Impeach?

[Longhorn_Platinum]

:question: Will the demonic rats go for it, or not?

[Beowulf]

You know they'll at least try so I voted yes.

[Apollo5600]

Same

[Proud American]

There is no knowledge that Bush had fellatio in the whitehouse so there is no grounds for impeachment.

[A-Fletch]

It would be a waste of time and a HUGE waste of the little political capital the Democrats have. NO.

[Popperite]

That would probably be the most foolish and damaging thing they can do right now.

[UnkHiram]

Of Course they will, Lets be serious.

[Naturalized-Texan]

There are no grounds for impeachment, so it won't happen.

[Lubbock]

I think NT's right. But the fact remains, there will be an effort.

That CSN Conyers is sitting on "go" and he can't wait for the starting bell. Pelosi can't hold him back. Nothing can stop that CSN Conyers.

And yes, it will be the most damaging thing the Democrats can do, and I can't wait for it to start. I can't wait to see Conyers take the Democrats down.

Between that CSN Conyers and tht CSN Rangel, and Waxman [a CSH], the Dems will spend any political capital they might now possess in their all-out "get Bush" effort.

It's been their goal since the moment he raised his right hand and took the oath of office.

I can't wait for it to start.

Fun times are on the way, boys and girls!

[Gonzo67]

Voted yes. They will try but they will fail.

[Gonzo67]

There is no knowledge that Bush had fellatio in the whitehouse so there is no grounds for impeachment.


That depends on how you define "had" and "IN the whitehouse".

[DoctorDoom]

They will because they "owe it" to the GOP in retaliation for the impeachment of BJ Billy. If there are no charges, they will invent them. The RATs' loathsome toadies in the MSM will put the BS on the front page and the evening news every day, and will censor all opposing information. They will lie without shame and attack without reason. Rathergate will seem like a kindergarten play.

And when the dust settled and the charges are proven false, they will spin the fact to blame Bush and the GOP for trampling on justice.

The bastards are as predictable as sunset.

[Peachdiane]

I voted yes. They can't but they will surely try and bring forth formal accusations...

[Wyatt_Junker]

They may not impeach, but they most definitely will impear his presidency as much as possible.

[DesertFox]

:rolleyes:

. . .

. . .

:biglaugh:

[Wyatt_Junker]

I know. I can't help it. I've got two kids. We're at knock knock joke level right now. Painful. But cute.

So bear with me...

Imkumquat. Imcucumber. Bust his imcherry. Ream him a new fruit every week. Ram a banana down the frunnuh his pants. With the 'crats anything's possible, even the gayest slapstick.

[maxparrish]

No...they are far more shrewd than I gave them credit for. Nancy and Harry want some legislative "accomplishments" that they can take credit for. This next year they will be just nice enough to get their agenda through, and the impeach Bush whakos will be held back.

And the following year would make it irrelevant. Won't happen. What will happen are buckets of investigations and (LET US HOPE) lots of crazy talk from Rangel et. al.

[PrezLeefun]

No. Some may try but they wont succeed.

[SevenofNine]

Oh please they not going to impeach Dubya first of all reason why GOP got punk because of Iraq people are angry how that war is going there some people think it was mistake that CNN crowd who want see Tom Cruise upcoming wedding with Katie Holmes

If they do impeach it make Demos foolish

[Gonzo67]

Let's all say it together... Punctuation. ;)

[Bluemoon_Rising]

No. But we can always hope they will try. It would be political suicide.

Please try.

[2nd_Amendment]

Voted no. They will try. They will fail.

The fact they will try has some potential good propaganda value for us, if we recall shades of the Dems excuse making while Slick WAS Impeached.

[Maggie_T]

There are no grounds for impeachment, so it won't happen.


Come now, N-T. How would that stop democrats? They've been itching to impeach Bush since 2000.

I voted like Beo.

[Charity]

I voted no. I think they would very much like to. After all, they can't completely push their socialist agenda with our President blocking the way but I just don't see any legal reason they can impeach him.

[DoctorDoom]

Do the RATs need a logical or even a rational reason for anything they do?

Remember that impeachment is akin to a trial. It is not equivalent to a conviction. IMO, they will do it knowing very well that they won't succeed, just to be able to say that they impeached Bush. It will in some small measure appease the RATs' hyperleftist core -- Soros, MoveOn et al.

[Charity]

Good point DD.

[Beowulf]

Now here's a question. If articles of Impeachment do get passed and it goes to trial, where in hell will they find an impartial jury, one way or the other? I say they won't.

[Eagle1]

they will impeach because dems are nuts and the house is crazy. they will not be able to convict of anything, the senate is not that far gone

[gnome]

Now here's a question. If articles of Impeachment do get passed and it goes to trial, where in hell will they find an impartial jury, one way or the other? I say they won't.

When Articles of Impeachment are passed, the "jury" consists of the members of the Senate, of which a two-thirds majority must vote to convict.

There's no way two-thirds of the Senate will vote to convict, in fact I doubt even all the Democrats would. It would be a waste of time; IMO similar to the impeachment of Bill Clinton, during which a 2/3 majority in the Senate was also clearly unattainable.

[Eagle1]

but like clinton the victory would be in the impeachment, not a removal from office

[The_Elucidator]

They most certainly will try to impeach W, make no mistake about it, they will TRY. With that being said, they will fail miserably! The 'Rats have sold their soul to the devil since '00. They have a radical leftist base that has tried to take him down for 6 years! With this congressional win these same idiots are demanding results...ala BJ Billy and putting gays in the military. These idiots think that they put the 'Rats in charge of both houses and there will be repercussions in '08 if they don't start impeachment hearings ASAP. There will also be serious repercussions if they don't pass any radical legislation either. Mark my words...we will take back the house, probably the senate and with the Right candidate (Pun Intended) keep the WH.

[Longhorn_Platinum]

The_Elucidator:
The 'Rats have sold their soul to the devil since '00.

:unsmile: Which one? 1900 or 2000? It's really hard to trace when the democrats became the demonic rats, but the last good democrat president was Grover Cleveland. He didn't even endorse William Jennings Bryan, the party's nominee to be his successor, because Bryan wanted to radically change the party's philosophy of adherence to the Constitution.

[Wyatt_Junker]

A formal impeachment is meaningless. He was already 'impeached' by the media the moment he took office and the coverage has gotten cloyingly worse from there.

[Maggie_T]

That's true, Wyatt. But you know libs. They live for revenge. The drive-by media's symbolic impeachment of Bush won't do. They'll want him to go through everything Their Boy did. Otherwise, it's no fun.

[ldb83]

I know this sounds like post-election BS, but I really think the future of either party depends on their willingness to get things done rather than fight the other side so harshly. Americans tend to be conservative, but I think most of the country is getting tired of all the bitching. The people on liberal and conservative forums love to fight of course (and I'm called a troll in both), but most of America is somewhere between these two arenas of thought and they're tired of the division. Neither liberal nor conservative thought will ever go away, so, cliché as it sounds, the answers are found when people reach a middle ground.

I'll be pissed if impeachment arises, and I don't really think it will. If it does, I'd expect Republicans to take back some or all of Congress very quickly.

[DoctorDoom]

Neither liberal nor conservative thought will ever go away, so, cliché as it sounds, the answers are found when people reach a middle ground.<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v349/DocDoom777/getalong.jpg" />

There is no middle ground between good and evil, and liberalism is evil. If you consider pure water and sewage, how much sewage would you consider acceptable in your water as a "middle ground"?

[Kathy30]

Can you say President Pelosi

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52918

[ldb83]

There is no middle ground between good and evil, and liberalism is evil. If you consider pure water and sewage, how much sewage would you consider acceptable in your water as a "middle ground"?

And this attitude is why people like you don't get elected anymore. You're in love with a divided America because it invigorates you and lets you turn frustration into witty polemics. And it'd be nothing other than divided if people like you had seats in Congress.

[Apollo5600]

And this attitude is why people like you don't get elected anymore. You're in love with a divided America because it invigorates you and lets you turn frustration into witty polemics. And it'd be nothing other than divided if people like you had seats in Congress.

Oh, and you think that if we kiss the butt of Liberals everything would just be fine? Need I remind you that the Democrats have been constantly heaping insults and ungrounded accusations against the President since the day he was elected? And yes, look, they've got the House and Senate! Your little theory falls apart real quick.

[Rhino]

Impeach for what?

[Apollo5600]

And it'd be nothing other than divided if people like you had seats in Congress.

If people like him had seats in Congress, the Republican Base would be so energized we'd keep control of all branches of government for Eons.

[ldb83]

How many Doomesque Democrats (or Republicans) were elected last Tuesday? Mud flies in both directions, and the bitching gets louder when one party has all the power. People voted for Democrats because they wanted some changes, not because they were convinced that conservatives are sewage from Hell. Most Americans don't want the division that this attitude (whether from liberals or conservatives) creates. I don't advocate kissing liberal asses, nor do I think liberals should kiss the asses of conservatives.

[Gonzo67]

I don't advocate kissing liberal asses, nor do I think liberals should kiss the asses of conservatives.


In other words, you support KEEPING the division. You don't want Liberals to concede, you don't want conservative to concede... therefore, the very "division" you are bitching about remains in place.

Listen Lib, I know this is a tough concept for you liberals, but think BEFORE you speak. Not the other way around.

[Apollo5600]

How many Doomesque Democrats were elected last Tuesday?

You should know better than to say "Doomesque".

Mud flies in both directions, and the bitching gets louder when one party has all the power.

Ok, show me one important Republican who said something BACK to the Democrats as "horrible" as what they have said about our President. All the Democrats get on the air and repeat nonsense about "This war is a failure, this war is a lie", show me what horrible insult Republicans use against Democrats everytime they're on the air? Can you think of any?

People voted for Democrats because they wanted some changes, not because they were convinced that conservatives are sewage from Hell.

People voted for Democrats because they believed one too many lies, and because Republicans were too weak to stand up for what they believe in.

Most Americans don't want the division that this attitude (whether from liberals or conservatives) creates.

Blah Blah Blah, same old tune, still hasn't answered why Democrats got elected.

[DoctorDoom]

And this attitude is why people like you don't get elected anymore.The reason they aren't is that ignorant pubblik skewl grajewitz like you are allowed to vote.

You're in love with a divided America ...Riddle me this, fleabrain: which party is the part of divisiveness? Which party obtains its power by pigeon-holing Americans by race, color, religion, national origin, sexual "orientation", etcetera, and maintaining the groups in a constant state of friction, distrust and hatred? Which party supports racism as long as it's against whites? Which party advocates "multiculturalism" and "diversity"?

Child, you're blind as well as clueless.

... because it invigorates you and lets you turn frustration into witty polemics.Thank you for your fatuous opinion. Obviously you finally received your copy of "Amateur Psychoanalysis for Dummies".

And it'd be nothing other than divided if people like you had seats in Congress.If opposing evil and fighting for what is right and good is "divisive", then we bloody well need a lot more divisiveness.

Why not tell us all what you mean by "middle ground"? No, let me do it: to a liberal, "middle ground" requires that conservatives abandon their principles, honor, decency and righteousness and have their lips surgically grafted onto the asses of the libeRATs.

That's not going to happen, liberal child. You can stuff your "common ground" where solar power won't work.

BTW, kid, you didn't respnd to the question I asked, so obviously you are agreeable to drinking sewage as long as it's diluted.

[ldb83]

In other words, you support KEEPING the division.

Every time I see "in other words", a huge spin follows. Swing and a miss.

What that statement meant was that you don't find answers to real problems by fighting to make one side submit to the will of the other.

[DoctorDoom]

Mud flies in both directions ...Find examples of Republicans and conservatives saying things like this.

Liberal Civility, Part 1

First, snippets from various sound bites of the Contract with America era:

"Why do the Republicans want to take apples and milk away from six-year-olds... Starving children is not the solution to balancing our budget... The Republicans are taking food out of the mouths of needy and middle-class children... It's cruel to kids... It's really a contract against children... Stop declaring war on our kids... War on their children. War on their children... We're going to let the kids go hungry again... And our children are being left the crumbs of the Gingrich revolution."

"This legislation is mean... I'd also like to speak to (sic) a moment about the mean-spiritedness I'm hearing about out of the floor today... But how can they be so mean-spirited... These cuts are mean-spirited... The mean-spirited Republicans... It is mean-spirited. It is vicious... The contract is too extreme, too mean-spirited... The draconian, mean-spirited and immoral cuts in funding... We're seeing draconian cuts in all sorts of social-service programs... Once again, they're playing Robin Hood in reverse, taking from the poor to give to the rich."

"The Gingrich/Dole Congress has been the most anti-labor Congress and anti-working-people Congress in the history of the United States of America, and it's time to turn them OUT!"
-- Tree-hugger Gore

"This has been without a doubt the worst environmental Congress in the history of our country. Americans today, had they had their way, would be drinking dirtier water, breathing dirtier air, and facing public health risks they should not have to face."
-- Sen. Tom Daschle

"GOP - Get Old People"

"We view yesterday's action, taken by the Republican conference, as an assault on diversity in the Congress and an attempt to disempower communities through congressional ethnic and philosophical cleansing."
-- Kwese Nfume, re Republicans cutting funding for Congressional Black Caucus

"What's next? Castration? Sterilization?"

"They're coming for our children. They're coming for the poor. They're coming for the sick, the elderly and the disabled."
-- Rep. John Lewis, GA

"He can raise enough money from the extreme right wing, the extra-chromosome right wing (a shot at Down's Syndrome victims), to come in and buy enough advertising to just overwhelm the truth."
-- Compassionate Algore

"The reason they're trying to slow the rate of increase in the program, I suppose, is that eventually they'd like to see the program just die and go away. You know, that's probably what they'd like to see happen to some seniors, too, if you think about it."
-- Compassionate Mike McCurry.

"If this bill ever became law, our drinking water would be dirtier, would make more people sick, and would kill more people."
-- Tree-hugger Gore

"What's being done to our society, the torture and the maiming of our society, is incomprehensible."
-- Major Owens

"You're a bunch of dictators, that's all you are... I had to fight you guys fifty years ago."
-- Sam Gibbons (Republicans are Nazis)


And from the era of President G.W. Bush...

The United States "is on the slippery slope to theocratic fascism." "The Catholic Church has been secretly encouraging oral sex for years."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "ought to be tortured." President Bush should be taken out and shot.

[snip]

The queen of venom, Randi Rhodes, followed Franken in the host slot. Her imitation of a cracker military type telling a soldier to "insert this fluorescent light bulb into that man's buttocks" was revolting. She compared U.S. prisons in Iraq to the "Nazi gulag" and said, "The day I say thank you to Rumsfeld is the same day I'll say thank you to the 12 people who raped me."

Rock bottom came when she compared Bush and his family to the Corleones in the "Godfather" saga. "Like Fredo, somebody ought to take him out fishing and phuw," she said, imitating the sound of gunfire.
Liberal radio is airing bad jokes and worst taste (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/col/story/192671p-166266c.html)

After celebrities raised $7.5 million with a concert for Democratic candidates John Kerry and John Edwards last night (July 8) in New York, an angry Bush campaign challenged their opponents to release a videotape showing performers calling the president a "liar" and a "cheap thug" during the show.

Actor Chevy Chase drew laughs and cheers from the Radio City Music Hall audience when he described politicians and their hobbies: "Clinton plays the sax, John plays the guitar, and the president's a liar." John Mellencamp sang a song about a "Texas Bandito" that referred to Bush as a "cheap thug."

[snip]

Celebrities didn't hold back, bashing Bush at every opportunity. "This guy's as bright as an egg timer," said Chase, who ridiculed the president for his tendency to flub the English language. Actor John Leguizamo, who is Puerto Rican, quipped: "Latins for Republicans. It's like roaches for Raid."

Actor Paul Newman assailed Bush's tax cuts as "borderline criminal," saying, "There is serious and dangerous stuff out there and something's gotta change." Actress Jessica Lange asked the crowd, "Are we going to continue to follow a self-serving regime of deceit, hypocrisy and belligerence?"
Concert For Kerry/Edwards Raises $7.5M (http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000574095)

When I read about people spitting on the Honor Guard at the New York State Democratic Convention May 16, I started to understand what has happened to my party over the last few years. I still can't get over the fact that Democrats attending a formal convention would so insult the American flag, but it happened. As an Honor Guard of Albany police officers entered the convention hall - with band playing and lights shining - they were spit on and called "Nazis" by a number of people on the delegate floor. On top of that, no Democrat nearby stopped the "spitters," or even reported them. And the Democratic leadership expressed no public outrage.

[snip]

On Sunday, June 18, the headline of the Washington Post read, "Political Dirty Tricks Alleged in Alabama Trial," but the story revealed something far more serious than "dirty tricks." A Democrat lawyer and a private investigator are now being tried for attempting to defeat a Republican candidate in 1998 by bribing a prostitute to accuse the Republican of raping her. The prostitute recanted and turned witness against the two "Democrats."

[snip]

About a week after the spitting incident at the New York Democratic Party Convention, there was another incident that shocked me profoundly. I still cannot believe this one actually happened, but it is on videotape. At the MCI Center fund-raiser in Washington, Robin Williams performed before a crowd of corporate and Democrat dignitaries, people who would that very night raise the party over 26 million dollars.

The fund-raiser, including Williams's performance, was broadcast live on C-SPAN. However, that didn't stop Robin Williams from doing some kind of seedy nightclub act. He used the F-word and other obscenities several times (C-SPAN later cut this out when the event was rebroadcast). Imagine. A grand room full of powerful Democrats, representatives of America's oldest political party, and the F-word is being said, over and over again with cameras recording!

As in the case of the harassment of the Honor Guard at the Albany Democratic Convention, the specific violation was bad enough, but the most egregious violation was the passive, cowardly acceptance of the audience. The hardest thing to believe - for those of us who remember America before 1992 - was that the president, vice president and Mrs. Clinton were at this fund-raiser. Did none of them think to stand up and leave? Didn't anyone in the audience consider booing the smutty language spoken before the assembled dignitaries? No, there was only laughter.

Even when Robin Williams noticed a child present and joked about the "new words" he was learning that night - even then - no one objected. Not one Democrat dared step forward and condemn the moment. Peer pressure is a powerful and coercive thing, for adults as well as children - one breaks rank at one's peril. And I'm sure it wouldn't have been good for "business" for the party leadership to create embarrassment at such a high-level Hollywood/corporate function. So everyone laughed.
Fascism, corruption and my 'Democratic' Party (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=16391)

I had noticed that when a prominent Republican or conservative said something offensive about liberals, it typically set off a storm of media condemnation, while an anti-conservative smear voiced by a liberal or a Democrat rarely drew any protest. There was no end of sour commentary, for example, when Newt Gingrich recommended (in a GOP strategy meeting) that Clinton Democrats be portrayed as "the enemy of normal Americans." It was an outrageous remark, particularly from an incoming speaker of the House, and Gingrich deserved the drubbing he received.

But when Jesse Jackson explicitly likened the proposals of the new majority to Nazism and apartheid -- "If this were Germany, we would call it fascism. If this were South Africa, we would call it racism" -- there wasn't even a ripple of disapproval. Julianne Malveaux, a radio host and USA Today columnist, caught no flak when she prayed aloud for the death of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. "I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease," she snarled on PBS. "Well, that's how I feel."

What was true in 1994 remains largely true today. MSNBC fired right-wing talk host Michael Savage in July, and rightly so, when he told a gay caller to "get AIDS and die, you pig." The liberal Nina Totenberg, on the other hand, suffered no ill effects for saying, during the flap over General Jerry Boykin's views of Islam and the war on terrorism, "I hope he's not long for this world." When the startled host asked if she were "putting a hit out on this guy," Totenberg backtracked and said she only wanted to see him expire "in his job."

But this isn't the first time the NPR diva has publicly wished death on a conservative. "I think he ought to be worried about what's going on in the Good Lord's mind," she said of Senator Jesse Helms in 1995, "because if there is retributive justice, he'll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it."

[snip]

"What you have now" -- this is left-wing activist and actress Janeane Garofalo, analyzing the Republican Party during an appearance at the 92d Street Y in New York earlier this year -- "is people that are closet racists, misogynists, homophobes, and people who love . . . the politics of exclusion identifying as conservative." That was apparently good enough to win her a guest-host slot on CNN's "Crossfire," where she offered this thoughtful critique of the Patriot Act: "It is in fact a conspiracy of the 43d Reich."

Ah, yes, the reductio ad Hitlerum. Why meet a conservative with facts or logic when you can simply tar him with the Nazi brush? Thus we had Nancy Giles on the "CBS Sunday Morning show" sourly tying Rush Limbaugh's "edgy" radio manner to you-know-who's. "Hitler would have killed in talk radio," Giles declared. "He was edgy, too." Ellen Gray of the Philadelphia Daily News struck a similar note in commenting on "The Reagans," the cancelled miniseries. "If Hitler had more friends," she told The Washington Post, "CBS wouldn't have aired [its Hitler mini-series] either."
Jacoby: Hate Speech from the Left (http://www.thebluesite.com/archives/000300.html)

In a speech yesterday denouncing U.S. policy in Iraq, he compared George W. Bush first to Richard Nixon, which is excessive. Then he compared Bush to Faust and said the president had lost his soul in pursuit of a policy of "domination."

He accused the United States of setting up an "American Gulag," thus comparing the incidents at Abu Ghraib to Josef Stalin's vast slave-prison archipelago that shackled nearly 30 million people in an Arctic wasteland and caused the deaths of many millions more.

He has, in essence, declared that the monstrous American creeps we've seen in the Abu Ghraib photographs are victims as much as those they humiliated: "On the list of those he let down are the young soldiers who are themselves apparently culpable, but who were clearly put into a moral cesspool. The perpetrators as well as the victims were both placed in their relationship to one another by the policies of George W. Bush."
GORE GOES GA-GA (http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/21671.htm)

A self-described liberal talk-show host known for his disdain of the Bush administration called for the death penalty for the president and Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld for "war crimes," according to an audiotape.

Mike Webb, who has a late-night show on KIRO radio in Seattle, denied a report last week by Talon News, but the Internet site said today it has a tape that proves the host make the statements on the air.

The prison abuse in Iraq "is a war crime, committed by the president of the United States," Webb declared on his show. "And do you know what the punishment for that is? Death!"
Talk host: Death penalty for Bush (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38671)

It's a cliché this is becoming the meanest year in politics yet. But it's true. Last week, Mike Lavigne, the spokesman for the Texas Democratic Party, admitted calling a state Supreme Court justice "a Nazi." When his boss, Democratic Party chairman Charles Soecthting, was asked if an apology was due, he said, "I don't have a problem that Mike said it."

Then there's Sen. Ted Kennedy, who told a startled Senate last week that "Saddam's torture chambers have been reopened under new management, United States management." Some conservative talk show hosts, such as Michael Savage, have railed against gays and immigrants while they question John Kerry's patriotism. On the left, Bush bashing has become a national sport.

[snip]

Certainly there are rhetorical excesses on the right too. High-octane conservative Web sites feature vitriolic personal attacks on Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Teresa Heinz Kerry and others. But some liberal activists go further. Michael Goodwin of New York's Daily News spent a day listening to Air America, the new liberal talk-radio network, and found he had to endure hours of "rancid venom." Host Randi Rhodes compared U.S. prisons in Iraq to the "Nazi gulag," a mixed ideological metaphor as well as an inflammatory one.

Nor are Nazi allusions limited to talk radio. Seymour Hersh, who broke the story of the Iraqi prisons in The New Yorker, appeared on CNN last week and said a picture of two guard dogs snarling at a prisoner was "a scene from we know what, you know, [the] Third Reich." When host Wolf Blitzer asked him to be more specific, Mr. Hersh changed the subject.

MoveOn.org is financed in part by billionaire George Soros, who last year also compared Mr. Bush to Hitler and said that Israel was "likely" a big but secret reason for the war in Iraq. Mr. Soros is also a major financial backer of the Media Fund, an anti-Bush group directed by Harold Ickes, who served as President Clinton's deputy chief of staff. When Mr. Ickes was asked what its supporters thought of Mr. Soros's penchant for Bush-Hitler comparisons, Mr. Ickes said "we have not taken heat because of it."
Anger Management (http://www.opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.html?id=110005088)

What I saw on the Portland, Ore., branch of the Independent Media Center this week is something I never thought I would see in this country.

That's where the memory of American hero Pat Tillman – the professional football player who gave up a $3.6 million sports contract to volunteer for military service in Iraq and Afghanistan and who lost his life last week – was cruelly attacked.

The anti-globalist website posted a story on the ex-NFL player who became an Army Ranger, Pat Tillman, with the title, "Dumb Jock Killed in Afghanistan."

[snip]

The Portland Independent Media Center website was filled with comments affirming the "Dumb Jock" headline.

One suggested an alternative headline, " ... or, how about, 'privileged millionaire, blinded by nationalist mythology, p------ away the good life.'"

Another suggested headline was: "'Citizen of empire allows ignorance to cause him to die for imperialism' or maybe ... 'Capitalist chooses to kill innocents instead of cashing check.'"

One reader who was identified as "George W." wrote, "Thanks for the laugh."

Commenting on the article's reference to a "brave American," a reader replied: "'brave'???? for going over to Afghanistan completely uninvited and slaughtering brown-skinned people with advanced weaponry?"

Another said: "Tillman chose to go to Afghanistan. He's partially reponsible [sic] for the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands of Afghan civilians. No need to feel sorry for him, other than feeling bad that he was brainwashed into serving as a grunt."
What country is this? (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38237)


Liberal civility is a wondrous thing to behold.

[DoctorDoom]

Liberal Civility, Part 2.

Such venom should be beyond the political and social pale. But too many liberals would still rather dismiss conservative ideas with a ugly slur than actually grapple with them on the merits. Debating the pros and cons of racial preferences or US foreign policy can be difficult; much easier to simply hiss "Racist!" or "Nazi!" or some equally poisonous insult.

"What you have now" -- this is left-wing activist and actress Janeane Garofalo, analyzing the Republican Party during an appearance at the 92d Street Y in New York earlier this year -- "is people that are closet racists, misogynists, homophobes, and people who love . . . the politics of exclusion identifying as conservative." That was apparently good enough to win her a guest-host slot on CNN's "Crossfire," where she offered this thoughtful critique of the Patriot Act: "It is in fact a conspiracy of the 43d Reich."

Ah, yes, the reductio ad Hitlerum. Why meet a conservative with facts or logic when you can simply tar him with the Nazi brush? Thus we had Nancy Giles on the "CBS Sunday Morning show" sourly tying Rush Limbaugh's "edgy" radio manner to you-know-who's. "Hitler would have killed in talk radio," Giles declared. "He was edgy, too." Ellen Gray of the Philadelphia Daily News struck a similar note in commenting on "The Reagans," the cancelled miniseries. "If Hitler had more friends," she told The Washington Post, "CBS wouldn't have aired [its Hitler mini-series] either."

But of course no one came in for more Hitler comparisons this year than George W. Bush. Third Reich references were practically a staple of antiwar rhetoric.

The president "is not the orator that Hitler was," acknowledged leftist commentator Dave Lindorff at Counterpunch.org. "But comparisons of the Bush administration's fearmongering tactics to those practiced so successfully and with such terrible results by Hitler and Goebbels . . . are not at all out of line."Hate Speech from the Left (http://www.thebluesite.com/archives/000300.html)

The racist label was mild next to some of the other ones liberals used in 1994. One popular technique: identifying conservatives with genocide.

"The most hideous schemes are being put forth now in the name of conservatism," railed Jesse Jackson, the man who added "Hymietown" to our lexicon. "If this were Germany, we would call it fascism. If this were South Africa, we would call it racism. Here we call it conservatism."

Religious conservatives, he said, are really latter-day SS troops, straight out of Nuremberg:

"The Christian Coalition was a strong force in Germany. It laid down a suitable, scientific, theological rationale for the tragedy in Germany. The Christian Coalition was very much in evidence there . . ."

Minnesota's liberal Republican Gov. Arne Carlson used the same calumny against his conservative GOP challenger, a devout Christian. History, he said, shows how "a narrow sliver has the ability to take over any entire system. That clearly is how Hitler started out."A year of character-assassination from the left (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/1994/12/27/a_year_of_character_assassination_from_the_left/)

No slur is more popular in the hate lexicon of the left than "racist." Except possibly "Nazi." When characterizing conservatives and Republicans, liberals reach for both. Some illustrations:

- "Hitler had a minister of propaganda that said tell a lie, tell a big lie. . . . Republicans are telling the biggest lie in the world. . . . What's next, castration?" (US Rep. Bill Clay, attacking GOP welfare proposals.)

- "Just like under Hitler . . ." (US Rep. Charles Rangel, describing a House Ways and Means Committee vote that closed a tax loophole.)

- "Republican storm troopers." (Mario Cuomo.)How the right is demonized (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/1995/12/21/how_the_right_is_demonized/)

Compare your political opponents to Nazis? No problem -- if you're a liberal. In 1997:

- Michael Greene, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, invoked Auschwitz in denouncing warning labels on violent or obscene records. They "would one day serve," he wrote, "as a tattooed number on the forearm of the artistic community."

- TV and movie director Michael Moore ("Roger and Me," "TV Nation") urged liberals to read The Wall Street Journal, a paper put out by "the enemy . . . every day to tell you what they are up to. That's incredible. Imagine the Nazis doing that every day, sending out a sheet that says, `Here's what we're up to.' "

- Christopher Edley, a law professor at Harvard and a Clinton adviser, pronounced Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom guilty of "a crime against humanity" -- like the Nuremberg defendants? -- for having published "American in Black and White," an important new book that is skeptical of racial quotas and preferences.

- Tim Fleck, a Houston Press columnist, warned readers that Gary Polland, the conservative Republican chairman of Harris County, Texas, had probably been "reading too much `Mein Kampf' for his own good." Why the Hitler comparison? Because Polland had rated candidates for local office based on their answers to a questionnaire. Fleck's piece was titled, "Look Out for the GOPstapo!"More hate speech from the left (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/1997/12/30/more_hate_speech_from_the_left/)

Granted, it's not nice to use the A-word. But it's not nearly as vile as comparing your political opponents to acolytes of Adolf Hitler. Yet liberals routinely liken Republicans and conservatives to mass-murdering totalitarians, and no one objects.

The platform of the Texas Republican Party, Bill Clinton sneered in June, "was so bad that you could get rid of every fascist tract in your library if you just had a copy" of it. Joe Gellar, the Democratic Party chairman in Miami-Dade County, fumed that out-of-town Republicans protesting the ballot recounts were engaging in "brownshirt tactics."

And for those too dense to grasp the point - conservatives are the moral equals of the men who ran Auschwitz - filmmaker Michael Moore spelled it out.

"There are tens of thousands of people who lived through [the Holocaust], escaped the ovens, and are now living out their final years in South Florida," he wrote in demanding a new vote in Palm Beach County. "Sixty-two years ago tonight, the . . . German government sent goon squads throughout the country to trash and burn the homes, stores, and temples of its Jewish citizens. Seven years and six million slaughtered lives later, the Jewish people of Europe were virtually extinct. A few survived. I will not allow those who survived to . . . be abused again."Slander is just fine when the left does it (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2000/12/28/slander_is_just_fine_when_the_left_does_it/)

When a conservative oversteps the bounds of decency in condemning a liberal, he typically gets scorched by criticism, much of it from the right. But there was no scorching of:

Chris Matthews, who likened Republicans quoting John F. Kennedy on taxes to "the Nazi Party quoting Kennedy saying, `Ich bin ein Berliner'?"

Al Sharpton, who said during the postelection ballot fight in Florida that conservatives want to "do the same thing to us" that "Hitler in his wickedness and evil" did to the Jews.Smears, slanders from the left (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2001/12/30/smears_slanders_from_the_left/)

Olbermann, the MSNBC commentator, announced in August that Starr made him think of Heinrich Himmler, who ran the Gestapo for Hitler. In February, Larry King compared him to Nazis. In October, Vanessa Redgrave also compared him to Nazis.

Indeed, it sometimes seems as if liberals can't look at a conservative or a Republican without seeing the SS. The GOP decision to block a vote on censuring Clinton, US Representative Tom Lantos of California snarled, is something one would expect "in Hitler's parliament." When New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani displeased an artists' association, it publicly depicted him with a Hitler moustache.The liberal double standard in reacting to 'hate' speech (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/1998/12/31/the_liberal_double_standard_in_reacting_to_hate_sp eech/)

"Bobby Ehrlich is a nazi. . . . he should be running in Germany in 1942, not Maryland in 2002. We'll define him as the nazi he is. Once we do that, i think people will vote for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend."

Thus spake Democratic political consultant Julius Henson about congressman Robert Ehrlich, the Republican candidate in Maryland's gubernatorial election this year. Henson had just signed on to work for Townsend, Ehrlich's Democratic opponent, and made his repugnant remarks in an interview with The Washington Post.

[snip]

And no prominent liberal blasted Gerardo Villacres, the head of the Hispanic American Chamber of Commerce, when he likened California businessman Ron Unz to a Nazi for financing ballot campaigns to end bilingual education.

Sliming conservatives as Nazis often seems to be the first refuge of liberal hate-talkers. Do they really not understand the terrible malignancy of that term?

Sandra Bernhard, the actress and alleged comedienne, was asked during an online Washington Post chat for her thoughts on terrorism. "The real terrorist threats," she replied, "are George W. Bush and his band of brown-shirted thugs." (The Nazi stormtroopers were known as brownshirts.) Miami minister and radio host Victor Curry castigated the Bush administration over the air for its "neo-Nazi, right wing mission against the American people." In a magazine interview, Sean Penn likened Bill O'Reilly, the popular Fox News personality, to Osama bin Laden, Senator Joseph McCarthy, and - of course - Adolf Hitler.The double standard on political hate speech (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2002/12/29/the_double_standard_on_political_hate_speech/)

The Nazi Parallels

We have previously compared the "theories" coming out of the lawyers in this Administration, to those used to justify Adolf Hitler's war crimes during World War II. In the article "Bush and Hitler: What the 'Torture Memos' Reveal," and an accompanying editorial, both in the July 2, 2004 EIR, we identified the parallels between the arguments put forward in the Bush Administration "torture memos," and the notorious "Commissar Order" issued on the eve of Nazi German invasion of the Soviet Union. Based on the notion that Germany was fighting a new kind of enemy, requiring new methods, and that Russia had not participated in the Hague Convention, and therefore had no rights under it, the Commissar Order gave virtual immunity to German soldiers for war crimes committed against the "barbaric" Russian enemy. Hitler also demanded that his officers rid themselves of "obsolete ideologies."Alberto Gonzales: Bush's 'Nazi Lawyer' (http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2005/3201gonzales.html)

What is a "Bush NAZI"? Well, it a person who ridicules other people who don't like Bush and calls them "unpatriotic" or "disloyal".

Adolf Hitler strongly believed in patriotism and loyalty to ones country. They waved flags and chanted "Gott Speichern Deutschland!" (God Save Germany!), but now in the United States people wave American flags and shout "God Save America". There's even a song by that name.

So imagine it if you can, or remember it if its happened to you. You're talking to what you think is a perfectly nice american, when suddenly the topic of George W. Bush comes up. And the Bush NAZI starts making fun of people who are anti-Bush.

What did the NAZIs do to people who didn't support Hitler? Well, they made fun of them. Some of them even attacked people who were anti-Hitler. Eventually the anti-Hitler people became more quiet, out of fear, or simply left Germany, out of fear.The Rise of Bush NAZI-ism (http://www.lilithgallery.com/articles/bushitler.html)

A quick note, first, about what counts as a "Bush = Hitler" allusion for these purposes. Obviously, someone saying "that George Bush guy is just like Hitler" counts. So does the ever-so-creative addition of a little Hitler-style mustache onto photographs or cartoons. So too does someone starting out "George Bush isn't like Hitler..." and then continuing "...but given X and Y and Z you can understand why some people are saying he is". So too does someone starting out "George Bush isn't like Hitler..." and then continuing with flattery of Hitler "...because Hitler was elected / didn't drink / actually served his time in the army". Implying that the Nazis were behaving better than the US certainly counts, such as "Not even the Nazis treated their prisoners this badly". Oh, and comparisons between September 11th and the Reichstag fire count as well.

Put simply, it's my page and it goes in if I think it counts. Every effort will be made to provide a link to the source, along with quotes and context so you can make up your own mind.

Harold Pinter (British playright)

Quoted in the Guardian, June 2003: "The US is really beyond reason now. It is beyond our imagining to know what they are going to do next and what they are prepared to do. There is only one comparison: Nazi Germany"

Corin Redgrave

In the Mail, Corin Redgrave incorrectly asks "Even the Nazis allowed the Red Cross to visit their prisoners : why won't America?" Millions of Russian prisoners taken by the Nazis on the Eastern front might have been surprised to hear that.

Ted Rall (cartoonist and writer)

In January, 2004, asking "Is Bush a Nazi?" seems the conclude that Bush is worse because at least Hitler was elected:Lately we're being told that it's either (a) inappropriate or (b) untrue to refer to Bush's illegitimate junta as Nazi, neo-Nazi or neofascist. Because, you know, you're not necessarily a Nazi just because you seize power like one, take advantage of a national Reichstag Fire-like tragedy like one, build concentration and death camps like one, start unprovoked wars like one, Red-bait your liberal opponents like one or create a national security apparatus that behaves like something a Nazi would create and even has a Nazi-sounding name. All of those people who see a little Adolf in the not-so-bright eyes of America's homeland-grown despot are just imagining things.

Me, I'm catching it for this week's cartoon for daring to suggest that, well--you know.

Of course, there are differences. Hitler, for example, was legally elected. And he had a plan--not one that I like, but a plan--for the period after the war.

I'll be happy to stop comparing Bush to Hitler when he stops acting like him.The Gallery of "Bush = Hitler" Allusions (http://semiskimmed.net/bushhitler.html)

TPCN received this apparently un-titled article as part of a group e-mail. The only information provided by the person who sent it to the group was that it had been "posted on AOL" and they had "checked the references"---which leaves it unclear whether the references support the article or merely exist. As the article at least 'rings true', I haven't bothered to check them.

Portions have been re-written for this web page (the content remains un-altered) and the sidebar material (bordered in blue) has been added. The original, un-altered article is also posted at the end of this page.

William WilgusSimilarities Among Bush, Hitler, Stalin and the GOP (http://www.thepubliccause.net/Articles/BushHitlerStalinGOP.html)

In the September 1, 2003, issue of National Review, Byron York chronicles (read the piece here) some of the Bushphobia. He writes,A staple of Bush-hating is the portrayal of the president as a Nazi. That has, of course, been a prominent part of other attacks against other presidents, but today it seems to be deployed with particular aggressiveness against Bush. There are thousands of references, across the vastness of the Internet, linking Bush to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Do you want to buy a T-shirt with a swastika replacing the "s" in Bush? No problem. Do you want to collect images of Bush in a German army uniform, with a Hitler mustache Photoshopped onto his face? That's easy. Do you want to find pictures of Dick Cheney and Tom Ridge and Ari Fleischer dressed as Bush's Nazi henchmen? That's easy, too.As York observes, It's not just the intellectual poltroons of the Internet who feign bravery by loudly saying what is patently stupid so that people a fraction dumber than them might mistake it for boldness and conviction. It's not just the masses of undifferentiated cattle who sport their Hitlerfied George Bush T-shirts and who chant slogans with a verve more truly reminiscent of Nuremberg than anything ever uttered by George Bush.

Indeed, "smart" people mouth this nonsense too. Scholars at Berkeley insist that George Bush shares a psychological profile with Hitler. An editorial writer for the Kansas City Star invokes Martin Niemoller's "First they came for the Jews…" mantra to decry the alleged excesses of the Patriot Act. Various Muslim activists are constantly suggesting that they are the Jews of the Nazified America. Almost everyday I get dozens of e-mails from seemingly intelligent liberals - and a few conservatives - who insist that I "can't deny it" anymore - it's 1933 Germany in America. Retired Princeton University professor Sheldon Wolin writes of the "inverted totalitarianism" of the Republican party - "a fervently doctrinal party, zealous, ruthless, antidemocratic, and boasting a near majority" - as a stand-in for a Nazi party which doesn't need to use "totalitarian thugs" to attain power. He writes:No doubt these remarks will be dismissed by some as alarmist, but I want to go further and name the emergent political system "inverted totalitarianism." By inverted I mean that while the current system and its operatives share with Nazism the aspiration toward unlimited power and aggressive expansionism, their methods and actions seem upside down. For example, in Weimar Germany, before the Nazis took power, the "streets" were dominated by totalitarian-oriented gangs of toughs, and whatever there was of democracy was confined to the government. In the United States, however, it is the streets where democracy is most alive - while the real danger lies with an increasingly unbridled government.You may think that's brilliant stuff and that Wolin is a savant. As for me, I'm simply reminded of Walter Bagehot's observation that "In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius.""Bush=Hitler" - The politics of dangerous stupidity. (http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.p?ref=/goldberg/goldberg090403.asp)

[ldb83]

BTW, kid, you didn't respnd to the question I asked, so obviously you are agreeable to drinking sewage as long as it's diluted.

I might've if the question wasn't such a stupid comparison. Conservatives haven't been showing themselves to be comparable to "pure water" lately any more than liberals to sewage (at least outside of your narrow worldview). Speaking of pure water though, which party places more emphasis on the preservation of a clean environment?

[DoctorDoom]

Liberal Civililty Part 3


"It's not 'spic' or 'nigger' anymore. They say, 'Let's cut taxes.' "
-- Charles Rangel

"A lot of people are afraid of you. . . . Worse, you're an intolerant bigot."
-- Sam Donaldson to Newt Gingrich

"The most hideous schemes are being put forth now in the name of conservatism. If this were Germany, we would call it fascism. If this were South Africa, we would call it racism. Here we call it conservatism... The Christian Coalition was a strong force in Germany. It laid down a suitable, scientific, theological rationale for the tragedy in Germany. The Christian Coalition was very much in evidence there..."
-- Jesse "Hymietown" Jackson

"I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do of heart disease.. . . He's an absolutely reprehensible person."
-- Julianne Malveaux, Pacifica Radio talk show host, on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas

"What's the difference between the Contract With America and the contract with the devil? Well, the devil's contract still provides for our seniors and our children."
-- Rep. Mike Ward (D-KY)

"Would it really be a bad idea if Rush Limbaugh got cancer of the mouth?"
-- Men's Fitness, May 1995, p20, article on cigar smoking

"I'll be watching, hoping someone shoots him. It would no doubt be a thrill."
-- Abraham Polonsky, blacklisted for his Communist sympathies in the 1950s, re Elia Kazan's Lifetime Achievement award

"Conservative legal interest groups, such as the Center for Individual Rights and the Southeastern Legal Foundation (which oppose racial preferences and quotas) are . . . a homogenized version of the Klan. They may have traded in their sheets for suits . . . but it's the same old racism."
-- Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell

"That herd of managers from the House, I mean, frankly all they were missing was white sheets. They're like night riders."
-- Eleanor Clift, Newsweek, re impeachment proceedings again BJ Billy

"Kenneth Starr is cunning, ruthless, and about as well-mannered as Heinrich Himmler."
-- LA Times editorial

"Whenever I hear Trent Lott speak, I immediately think of nooses decorating trees. Big trees, with black bodies swinging."
-- Los Angeles Times, Karen Grigsby Bates


Re Ann Coulter, Thor Hesla, Asshole Extraordinaire, launched a diatribe in Salon (http://archive.salon.com/media/feature/1999/06/25/coulter/print.html) in 1999 that was the quintessence of hatred. Among his "Ten modest proposals to help Ann Coulter get a date":

1) Quit injecting yourself with your own urine. I don't mean to be presumptuous, but the rumor is that George Balanchine used to put so much pressure on his corps d' ballet to remain razor-thin that some of them injected themselves with their own urine to keep the pounds off. You look like you're doing this also.

[snip]

5) Stop being a mean bitch.

One of the things you hate about Washington is that complete strangers on the Metro ask you for your sports page. Ann, I frequently have out-of-town guests visit me in D.C. Because, as you have already established, I have to watch a lot of TV to see what's going on in your neck of the woods, I often send these gentle strangers out onto the Metro alone. When I do, I pray, literally, that they won't run into pompous, intolerant, judgmental, high-strung, anorexic clothes-horses like yourself if they should happen to get lost, require assistance, or even, God forfend, reach out across the aching void that divides us all and inquire if you're finished with that section of the paper, ma'am?

[snip]

8) Buy a vibrator.

In addition to all your other problems, I think you need to rack up some quick orgasms. There's one called "the Rabbit" which I hear gets you going from several different angles at once, if you know what I mean. It was featured in a recent episode of "Sex in the City."

Once you've cleared your system of all the toxins that back up when you stop getting off, you should immediately ...

9) Get your head out of your ass.

Another of your complaints about D.C. is that the cabs don't have meters. Are you really simple? The zone system in D.C. is mandated by Congress (here's that white thing again) so that they can ride to and from Capitol Hill as inexpensively as possible.

Returning to the snippets...

"Rush Limbaugh is a Big, Fat Idiot and other Observations."
-- Al Franken book title

"A lot of the blood of America's race war victims will be on the hands and bloated bodies of Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern."
-- Columnist Carl Rowan

"The evaporation of 4 million who believe in this crap would leave the world a better place."
-- Andre Codrescu, NPR, re Christian fundamentalists

But nobody drew more savage abuse in 1996 than black conservatives -- usually at the hands of black liberals. Ward Connerly, chairman of California's Proposition 209 campaign to abolish race and gender quotas in state government, was routinely called an "Uncle Tom" and a "traitor" by the defenders of quotas. "He's married to a white woman," hissed state Sen. Diane Watson of Los Angeles. "He wants to be white." The Oakland Tribune depicted him in a cartoon as the proprietor of "Connerly & Co./ Ethnic Cleansers" -- with a Klansman's robe hanging in the window.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas again found himself on the receiving end of sickening hate speech. On the cover of its November issue, Emerge, a liberal black magazine, portrayed "Uncle Thomas" as a "Lawn Jockey for the Far Right." Inside, a grinning Thomas crouched at Justice Antonin Scalia's feet, shining his shoes.

And then there was the six-page memo that US Rep. William Clay, a black Missouri Democrat, published about Rep. Gary Franks, a black Republican from Connecticut. Franks is "a Negro Dr. Kevorkian," Clay spewed, "who gleefully assists in suicidal conduct to destroy his own race." Clay bashed his colleague's "foot-shuffling, head-scratching 'Amos and Andy' brand of 'Uncle Tom-ism,' " calling him a "gun for hire willing to assassinate . . . blacks." Like all "barbarous" black conservatives, he snarled, Franks wants "to maim and kill other blacks for the gratification and entertainment of . . . white racists."Another year of hate speech from the left (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/1996/12/31/another_year_of_hate_speech_from_the_left/)

"I think he ought to be worried about what's going on in the Good Lord's mind, because if there is retributive justice, he'll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will."
-- Nina Totenberg re Sen. Jesse Helms

"What you have now is people that are closet racists, misogynists, homophobes, and people who love . . . the politics of exclusion identifying as conservative."
-- Janeane Garofalo re GOP

"It is in fact a conspiracy of the 43d Reich."
-- Garofalo re the PATRIOT Act

The president "is not the orator that Hitler was. But comparisons of the Bush administration's fearmongering tactics to those practiced so successfully and with such terrible results by Hitler and Goebbels . . . are not at all out of line."
-- Dave Lindorff at Counterpunch.org

"Hitler had a minister of propaganda that said tell a lie, tell a big lie. . . . Republicans are telling the biggest lie in the world. . . . What's next, castration? Sterilization?"
-- Rep. Bill Clay, attacking GOP welfare proposals

"Republican storm troopers."
-- Mario Cuomo

" 'Apollo 13' . . . celebrates the paradisiacal America invoked by Ronald Reagan and Pat Buchanan -- an America where men were men, women were subservient and people of color kept out of the damn way."
-- John Powers, reviewing the movie "Apollo 13" in the Washington Post

Two months ago, as Houston voters were considering a proposal to end racial preferences, opponents of the measure aired a radio spot. It began with the familiar cadences of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Then a gunshot sounded. Sirens wailed. And the narrator spoke: "Just when our community starts to move ahead, some people try to turn back the clock. Sometimes they do it with bullets. Sometimes they do it with laws."

Clear enough? If you favor colorblind laws, you are no better than Dr. King's murderer.

If a conservative group aired a radio spot likening its liberal foes to Lee Harvey Oswald, it would be inundated, and rightly, by a wave of denunciation from sea to shining sea. But when liberals spew such venom on conservatives, comparing them to assassins, fascists, and mass murderers, there is barely a trickle of indignation.More hate speech from the left (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/1997/12/30/more_hate_speech_from_the_left/)

You're watching "The O'Reilly Factor," FOX News Channel's popular interview show. The host is commenting acidly on the presidential campaign. To illustrate a point, he airs some video of Al Gore addressing the Democratic convention in Los Angeles. And as you watch, amazed, the words "snipers wanted" appear on the screen as Gore speaks.

It never happened, of course. But imagine the reaction if it had.

If O'Reilly ever pulled such a stunt, he would be pilloried from coast to coast. Editorials would sear him for joking about murder. Democrats would blast the "sick right-wing mentality" that thinks killing the vice president is humorous. Talk shows would seethe. The Federal Communications Commission would investigate. And Fox News, flooded with petitions demanding O'Reilly's head, would be forced to take him off the air.

That's the script, more or less, when well-known conservatives aim vicious insults and hateful slurs at liberals. But when the venom moves in the other direction - when it's a conservative getting smeared - the indignation meter barely flutters.

Which is why there was no explosion over "Snipers Wanted."

The truth is, it did happen - but not on Fox News and not with an image of Al Gore. It was Craig Kilborn, host of CBS's "Late Late Show," who put out the call for snipers while showing footage of George W. Bush at the GOP convention. Eventually, CBS apologized, mumbling something about the joke being "inappropriate and regrettable" - and that was the end of it. No seething, no petitions, nobody taken off the air.Slander is just fine when the left does it (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2000/12/28/slander_is_just_fine_when_the_left_does_it/)

"But if you look closely at that map you see a more complex picture. You see the state where James Byrd was lynched-dragged behind a pickup truck until his body came apart - it's red. You see the state where Matthew Shepard was crucified . . . for the crime of being gay - it's red. You see the state where right-wing extremists blew up a federal office building and murdered scores of federal employees: red. The state where an Army private thought to be gay was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat . . . and the state where Bob Jones University spews its anti-Catholic bigotry: they're all red, too."
-- Paul Begala, MSNBC.com, re the red-blue map of states for Bush and Gore

(Selecting Ashcroft resembled) "the way Ku Klux Klan members worked to improve race relations: They, too, reached out to blacks with nooses and burning crosses."
-- Rep. William Clay of Missouri re George W. Bush's talk of outreach to black Americans

Bush dredged John Ashcroft "from the Taliban wing of American politics."
-- Julian Bond

(While Afghanistan) "has been protecting Osama bin Laden, Italy has been harboring another omnipotent religious zealot, one who equally condemns us Western sinners and incites violence. . . . Meet John Paul II, Christian fundamentalist extraordinaire and a man who inspires thugs across the globe. . ."
-- Michelangelo Signorile, well-known queer author

The worst political slur of 1998, to judge by the media attention it drew, was uttered by Al D'Amato, New York's Republican senator. In a private meeting with supporters during his reelection campaign last fall, D'Amato called his Democratic opponent, Representative Charles Schumer, a "putzhead."

Now, it is not nice to call people "putzhead," and I wasn't sorry to see D'Amato spanked for his boorish language. But it is also not nice to call people white-sheeted racists, yet so far as I know, none of my media brethren spanked Illinois Senator Carol Moseley-Braun when she implied that George Will, the noted commentator, belonged to the Klan.

"I think because he could not say 'nigger,' he said the word 'corrupt,' " Moseley-Braun offered by way of rebutting Will's columns about her many ethical lapses. "George Will can just take his hood and go back to wherever he came from." (In fact, Will hadn't said the word "corrupt.")

Why did Moseley-Braun's vile slander get a pass while D'Amato's crudity became a national story? Because in one case, a liberal insulted a conservative, while in the other, a liberal was insulted by a conservative. I devote a column each December to illustrating the pervasive double standard by which liberals are permitted to say vicious things about conservatives -- things that would get a conservative beheaded by sundown if he said it about a liberal.The liberal double standard in reacting to 'hate' speech (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/1998/12/31/the_liberal_double_standard_in_reacting_to_hate_sp eech/)

"Don't you believe that they don't want to dismantle the Social Security system. They are afraid to come out from under their hoods and attack us directly."
Charles Rangel re GOP


Conan O'Brien: "Before we leave, I gotta ask you. It's no secret that you are very political. You are a very political person. It's no secret that you have actually had some associations with the Clintons. That you're a liberal man and I thought you know today, this is a historic day and you're one of the most politically active actors out there. What do you think?"

Baldwin: "I was in Africa. I go to Africa. I mean ladies and gentlemen I am in Africa. For three months I am in the bush and I come back. I come back here and I come back to what? I mean what is happening right now as we speak? Right now the Judiciary Committee, the President has an approval rating of 68 percent. The President is very popular and things are going pretty good and they are voting to impeach the President. They voted on one article of impeachment already. And I come back from Africa to stained dresses and cigars and this and impeachment. I am thinking to myself in other countries they are laughing at us twenty four hours a day and I'm thinking to myself if we were in other countries, we would all right now, all of us together, [starts to shout] all of us together would go down to Washington and we would stone Henry Hyde to death! We would stone him to death! [crowd cheers] Wait! Shut up! Shut up! No shut up! I'm not finished. We would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and we'd kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families. [stands up screaming] What is happening in this country? What is happening? UGHHH UGHHH!!!!"
-- Alec Baldwin on Conan O'Brien show, 12/11/1998

"Bobby Ehrlich is a nazi. . . . he should be running in Germany in 1942, not Maryland in 2002. We'll define him as the nazi he is. Once we do that, i think people will vote for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend."
-- Political consultant Julius Henson about congressman Robert Ehrlich, 2002 Maryland gov race

"The real terrorist threats are George W. Bush and his band of brown-shirted thugs."
-- Sandra Bernhard, actress and "comedienne"


An on and on it goes. And the libeRATs have the balls to whine about conservative "mud slinging". Jeez!

[Kathy30]

When I imagine the middle ground between liberals and conservatives I imagine an armed assailant demanding my wallet or forefit my life. What middle ground is there? Will he be content with a ten spot as a compromise? Maybe the fair compromise would be a twenty and he gets to shoot me in a non vital area.

The idealogies are just too far apart anymore to find a middle ground. The middle ground used to be leaving people alone as much as possible. Let everyone decide for themselves out they wanted to live and let them do it. That was before liberalisim wanted the power to decide how everyone should live and force them into it.

[DoctorDoom]

I might've if the question wasn't such a stupid comparison.It's "stupid" only in the sense that it was written at a level that liberal idiots can comprehend.

Conservatives haven't been showing themselves to be comparable to "pure water" lately any more than liberals to sewage (at least outside of your narrow worldview).Conservatism is pure water. Liberalism is sewage. Therefore ...

Speaking of pure water though, which party places more emphasis on the preservation of a clean environment?O woe is me, for I am undone by the loony's dazzling rhetoric. Ah jist plumb fergot that us Republicans don't live on the Urth so we jist don't care none about the environment.

O mighty Gaia, forgive me! As my penance I shall now go out and kiss all trees within ten miles.

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Use it to buy a clue about the fact that we also live here, and we have great concern for the environment. However, clueless one, we don't worship it, nor consider bugs to be equal to. And we sure as hell don't want America's energy self-sufficiency to be at the mercy of braindead liberal assholes who don't want our domestic resources to be exploited.

[Rhino]

Speaking of pure water though, which party places more emphasis on the preservation of a clean environment?The dems put more emphasis on the rhetoric. The Republicans put more emphasis on the substance.

[ldb83]

The idealogies are just too far apart anymore to find a middle ground.

I don't agree.

Hard right-wing and hard left-wing ideologies are too far apart to find middle ground, yes, and that's why my comments in this thread have sounded so dumb to everybody. A majority of Americans aren't hard anything. People on forums like this don't realize how staunch and extreme they are. They think they're just passionate. But I get onto a liberal forum and talk about compromise and how generalizations and extreme thinking only hurts their side and contributes to division... and what happens?

They erase my posts and warn me for being so conservative. I give this site credit for at least responding with harsh criticism and personal attacks as opposed to outright censorship. That's why I post here more often. But the responses I do get from liberals are the same types of diatribes I see from Doom and Maggie.

My point is, both far-ends are convinced they are absolutely right and absolutely good, and the other is pure evil. Nobody here resembles extreme liberals' style of responding to middle-ground ideas more than Dr. Doom and Maggie. Neither extreme has any feasible solutions. Just bitchy attacks and overexaggerations. Middle ground can be met, just not between the types of extremists you'll find on conservative or liberal forums.

[Naturalized-Texan]

ldb83: The only "hard" line lies on the far left. We conservatives are smackdab in the middle of the mainstream of American political thought. The hard left that controls the Democrat Party and the media is so far out of the mainstream of American politcs that it couldn't even see the mainstream with the Hubble Space Telescope.

[Beowulf]

Speaking of pure water though, which party places more emphasis on the preservation of a clean environment?

So that's the big issue with you and nothing else matters? I know you can't say the economy is bad as the stock market is doing as well as or better than it was during the Clinton years and unemployment is lower than at any point during the Clinton years.

You speak of a clean environment. At what expense I ask? Bigger government and more taxpayer dollars? I don't want more government nor do I want it running my life for me. I also don't want my government giving handouts to the lazy.
I still find it amusing that Democrats would rather criticize then offer legitimate solution. I guess your agenda of hating George Bush is more important! Now that you have a majority in BOTH houses, you only have yourselves to blame if you can't get anything accomplished.

[Kathy30]

Do you absolutely feel that people would vote to be California? People didn't vote for liberals, they voted against Bush. The media has been wildly successful for creating a hate Bush above all else climate. People blame Bush for everything. It was all carefully controlled.

[DoctorDoom]

Now that you have a majority in BOTH houses, you only have yourselves to blame if you can't get anything accomplished.Surely they do. They and their MSM butt-bussers can blame the Republicans for obstructionism, which is something of which the bipartisan, cooperative DemonRATs would NEVER be culpable.

[DoctorDoom]

BTW, according to today's radio news, the RATs have stated that any prospect of oil exploration in Alaska and along the coastal areas is utterly dead. Obviously, they're sucking up to OPEC as usual, and providing even more proof (as though it's needed) that they are shameless traitors who are out to destroy America.

One wonders whom they are going to blame when oil and gas prices go up again during their watch. Their lies and spin should marvelous.

[Lazarus]

Civics 101...

There will be no Impeachment hearings by this Dem Congress... Imeachment is specifically a Criminal Indictment procedure against the President - By definition they need to have a specific felony to accuse Bush with...

I saw someone on page 1 refer to Clinton's sexual activities in the Oval office - A correction must be made here... Clinton was not impeached because of his immoral activities in the Whitehouse... He was impeached because he committed a felony - He committed purgery under oath in a Federal court, an act that would send any common citizen to federal prison...

No Congress can impeach a president because of immoral behavior, nor can they impeach him because they are vehemently opposed to his policies... They cannot even impeach him based on gross incompetence... Most people confuse Impeachment with the act of Recall... And The Congress does not have the authority to Recall a President...

The process of Impeachment is in essence the same process where an accused person is brought before a Grand Jury so that it can be decided whether the evidence against him is sufficient to bring him to trial...

In an Impeachment, the House managers bring evidence before the floor of the House of Reps accusing the President of a felonious act... The House managers act as the Presecutor and the House acts as the Grand Jury... If a majority of the House agrees that the evidence warrants a criminal trial, and choose to send the President to trial, THAT is what we call an Impeachment - That is what happened to Clinton...

Note that an Impeachment is simply an official accusation of a felony, not a conviction... The House managers then bring their evidence to the Senate where the Impeached President is tried on the evidence... In this process, the Senate acts as the trial jury and the President has the right to present a defense...

In the Clinton Impeachment, although the Senate was obligated to hear the evidence, the REPUBLICAN-Dominated Senate under the leadership of Trent Lott in fact refused to try Clinton... They informed the House Managers in private that they had no intention of trying the President... We can all thank Trent Lott for his masterful betrayal of the American people for that little politcal sidestep... I've often wondered what Clinton had on Lott...

The bottom line is, Bush certainly has excercised his authority as President to institute policies that the Dems opposed, but there is no hint of anything that can remotely be construed as a felonious act on Bush's part...

Having said that, that does not mean that Conyers and Co. wont dedicate the next two years to "extensive oversight investigations", and they may even go thru the farcical act of searching for impeachment material to offer as a bone to the radical Bush-hating left... They will dedicate all this time and money (what's money to our government - they spend it like water) in a concerted 2-year effort to cause as much politcal damage to the Republicans as possible going into the '08 elections - They MUST retake the Whitehouse...

But no impeachment of Bush will ever materialize... I do, however, fear a very real effort to Impeach Chaney... I suspect they believe they can massage the facts and make certain implications about Chaney and his connections with Haliburton and the Oil Companies that will, in their minds, bring about an Impeachment of him... If they do this, I believe it will be so transparently political that it will backfire on them in '08...

In fact, I believe the more time and money they dedicate to investigations, the more it will erode the voters' faith in them come the next election...

That is the estimate of Laz...

[thenotch]

There are no grounds to impeach him... zero.

He has not done anything inappropriate, hasn't violated any laws and as others have said it would be HIGHLY damaging to the Dems if they would pursue this coarse of action.

Won't happen... they will just continue to do what they do best: whine and complain and point their fingers...

:no:

[BarkleUSA]

The people on liberal and conservative forums love to fight of course (and I'm called a troll in both), but most of America is somewhere between these two arenas of thought and they're tired of the division. Neither liberal nor conservative thought will ever go away, so, cliché as it sounds, the answers are found when people reach a middle ground.

Yikes! Where to begin.

If your wife is giving birth and you have an angel on each shoulder, one telling you that God has given you a precious gift and the other telling you to puncture your babies skull in the birth canal to kill it - do you feel somehow moderate because you just hacked off a couple of arms from God’s gift?

I don’t get it?

I believe that the liberal agenda represents a real and present danger to my freedom, my security, my livelihood and my country.

I would rather fight passionately to preserve my rights then compromise in order to slow how quickly they are lost.

If your son doesn’t get into college because the school mandates 20% blacks in the incoming freshman class – do you tell him sorry son, I know your scores and grades were better, but don’t you feel more tolerant?

I don’t want to get along with liberals - EVER. I want to destroy them and their evil ideology.

Seems to me your “middle ground” is on shifting sands.

[Westfield Jimmy]

IMO, ..I do not believe the demorats will try to impeach Mr. Bush.

I believe their earler rhetoric was mostly for theatrics, & to appeal to all the dummy voters.

I have to believe there were many non-democrats who helped give victory to the demorats in the mid-term elections, & I believe the attempt to impeach Bush would alienate them, & their votes for the 08' election, & I don't think the demorats can afford to alienate any future voters.

[Lubbock]

For those of you who don't believe the Democrats will try to bring charges to impeach, let me point out once again, John Conyers, a CSN, has become obsessive with the impeachment of GWB, and Nancy Pelosi will hold no sway when Conyers gears up. He will steam roll the tight skinned one. She will be flattened in the blink of an eye.

If anyone thinks for a minute that Pelosi is anything other than a figurehead, think again.

Witness the Murtha/Hoyer "fight," which wasn't really a fight at all. The outcome of that upscut was preordained. If Nancy believed she was going to run Murtha past the ones holding the real power, she is more deluded than even I can fathom.

The same will hold true when it comes to Conyers and his impeachment quest.

If Conyers is stopped, it won't be Nancy's power that does it. It will be a contingent of "good old boys" who hold him back.

I'm still betting on an loud, public, much reported upon, protracted attempt to impeach.

Trust me. Y'all are going to get real sick and tired of seeing Conyers' ugly face, and listening to that limp-wrist whine drone on and on.

And I'm all for it.

The longer the public has to listen to Conyers, the bigger belly full of the Democrats the "public" will get, and that bodes well for Republicans.

[Charity]

There are no grounds to impeach him... zero.

He has not done anything inappropriate, hasn't violated any laws and as others have said it would be HIGHLY damaging to the Dems if they would pursue this coarse of action.


Exactly!
To impeach a President just because he is a Republican is crazy but then again dims are crazy.