Williams went on to suggest that Obama might "like a cloth flag and a
match," and called the "Democrat [sic]
Party" the "domestic enemy."
BILL HEMMER (co-host): All right, Barack Obama wants to be president,
right? This week he was asked why he no longer wears an American flag
lapel pin on his suit. Instead the Illinois senator saying that he wants
to show Americans his beliefs are a testament to his patriotism. How's
this going to impact his campaign? Let's debate that now with radio talk
show host Mark Williams and the Washington editor for The Nation,
David Corn. Gentlemen, welcome to both of you here.
WILLIAMS: Thank you.
CORN: Good to be here.
HEMMER: David, you first, now how does this decision win votes?
That's the name of the game, right?
CORN: Uh, excuse me. Last night, on this very network, there was an
interview with Fred Thompson. Guess what he had on his lapel? No flag
pin. I went on to the websites this morning of John McCain and Mitt
Romney. Found lots of pictures of them, no flag pin, flag pin. I looked
at Congressional Quarterly this morning, and I did see a picture
of Larry Craig, the disgraced senator who's not giving up his seat.
There was a flag pin.
HEMMER: I don't, OK.
CORN: This is a big nothing. Unless you want to talk about everybody
else who's wearing and not wearing a flag pin, I don't see how this
makes a difference in the race.
HEMMER: I want to bring in Mark in a moment. Have these guys been
asked about it yet? I don't think they have. I think it's Obama that's
on record as addressing this. Mark, what do you make of this? How does
it win votes? That is the name of the game.
WILLIAMS: It uh, well first of all, Obama's very different than
those other names, in that Obama says he took his flag pin off after
9-11, and he felt, apparently, some sort of an affinity or some sort of
a connection, because at that point he felt it OK to come out of the
closet as the domestic insurgent he is.
CORN: Oh, you know --
WILLIAMS: The Democrat [sic] Party is coming out of the closet as
the domestic insurgency and the domestic enemy. We've got John
"Skippy" Edwards, who wants us all to march off to the doctor for
mandatory physicals. Hillary Clinton, who wants us to be denied the
right to work for a living unless we live a politically correct
prescribed lifestyle for our universal health insurance. Obama, who says
9-11 is his cue to take off the American flag --
CORN: Mark, Mark --
WILLIAMS: And then now David Corn equating an American flag with a
pervert in a toilet.
CORN: That's wrong, Mark. You have your facts wrong.
HEMMER: He's calling him a "domestic insurgent," David?
CORN: Hey, hey, Bill, Bill, let me make a suggestion here. If you
want to have an intelligent debate, you should have someone who knows
the facts. What Obama says is that he wore a flag pin after 9-11. That's
not that 9-11 caused him to take it off. And that after --
WILLIAMS: Took it off after 9-11.
CORN: No, no. And then he took it off sometime after 9-11 --
WILLIAMS: As a - as a good ally --
[crosstalk]
HEMMER: Hang on.
CORN: Let me finish.
[crosstalk]
CORN: He took it off because he didn't like the run-up to the war,
and he decided that you show your patriotism by your ideals, not by what
you wear on your lapel. So you have it wrong, Mark. Mark, you owe him an
apology.
HEMMER: David, you've made your point. Mark, is that the case? Is
that a fact?
CORN: You owe him an apology, Mark.
HEMMER: Hang on, David. Mark, go ahead.
WILLIAMS: He took it off after 9/11. He said that he felt that the
flag was becoming something -- it was becoming too noticeable, too high
profile. He thought that people were wearing it in place of showing
their patriotism. I mean, come on, what has Obama done to demonstrate
the patriotism that he says doesn't belong on his lapel? What's he done
to demonstrate that, except get out there, badmouth this country, and
help demoralize the troops, and help do his part to undermine this
nation?
CORN: You know, there are plenty of generals who don't support this
war who have spoken out against it. I guess they're all unpatriotic in
your view too. More Americans than not say the war was a mistake. Are
they unpatriotic as well, Mark? You're putting yourself into a very
small corner.
WILLIAMS: Are they throwing their flags into the gutter?
CORN: No one's throwing their flags into the gutter.
WILLIAMS: Maybe Obama would like a cloth flag and a match.
CORN: You know, you really should stick to some facts. I know on
radio talk, rhetoric is what counts the most, but you're misstating the
facts, and now you're branding everybody who's against the war as being
unpatriotic? Some people would say that that's unpatriotic.
WILLIAMS: I'm talking about Obama --
HEMMER: Mark, you get the last word. Fire away.
WILLIAMS: I'm talking about Obama and the domestic enemies in the
Democrat Party --
CORN: Oh, this is absurd.
WILLIAMS: -- who stand for everything this country was founded to
oppose.
HEMMER: You guys are hot.
CORN: Well, I'm right and he's wrong.
HEMMER: David, thank you. Mark, thanks to you as well.
WILLIAMS: Thanks.
HEMMER: Something tells me that this isn't the last of this debate.
See you guys.
The Coming 'Stab in the Back' Campaign
Having exposed their country to the ignominy of certain defeat in
Iraq, the Bush Administration and its neoconservative allies are seeking
to salvage their crumbling reputations by blaming their critics for the
catastrophe their policies have wrought. We are witnessing the
foundation for a post-Iraq "stab in the back"
campaign.
The tactic--Dolchstoßlegende, which means, literally, "dagger stab
legend"--is associated with attacks by German anti-Semites on Jews in
the aftermath of World War I and is a familiar response for frustrated
American right-wingers when reality fails to live up to their
ideological fantasies. Following the inevitable collapse of nationalist
China, unhinged accusations of a liberal conspiracy inside the US
government that purposely "lost" China to the Commies ruled the foreign
policy debate.
Consider these words from GOP Senator William Jenner of
Indiana:
"This country today is in the hands of a secret inner coterie which is
directed by agents of the Soviet Union.... [A] secret invisible
government...[has] led our country down the road to destruction." The
China lobby--the AIPAC of its day--tirelessly policed American politics
to insure that no one with national aspiration dared recognize the
reality of the Communist Chinese victory.
During Vietnam, Ronald Reagan tried to blame protesters for killing
troops, charging, "Some American will die tonight because of the
activity in our streets." The right created the myth of antiwar
protesters spitting on soldiers, although a detailed study by Jerry
Lembcke, in his The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of
Vietnam, found not a single verifiable incident of such behavior. And
while it is a given among conservatives--and even reporters--that
critical media coverage somehow hampered the war effort, Daniel Hallin's
The Uncensored War notes that most reports, particularly on television,
rarely deviated from patriotic, pro-American assumptions. Indeed, the
Army's official history of the media's role in the conflict, published
by the Army Center of Military History, explicitly rejects this line.
None of this prevented Norman Podhoretz from reviving the charge in 1982
with a thinly researched book-length essay called Why We Were in
Vietnam. Fortunately, the country was not in the mood; the vast majority
of Americans surveyed over the past thirty years have said US
involvement was a mistake from the start. (Nowhere in his book did
Podhoretz admit that one of those leftists calling explicitly for a US
defeat was the then-editor of Commentary--a fellow by the name of
"Norman Podhoretz." He argued in 1971 that a Vietcong victory was
preferable to "the indefinite and unlimited bombardment by American
pilots in American planes of every country in that already devastated
region.")
The coming campaign's foundations are already in place. They rest on
three building blocks: an attack on the loyalty of those willing to
recognize reality; the construction of an alternative reality in which
victory is deemed to be imminent; and, finally, a shifting of blame for
a supposedly premature withdrawal to those who refuse to play along.
Matthew Yglesias, in the Center for American Progress's "Think Again"
column, noticed preparations for such a campaign as early as May 2004.
Roll Call's Morton Kondracke pretended that "the media and politicians"
were "in danger of talking the United States into defeat in Iraq," while
Tony Blankley of the Washington Times added, "the president's political
and media opposition want the president's defeat more than America's
victory." Two years later, when most Americans had turned against the
war, Spencer Ackerman, writing in The New Republic, noticed that not a
single contributor to a National Review symposium advocated withdrawal.
Typical were comments like those of former Bush Pentagon analyst Michael
Rubin, who announced, "The US is losing in Iraq because American
politicians and the general public have not decided they want or need to
win."
George W. Bush has both feet firmly planted in the "stab" camp, and
offered it aid and comfort when he tried to link the "unmistakable
legacy of Vietnam"--"boat people," "re-education camps" and "killing
fields"--to calls for withdrawal from Iraq. Podhoretz's recent entry
into the sweepstakes is, appropriately, a retread of his 1982 attack on
his ex-friends and former self. In his clinically delusional book World
War IV, Podhoretz paints Bush as a "great president" and professes to
see in Iraq "enormous strides that had been made in democratizing and
unifying the country under a workable federal system." No less
implausibly, he compares war opponents, like former National Security
Advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, to a "domestic
insurgency" with a "life-and-death stake" in America's defeat. Podhoretz
flatters himself and his fellow armchair generals with his claim that
his screeds in Commentary and the Wall Street Journal editorial pages
represent a "war of ideas...no less bloody than the one being fought by
our troops in the Middle East."
Podhoretz's paranoid ravings notwithstanding, it is likely that he has
been less effective in laying the groundwork for the post-Iraq stab
campaign than second-generation neocon generalissimo William Kristol,
who despite mountains of contrary evidence professes to detect an
"astoundingly" successful surge and a military situation that is "better
than anyone expected." Kristol's Weekly Standard recently ran a cover
drawing of an American soldier viewed from behind within the sights of
an unseen weapon, beneath the headline Does Washington Have His Back?
Another Standard headline reads: They Don't Really Support the Troops.
Such visual, visceral propaganda attacks would have fit in perfectly
with those employed against Jews by right-wing anti-Semites in the days
before Hitler. One might have imagined that American neocons would have
pulled back before crossing that line.
The campaign is coming; forewarned is forearmed.
10/2/2007
"The Boy" is not living up to my expectations
and I know, that's my problem, not his. I have lowered my expectations to the
point where all he has to do is show up for school, go to bed before 0200 and
not call Christy & me names in our presence. When you are dealing with someone
who doesn't give a popcorn fart about you or your opinion, and he knows you
won't physically abuse him then nothing you do will have any impression on him.
We have apparently taught "The Boy" only one thing in the past 17 years and that
is; If I throw a tantrum like a 5 year old, people will let me do whatever I
want to do, they will even buy me stuff just to get me to shut up and leave them
alone. I thought he would eventually learn that the world may appease him for a
little while but eventually they will tire of his manipulating and shut him
out... but he didn't.
I had a long talk with Christy and we
agree that he really is incapable of seeing even 10 minutes into the future. He
doesn't comprehend the meaning of consequences because he has never excepted the
consequences he has had as having any relationship to his wellbeing. He has always been like that but
it's never really mattered before. I am very concerned. I can't talk to him on
any level, he gets pissed off, calls me an asshole under his breath and leaves
the house or goes into his room. Christy can get thru to him sometimes but it
wears off quickly, he seems to become immune to reason after a day... or less.
He goes back to the self gratifying, self destructive ways. Most frustrating
kid I have ever known, it would be easier to deal with if I didn't care about him so
much, he is funny, articulate and bright, really a lot of fun to be around when
there are no conflicts. Christy said this morning that he probably needs a
psychiatrist. Of course he does but he has had a psychiatrist and he wouldn't
participate then and he won't buy in now. The doc would talk to us and try to
diagnose his problem and he did conclude rather early on that "The Boy" has
severe ADHD and he prescribed medication but if "The Boy" won't take his
medication there is nothing we can do about it.
It's a quandary...
One of the problems is that "The Boy" is tied into an online
game, I have talked about it before. The characters in the game are called
"Avatars", they look like Saturday morning cartoon images. They are created by
the players and they are extensions of the egos and personalities of the
players. People, not just kids, grown-ups get caught up in it too, are seduced
by the idea that they can place their avatars' in any situation, they can do
anything they want to do, there is no one to stop them, no one to rebuke them.
They can lie, steal, rape and kill. The worst thing that can happen to an avatar
is that it gets killed by another avatar but with a click of the button and a
code word they are back in the game as though nothing has happened. People are
apparently seduced by the power, wealth and prestige they get/earn when they are
online. The weaker and more immature the player is in real life the more
gratification he gets when he is online. It's sad and a little pathetic but you
can't convince the players... and there are millions of them... that there might
be something wrong with the fact that they can't stop playing... the fantasy
world becomes real and the real world becomes an extension of the fantasy, an
annoyance, a faint buzzing sound in the back ground.
I will disassemble the PC and take it to the shop if he
doesn't get to school by 1100... per Christy.
10/3/2007
Micki manages the Mini Mart, she works most weekday mornings,
she is who she is... nothing anyone believes or says about her will change that,
but she and everyone who knows she exists, believes something about her
different than anyone else. Customers, depending on their needs,
have only a fleeting impression of her, if any at all. If she just takes their money they won't even remember what she
looks like, if they need directions and she can help them, then she is
knowledgeable, if she is unable to help or wrong then she is fallible. Everyone
that meets her carries away a different impression, every time you meet her you
add to your knowledge base, she is a friend, a sister, a
daughter, a mother, a lover, a confidant. I am sure that depending on who you
ask, at some point in her interaction with the world she has been deemed to be virtually
everything from rude, pleasant, impatient, understanding, angry, loving... the
whole gamut. Most people reading this did not even know she existed but now you
do, you may never meet her but you know she exists because I told you she did...
unless I made her up, it is entirely possible that I did just make her up simply
to make some vague point about knowledge, faith, belief and religion. People who have been to the Mini-Mart
know...
Religion relies on your ability to believe what you can not
perceive with your five senses, everything you know about any religion is
gleaned from cobbling together something someone wrote or something someone said. Your mind can
expand on a concept and it will try to find a way to make it fit the belief...
we see examples of it every day, if your belief is that Hillary Clinton is evil then you
will believe anything you hear, see or read that supports that belief and
disregard anything that refutes it. The hard thing to do is to admit that you
are capable of deceiving yourself. Just go back and look at the slander-mail you
have passed on that turned out to be a hoax or a totally contrived
misrepresentation of the truth. I have done it in the past, I learned the hard
way to always check out
everything. I read because I have been fooled so many times before.
I sometimes
wish I could repress my skeptic intellect and lose myself in some religious
ideology, I am told life would be much simpler, more well defined... but I can't do it. I
tried, half heartedly I admit, to get involved but from my perspective the whole scene just
reeks of sanctimonious hypocrisy and delusion... contrived, superficiality
and I feel crushed by it, and I can't get past it... The people are very nice, salt of the earth
types, I like the social aspect of church but I gag on the doctrine. Best I
just do my own thing and try not to get caught up in any conversation that
pits my beliefs and opinions against someone else's heartfelt dogma.
Religion is a
difficult subject, I know everyone has strong beliefs, so do I. I can
respect that on one level but I have a hard time. I guess that the reality
is that we respect the beliefs of others as much they respect ours. I really
get defensive when someone dismisses my 64 years of life, searching for
understanding and inner peace. To tell me I am wrong or misguided, haven't
studied hard enough, haven't trusted, haven't had faith, or I haven't seen
the light is just insensitive arrogance, it just turns me off cold... and it pisses me off.
I have reached a place where I am comfortable with my conclusions. It really
is easier for me to believe in random chaos than to accept that all this
trauma and pain is a part of some grand plan. If it is all just natural
phenomena then we can just forget all the agonizing and deal with it. We can
treat the pain, find some way to deal with the chaos enjoy the peace, laugh
at the irony and silliness of it all. One reality everyone accepts, we are on a doomed planet in a chaotic
constantly changing universe we know virtually nothing about. As the
Republicans say, that's the truth, deal with it.
