Bush Supporters' Aftermath Thread V

About half that article was about reporting of gay issues, gay rights, gay marriages. I'm getting the impression that the author has some personal issues there. Maybe he's a bit insecure in his own sexuality.

And he doesn't like the pictures of the fashion models. Damning.

Still, that's not the issue here. We are speaking about the frank editorial of 12.31.07 critical of the present Administration, and I'd like to hear Tico on that, instead of slathering "liberal" on the newspaper.

(In this country btw you can vote Liberal if you want to. They are a kind of median between the Conservatives (Margaret Thatcher's party) and New Labour (Tony Blair's). Why do Americans misuse the term so?)

You already heard me on that, McT. The NYT is welcome to its opinion, and as I said, I'm not surprised -- and frankly I'd be surprised if anyone was surprised -- to read an anti-Bush editorial in its Op/Ed pages.



Why do the English misspell so many words?

Let the record show, Tico avoided the issue. Again.


(I used to watch Perry Mason)

tico
You make the claim that , admit you haven't read the paper in years (leaving us uninformed but justifiably suspicious regarding how much you read it even prior to that point in time) then post Okrent's piece from 2004 to serve as evidence for you claim.

But nowhere does Okrent describe the paper as "anti-Bush". As McT notes, pretty much half the article deals with what Okrent sees as "cheerleading" for gay marriage and gay rights.

Otherwise, he speaks of an (often unconscious) adherence to 'liberal' ideas and values which, though appropriate in cosmopolitan and culturally varied NY city, would strike a lot of 'typical small town midwest americans' as alien. Of course, that is the same point as I note in the paragraph above. And generally speaking, this applies to any big city newspaper in any country...cultural liberalism (as opposed to cultural conservatism) is a function (in a free country) of diverse ethnicities and cultural groups. The Dallas Morning News is inevitably more 'liberal' than the Lubbock Lariat.

He mentions that, at the time, five columnists were liberal and two conservative. He adds that the two conservatives are not completely - 360 degree - conservatives and both have some area of political philosophy not shared by, perhaps, tico. No such attenuating addendum is bothered with for the other five columnists we note. Not Krugman's economic ideas, for example, which have always been strongly influenced by Hayek and Friedman. Presently, of course, we have Tierney, Brooks and now, Kristol. But you haven't read the paper in three or more years tico which is no barrier at all to your certainty that the paper hasn't changed, another claim you've made.

Okrent serves up the little gem "liberal theology" to describe what the paper can be suffering from. I bet you liked that one, tico. I bet by way of contrast, you don't much have a taste for a description of the Wash Times or Fox or Townhall as being in the unconscious and tenacious grip of "conservative theology".

A lot of what Okrent thinks and says here is clearly correct. As he also notes, there's much of what he writes about that he wouldn't change.

But the big failure of the piece is that Okrent's 'observations' are without any historical comparison at all. Apparently, his means of comparison are entirely contemporary and arise out of letters from this partisan side versus letters from that partisan side. We wonder, rather briefly, what an ombudsman at the National Review or Fox might conclude, given the same methodology. The chances of seeing such a thing are about zero, of course, but it's worth a brief thought.

To claim that the paper is "anti-Bush" (which, again, tico does without any support from Okrent in the claim) is meaningless by itself, outside of some affinity for totalitarian-style control of information that dutifully supports existing power structures. For the charge to have any meaning or traction such that we can actually use it to think with, comparisons with earlier periods are necessary. Neither Okrent or tico set foot here. As Molly Ivens put it several years ago when bumping into the growing rightwing refrain of "We just don't understand it...never before has the media so zestfully promoted president-hatred," they need only to clear out the cobwebs and peer back into the dim dim history of...the last administration.

So, you tell us, tico, from out of your proud and aggressive certainty, how many columns critical of Bush has Dowd written and how many columns critical of Clinton has Dowd written?

In the period before the runup to the war in Iraq, how much coverage of Bush policies expressed a viewpoint antithetical to the administration and how many expressed a view of the opposite sort?

You don't know any of these things because you are both too lazy and too ideologically fixated to risk your self-certainty. You understand your own country and its history in a paltry and superficial manner which comes as a consequence of your comfortable bath in modern conservative movement propaganda. I've posted this 1952 letter from Ike to his brother Edgar before but what a fine time for the reminder...



As a last point, one thing Okrent risks getting really wrong is here (he's speaking of matters related to homosexuality)...

The proper function of journalism isn't to elucidate or discover or promote some middle way through acting as a stenographer for both of two presently existing versions of political ideologies. What's the 'middle way' or the 'three dimensional perspective' between Tito and his contemporaries?

But even if one conceived of the role of journalism in such a silly and simplistic manner, how about, so as to three dimensionally balance the recent hiring of Bill Kristol to the NY Times, we were to request that the Times also take on Noam Chomsky? What are the chances of that? And of course the reason is because of how biased to the left the NY Times and the mainstream media are.

How can any self-respecting member of the media not be anti-Bush? He and his administration have lied us into a major war, produced massive deficits, introduced torture, botched the capture or killing of bin-Laden, ignored healthcare reform, etc.

Advocate, if Bush knew for certain there was no WMD in Iraq, then how come one of the CIA's experts dealing with that issue, Valerie Plame, how come she didn't know that?

Not knowing for certain that they do have WMD isn't the same thing as knowing for certain that they don't have WMD, is it? Bush (and ESPECIALLY his advisers who consistently addressed the media) made it out as a certainty. That was the lie.

Cycloptichorn

Okie, that is a bit silly. Plame is not THE expert on everything. She was a GS-15 who, I understand, focused on Iran. I doubt that she had any relationship with monitoring Iraq's WMD situation.

Even Republican candidates are divorcing themselves from Bush's record.

ELECTION '08
The Beginning Of The End Of Bush
In Jan. 2007, Newsweek conducted a poll asking Americans if "they wish the Bush presidency [were] simply over." Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they did, including 59 percent of independents and 21 percent of Republicans. Today in Iowa, the final chapter of President Bush's two terms in office will begin to unfold as an estimated 200,000 to 240,000 voters participate in the first nominating battle of the 2008 election. With Bush's approval rating hovering around 33 percent -- and with roughly 67 percent of Americans believing that the country is on the "wrong track" -- a common thread running through the campaigns of the candidates from both parties is the need for a break from the policies and passions of the Bush years. Last month, Democratic pollster Peter Hart and Republican pollster Bill McInturff surveyed whether Americans were looking for "small adjustments," "to turn the page," or to start "a brand new book." Respondents preferred "a brand new book" by a margin of 17 percentage points over "turn the page" and 22 percentage points over "small adjustments." As the Des Moines Register editorializes today, for a country yearning for a new beginning, participants in the Iowa caucuses have "a more awesome responsibility this year than ever" to pick someone who can fix the problems wrought by eight years of Bush.

RUNNING AWAY FROM BUSH: On MSNBC's Hardball last month, host Chris Matthews asked Sen. John McCain (R-TX): "Should the Bushies vote for you because you're the closest thing to keeping him in for a third term?" Instead of embracing the President, McCain laughed awkwardly before saying, "I hope they would vote for me because they recognize the challenges, particularly in national security." McCain isn't the only conservative avoiding comparisons to Bush. In a recent CNN debate, Bush's name was never once mentioned by any of the candidates from his own party. Writing in Foreign Affairs, former Republican Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee directly criticized the Bush administration for having an "arrogant bunker mentality" that "has been counterproductive at home and abroad." Huckabee's rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, originally attacked him over his criticism, saying he owed Bush an apology, but now Romney is "distancing himself from his party's unpopular president" by calling him a bad manager.

THE CHANGE ARGUMENT: "After a yearlong campaign in Iowa, the Republican and Democratic presidential front-runners are boiling down their arguments to a six-letter word: change," writes Bloomberg's Julianna Goldman. Though each candidate has a different idea of what form that change should take and how it can best be delivered, almost all of them are arguing that it is necessary. In a recent event in Indianola, IA, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) mentioned the word "change" 21 times. In his televised closing argument yesterday, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) asked, "Who can take us in a fundamentally new direction?" Romney says he wants to bring the "spirit of change" to Washington, DC. "If we don't make some changes to the way we do business in this country," argues Huckabee, "there won't be enough of an America left to still be fighting for." Former Democratic senator John Edwards tells crowds that "unless you've got a president who's willing to take on" special interests to which the Bush administration catered, "nothing's going to change." Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), who has raised more money this quarter than any other Republican, considers himself "a genuine true believer that this country is ready for a real change."

-- americanprogressaction.com

What is telling about your article is that only 21 percent of republicans wished Bush's tenure was over.

If the majority of Americans think that Iraq and our economy are the major issues for today, why would they want to vote in republicans into office for more of the same? Amusing at best, sad at most.

ci

I think it is simply a truth about human populations where some percentage, perhaps around 20%, are not constitutionally able to be very autonomous in their thinking. This isn't a thesis I've had time or inclination to follow up with study so I can't express it as more than a tempting notion. But anecdotally at least it has some traction for me.

And on the topic of fiscal responsibility...




http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/

If pictures speak a thousand words, republicans have not learned how to read. They continue to parrot that republicans are better at fiscal management of our government coffers. Go figure.

Too lazy .... probably true. Too busy ... absolutely. You will go to great lengths to preserve and protect the image you hold of one of your favorite leftist rags ... meanwhile, I've got better things to do than survey articles written by Dowd.



Who are we talking about ... Jermaine, Jackie, Marlon, and Michael?

As the train leaves the station, the rest of america waves to the steadfast, if forlorn, Bush supporters standing there by the bombed out old station-house. A better future waits elsewhere.

Huckabee's at the next station.

Tell him to hold onto his hat. At seventy miles per hour, passenger trains push a significant wind blast.

Looking at this graph, it appears that the Clinton admin at one point had a higher national debt (as a percentage of GDP) then the projected 2008 budget.

Also where the Clinton line began to drop was when the Republican Congress and Newt Gingrich began to affect the budget.

Also note where 9/11 is on the graph and how the line appears to be about flat now after recovering from 9/11.

It would be interesting to see the Democratic Congress overlain on this graph. Reagan was a great president but the Democrats would not allow many of his proposals to cut bureaucracies to pass; remember Tip Oneill.

What Reagan proposals were they? The fact is that congress approved, almost to the dollar, Reagan budgets.

BTW, Clinton forced Gingrich to back down on the latter's tax-cut proposals, which would unbalance the budget. Gingrich deserves little credit for Clinton's pay-as-you-go surpluses.