I Cogitate
| Recent Posts | My Best Blogs | Archives | Favorite Quotes | Links | Contact |
Rosa Brooks for Nobel Truth prize
I'm beginning to think it's a conspiracy...but a good one. Still in recovery mode, I keep coming across material that MUST be posted, illness or no. I'm starting to feel a kinship with postal carriers "neither rain, nor sleet..." Anyway, I'm not the point. Here is a Los Angeles Times columnist doing a no-no, peeing in the media pool.
The wise old mass media dons and donnesses of D.C. and New York -- today we chose to highlight everyone seated on the coma-inducing but ever so proper "Washington Week In Review".-- just can't quite bring themselves to state the obvious, a la Brooks. Because for these never-ever-stray-from-the-conventional-wisdomists to do so would leave them open to ridicule and shame from their vocational species or worse. The latter being 'concern' from the corporate managers and owners at their newspaper or network. For even doing penance by calling out the obvious may result in exclusion from future televised tete-a-tetes.
It used to be an 800-pound gorilla in the White House living room that no one wished to identify but after consuming even more of the spines of media members and a number of not-wanting-to-offend Democrats, the occupant is up to 1,000 pounds and growing. He and his second-in-command continue to feast unimpeded at the trough. Lies are truth, wingnuttedness is normal, all is just peachy. Meanwhile, a faux presidential candidate, one who just recently announced, is polling better than a number of those who have devoted their lives to politics as we know it.
Let's set up a bet.here. Will anyone in the mainstream newspaper and television world ever use the word radical or even the phrase rightwing in describing George Bush? Not just while he remains in office, but ever?
A hat tip for Rosa Brooks.
Straitjacket BushGo here for the remainder (and no, this link will not take you to Planet Cheney).
The president's warmongering remarks on the Iranian threat suggest he is psychotic. Really.
Rosa Brooks
Los Angeles Times
October 25, 2007
Forget impeachment.
Liberals, put it behind you. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney shouldn't be treated like criminals who deserve punishment. They should be treated like psychotics who need treatment.
Because they've clearly gone mad. Exhibit A: We're in the middle of a disastrous war in Iraq, the military and political situation in Afghanistan is steadily worsening, and the administration's interrogation and detention tactics have inflamed anti-Americanism and fueled extremist movements around the globe. Sane people, confronting such a situation, do their best to tamp down tensions, rebuild shattered alliances, find common ground with hostile parties and give our military a little breathing space. But crazy people? They look around and decide it's a great time to start another war.
That would be with Iran, and you'd have to be deaf not to hear the war drums. Last week, Bush remarked that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III . . . you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." On Sunday, Cheney warned of "the Iranian regime's efforts to destabilize the Middle East and to gain hegemonic power . . . [we] cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions." On Tuesday, Bush insisted on the need "to defend Europe against the emerging Iranian threat."
Huh? Iran is now a major threat to Europe? The Iranians are going to launch a nuclear missile (that they don't yet possess) against Europe (for reasons unknown because, as far as we know, they're not mad at anyone in Europe)? This is lunacy in action.
Writing in Newsweek on Oct. 20, Fareed Zakaria, a solid centrist and former editor of Foreign Affairs, put it best. Citing Bush's invocation of "the specter of World War III if Iran gained even the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon," Zakaria concluded that "the American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. . . . Iran has an economy the size of Finland's. . . . It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are . . . allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?"
Planet Cheney.
top
RSS feed
| Recent Posts | My Best Blogs | Archives | Favorite Quotes | Links | Contact |