Political Theatre category archive
McBush: Fact Challenged 1
And this is supposed to be a foreign policy maven.
Dick Polman has the facts (emphasis added):
Well, we can look McCain right in the eye and remind him that, as a matter of fact, we have not drawn down to pre-Surge levels. It’s just a matter of comparing the actual numbers. Before President Bush ordered his troop escalation in January 2007, we had 128,569 soldiers in Iraq; today, we have 155,000 soldiers in Iraq. In accordance with how math generally works, the latter number is larger than the former.
Putting aside MCain’s claim that Mosul is “quiet,” on the same day that Mosul reportedly suffered three suicide bombings . . . .
The problem, of course, is that McCain was declaring the draw-down to pre-Surge levels as Mission Accomplished, whereas, in factual reality, it is no such thing.
(snip)
McCain has twice confused the Sunnis and the Shiites.
(snip)
He has insisted that Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the most powerful figure in that country, whereas, in reality, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iran’s national security council are the powers that run the show. (McCain is fine with the idea of repeating the error about Ahmadinejad: “I think of you asked any average American who the leader of Iran is, I think they’d know.”) And after a recent clash between Iraqi government troops and Shiite insurgents pledged to Moqtada al-Sadr, McCain erroneously stated that a chastened Sadr had sought a ceasefire, whereas, in reality, the ceasefire was kick-started when the Iraqi government asked its allies in Iran to broke the process; in the end, Sadr’s forces were left virtually intact.
Mr. Polman goes on the wonder what the reaction might have been had Senator Obama made even one of these mistakes.
Legacy 3
He’s a uniter, not a divider.
From the Guardian:
But more striking, as we watch these last days of the Bush administration, is to survey the damage that Bush has done to the Republican party that was in essence a bequest to him from Ronald Reagan. Despite the havoc Reagan wrecked on the federal budget, the government safety net and the political fabric of the country, he managed to bring a respectability and a strength to American conservatism that proved formidable for more than a generation. It was powerful enough to force the Democratic party off its bearings and managed to get Bush elected president despite his obvious deficiencies as a candidate, an executive and a thinker.
Bush was hailed as the fulfilment of the Reagan’s aspirations and heir to his legacy. After losing to Bill Clinton in 1992, and taking control of the Congress in 1994, conservatives in general and Republicans in particular saw Bush’s 2000 win as the rapture for which they had been waiting since 1980, when they thought they had set liberalism back on it heels forever. By 2004 they controlled all the levers of government, but, counter to their expectations, the conservative agenda was more in tatters than ever.
Today, Bush is the most unpopular president in recent history. He has defiled Republicans’ notions of small government and destroyed their reputation as the more responsible stewards of the taxpayers’ money. And, of course, there was the war of his choosing, which has led to the nefarious, Wilsonian nation-building they have so long despised. The word in Washington these days in that the Republican brand is tarnished. It may be worse that that. There are signs that the GOP is headed for landslide losses in the congressional elections this fall.
Sellin’ McClellan 0
I have avoided posting anything about Scott McClellan’s book. Writing about it would be a case of coals to Newcastle.
But I do want to recommend this post, from the Knight-Ridder McClatchy reporters, who had it right from the git-go.
Oh, yeah, and don’t forget the Demon Princess.
McClatchy link via Digby.
Have Your Cake and Eat It Too: Clinton Dept. 1
From the Booman (emphasis added):
Those are contradictory arguments. The truth of the matter is that Hillary Clinton is asking the superdelegates (or automatic delegates) to ignore the will of the voters as expressed by the delegates elected under the rules (even including Florida and Michigan). She’s saying that the whole point of the nominating process is to ‘pick our strongest nominee’ rather than discover the preferences of the voters (since those two things are not necessarily synonymous). Yet she keeps howling about how we have to count every vote? Why is it so important to count every vote if your ultimate argument is that the process should nominate the strongest nominee regardless of the vote?
And This Surprises Us How? 1
It can surprise only those who haven’t yet figured out that McBushies thrive on lies.
Among the most explosive revelations in the 341-page book, titled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception†(Public Affairs, $27.95):
- • McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda†to sell the war.
- • He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.
- • He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.â€
- • The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them — and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts.
- • McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter†Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff — “had at best misled†him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.
Via John Cole.
Support the Troops, McBushie Style 0
What Digby said.
The Republican Problem Solving Manual 0
An excerpt. Follow the link to see their plots revealed:
- give yourself a cool undercover spy name
- add three levels of corruption to it
- change subject to fancyboy haircuts
- link it to the death tax/gay marriage/social security
- borrow a mountain of money for you know, whatever
- say something about Hitler or Lincoln or Reagan
- jury is still out on it.
Via DelawareLiberal.
Gag Me with a Spoon Dept. 2
Dick Polman. Please read the whole post. What it says about citizen americanus is scary (emphasis added):
And since we’re finally talking about ignorance, I offer Exhibit A – the report of a focus group, featuring 12 independent voters, that was conducted earlier this week in swing-state Virginia by the noted Democratic pollster, Peter Hart.
Hart yesterday circulated this report to folks like me. He took pains to point out, in his summary, that his 12 focus-group participants are not close followers of politics. None of them voted in Virginia’s Democratic or Republican primaries. All of them feel like “the election has been going on forever,” but none of them have bothered to learn anything about it. All they know is what they have heard – or, more significantly, misheard. And these independents are potentially pivotal in November; in Hart’s words, they “represent 20 percent of the electorate.”
(snip)
Perhaps…as long as they can learn to distinguish between Obama from McCain on the issues. Because here’s Danny, one of your fellow citizens:
“(The race) has gone on so long….They all kind of say the same thing. They’re all saying the same thing, so what’s to get excited about?”
Really? McCain and Obama are “saying the same thing”? Perhaps the maligned “eggheads” can enlighten Danny about that.
By the way, Barack Obama now has his own subdirectory on Snopes, because of all the wingnut lies.
“Just Low Class” 0
Yeah.
Well.
They are.
And that surprises you how?
Legacy of Failure 0
The Nation (emphasis added), on what happened when the Republicans had all the marbles. They lost them.
(snip)
For forty years, the most important trait of conservatives of all stripes has been their unshakable conviction that their vision and their ideas are right. Moral permissiveness, a feckless foreign policy, a welfare-dependent underclass: all the viruses that had infected the body politic under the stewardship of liberals would be cured if only conservatives were given a chance. The right was united above all in its belief that a new Eden would dawn when Americans were liberated from the tyranny of government, whose intrusive hands reached unwarrantedly into every aspect of citizens’ lives (save, of course, the bedroom, where those hands were needed to prevent overly liberated citizens from indulging the wrong impulses). When Bill Clinton ended welfare and declared that the era of big government was over, the argument seemed to have been cinched: at long last, even Democrats had come to realize the folly of their ways. But something funny happened on the way to making the revolution complete: when Republicans were finally given the opportunity to free the citizenry from the chains of the Leviathan state, the result was crony capitalism, fiscal recklessness and bumbling incompetence on an unprecedented scale. The opportunity to govern without interference from liberals came, and the consequences–in New Orleans, in Baghdad, in neighborhoods ravaged by housing foreclosures, in levels of inequality unmatched since the Gilded Age–have been calamitous.
Demographics 2
DelawareLiberal looks at the numbers.
Bushie Antics . . . 0
Seen and called.