Posted on 09/29/2006 8:45:40 AM PDT by A.Hun
It's just plain wrong. lol.
By E. J. Dionne
WASHINGTON -- Bill Clinton's eruption on Fox News last weekend over questions about his administration's handling of terrorism was a long time coming and has political implications that go beyond this fall's elections.
By choosing to intervene in the terror debate in a way that no one could miss, Clinton forced an argument about the past that had, up to now, been largely a one-sided propaganda war waged by the right. The conservative movement understands the political value of controlling the interpretation of history. Now, their control is finally being contested.
How long have Clinton's resentments been simmering? We remember the period immediately after Sept. 11 as a time of national unity in which partisanship melted away. That is largely true, especially because Democrats rallied behind President Bush. For months following the attacks, Democrats did not raise questions about why they had happened on Bush's watch.
But not everyone was nonpartisan. On Oct. 4, 2001, a mere three weeks and a couple of days after the towers fell and the Pentagon was hit, there was Rush Limbaugh arguing on The Wall Street Journal's op-ed page: "If we're serious about avoiding past mistakes and improving national security, we can't duck some serious questions about Mr. Clinton's presidency.''
To this day, I remain astonished at Limbaugh's gall -- and at his shrewdness. Republicans were arguing simultaneously that it was treasonous finger-pointing to question what Bush did or failed to do to prevent the attacks, but patriotic to go after Clinton. Thus did they build up a mythology that cast Bush as the tough hero in confronting the terrorist threat and Clinton as the shirker. Bad history. Smart politics.
And the polemical distortions of history came roaring back earlier this month in ABC's fictionalized account of the 9/11 events that butchered the Clinton record.
This history-as-attack-ad approach won praise by none other than Limbaugh, who described the film's screenwriter as a friend.
Limbaugh was pleased that the film was "just devastating to the Clinton administration'' and attacked its critics as "just a bunch of thin-skinned bullies.'' Pot-and-kettle metaphors don't begin to do justice to the hilarity of Limbaugh saying such a thing.
And so Clinton exploded. My canvassing of Clinton insiders suggests two things about his Fox News outburst. First, he did not go into the studio knowing he would do it. There was, they say, a spontaneity to his anger. But, second, he had thought long and hard about comparisons between his record on terrorism and Bush's. He had his lines down pat from private musing about how he had been turned into a punching bag by the right. Something like this, one adviser said, was bound to happen eventually.
Sober moderate opinion will say what sober moderate opinion always says about an episode of this sort: Tut tut, Clinton looked un-presidential, we should worry about the future, not the past, blah, blah, blah.
But sober moderate opinion was largely silent as the right wing slashed and distorted Clinton's record on terrorism. It largely stood by as the Bush administration tried to intimidate its own critics into silence. As a result, the day-to-day political conversation was tilted toward a distorted view of the past. All the sins of omission and commission were piled onto Clinton while Bush was cast as the nation's angelic avenger. And as conservatives understand, our view of the past greatly influences what we do in the present.
A genuinely sober and moderate view would recognize that it's time the scales of history were righted. Propagandistic accounts need to be challenged, systematically and consistently. The debate needed a very hard shove. Clinton delivered it.
LOL!
Gore needs more UBUNTU!!!!!
That needed a barf alert.
Rush: "I don't like talking about myself".
Riiiiiiiiiight.
Wow thats something els
Ocena and Beckly are the only places you have to be careful in other then that the rest of the places are pretty nice
CCW permit holders, both of us.
Good and down in coalfields keep your doors locked double locked if you can casue they will steal you blind down there
EJ has it wrong. Rush's first comments on this was to expose Serpenthead's memo to Hillary on how to wrest the popularity Bush was receiving at the time away from him. The key point was to make it Bush's fault, and to blame the Republicans.
by Peggy Noonan; Friday, September 29, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT; opinionjournal.com
We are talking past each other, the left and right in America. I suppose we always did, but I'm noticing it more. We have different intellectual styles (rather too emotive, arguably too linear), start with different assumptions, and recognize different data. We could be speaking different languages. Which is odd, since all half the country does is talk. (The other half puts roofs on houses.) You'd think they'd find a way to break through.
And so I come to Bill Clinton and Fox News Channel. A week after it aired, the interview still dominates the dinner party. Did he rouse his base? I think so. Did he remind everyone else of what they find objectionable in him? I know so.
But in Manhattan this week at gatherings of hungry liberals--they are feeling frisky, they can smell victory coming, though this is not necessarily indicative of anything, as Manhattan liberals are traditionally the last to know, and occasionally and endearingly concede they are the last--the conversation wasn't really about Clinton, but Fox News.
One can't exaggerate how large Fox looms in the liberal imagination. They see it as huge and mighty and credit it with almost mythical powers. It is a propaganda channel whose mission it is to destroy the Democratic Party. That's part of why Clintons' performance had such salience. Finally he was standing up to an evil empire.
It is odd that they are so spooked. In October America is set to become a nation of 300 million. What a big country. Fox News's average evening prime-time viewership is less than two million. Its average daytime is less than a million. And if my mail is an indication, they're already Republicans. Fox's power is that it is an alternative to the mainstream media. It did not take its shape by deeply inhaling liberalism and slowly breathing it out.
The left sees Fox as a symptom and promoter of anarchy. The old unity, the old essential unity one used to experience when one turned on the TV in 1950 or 1980, has been fractured, broken up. We are becoming balkanized. Fox, blogs, talk radio, the Internet, citizen reporters--it's all producing cacophony, and heralds a future of No Compromise. No one trusts the information they're given anymore, as they trusted Uncle Walter. This is bad for the country.
It is an odd thing about modern liberals that they're made anxious by the unsanctioned. A conservative is more likely to see what's happening as freedom. It isn't that honest and impartial news lost its place of respect, it's that establishment liberalism lost its journalistic monopoly. And it was a monopoly.
Not everyone believed Uncle Walter. Uncle Walter, and Chet and David, were all there was. But while they reigned, Americans were buying "Conscience of a Conservative" by Barry Goldwater, and Reagan was quietly rising way out in California, and Spiro Agnew and Bill Safire were issuing mainstream hits like "effete snobs" and "nattering nabobs." In the time liberals think of as the last great unified era, Americans were rising up.
The new media did not divide us. The new media gave voice to our divisions. The result: more points of view, more subjects discussed, more data presented. This, in a great republic, a great democracy, a leader of the world in a dangerous time, is not bad but good.
Billy's "LEGACY":
Worked days and nights in the streets, backyards, basements and rooftops of Harlem, Washington Heights and the South Bronx for 8yrs. My buddy's a native Mountaineer from Pickens. No problemo.
Will Democrats Pull Bob Menedez From N.J. Race?
newsmax.com
As allegations of ethical wrongdoing against the man he selected to be U.S. senator persist, New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine on Friday endorsed Robert Menendez's campaign while Republicans continued trying to convince voters Democrats will change candidates.
Corzine resigned from the U.S. Senate in January to become governor and appointed Menendez to fill the final year of his U.S. Senate term.
But Menendez repeatedly has found himself defending alleged ethical missteps and, despite representing a state that hasn't elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate in more than 30 years, is in a tight race with Republican state Sen. Tom Kean Jr.
In response, Republicans repeatedly have raised the specter of Democrats pulling Menendez from the campaign and replacing him on the Nov. 7 ballot, much like Democrats did in 2002 with Robert Torricelli.
National Republicans held a news conference Thursday to discuss how they would respond to a switch. Republican aides often attempt to spread word a switch is imminent.
But Corzine, who as governor essentially is the state Democratic Party leader, has shown no sign that's going to happen.
"Bob Menendez was Governor Corzine's choice to replace him in the Senate in January," Corzine spokesman Anthony Coley said. "He is Governor Corzine's choice today and he will remain the governor's choice through the election."
State law prevents parties from switching candidates less than 48 days before a November election, but Democrats did so in 2002 when they replaced Torricelli with Frank Lautenberg two weeks after the deadline. Republicans sued, but the state Supreme Court upheld the switch and Lautenberg won the election.
A bid by state Senate Minority Leader Leonard Lance to limit such switches was defeated Monday by majority Democrats.
Democratic leaders say there's no chance Menendez will leave the race, noting he's competitive in polls that show the contest is very close. Menendez, a former longtime congressman, also has a massive fundraising advantage over Kean, who is the son and namesake of a popular former governor.
Very good you should really like the New River
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