Category Archives: NADA – New American Dark Ages

New American Dark Ages

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Nice Mike

Confederate Flag Takes Center Stage Once Again – New York Times

“You don’t like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag,” Mr. Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, told supporters in Myrtle Beach, according to The Associated Press.

“In fact,” he said, “if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell them what to do with the pole; that’s what we’d do.”

At a news conference on Thursday night, he said, “It is not an issue the president of the United States needs to weigh in on.” [mjh: But just right for a presidential candidate?] Mr. Huckabee, who did not say whether he considered it offensive to fly the Confederate battle flag, made his remarks as he toured the state with David Beasley, a former South Carolina governor, who had angered some conservatives by removing the flag from the Capitol dome in Columbia and displaying it elsewhere on the Capitol grounds.

And a radio advertisement paid for by an independent group used the flag issue to attack Mr. McCain, of Arizona, and praise Mr. Huckabee. “John McCain assaults our values,” it said. “Mike Huckabee understands the value of heritage.”

Dump Duhbya

Screw the Environment (again and again)

Navy Wins Exemption From Bush to Continue Sonar Exercises in Calif. – washingtonpost.com, By Marc Kaufman, Washington Post Staff Writer

The White House has exempted the Navy from two major environmental laws in an effort to free the service from a federal court’s decision limiting the Navy’s use of sonar in training exercises.

Environmentalists who had sued successfully to limit the Navy’s use of loud, mid-frequency sonar — which can be harmful to whales and other marine mammals — said yesterday that the exemptions were unprecedented and could lead to a larger legal battle over the extent to which the military has to obey environmental laws.

In a court filing Tuesday, government lawyers said President Bush had determined that allowing the use of mid-frequency sonar in ongoing exercises off Southern California was “essential to national security” and of “paramount interest to the United States.”

[mjh: Right — national security. To stop all those terrorists who use submarines instead of donkey carts.]

Dump Duhbya

One Year and Five Days Left

ABC News: New Lows in the New Year for Bush Ratings, ANALYSIS by GARY LANGER, ABC News

Beset by growing economic concerns on top of the long unpopular war in Iraq, President Bush starts the last year of his presidency with the worst approval rating of his career.

Just 32 percent of Americans now approve of the way Bush is handling his job, while 66 percent disapprove. Bush’s work on the economy has likewise reached a new low. And he shows no gain on Iraq; despite reduced violence there, 64 percent say the war was not worth fighting, 2 points from its high.

Given these complaints, 77 percent in this ABC News/Washington Post poll say the country is headed off on the wrong track — the most since the federal government shut down in a deeply unpopular budget battle in early 1996.

Three post-World War II presidents have gone lower than Bush in overall approval — Jimmy Carter (28 percent), Richard Nixon (24 percent) and Harry Truman (22 percent). But after three straight years in the doghouse, Bush is just two months away from Truman’s record of 38 months without majority approval — far beyond any other.

Bush’s ratings have stayed remarkably stable lately; he received between 33 and 36 percent approval in nine ABC/Post polls in 2007. The change in this poll, while not statistically significant, marks his first foray below one-third approval.

Intensity of sentiment, moreover, remains very heavily against the president. Fifty-one percent strongly disapprove of his work overall, while just 16 percent strongly approve — strongly negative by better than a 3-1 ratio.
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Poll: Americans Think U.S. On Wrong Track, Economy And The War Have Americans Voicing Pessimism About The Future Of The Country – CBS News

Assessments of the current state of the nation are grim as Americans have begun to choose who will vie to be the country’s next president. 75% of Americans think the country is off on the wrong track – matching the highest number ever recorded in the CBS News/New York Times Poll – and approval of President Bush remains low.

Concern about the direction of the country is accompanied by growing alarm about the condition of the economy – now the country’s most important problem. Perceptions of the condition of the national economy continue to drop, and most Americans think the worst is yet to come.

Three in four Americans think the country is off on the wrong track, matching the highest number recorded in the twenty-five years since CBS News began asking the question. Only 19% say it is headed in the right direction, matching the all-time low reached last June.

Worries about the direction of the country coincide with a low job approval rating for the president. 29% of Americans approve of the way President Bush is handling his job as president. Approval has hovered around 30% for the past year.

Dump Duhbya

Why I Believe Bush Must Go

Why I Believe Bush Must Go
Nixon Was Bad. These Guys Are Worse.
By George McGovern
Sunday, January 6, 2008; B01

As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president. …

Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly “high crimes and misdemeanors,” to use the constitutional standard. …

I have not been heavily involved in singing the praises of the Nixon administration. But the case for impeaching Bush and Cheney is far stronger than was the case against Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew after the 1972 election. The nation would be much more secure and productive under a Nixon presidency than with Bush. Indeed, has any administration in our national history been so damaging as the Bush-Cheney era?

How could a once-admired, great nation fall into such a quagmire of killing, immorality and lawlessness? …

The basic strategy of the administration has been to encourage a climate of fear, letting it exploit the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks not only to justify the invasion of Iraq but also to excuse such dangerous misbehavior as the illegal tapping of our telephones by government agents. The same fear-mongering has led government spokesmen and cooperative members of the press to imply that we are at war with the entire Arab and Muslim world — more than a billion people. …

Ironically, while Bush and Cheney made counterterrorism the battle cry of their administration, their policies — especially the war in Iraq — have increased the terrorist threat and reduced the security of the United States. …

Impeachment is unlikely, of course. But we must still urge Congress to act. Impeachment, quite simply, is the procedure written into the Constitution to deal with presidents who violate the Constitution and the laws of the land. It is also a way to signal to the American people and the world that some of us feel strongly enough about the present drift of our country to support the impeachment of the false prophets who have led us astray. This, I believe, is the rightful course for an American patriot.

As former representative Elizabeth Holtzman, who played a key role in the Nixon impeachment proceedings, wrote two years ago, “it wasn’t until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country’s laws — that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as I did during Watergate. . . . A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law — and repeatedly violates the law — thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors.” …
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See also: mjh’s blog — John Dean says to censure Bush

Search edgewiseblog for impeach
http://www.edgewiseblog.com/mjh/index.php?s=impeach

Dump Duhbya

Let Them Eat Dogs

ABQjournal Opinion: Letters to the Editor
Bush Sends Parks to the Dogs

THE THEME of “White House Christmas 2007” was Holiday in the National Parks. As a prelude to the airing on HGTV of a tour of the White House, television stations aired segments of a program in which George and Laura Bush appointed their pet dogs as Junior National Park rangers.

According to the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), “Our National Park system— the first and finest in the world— is in dire straits right now.” According to the NPCA, there is an estimated $4.9 billion backlog of park maintenance that needs to be done to preserve our national parks. …

Watching the program in which George and Laura appointed their dogs as junior rangers, I was reminded of the Roman Emperor who appointed his horse as a Roman senator to express the emperor’s contempt of the Roman Senate.

George Bush has been accused of trying to establish an imperial presidency. Judging from his contempt for the National Park system and its visitors, he obviously believes he has achieved his goal.

RONALD GRENKO
Albuquerque

[mjh: Amen, Ron. Note the irony that most National Parks don’t allow dogs (at least, on trails). One year and nine days until the End of the Bush Error.]

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Conservative Cage Fighting

I’m always delighted to see conservatives attacking each other. Beyond the entertainment value, internecine battle shows just how ugly and mean the most out-spoken conservatives can be, as well as the chaos Duhbya/Rove/Cheney have left the Republicans. So, Paul Greenberg made some less-than-reverential reference to the Jester of Bloviation, Lush Limbaugh, and, of course, got attacked by a proud dittohead. Of course, that’s the conservative way — attack, defeat, conquer — our warrior caste.

Greenberg defends himself as “more conservative than thou” — counter-attack is the only self-defense, it seems. Yearning for civility long abandoned by Conservatives, Greenberg wields his pen like a stiletto, as he explains he is a true conservative, not some brutish right-winger. But he exhibits the same binary mind of his cohort: he is true, others are false. There is only black and white in conservative eyes. Pity. Ironic, too, that the reverence for the past doesn’t include an effort to preserve the analog perspective with its infinite gradations. Conservatives despise subtlety; sophisticates like Greenberg eschew nuance.

Why do Conservatives believe they can pick and choose what to conserve? Not only is change clearly inevitable, but much of it is for the best in the long run and most of it is probably as much a mix of good and bad as anything human. When would Conservatives roll back time to and freeze the clock? Was our golden age the Fifties? (Not the Sixties, certainly.) The Raygun Error? The late 1700s? (A great time for white males with land and guns.) When was everything perfect and how much of what we have today would Conservatives give up for the goodle daze: the Internet, modern medicine, civil rights, the wheel? mjh

Townhall.com::To Be a Conservative::By Paul Greenberg

Dear Dittohead,

It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you, even though yours was not exactly a fan letter. But we learn most from our critics, and you gave me a chance to think on what it is to be a conservative in these raucous times. It seems I’m not a true conservative by your lights because I dared criticize Rush Limbaugh in passing, specifically his brash, take-no prisoners approach to political rhetoric. …

Do I have to praise Rush without reservation, vulgarity and all, to avoid being read out of conservative ranks? …

Irony is a pleasing enough style, one among many others, but all-irony-all-the-time is poisonous. It crowds out any real meaning. Much the same could be said of bluster, anger, ridicule or any other popular substitute for reasoned thought and time-tested principles.

The object of political rhetoric should be to raise the level of public discourse, not lower it. Our politics ought to be something more than a mutual exchange of insults between left and right. It ought to have a higher, more thoughtful level. [mjh: ROFLOL. Paul, you are hilarious. Remember the opprobrium you just heaped on all Democrats-cum-traitors?]

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/PaulGreenberg/2007/12/12/to_be_a_conservative

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Conservative Viscious Nonsense

I am appalled by Paul Greenberg. It is beyond mere rhetoric to slander all Democrats as wishing for defeat in Iraq. I’m used to conservative ignorance, deceit and petty meanness, but this is too much to bear.

I can’t speak for all Democrats, but I assume we all hope for one thing: the end of the Bush Error, er, Era. We can’t wait, though we’ll have to. As for Iraq, no one wants death, no one wants destruction — well, no one but a war-monger, profiteer or zealot. We want the war ended. mjh

Townhall.com::The Specter of Victory::By Paul Greenberg

A specter is haunting the Democratic Party. The long-awaited defeat of American forces in Iraq, on which so many critics of this administration have built their fondest hopes, seems to have been delayed again and – unsettling thought – may not even materialize. Even the dreaded word, Victory, is being whispered. …

The turnaround in Iraq, aka The Surge, is proving embarrassing for the kind of critics of the war who dare not admit being embarrassed. To do so would be to entertain the unthinkable thought that they might, just might, have been wrong. [mjh: Did I miss someone — anyone — on the Right admit anything going wrong in Iraq before now? Admitting being wrong is indeed unthinkable — to the Radical Wrong.]

This is no time for critics of the war to go wobbly. Their outward confidence in American defeat must be preserved, at least till next November. …

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/PaulGreenberg/2007/12/17/the_specter_of_victory