Category: Politics

Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly waxes incredulous at Rush Limbaugh’s latest piece of… well, treason is about the only word for it:

The right-wing host went on a similar tirade yesterday when talking about the economic recovery package: “I want everything he’s doing to fail… I want the stimulus package to fail…. I do not want this to succeed.”

Limbaugh is, without ambiguity, rooting for failure. In the midst of an economic crisis, Limbaugh quite openly admitted that if Obama’s economic policies are successful, it would undermine the talk-show host’s worldview. As such, Limbaugh wants desperately to see more Americans suffer, more workers unemployed, more businesses close up shop. […] Limbaugh would much prefer a suffering nation than a reevaluation of conservative ideas.

Keep in mind, of course, that such talk under Bush’s presidency would force someone from the airwaves. If a prominent progressive figure said, just as the president was sending troops into war in early 2003, “I want everything he’s doing to fail. I want the war in Iraq to fail. I do not want the president’s national security agenda to succeed,” he or she would lose all advertising revenue and be fired. In the midst of a crisis, Americans rooting against America, based on nothing but ideological rigidity, are pariahs.

Or, at least, they used to be.

Digby at Hullabaloo:

But the fact that the white house consciously and knowingly used anal rape to control, interrogate and punish prisoners and went to some length to protect those who were doing it from scrutiny, still has the power to stun me.
Are we really just going to let this stuff go? Really?

[w]hen the GOP enforces a party line vote against the stimulus bill and then goes on Sunday morning talk shows to complain about the lack of bipartisanship in the White House, it’s like a shopkeeper complaining that he’s got no sales while he’s waving a gun at anyone who tries to enter the store.

John Scalzi at Whatever.

British MP Gerald Kaufman, speaking in Parliament:
(Via Juan Cole.)

As you can see here. Which reminds me: where’s Riverbend?

‘So What?’
Not unexpected, but still outrageous.

I recently read Jane Mayer’s brilliant book “The Dark Side”, about the way in which the Bush regime embraced and justified a policy of torture. I kept meaning to blog about it, but now (via Appel, standing in for Sully) I see that Publius has written a review which says pretty much what I would have said (but better).

In reading Mayer, one striking aspect of the administration’s anti-terrorism policies is how completely haphazard and impetuous they were. There was practically no deliberation within the government, particularly among the branches who (1) actually knew something about this stuff; and (2) were, you know, statutorily authorized to do something.
Instead, a lawless cabal of ignorant people – Yoo, Addington, etc. – decided to craft national anti-terrorism policy having basically no experience in the relevant fields (military, terrorism, etc.). The disparity between (1) the magnitude of decisions being made, and (2) the relative ignorance of the people making them is simply staggering.

Please check it out.

“I thought you would torture me, and when you didn’t, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That’s why I decided to cooperate.”

(A jihadist captured in Iraq, speaking to U.S. interrogator Matthew Alexander. from his article “I’m Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq” in today’s Washington Post.)

What a truly historic moment. McCain’s concession speech was gracious; it was depressing that his supporters responded in such an ugly way.

Alex Massie draws our attention to what is probably the most over-the-top description of John McCain yet written. This is from David Gelernter in the Weekly Standard:

There is no single English word for McCain the hero, the moral entity. But in Hebrew he would be called a tsaddik–a man of such nobility and moral substance that he approaches holiness. If this assertion sounds crazy, that only shows how little we have thought about the issue.

Who knew? But doesn’t this sound just a little bit… oh, I don’t know, elitist?!