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Friday, September 28, 2007
Limbaugh Controversy Over "Real" SoldiersI'm a little late to this party, but there's still some punch in the bowl. The Media Mutters crowd are trying to raise a stink over a Limbaugh comment on yesterday's show: CALLER 2: No, it’s not, and what’s really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.
LIMBAUGH: The phony soldiers.
CALLER 2: The phony soldiers. If you talk to a real soldier, they are proud to serve. They want to be over in Iraq. They understand their sacrifice, and they’re willing to sacrifice for their country. You can guess the take; "Rush is saying that if you don't support the war, you're a phony soldier." Except that's not what he's saying. Read the exchange again, and see what Rush was responding to: ...they never talk to real soldiers. (Italics added). Well, if they're not talking to "real" soldiers, who are they talking to? Well, fake soldiers, and Rush goes on to elucidate: Here is a Morning Update that we did recently, talking about fake soldiers. This is a story of who the left props up as heroes. They have their celebrities and one of them was Army Ranger Jesse Macbeth. Now, he was a "corporal." I say in quotes. Twenty-three years old. What made Jesse Macbeth a hero to the anti-war crowd wasn't his Purple Heart; it wasn't his being affiliated with post-traumatic stress disorder from tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. No. What made Jesse Macbeth, Army Ranger, a hero to the left was his courage, in their view, off the battlefield, without regard to consequences. He told the world the abuses he had witnessed in Iraq, American soldiers killing unarmed civilians, hundreds of men, women, even children. In one gruesome account, translated into Arabic and spread widely across the Internet, Army Ranger Jesse Macbeth describes the horrors this way: "We would burn their bodies. We would hang their bodies from the rafters in the mosque." So Rush even brings up an example of a phony soldier. But of course the Left isn't really interested in what Rush meant; this is just a convenient club for the folks who want to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. Rush was not criticizing soldiers who are against the war. He's criticizing phony soldiers who are against the war and the media who accept their claims uncritically. Sadly, a couple otherwise sane people seem to agree with the cranks on this one. Labels: Phony Soldiers, Rush Limbaugh
Thursday, September 27, 2007
New McCain AdsJohn McCain has released two new ads in New Hampshire, Live Free and One Man. I highly recommend them both, but keep some Kleenex handy as the emotions are strong, especially at the beginning of "One Man". Labels: 2008 Candidates, John McCain
Monday, September 24, 2007
Krugman: Yes, Southern Whites Are Bigots, But Only the Rich OnesThat's what I get out of the combination of his column today combined with the blog. Starting from the column: And yes, Southern white exceptionalism is about race, much more than it is about moral values, religion, support for the military or other explanations sometimes offered. There’s a large statistical literature on the subject, whose conclusion is summed up by the political scientist Thomas F. Schaller in his book “Whistling Past Dixie”: “Despite the best efforts of Republican spinmeisters to depict American conservatism as a nonracial phenomenon, the partisan impact of racial attitudes in the South is stronger today than in the past.” But from the blog: In fact, if you look at voting behavior, low-income whites in the South are not very different from low-income whites in the rest of the country. You can see this both in Larry Bartels’s “What’s the matter with What’s the Matter With Kansas?” (pdf), Figure 3, and in a comprehensive study of red state-blue state differences by Gelman et al (pdf). It’s relatively high-income Southern whites who are very, very Republican. Can I get away with saying that rich white trash are the problem? Of course you can, Paul. God only knows how Krugman manages to keep so many contrary thoughts in his head at one time. Democratic voters are smarter than Republicans, but poorer than Republicans and less likely to be racists. Got it? Labels: Paul Krugman
The Enemy of My Enemy, Part IIThis post over at the Daily Kos has gone around the blogosphere quite quickly. Why I Have A Little Crush on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
I know I'm a Jewish lesbian and he'd probably have me killed. But still, the guy speaks some blunt truths about the Bush Administration that make me swoon... How in the world do you parody that? Labels: Daily Kos, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Sunday, September 23, 2007
The Enemy of My Enemy Is My FriendThat sort of thinking is seldom admitted to as frankly as in this statement by the Columbia Coalition Against the War. As Columbia only very recently announced, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be speaking in Roone Arledge auditorium this Monday. A number of students and student organizations have already announced plans for a protest rally the same day. We are not among them. We do not endorse Ahmadinejad or his views, many of which are inexcusable. However, as opponents of a US military strike against Iran, we have serious concerns with the content of some of the hostility that has been expressed to his presence, and specifically with the planned protest.
We fear the demonization of Ahmadinejad, because we think this demonization contributes to the likelihood of war. In the current climate, with many on the political right in the U.S. and Israel pushing for air strikes, a campaign against Ahmadinejad is dangerous, regardless of the intentions of most involved. A call to action, unless it prominently rules out war, implies military action. It's a tough balancing act that "progressives" must face: how to maintain some credibility as human rights campaigners, while avoiding the endorsement of any action to improve the human rights situation in Iran. Labels: Columbia University, Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
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