Signs of the Coming Bush Apocalypse
Also: Former bureau chief Chris Hedges went wild on Christian "fascism," plus Frank Rich's "pathology."
Published: 10/20/2006 2:44 PM ET
Signs of the Bush Apocalypse
"If you are sure you will be raptured into heaven, your clothes left behind with the nonbelievers, then this news should cheer you up.If you are rational, however, these may be some of the last few weeks or months in which to enjoy what is left of our beleaguered, dying republic and way of life." - Former Times Middle East Bureau Chief Chris Hedges in his October 9 column for Truthdig, on the aftermath of what he predicts will be an imminent attack by Bush on Iran that could happen "in as little as three weeks."
...And A Blast From Chris Hedges' Past:
"All debates with the Christian Right are useless. We cannot reach this movement. It does not want a dialogue. It cares nothing for rational thought and discussion. It is not mollified because John Kerry prays or Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday School. These naive attempts to reach out to a movement bent on our destruction, to prove to them that we too have 'values,' would be humorous if the stakes were not so deadly. They hate us. They hate the liberal, enlightened world formed by the Constitution. Our opinions do not count. This movement will not stop until we are ruled by Biblical Law, an authoritarian church intrudes in every aspect of our life, women stay at home and rear children, gays agree to be cured, abortion is considered murder, the press and the schools promote 'positive' Christian values, the federal government is gutted, war becomes our primary form of communication with the rest of the world and recalcitrant non-believers see their flesh eviscerated at the sound of the Messiah's voice." - Then-Times reporter Chris Hedges, from a November 15, 2004 op-ed posted on TheocracyWatch.
"People Like These" Love Dick Cheney
"Mr. Cheney's favorability ratings might be in an underground bunker, somewhere beneath the president's (at 20 percent in the most recent New York Times poll). Critics deride him as a Prince of Darkness whose occasional odd episodes - swearing at a United States senator, shooting a friend in a hunting accident and then barely acknowledging it publicly - suggest a striking indifference to how he is perceived. Even admirers who laud his intellect and steadiness rarely mention anything about his electrifying rooms or people. But then there are people like these , at the Capitol Plaza Hotel Manor Conference Center in Topeka." - Mark Leibovich, October 17.
No Liberals in Immigration Debate, Just "Far-Right Republicans"
"Janet Napolitano watched the escalating arms race between the two far-right Republican gubernatorial candidates with wry humor and maybe a hint of disdain, from her office on top of a stubby tower that is built into the Arizona Capitol....Napolitano presents herself as a problem-solver, not an ideologue. ('I think that's just so anachronistic,' she remarked when I noted the absence of liberal rhetoric in her pronouncements.)" - Former Executive Editor Joseph Lelyveld, in the cover story for the October 14 edition of the Sunday Magazine.
Actually, the GOP Is "The Party of Lincoln"
"Known in some insider slang as the Velvet Mafia or the Pink Elephants, gay Republicans tend to be less open about their sexual orientation than their Democratic counterparts. Even though the G.O.P. fashions itself as 'the party of Lincoln' and a promoter of tolerance, it is perceived as hostile by many gay men and lesbians. Republicans have promoted a 'traditional values' agenda, while some conservatives have turned the 'radical gay subculture' into a reliable campaign villain. And there are few visible role models in the party; Representative Jim Kolbe of Arizona is the only openly gay Republican in Congress." - Mark Leibovich, October 8.
Left-Wing Propaganda in the Theatre Section
"There is nothing dated about the subject, when Congress has not raised the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour since 1997, or, as a character in the play says about looking for an apartment, 'There's just no place left in this town for working people to live.'" - Andrea Stevens' review of a play based on socialist writer's Barbara Ehrenreich's book "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America," from the October 11 edition.
Malkin's "Questionable Political Graffiti"
"Last week, as YouTube continued its recent campaign to spit-shine its image and, perhaps, to look a little less ragtag to potential buyers (including Google, which was said to be eyeing the upstart in the $1.6 billion range), the company took a scrub bucket to some questionable political graffiti on its servers, including a video entry from the doyenne of right-wing blogs, Michelle Malkin....This is not to suggest that Ms. Malkin's video would not be particularly offensive to some people. There is little that Ms. Malkin says or does that is not. But it is hard to imagine what YouTube hopes to gain by punting such content, or what sort of uphill rhetorical battle it is setting itself up for when it does so." - Tom Zeller Jr., October 9.
McCain When Attacking Bush: Brave Maverick. Attacking Clinton? Bitter Partisan
"Mr. McCain's attack was part of an increasingly bitter partisan row over who was responsible for allowing North Korea to achieve nuclear ability." - Congressional reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg, in an October 11 story headlined "Instant Fallout For Politicians: Finger-Pointing - Bitter Partisan Furor After Nuclear Claim."
Don't Even Bother to Read This One
"Senator Offers to Amend Financial Forms" - Headline over an October 12 story about Democratic Minority leader Sen. Harry Reid failing to declare a $700,000 profit on a property sale in Las Vegas.
"The split between the Republicans' outward homophobia and inner gayness isn't just hypocrisy; it's pathology. Take the bizarre case of Karl Rove....we now learn from 'The Architect,' the recent book by the Texas journalists James Moore and Wayne Slater, that Mr. Rove's own (and beloved) adoptive father, Louis Rove, was openly gay in the years before his death in 2004." - Editor-columnist Frank Rich, October 15.
"If you are sure you will be raptured into heaven, your clothes left behind with the nonbelievers, then this news should cheer you up.If you are rational, however, these may be some of the last few weeks or months in which to enjoy what is left of our beleaguered, dying republic and way of life." - Former Times Middle East Bureau Chief Chris Hedges in his October 9 column for Truthdig, on the aftermath of what he predicts will be an imminent attack by Bush on Iran that could happen "in as little as three weeks."
...And A Blast From Chris Hedges' Past:
"All debates with the Christian Right are useless. We cannot reach this movement. It does not want a dialogue. It cares nothing for rational thought and discussion. It is not mollified because John Kerry prays or Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday School. These naive attempts to reach out to a movement bent on our destruction, to prove to them that we too have 'values,' would be humorous if the stakes were not so deadly. They hate us. They hate the liberal, enlightened world formed by the Constitution. Our opinions do not count. This movement will not stop until we are ruled by Biblical Law, an authoritarian church intrudes in every aspect of our life, women stay at home and rear children, gays agree to be cured, abortion is considered murder, the press and the schools promote 'positive' Christian values, the federal government is gutted, war becomes our primary form of communication with the rest of the world and recalcitrant non-believers see their flesh eviscerated at the sound of the Messiah's voice." - Then-Times reporter Chris Hedges, from a November 15, 2004 op-ed posted on TheocracyWatch.
"People Like These" Love Dick Cheney
"Mr. Cheney's favorability ratings might be in an underground bunker, somewhere beneath the president's (at 20 percent in the most recent New York Times poll). Critics deride him as a Prince of Darkness whose occasional odd episodes - swearing at a United States senator, shooting a friend in a hunting accident and then barely acknowledging it publicly - suggest a striking indifference to how he is perceived. Even admirers who laud his intellect and steadiness rarely mention anything about his electrifying rooms or people. But then there are people like these , at the Capitol Plaza Hotel Manor Conference Center in Topeka." - Mark Leibovich, October 17.
No Liberals in Immigration Debate, Just "Far-Right Republicans"
"Janet Napolitano watched the escalating arms race between the two far-right Republican gubernatorial candidates with wry humor and maybe a hint of disdain, from her office on top of a stubby tower that is built into the Arizona Capitol....Napolitano presents herself as a problem-solver, not an ideologue. ('I think that's just so anachronistic,' she remarked when I noted the absence of liberal rhetoric in her pronouncements.)" - Former Executive Editor Joseph Lelyveld, in the cover story for the October 14 edition of the Sunday Magazine.
Actually, the GOP Is "The Party of Lincoln"
"Known in some insider slang as the Velvet Mafia or the Pink Elephants, gay Republicans tend to be less open about their sexual orientation than their Democratic counterparts. Even though the G.O.P. fashions itself as 'the party of Lincoln' and a promoter of tolerance, it is perceived as hostile by many gay men and lesbians. Republicans have promoted a 'traditional values' agenda, while some conservatives have turned the 'radical gay subculture' into a reliable campaign villain. And there are few visible role models in the party; Representative Jim Kolbe of Arizona is the only openly gay Republican in Congress." - Mark Leibovich, October 8.
Left-Wing Propaganda in the Theatre Section
"There is nothing dated about the subject, when Congress has not raised the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour since 1997, or, as a character in the play says about looking for an apartment, 'There's just no place left in this town for working people to live.'" - Andrea Stevens' review of a play based on socialist writer's Barbara Ehrenreich's book "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America," from the October 11 edition.
Malkin's "Questionable Political Graffiti"
"Last week, as YouTube continued its recent campaign to spit-shine its image and, perhaps, to look a little less ragtag to potential buyers (including Google, which was said to be eyeing the upstart in the $1.6 billion range), the company took a scrub bucket to some questionable political graffiti on its servers, including a video entry from the doyenne of right-wing blogs, Michelle Malkin....This is not to suggest that Ms. Malkin's video would not be particularly offensive to some people. There is little that Ms. Malkin says or does that is not. But it is hard to imagine what YouTube hopes to gain by punting such content, or what sort of uphill rhetorical battle it is setting itself up for when it does so." - Tom Zeller Jr., October 9.
McCain When Attacking Bush: Brave Maverick. Attacking Clinton? Bitter Partisan
"Mr. McCain's attack was part of an increasingly bitter partisan row over who was responsible for allowing North Korea to achieve nuclear ability." - Congressional reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg, in an October 11 story headlined "Instant Fallout For Politicians: Finger-Pointing - Bitter Partisan Furor After Nuclear Claim."
Don't Even Bother to Read This One
"Senator Offers to Amend Financial Forms" - Headline over an October 12 story about Democratic Minority leader Sen. Harry Reid failing to declare a $700,000 profit on a property sale in Las Vegas.
"The split between the Republicans' outward homophobia and inner gayness isn't just hypocrisy; it's pathology. Take the bizarre case of Karl Rove....we now learn from 'The Architect,' the recent book by the Texas journalists James Moore and Wayne Slater, that Mr. Rove's own (and beloved) adoptive father, Louis Rove, was openly gay in the years before his death in 2004." - Editor-columnist Frank Rich, October 15.
