Month: February 2007

Helicopter Disaster

by tristero

One of far too many, recently:

Seven people were killed today when a Marine transport helicopter crashed into an insurgent-heavy region northwest of Baghdad. It was the fifth American helicopter to crash or be shot down since mid-January, and military officials are growing increasingly concerned that Iraqi insurgents are successfully adapting their tactics to be more effective against American aircraft.

Some Iraqis who saw the helicopter crash said it appeared to have been shot down. But according to news-agency reports, military officials suggested that the crash was probably caused by a mechanical failure.

Of course, because speaking very strictly, you can’t have any kind of a helicopter crash without experiencing mechanical failure.

But what, I wonder, caused the “mechanical failure?” An attack by insurgents, perhaps?

And The Hits Just Keep On Coming

by digby

It’s so interesting that the NY Times is concerned enough with the use of “explicit and inflammatory language” and the huffing and puffing of a rightwing gasbag like William Donohue that they actually reported the phony right blogospheric brouhaha over the Edwards’ campaign hiring Amanda Marcotte and Shakespeare’s Sister.

The two women brought to the Edwards campaign long cyber trails in the incendiary language of the blogosphere. Other campaigns are likely to face similar controversies as they try to court voters using the latest techniques of online communication.

Oh lordy, I’ll bet reading through all that “incendiary language” sent poor John Broder right over to the fainting couch. I hope Modo had some smelling salts handy. Profanity is uncivil and should not be tolerated by decent people:

A brief argument between Vice President Cheney and a senior Democratic senator led Cheney to utter a big-time obscenity on the Senate floor this week.

On Tuesday, Cheney, serving in his role as president of the Senate, appeared in the chamber for a photo session. A chance meeting with Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, became an argument about Cheney’s ties to Halliburton Co., an international energy services corporation, and President Bush’s judicial nominees. The exchange ended when Cheney offered some crass advice.

“Fuck yourself,” said the man who is a heartbeat from the presidency.

Gleeful Democrats pointed out that the White House has not always been so forgiving of obscenity. In December, Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry was quoted using the same word in describing Bush’s Iraq policy as botched. The president’s chief of staff reacted with indignation.

“That’s beneath John Kerry,” Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. said. “I’m very disappointed that he would use that kind of language. I’m hoping that he’s apologizing at least to himself, because that’s not the John Kerry that I know.”

This was not the first foray into French by Cheney and his boss. During the 2000 campaign, Bush pointed out a New York Times reporter to Cheney and said, without knowing the microphone was picking it up, “major-league [expletive].” Cheney’s response — “Big Time” — has become his official presidential nickname.

Then there was that famous Talk magazine interview of Bush by Tucker Carlson in 1999, in which the future president repeatedly used the F-word.

Now they’ve got Bill “anal sex” Donohue working the NY Times like it’s a cheap whore, braying in faux outrage that he’s “offended” by something that Marcotte wrote in the past about Catholicism. Please. This game has gone on long enough.

Republicans write books calling Democrats traitors and calling for the internment of all American Muslims. They have hate radio shows with listeners in the millions, in which they call liberals cockroaches and compare them to terrorists and child molesters. These same radio show hosts are invited to the white house for strategy sessions and are feted by the conservative press as if they are heroes.

The press has let this go on for over a decade now without ever raising a peep. Indeed, it took Rush Limbaugh making a blatantly racist remark on national television before anyone even noticed that he is a bigot of the highest order. All ESPN ever had to do was listen to the hypocritical blowhard’s show for a hour to know that. And it didn’t stop George W. Bush and Dick Cheney from both appearing on his show last fall.

And campaign bloggers? You’ve got to be kidding. From Glenn Greenwald:

Let’s begin with Patrick Hynes, the paid consultant for John McCain’s presidential campaign. Hynes continuously blogged about political matters, including ones involving McCain and the GOP field, while concealing that he was on McCain’s paid staff. That was not the first time Hynes has been caught using deceitful tricks to manipulate the blogosphere into writing content on behalf of his undisclosed clients.

[…]

Hynes’ public writing is devoted to pure religious divisiveness — he focuses almost exclusively on the claim that Christianity is superior and that those who attend church live better lives, and specifically to the belief that the Republican Party is the true party of those who believe in God and that Democrats are “anti-Christian.” He wrote a book entitled In Defense of the Religious Right, and in an interview about that book in July, 2006, this is what he said:

Miner: Is it fair to call America a “Christian nation”?

Hynes: Yes. America is a Christian nation. As I write in my book, “Is America a Christian nation? Of course it is. Don’t be ridiculous. What a stupid question

.

Does McCain agree with that view, or think it is acceptable to label as “stupid” objections to the notion that “America is a Christian nation.” Is that not as divisive and offensive, at least, as anything Marcotte wrote?

And then there is the controversy which Hynes tried to create several months ago by continuously disseminating anti-Mormon stories in order to damage Mitt Romney’s standing among evangelical Christians, with claims like this:

But many evangelical Christians are not. There is growing concern among high-level evangelical leaders that the Romney campaign may have duped them after it was revealed by the Globe that Romney’s team has constructed a Mormon political machine in secret after repeatedly stating in private to them that Romney would not run with the Mormon Church’s backing.

The controversy over the Romney camp’s use of church resources to support his political ambitions has the potential to widen the rift between Romney and the important evangelical bloc of votes he says he is pursuing.

Dr. James Dobson, one of the most recognizable faces on the evangelical scene has stated earlier in the month, “I don’t believe that conservative Christians in large numbers will vote for a Mormon but that remains to be seen, I guess.

And two weeks ago Ted Haggard, the President of the National Association of Evangelicals called Romney’s religion a cult.

“We evangelicals view Mormons as a Christian cult group. A cult group is a group that claims exclusive revelation. And typically, it’s hard to get out of these cult groups. And so Mormonism qualifies as that, Haggard told the LA Times.

Does McCain approve of his consultant’s attempt to use Romney’s Mormonism to scare off Christian evangelicals from supporting Romney and to promote bigoted anti-Mormon accusations that Mormonism is a “cult”? Why would John McCain want someone on his campaign staff who traffics in such ugly, divisive, sectarian-based rhetoric?

These are things that one finds within 60 minutes or so of searching Hynes’ blog. The blog he previously maintained throughout the 2004 election, Kerry Crush, is no longer online. Its archives undoubtedly contain ample content which would generate many more questions for McCain. The ones here are a good start.

Michele Malkin and her ilk seem to have gotten that paragon of decency and civil discourse, Bill Donohue, to punk the NY Times into going with this non-story about the Edwards campaign bloggers. The Times frames it by saying that “other campaigns” are going to have similar problems. Fine. Let’s see the story on Hynes. (And there’s more where that came from.)

Perhaps you would like to help the NY Times with their research on this matter. The reporter didn’t seem to be inclined to check into similar problems with Republican campaigns. Apparently, they were even too busy to check whether William Donohue is a trash talking political hitman and whether or not this is an organized takedown coming from the right blogosphere. So it appears that only Democratic bloggers are deserving of stories in the NY Times sniffing about their “inflammatory language” and alleged anti-catholic blog posts while Republican bloggers who lie about their campiagn affiliations and openly preach religious intolerance are given a pass. I’m sure that’s not what they intended.

Here’s the email for John Broder. Perhaps you can politely point him in the right direction.

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Chiming In On Giuliani

by tristero

Just a brief post to say that as a New Yorker, I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments expressed by Digby and Glenn Greenwald below in re: Giuliani (and as far as I’m concerned, it’s not “Rudy,” an affectionate moniker which humanizes him the way “Arnold” did a certain Nazi-lover, and “W” did the worst president ever) . He would be one of the worst conceivable replacements for Bush. When he was mayor of New York, he alienated the black community and many others. He was known to be exceedingly histrionic, vindictive, self-righteous, and petty, all so extreme that on occasion, many doubted his mental health. Had it not been for 9/11, he would be remembered as, at best, a mediocre mayor.

In regards to Giuliani and 9/11. Much has been written about Giuliani’s fake heroism for his behavior on 9/11 (links to come) and responsiblity for the failures in the response. Now I’m sure to get some strong objections to this, but… My recollection of the time, was that Giuliani – in public – acted very much as one might hope the mayor of of a stricken community would act. That is especially true when I recall the widespread panic, confusion, and cowardice exhibited by the Bush administration, especially by Bush himself. If this is an illusion, it remains a commonly-held illusion, even among those of us who otherwise loathe much of what Giuliani did and the way he did it. Fighting this perception will be very hard.

I think the point should be made, over and over again, that Giuliani’s behavior on 9/11 says less about Giuliani than it does about the utter lack of character and competence of the Bush administration. Giuliani’s character is easily spoken for by noting that the Bush administration is one which Giuliani has gone out of his way to support and defend.

It is just not that exceptional for mayors, governors, and presidents to behave appropriately during emergencies. That’s part of their job. What is truly aberrant is for any official, let alone the president, to remain for 7 long minutes reading a children’s book after s/he has been informed the country is under attack. In fact, that’s bizarre beyond belief.

So yes, compared to Bush, Giuliani looked competent and brave on 9/11. Golly.

Ths country needs a far more competent and stable person than Rudolph Giuliani to be its president. “More stable than Bush under pressure” is hardly a positive reccomendation.

Fortunately, it appears that the Democrats already have several candidates running who are not merely competent and stable, but downright superb people, any one of which would, if the campaign is run effectively and the press doesn’t fall at Giuliani’s feet (too big ifs), demonstrate how truly unfit for president Giuliani is, if he, God help us, becomes the Republican candidate in ’08.

Libby Mania

by digby

I knew today’s Libby testimony was good, but I didn’t have time to give it the attention it needed. Luckily, Jane’s posted the evening round-up and video run-down.Check it out.

Tomorrow is Tim Russert. Jane says:

There are three more hours of tapes to get through tomorrow, and then Tim Russert testifies. Fitzgerald could not have set the table for his appearance any better. Throughout the taped testimony, Libby repeats over and over again that he could not have heard about Plame from so-and-so, because he remembers being surprised when Russert told him. Well, Russert is going to show up and say he never told Libby about Plame, and if the jury were tempted to believe Libby over the endless parade of people who all would have had to mis-remember in exactly the same way in order for his story to hold up, the Russert testimony may strike the final blow. And while Russert no doubt dreads having to testify, he will probably use the opportunity to try and counter Cathie Martin’s assertion last week that he was in the bag for Dick Cheney, ever the pliant administration propagandist.

I’m looking forward to it. His friends at Fox are already coming to his rescue with clever stuff like this:

Bashing Bush?

Newsweek magazine assistant managing editor and noted author Evan Thomas was asked on a local Washington TV program the other day whether the media has been bashing the president unfairly. His response — “our job is to bash the president. That’s what we do.” He went on to say that the President had lost support after he “kissed off the Iraq Study Group.”

Thomas in the past has acknowledged the media has a bias in its reporting — saying the press favored John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. His comments over the weekend followed an assertion by National Public Radio’s Nina Totenberg — that the president had received a “free ride” for years, and now is getting fierce coverage.

Imagine that.

As Jane notes, the testimony shows that the Bush administration chose the King of the Kewl Kidz to make their case. (You’d think Fox had earned such an honor, but with their teensy credibility problem, they can’t be used for the serious stuff.) Still, it’s kind of them to keep up the fiction that the DC press corps wasn’t an mindless herd of moaning, bootlicking Bush sycophants for years. Maybe it will help the Monsignor repair his tarnished image.

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The Song Remains The Same

by digby

This is interesting. From Queequeg the Harpooner:

In today’s speech, Bernanke sought to explain why the rich have gotten so much richer in the last few decades, leaving the poor and especially the middle class behind. (The people in the middle quintile of the income scale have advanced the least, in relative terms.)

Bernanke trots out the role of global trade and technological change, and then he comes up with this:

Finally, changes in the institutions that have shaped the labor market over the past few decades may also have been associated with some increase in wage inequality. For example, unions tend to compress the dispersion of pay for jobs in the middle of the skill distribution. Thus, the decline in private-sector union membership over the post-World War II period — particularly the sharp drop in the 1980s — has been associated with an increased dispersion of pay among workers with intermediate levels of skill. The sources of the decline in union membership are much debated, and certainly long-run structural changes in the economy, such as the decline in manufacturing employment, have played a role.

No mention of Ronald Reagan. No mention of PATCO. No mention of a decades-long effort to throttle unions until they constitute just 7.4 percent of employees of private companies.

Well, no. That would be partisan. Via Brad DeLong, I see that Bernanke also failed to mention tax policy. That would be partisan too.

Apparently, the answer to this pesky rising income inequality problem remains what it has been for the last two decades — retraining 50 year olds in new careers in the “service industry” and making sure we can take our $2,000 a month health care premiums with us when our jobs get moved overseas. It’s worked out so well so far.

Update: Read this. Maybe the debate isn’t as sterile as we think.

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Viceroy Autoteller

by digby

The Bush administration went on a $5bn spending spree in Iraq in 2004 just six weeks before returning control of the government to Iraqis, according to a Democratic lawmaker investigating the payments.

Huge sums were doled out, sometimes in dollar bills from the back of pick-up trucks, it was alleged.

In a hearing before the chief House oversight committee, Democrats on Tuesday demanded answers from Paul Bremer, who headed the Coalition Provisional Authority, Iraq’s first post-occupation government, and oversaw the disbursement of $12bn in cash in reconstruction funds in the months after the invasion.

In his first appearance before Congress since leaving Iraq, Mr Bremer admitted making mistakes during his 13-month tenure. However, he emphasised that Iraq was in a “desperate situation” in May 2003 and that the CPA could not have waited to install a “modern financial system” before beginning the process of getting the defunct Iraqi government and various ministries reinstated.

The payments in question comprised of Iraqi funds that had been held by the Federal Reserve Bank in New York before the invasion and consisted of a fund that succeeded the United Nations Oil for Food programme and seized Iraqi assets.

“I acknowledge that I made mistakes and that, with the benefit of hindsight, I would have made some decisions differently. But on the whole, we made great progress under some of the most difficult conditions imaginable,” Mr Bremer told the committee.

And all these rightwing asses are still braying about the “corrupt UN oil for food program” when their own hand-picked GOP toady viceroy cannot account for billions.

But these guys don’t think there’s any need for such things:

What happened to billions in Iraqi funds that were overseen by the Coalition Provisional Authority? That’s not “important,” according to David Oliver, the former Director of Management and Budget of the agency.

A recording of the unfortunately candid remarks, previously made by Oliver to the BBC, were played during this morning’s oversight hearing by Rep. Diane Watson (D-CA). The hearing has focused on the CPA’s administration of nearly $9 billion in Iraqi funds in 2003 and 2004 — money that Stuart Bowen, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, has said was inadequately accounted for.

“I have no idea, I can’t tell you whether or not the money went to the right things or didn’t – nor do I actually think it is important,” Oliver says on the tape . “Billions of dollars of their money disappeared, yes I understand, I’m saying what difference does it make?”

Keep that in mind when you hear these people braying about tax and spend liberals and personal responsiblity and all the rest of their patented, Luntz-grouped swill.

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Ohfergawdsake

by digby

Chris Hayes finds the worst column of the week (and there are many contenders already.) Hayes writes:

One thing that was really amazing about Hurriance Katrina was the way it brought all these very, very old-school (a polite euphemism) racial attiudes front and center. I’d fooled myself into thinking they’d been largely banished from elite white opinion, but nope. Well, apparently the candidacy of Obama is playing the same role, giving a lot of really ignorant white folks ample opportunity to say some awesomely foolish things.

Read on.

Yes, I suspect we are going to get another peek at the fat white underbelly of thoughtless racism — mostly from people who believe that because they praise a “good negro” like Obama when they say these things, nobody can accuse them of being bigots.

We’ve come a long way, but we aren’t there yet.

Update: As a commenter reminds me, if you aren’t reading David Niewert’s series on eliminationism, you should.

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It’s Giuliani Time

by digby

As often happens, Glenn Greenwald and I are walking a similar path today. Glenn writes about the possibility of Rudy Giuliani being accepted by the GOP base after all, and it’s a fascinating analysis:

Giuliani’s talent for expressing prosecutor-like righteous anger towards “bad people” — as well as his well-honed ability to communicate base-pleasing rhetoric towards Islamic extremists — are underappreciated. I don’t think any candidate will be able to compete with his ability to convey a genuine hard-line against Middle Eastern Muslims (see here for one representative maneuver), and that is the issue that — admittedly with some exceptions — dominates the Christian conservative agenda more than gay marriage and abortion (concerns which he can and will minimize by promising to appoint more Antonin Scalias and Sam Alitos to the Supreme Court, something he emphasized last night in a highly amicable interview with Sean Hannity).

I would just say that I don’t think it’s a matter of prioritizing these issues within the Christian Right agenda. These people do believe that abortion and gay marriage are just as important as the threat of the Islamic boogeyman, but they are also willing to be bamboozled by their preachers if they decide that Rudy has adequately genuflected to their power. One of the great things about having a very religious voting bloc on your side is that they, by nature, tend to act on faith and follow their leaders.

I would not have thought a Giuliani candidacy possible just a few months ago, but I learned something very important about the Christian right in the last election and so should we all. Their leadership is completely unprincipled:

DOBSON: As it turns out, Mr. Foley has had illicit sex with no one that we know of, and the whole thing turned out to be what some people are now saying was a — sort of a joke by the boy and some of the other pages … By midafternoon yesterday, a rumor emerged that in fact Mark Foley had been pranked by the House pages. It is the first plausible thing I’ve heard in seven days…

And they vote with their tribe:

But in dozens of interviews here in southeastern Virginia, a conservative Christian stronghold that is a battleground in races for the House and Senate, many said the episode only reinforced their reasons to vote for their two Republican incumbents in neck-and-neck re-election fights, Representative Thelma Drake and Senator George Allen.

“This is Foley’s lifestyle,” said Ron Gwaltney, a home builder, as he waited with his family outside a Christian rock concert last Thursday in Norfolk. “He tried to keep it quiet from his family and his voters. He is responsible for what he did. He is paying a price for what he did. I am not sure how much farther it needs to go.”

The Democratic Party is “the party that is tolerant of, maybe more so than Republicans, that lifestyle,” Mr. Gwaltney said, referring to homosexuality.

Most of the evangelical Christians interviewed said that so far they saw Mr. Foley’s behavior as a matter of personal morality, not institutional dysfunction.

All said the question of broader responsibility had quickly devolved into a storm of partisan charges and countercharges. And all insisted the episode would have little impact on their intentions to vote.

If Dobson and his brethren decide it is in their best interests to back Rudy or McCain, they will do so. Expect a lot of posturing and pandering — these are political animals and they play the game very well. But at the end of the day this decision has nothing to do with whether the Christian conservative base will flee the party or stay home. They can rationalize anything.

Rudy is a formidable candidate who will have to get past Dobson and McCain and pay homage to southern values in a way that southern conservatives understand that he’s acknowledging their awesome power. (Look for some very thinly veiled racial appeals from Rudy — he’s got cred in that department.) But his manly-man authoritarian personality and image is where he makes them all swoon and he may very well finesse his former “liberal” positions.

Greenwald concludes:

As this excellent and comprehensive article documents, Giuliani is an “authoritarian narcissist” — plagued by an unrestrained prosecutor’s mentality — who loves coercive government power (especially when vested in his hands) and hates dissent above all else. He would make George Bush look like an ardent lover of constitutional liberties. He is probably the absolute worst and most dangerous successor to George Bush under the circumstances, but his political talents and prospects for winning are being severely underestimated.

I agree with this. All that “unitary executive” power in the hands of a wingnut prosecutor with little respect for the bill of rights is a truly dangerous propect and we should do everything we can to make sure Mr. 9/11 doesn’t get any traction. It is a very bad idea to count on the religious right to foreclose his (or any other) candidacy for us. They will vote for Michael Moore if he’s the Republican in the race — it’s a tribal choice, not a religious one. They are smart enough to force these men to publicly bow down and adjust their attitudes and platforms, but they’re also smart enough to know that it’s all kabuki.

The political motivation for the Christian Right is first and foremost to vote against dirty hippies and if it takes holding their nose and voting for Giuliani they’ll do it — especially if he promises to “get tough on criminals and terrorists” and restore “law and order.”

Here’s a little taste of how they might start building the drumbeat:

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Exit question: In some U.S. locations, we’ve seen some fighting between blacks and Latinos. How worrisome is this? Pat Buchanan.

MR. BUCHANAN: Oh, listen, this is a hellish problem. You take LA. The underclass is at war. The black-brown gangs — when they say Crips and Bloods together, it’s got new meaning, John. It is a terrible war, frankly, in South Central and the areas of Los Angeles.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Will the Latinos take over from the blacks the largest caucus in the Congress?

MR. BUCHANAN: John, the Latinos in California outnumber African- Americans something like six to one in California. The African- Americans, like white Americans, are coming back over the mountains.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: You see that as a sweep of the country in how many years?

MR. BUCHANAN: Well, here’s the thing. The trouble with the Hispanics is many of them are illegal. The ones who are legal don’t register, and the ones who register don’t vote.

MS. CLIFT: The Latinos are under —

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Yeah, you’re worried about the situation, aren’t you?

MR. BUCHANAN: Well, I mean, in terms of the social situation in the American Southwest, the country is going to look — all of our cities are going to look like Los Angeles of the movie “Crash.”

[…]

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Are you nervous too?

MR. BLANKLEY: Look, it’s not a question of scaring. The Hispanic mayor of Los Angeles, just in the last few days, denied the fact that there was a race war going on in his city, even though the police chief, formerly from New York —

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: What’s the point?

MR. BLANKLEY: The point is that at the mayoral level, the state and local level, there’s real concern about the violence that’s going on, particularly in LA, between Hispanics and black gangs.

MR. PAGE: He is aware of the situation. It’s not a race war. But there is a gang war going on. It’s like “West Side Story.” It’s along —

MR. BLANKLEY: It’s a gang war polarized by race, and there’s no way around that.

MR. PAGE: What’s new about that “West Side Story,” right? You know, ethnic gangs have been fighting as long as we’ve had cities. It is a crisis there. It’s a neighborhood problem that can spread out and become even more dangerous. I hope the mayor has got his hands on it. But it’s not just simply as a consequence of some takeover by Hispanics.

MR. BLANKLEY: Well, the mayor’s called for a Marshall Plan of social spending to solve the problem. What he needs is to be a tough mayor like Giuliani was in New York and fight crime wherever he finds it.

They can dust off that good old southern strategy and put America’s mayor, the hero of toilet plunger afficionados all over the country, back on the beat in a New York minute. Combine that with the War on Terra and enough dumb swing voters and we are looking at Bush’s authoritarian doppleganger as leader of the most powerful nation on earth.

Update: Here are some other fun reminders of our hero of 9/11, from Julia at Sisyphus Shrugged. And then there’s this.

Update: Heh. The future ex-Mrs Giuliani is telling everyone who’ll listen what a hot ticket her man is:

“I’ve always liked strong, macho men, and Rudy — I’m not saying this because he’s my husband — is one of the smartest people on the planet,” gushed the former Judith Nathan to Harper’s Bazaar in editions due out Feb. 20.

“What people don’t know is that Rudy’s a very, very romantic guy. We love watching ‘Sleepless in Seattle.’ Can you imagine my big testosterone-factor husband doing that?”

Describing Rudy, a former federal prosecutor, as “the Energizer Bunny with no rechargeable batteries,” Judi said, “One of the most remarkable things about my husband, who sleeps three or four hours a night, is his energy level and stamina.

Oooh baby.

The chatterers are acting all confused about this wondering why his campaign would do something like this. I don’t suppose it has something to do with the fact that there is footage of him in drag all over the internet, do you?

Update again: I should add that all of this depends upon how Rudy handles the question of Iraq. No Republicans are going anywhere if they can’t find some kind of sweet spot on that one. Good luck with that.

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Hobgoblin Overload

by digby

Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said it right after 9/11:

JERRY FALWELL: The ACLU’s got to take a lot of blame for this.

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, yes.

JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I’ll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen’.

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we’re responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system.

It took a while, but Dinesh D’Souza finally came out and agreed with this thesis in his book The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11:

The cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11 … the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the non-profit sector and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world.

Now the great men of the conservative movement are finally coming out of the closet too:

To the Editor:

The issue of interest regarding Dinesh D’Souza’s incendiary book is surely not whether your reviewer, Alan Wolfe, likes its point of view but whether the incisive arguments it makes are true. Although Wolfe implies that D’Souza is against Israel, nowhere does D’Souza express the slightest hostility toward this precious beacon of our civilization.

Rather, D’Souza raises the alarm that the anti-religious, sexual liberationist, anti-natalist and feminist thrust of American foreign, cultural, and free-speech global Internet policies threaten and estrange all the traditional cultures of the third world, whether Muslim or Christian, Hindu or Buddhist. Poor people cannot afford the epidemics, abortions and divorces of Hollywood liberalism, and uphold a monotheist God as the foundation of their moral codes and worthy of respect.

The American global cultural campaign pushes a billion non-militant Muslims to condone the jihad and thus threatens the existence of Israel and the survival of vulnerable American cities like New York. Perhaps your readers would be intrigued with a discussion of the argument rather than anathemas against its expression. To call the book McCarthyite and a “national scandal” will neither stop the jihad nor save Israel in a nuclear age.

George Gilder

Great Barrington, Mass.

Ann Coulter and others on the right have spent the last few years saying that liberals are a fifth column consciously working on the side of the terrorists. She wrote a book called “Treason” on just that subject. Michele Malkin and her little friends went completely nuts over those Danish cartoons, screeching to high heaven about free speech and the inalienable right to criticize religion to matter how offensive the believers found it. It has been an article of faith that the left is in cahoots with the terrorists from the beginning.

Now, they’ve decided that the terrorists attacked America because it hates the American left — its alleged supporters for lo these many years. And the finest minds of the right seem to be saying that America should appease these terrorists by succumbing to their demands that America stop tolerating liberalism at all.

When in the company of conservatives these days, be sure to carry an umbrella. You can never be sure when one of their heads is going to explode.

Update: Elton Beard noted an even earlier foray into the “Blame Americans first” meme: Newtie was making common cause with the Jihadists back in 2003.

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Feingold

by tristero

Now, this is how a real 21st century Democrat should speak:

I am really troubled by the attempt of not only Republicans but leading Democrats to essentially finesse the situation we’re in right now. This is not a time to finesse the situation, this not a time to slow-walk. This almost reminds me a little bit of the way Democrats behaved in October of 2002 which was trying to play it safe, trying to use words such as, “well, we’re going to vote for this resolution but what it really means is that the president should go to the U.N.” That stuff doesn’t fly. And this kind of an attempt to go a little bit of the way just to show you’re on the other side of the President doesn’t fly either.

What we need now is a strong position to get out of this situation. That’s what I have proposed in a bill and we have also offered an amendment to this item that is in theory before the Senate now, which would basically strike the provisions that I just talked about, that were harmful. It’s already been cosponsored by two of the most distinguished and senior members of the Senate – Senator Leahy and Senator Dodd. So the three of us have introduced this amendment that says, look, you can’t have language in this Warner thing that says you can’t start withdrawing troops. It says you can’t have language that talks about a surge in Al Anbar province, and you can’t have language that says we can’t consider reducing the funding. So this is an important moment to see if we’re really going to try to end this war and frankly I’m disappointed that democrats are playing it too safe on this.

Feingold urges calling your congresscritters. Do it. Now. Say, “No matter what Bush calls it, I do not support the escalation of the disastrous war in Iraq he started. I support a full and immediate withdrawal as soon as possible.”