Category Archives: Politics: US

Tompaine.com was one of the early truth-squad, good-government sites, a trailblazer, which may be why it seems a little dowdy already. But they keep delivering.

Today it's A Cronkite Moment? in which Jonathan Tasini suggests that SI might be a bellweather today a bit like Walter Cronkite was 46 years ago.

In the May 3 issue of SI, Reilly, in his regular back-page column “The Life of Reilly,” wrote a piece under the headline “The Hero and the Unknown Soldier.” The hero in Reilly's column was Pat Tillman, the former star football player who was killed in Afghanistan. After 9/11, Tillman had given up a multimillion-dollar contract to volunteer for the Army Rangers. He was lionized throughout the country for his sacrifice.

The Unknown Soldier was Todd Bates. Bates drowned in Iraq. His death went virtually unnoticed except to his family and friends. The man who raised Bates, Charles Jones, refused to go to the funeral, refused to eat or relate to others; he died just four weeks after the funeral. “He died of a broken heart,” Bates' grandmother, Shirley, who also raised him, told Reilly. “There was no reason for my boy to die. There is no reason for this war. All we have now is a Vietnam. My Toddie's life was wasted over there. All this war is a waste. Look at all these boys going home in coffins. What's the good in it?” Reilly, in barely controlled rage, concludes his piece about Tillman and Bates:

“Both did their duty for their country, but I wonder if their country did its duty for them. Tillman died in Afghanistan, a war with no end in sight and not enough troops to finish the job. Bates died in Iraq, a war that began with no just cause and continues with no just reason.

Be proud that sports produce men like this.

But I, for one, am furious that these wars keep taking them.”

Reilly, in his eloquence, was expressing opinions already delivered in places like The Nation and op-ed pages around the country. But that's the point. With all due respect, The Nation,—of which I am a subscriber and supporter—and its ilk will not change the course of history because they speak to the already converted.

What's important here is that Reilly's audience is not the typical Nation reader.

One of the things I'm fairly squeamish about is comparisons of contemporary figures to Hitler. I do not go as far as those who say that this genocide was unique and superlatively horrible; Cambodia, 'ethnic cleansing', Rwanda, the 20th century has examples of horrors, each different in meaningful ways, each horrible.

Nevertheless, I am highly predisposed to dislike and distrust a statement like this one: “ Rush Limbaugh is as mainstream in America as Hitler was mainstream in Germany, circa 1932.” Trouble is, Digby got evidence, drawn from Day One of David Brock's new site Media Matters for America​.

It ain't pretty.

If there is any decency around, then decent people are going to run away from Limbaugh, despite the TLC they may wish to give this slightly repentant drug abuser.

• Limbaugh suggests that feminists are into bestiality with dogs

• “What's good for terrorists is good for John Kerry”

• “if you want the terrorists running the show, then you will elect John Kerry”

• “[Speaking about Democrats] I don't know who they are, I don't know what they believe, but I can't relate. I can't possibly understand somebody who hates this country, who was born and raised here. I don't understand how you hate this Constitution. I don't understand how you hate freedom”

• “These people have become the mainstream thought — thinkers, generators of the Democratic Party. It's who they are. They hate this country. They hate the military of this country.”

(there's quite a bit more where that came from).

When I lived in Cambridge, back in the Thatcher era, my friends — especially David Howarth, now the LibDem Propective Parliamentary Candidate for Cambridge — commonly called the Conservative Party (the Tories) the “stupid party”.

So what to make of this chart? (via Leiter)

At least Florida is only a tiny bit below average. I'm sure that when Jeb Bush gets done trashing our school system we will do worse here.

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Angry Bear and Brad DeLong are trying to compile a list of people who are going to get out of the Bush administration with their reputation intact. Being economists, they're naturally concentrating on those, which means mostly higher staffers and regulators, with a dash of policy and press people thrown in for good measure. It turns out that the set of people who will emerge with reputations unsullied is not empty, but by their reckoning it's pretty small.

Back in October I surveyed the Bush cabinet and found it to be a fairly sad lot. But I did find one name that I think should be added to their list. You may never have heard of him, but he's in the Cabinet.