Our neo-con, macho asshole problem

after reading the headline and the lede, i didn't have the stomach to read the rest...

How to solve the pirate problem

By Jonah Goldberg

Shooting three Somali pirates was a good start. Now let's shoot some more.

jerk...

could someone please explain to me how killing people is the solution to our problems...? i'm afraid the connection escapes me...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

The LA Times op-ed page takes a turn at Obama-bashing

honest to pete, is there a person with a pulse anywhere who can't see through the blatant efforts by our media elites to destroy barack obama...?

Michelle Obama is fair game

By Jonah Goldberg

Candidates who send their wives out on the campaign trail shouldn't lash out when their spouses face criticism.

Obama's delusional foreign policy

By Raoul Lowery Contreras

President Bush was right to call it appeasement.

i gave the la times a little bit more credit than this... however, i don't know why in hell i would do that since they regularly give jonah goldberg an outlet for his world-class asshole views...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Glenn Greenwald on Ron Paul and Jonah Goldberg

i'm not going to excerpt either of the two most current posts over at glenn's corner at salon, but i am going to strongly recommend that you read them both, one on ron paul, and the other on the sub-species of human being known as jonah goldberg...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Robert Scheer echoes Jim on James Madison

yesterday, i pulled jim's comment, in which he quoted james madison about the dangers of an imperial presidency, and bumped it into a full post... today, i find this from robert scheer, the excellent former la times columnist (who, sadly, was replaced by that dipshit extraordinaire, jonah goldberg)...

George W. Bush is the imperial president that James Madison and other founders of this great republic warned us about. He lied the nation into precisely the "foreign entanglements" that George Washington feared would destroy the experiment in representative government, and he has championed a spurious notion of security over individual liberty, thus eschewing the alarms of Thomas Jefferson as to the deprivation of the inalienable rights of free citizens. But most important, he has used the sledgehammer of war to obliterate the separation of powers that James Madison enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

With the "war on terror," Bush has asserted the right of the president to wage war anywhere and for any length of time, at his whim, because the "terrorists" will always provide a convenient shadowy target. Just the "continual warfare" that Madison warned of in justifying the primary role of Congress in initiating and continuing to finance a war -- the very issue now at stake in Bush's battle with Congress.

In his "Political Observations," written years before he served as fourth president of the United States, Madison went on to underscore the dangers of an imperial presidency bloated by war fever. "In war," Madison wrote in 1795, at a time when the young republic still faced its share of dangerous enemies, "the discretionary power of the Executive is extended ... and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force, of the people."

scheer seizes on the very quote from madison that grabbed jim's attention...

Bush betrayed Congress, which in turn betrayed the American people -- just as Madison feared when he wrote: "Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it compromises and develops the germ of every other."

< sigh > we gotta get rid of 'em... we just gotta... every single day i wake up and think, my god, we simply CAN'T tolerate another day with that gang of criminals in office, and every night i go to bed thinking exactly the same thing...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Dick Cheney: "We must restore some balance" between Congress and the White House

this man is clueless...



the above surely must be one of jonah goldberg's favorite quotes... he's writing in today's la times, parroting once again the incredibly juvenile theme of, "Well, THEY did it too"...

My president's better than yours
Liberals who deride Bush's actions as extreme sang a different tune when their party's presidents used similar tactics.

At a candidate forum for trial lawyers in Chicago on Sunday, Hillary Clinton proclaimed that the Bush administration is "the most radical presidency we have ever had."

This is, quite simply, absurd. But such boob-bait for the Bush bashers is common today in Democratic circles, just as similar right-wing rhetoric about Bill Clinton was par for the course a decade ago.

[...]

For eight years, the right screamed bloody murder about Clinton's overreaching. He minted new executive privileges, "accidentally" rummaged through the FBI files of political opponents and sought electronic wiretapping powers — during peacetime — that today are denounced during the war on terror. Some on the right feared we were on a slippery slope to tyranny. Liberals often chortled about such right-wing paranoia.

Today, the dynamic is reversed. Liberals fret over creeping fascism while conservatives give Bush the benefit of the doubt. Both sides are open to charges of hypocrisy, and neither is immune to partisan amnesia. The only consistent crowd are the Libertarians, who distrust all government power.

here's what i wrote to the la times as an open letter to mr. goldberg...

Sir,

I don't disagree with your thesis. Presidents seem to have a propensity for seizing as much power as they can, a tendency foreseen by the founders and doubtlessly the reason they formulated such clear language about the separate but equal balance of powers.

I don't support any president of any party accruing unfettered power, and to claim that concerns about the constitution-trampling Bush administration are "absurd" only tells me that, one, you either haven't been paying attention or, two, you choose to ignore reality. The steps taken by George Bush and Dick Cheney to wield absolute executive power are among the single most disturbing developments I have seen take place in my country over a 60-year lifetime, a lifetime that's included 37 years of senior level management and university professorships around the globe. I am in daily touch with a number of friends both in the U.S. and abroad, a mix of lifelong Republicans, Democrats and independents, all of whom agree that the United States is facing the most critical constitutional crisis of its history, and that, if it's allowed to continue, we are in serious danger not only because of the time left to the current White House occupants, but, down the road, from ANY future president.

Rather than perpetuating the, in my opinion, patently ridiculous theme of "Well, THEY did it too," I would think you would be speaking out FOR the restoration of our precious Constitution to its rightful place as the fundamental underpinning of our nation. I never let my children (or, now, my grandchildren) get away with the "They did it too" excuse and I certainly expect better from someone who writes from the platform of the Los Angeles Times.

Sincerely,

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

If you're gonna smear, do it in a bipartisan spirit

another taste of how the relentless attacks on 2008 presidential candidates are going to shape up... from one of the masters of the art, jonah goldberg...

John Edwards' poor scam

The would-be president and former ambulance chaser wants you to think he's the champion of the underclass.

There's a little hustler in every politician. But sometimes there's a little politician in a hustler. Such is the case with John Edwards.

and that's just the title,the teaser and the opening sentence...

i felt moved to compose a letter to the la times editor...

Dear Sirs:

I can see how the 2008 campaign is going to shape up - hyperventilating huffers and puffers, sitting in their foxholes, tossing out feces-laden grenades, and hoping none either roll back into their holes or get lobbed their way. Ok, if that's the kind of opinion writer you choose to support, so be it. Let me make a small request.

I would feel somewhat better about seeing such vituperation in print if the opinion writer in question, Mr. Goldberg, would opine in a more bipartisan fashion. It seems there are hypocrites and idiots galore in the current field of presidential candidates, both Democrat and Republican. When entire op-ed columns are dedicated to savaging only one party's candidates, serious editorial bias starts to become a little bit obvious, don't you think? Even George Bush occasionally makes the effort to appear bipartisan (I emphasize the word "appear"). Couldn't you encourage Mr. Goldberg to follow suit?

Best regards,

i didn't deliberately didn't offer any examples of idiots and hypocrites from the "other party" because i think they are ridiculously easy to find... how about rudy giuliani, mitt romney, and john mccain for starters...?

from paul krugman (nyt select, subscribers only) via joe at americablog...

Here’s the way it ought to be: When Rudy Giuliani says that Iran, which had nothing to do with 9/11, is part of a “movement” that “has already displayed more aggressive tendencies by coming here and killing us,” he should be treated as a lunatic.

When Mitt Romney says that a coalition of “Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda” wants to “bring down the West,” he should be ridiculed for his ignorance.

And when John McCain says that Osama, who isn’t in Iraq, will “follow us home” if we leave, he should be laughed at.

so, jonah, whaddaya say...? lessee you take a crack at these idiots as well... it seems to me that you could have yourself a veritable bipartisan vituperation feast (if you want to, that is)...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments