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Fri 10 Sep, 2004 11:43 am
Setting the Bush lies straight
Molly Ivins, Creators Syndicate. Molly Ivins is a syndicated columnist based in Austin, Texas
Published September 9, 2004
AUSTIN, Texas -- The wire services reported Monday that we lost seven Marines in Fallujah, Iraq. To use journalist Linda Ellerbee's line, "And so it goes . . ."
The way it does not go is as claimed last week at the Republican National Convention. I feel like the janitor in that photo of Madison Square Garden after the party, facing a sea of garbage that needs to be collected and thrown out. Even after several days and with alert bloggers to help, it's hard to catch all the lies. The number of things Sen. John Kerry is supposed to have said that he never said was the largest category.
- Kerry never said we need to have a "sensitive war." (Bonus points if you can find President Bush's references to our need for more sensitivity.)
- Kerry never said we need other countries' permission to go to war.
- Kerry has never failed to "support our troops in combat."
The whole list of defense programs Kerry supposedly voted against mostly came out of one vote against a huge defense package in 1990--he supported a smaller package, as did then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. I especially like the inclusion of the Apache helicopter in the list of weapons opposed by Kerry--that's the one that kept crashing.
The United States has not gained jobs under George Bush. The net loss is 1.1 million jobs, according to the Bush Department of Labor.
Special bonus points for the novel charge by Cheney that Kerry wants to "show Al Qaeda our softer side." Showing real imagination there.
Then we have what can most kindly be called differences of interpretation. Are things peachy-keen in Afghanistan? Hunky-dory in Iraq? Or are the only things that have fully recovered in Afghanistan the warlords and the opium trade? What have we created in Iraq--freedom or more terrorists? In either case, none dare call it peace.
Well, last week's news was not all about lies. This investigation of alleged spying for Israel out of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith's office has now broadened to include Harold Rhode, also of Feith's office, David Wurmser of Vice President Cheney's office and Richard Perle of the Defense Policy Board.
I am indebted to several bloggers for the reminder that retired Gen. Tommy Franks, according to journalist Bob Woodward, once called Feith "the dumbest [expletive] guy on the planet."
Perle had an especially bad week, having been blasted to smithereens by the new report on the Hollinger International media debacle, in which Conrad Black and Perle allegedly engaged in looting the company.
Let me put in a word of caution here about any so-called "spy charges." Recall that we have a bad habit of charging people who are quite innocent (Wen Ho Lee) and missing those who are quite guilty (Aldrich Ames and the FBI's Robert Hanssen).
In fact, what we're looking at across the board is evidence of massive incompetence. Turns out the U.S. Justice Department can't even prosecute terrorists straight. It has always seemed to me a bad idea to put a party full of people who are against government in principle ("Government is not the solution, government is the problem") in charge of running it. They just don't seem to do a very good job. In case you hadn't noticed, we have gone from massive surplus to massive deficit, and the only people who really benefited were the richest 1 percent of Americans. That leaves the other 99 percent of us worse off than we were four years ago.
I really had to take a deep breath after Bush declared that he wants to "get government on your side." Where has he been for the last four years? Almost every program he mentioned, saying he wanted to build them up, he has already cut, including job training. And I am truly dazzled by "the noive of him" in claiming that the No Child Left Behind Act, which is massively underfunded, has somehow mysteriously become a great success. If you believe that, have I got a bridge for you.
His peculiar contention that our policy in Iraq is a triumph is close to bizarre. What we have there is dangerous chaos. Does anyone honestly think this occupation is going well?
I thought the saddest theme was about how Sept. 11, 2001, had united us--and then, for reasons never explained (except by Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) at his worst), half the country and most of the rest of the world just sort of drifted away. How could that have happened? Could Bush and Cheney have had anything to do with it? For example, did they tell us a lot of things that aren't true? Republicans seemed to find it all a great mystery.
Helpful hint to Cheney: Oratorically speaking, when the call-and-response segment of your speech consists of getting your audience to boo, you are probably not on a positive track.
What Bush and his like depend on is the hostility of the lower middle class toward the middle class.
The lower middle class would prefer to hand power to a Bush or a Cheney than to fight for a fair wage for themselves. They subsist. The see no hope. They have no skills. And their pleasure is derived from hearing someone like you speak of how 99 percent of us are doing worse.
They weren't doing well to begin with and Bush is counting on these losers to fight for him and to vote for him.
Sadly, they are among the ranks who do.
Padmasambava, what you said is very like the theme of a book titled, What's Wrong With Kansas?
Here is a review printed by Amazon:
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
The largely blue collar citizens of Kansas can be counted upon to be a "red" state in any election, voting solidly Republican and possessing a deep animosity toward the left. This, according to author Thomas Frank, is a pretty self-defeating phenomenon, given that the policies of the Republican Party benefit the wealthy and powerful at the great expense of the average worker. According to Frank, the conservative establishment has tricked Kansans, playing up the emotional touchstones of conservatism and perpetuating a sense of a vast liberal empire out to crush traditional values while barely ever discussing the Republicans' actual economic policies and what they mean to the working class. Thus the pro-life Kansas factory worker who listens to Rush Limbaugh will repeatedly vote for the party that is less likely to protect his safety, less likely to protect his job, and less likely to benefit him economically. To much of America, Kansas is an abstract, "where Dorothy wants to return. Where Superman grew up." But Frank, a native Kansan, separates reality from myth in What's the Matter with Kansas and tells the state's socio-political history from its early days as a hotbed of leftist activism to a state so entrenched in conservatism that the only political division remaining is between the moderate and more-extreme right wings of the same party. Frank, the founding editor of The Baffler and a contributor to Harper's and The Nation, knows the state and its people. He even includes his own history as a young conservative idealist turned disenchanted college Republican, and his first-hand experience, combined with a sharp wit and thorough reasoning, makes his book more credible than the elites of either the left and right who claim to understand Kansas. --John Moe
Of course, one of the major reasons I've always loved Molly Ivins is that she once said that if she had to stop writing, she'd develop a line of BBQ flavored vaginal get. What a woman!!!
Sounds like people in Kansas aren't too bright.
Perhaps Dorothy Toto and others either will not be in Kansas anymore, or maybe Kansas and other places will show Michael Moore's movie and want to make themselves less available for recruitment.
Perhaps not.
You gotta love Molly Ivins in any event!
Dare2think, sometimes when people are so entrenched in poverty, religion becomes their only comfort and the "good old days" always seem to be better than they really were. I don't think intelligence has much to do with that kind of thinking--to me, it's more a search for anything that makes them feel there might be hope--even believing in promises that are based on falsehoods.
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