. Matthews SOP for water-carrying for the administration. Look over there! Look what those guys are doing NOW! Blah. Blah. The document says not one racist word and nothing indicating Scalito is mobbed up. No point in buying into that strategy, again.
Posted by: Eli | Nov 1 2005 18:45 utc | 14
I read the relevant section of the memo. It doesn’t imply that anything about the prosecution was amiss owing to ethnicity. Metadata faking or what have you, the memo is nothing out of the ordinary, and it’s just right wing blustery bullshit to say that its racist.
The section in question is pretty clearly intended to portray Alito as a less than competent prosecutor with a cavalier attitude about his shortcomings. It was in 1988, so it’s not relevant anymore (people make mistakes, particularly earlier on in their careers), and though his response “you can’t win them all,” was probably indicative of an arrogant schmuck, that’s not a crime (would that it were). Hell, these days, it’s’ not even considered a personal shortcoming in a wingnut.
At best, it’s a very lame attempt to make him look incompetent. But it’s most certainly not an ethnic attack, and only in the fevered paranoia/shameless mendacity of a right wing tool like Matthews could it be read as anything different. And furthermore, I doubt Matthews even read the thing before getting pissed off about it; probably someone handed it to him, said “here’s the list of communists in the State Department,” and he went off.
Posted by: bob | Nov 2 2005 0:37 utc | 15