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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (133511)	8/20/2005 9:23:14 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793817

Very, very well said. "Well said?" I read it as a piece of junk. Shows you how far apart we are.

To: JohnM who wrote (133511)	8/20/2005 10:51:04 PM
From: paret	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793817

Frank Rich is a lady who used to cover movies for the NY TIMES (the paper of Walter Duranty and Jason Blair). Now they publish his (her?) deep thoughts on other topics. LOL.

To: JohnM who wrote (133511)	8/20/2005 11:53:49 PM
From: Thomas A Watson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793817

If any person suggests the President is the worst terrorist in the world. quite simply they have defined themselves to be crackpots. Rush quite elegantly explained the fraud of the left in suggesting because she lost a child, her opinion was somehow morally unquestionable. I evaluate myself by considering how I or any rational person would act. First I am not alone in the suffering of loss. All members of my immediate family suffer the same loss as I. I would never consider overt actions unless all members of my immediate had no problems with my actions. And I also would not use the names of others who had died along with my lost one without permission of every immediate family member of that person killed. The crosses in crawford with other names represent a vicious selfish evil of inflicting sadistic emotional pain. Only a crackpot can be excused. There is no excuse for FRANK RICH.

To: JohnM who wrote (133511)	8/21/2005 3:53:31 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793817

Decision 08 on Frank Rich. An excellent Fisking. "How To Write A Frank Rich Column: 7 Simple Rules That Could Change Your Life Forever As a public service announcement, because I know all of us simply can’t abide the six days a week we are without Frank Rich columns, I now present a primer on how to write your very own Frank Rich column, anyday, anytime. We’ll use this week’s column as a handy illustration of our points as we go along. Let’s set down some ground rules, first. 1. George W. Bush is bad. 2. Anyone opposed to George W. Bush is good. 3. Rich Manhattan liberals love to have their opinions confirmed, so don’t hold back - the more outrageous the conspiracy you can draw, week after week, the better; remember, the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it. Got it? Good, let’s get started: Rule Number 1: Start off with a big analogy between some current event and some completely unrelated event in the past, as if they were somehow connected. Cindy Sheehan couldn’t have picked a more apt date to begin the vigil that ambushed a president: Aug. 6 was the fourth anniversary of that fateful 2001 Crawford vacation day when George W. Bush responded to an intelligence briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States” by going fishing. Rule Number 2: Repeat over and over that Iraq did not attack the United States on 9/11, never mind that the President never said that it did. So it goes with a president who hasn’t foreseen any of the setbacks in the war he fabricated against an enemy who did not attack inside the United States in 2001. Rule Number 3: Pretend Democrats lose elections because of Republican dirty tricks, not because they run candidates that most people wouldn’t buy a used car from. Once Ms. Sheehan could no longer be ignored, the Swift Boating began. Character assassination is the Karl Rove tactic of choice, eagerly mimicked by his media surrogates, whenever the White House is confronted by a critic who challenges it on matters of war. The Swift Boating is especially vicious if the critic has more battle scars than a president who connived to serve stateside and a vice president who had “other priorities” during Vietnam. Conveniently, Rule Number 4 was covered above, also: remember, everything in the world is like Vietnam. I can’t stress this enough: Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam. If possible, use the word ‘quagmire’ for bonus points. Rule Number 5: Remember that kitchen sink ground rule? Here’s your chance…keep a handy reference chart of all your previous columns, and reference every last one of them in each future column. The most prominent smear victims have been Bush political opponents with heroic Vietnam résumés: John McCain, Max Cleland, John Kerry. But the list of past targets stretches from the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke to Specialist Thomas Wilson, the grunt who publicly challenged Donald Rumsfeld about inadequately armored vehicles last December. The assault on the whistle-blower Joseph Wilson - the diplomat described by the first President Bush as “courageous” and “a true American hero” for confronting Saddam to save American hostages in 1991 - was so toxic it may yet send its perpetrators to jail. Rule Number 6: When Democrats spew bile all over the President and his supporters, it’s ’speaking truth to power’. When Republicans point out the bile that has just been spewed on them, that just shows how hateful conservatives are. …[T]he attack on Cindy Sheehan surfaced early on Fox News, where she was immediately labeled a “crackpot” by Fred Barnes. The right-wing blogosphere quickly spread tales of her divorce, her angry Republican in-laws, her supposed political flip-flops, her incendiary sloganeering and her association with known ticket-stub-carrying attendees of “Fahrenheit 9/11.” The finale - Rule Number 7: Remember, you write for the New York Times! If you write something, that makes it true! Never mind pesky reality; you can build your own reality. THIS summer in Crawford, the White House went to this playbook once too often. When Mr. Bush’s motorcade left a grieving mother in the dust to speed on to a fund-raiser, that was one fat-cat party too far. The strategy of fighting a war without shared national sacrifice has at last backfired, just as the strategy of Swift Boating the war’s critics has reached its Waterloo before Patrick Fitzgerald’s grand jury in Washington. The 24/7 cable and Web attack dogs can keep on sliming Cindy Sheehan. The president can keep trying to ration the photos of flag-draped caskets. But this White House no longer has any more control over the insurgency at home than it does over the one in Iraq. Now you need never go hungry for that Frank Rich fix - another masterpiece is just 7 simple rules away. No need to thank me, I live to serve…" decision08.net

To: JohnM who wrote (133511)	8/21/2005 4:11:58 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793817

I summed up my reaction to Frank Rich as "junk." Others are more eloquent. Rich 'Swiftboats' Himself Into Irrelevancy Captain Ed Rarely does a columnist for a national news outlet publish a piece as intellectually bankrupt as Frank Rich's entry today in the New York Times. The only item in the column that has full engagement with the truth is this single, lonely statement: Nicholas D. Kristof and David Brooks are on vacation. Otherwise, Rich engages in transparent sophistry that must be fisked to be believed. First Rich decries the supposed character assassination of Cindy Sheehan by engaging in the same tactic himself: Once Ms. Sheehan could no longer be ignored, the Swift Boating began. Character assassination is the Karl Rove tactic of choice, eagerly mimicked by his media surrogates, whenever the White House is confronted by a critic who challenges it on matters of war. The Swift Boating is especially vicious if the critic has more battle scars than a president who connived to serve stateside and a vice president who had "other priorities" during Vietnam. The most prominent smear victims have been Bush political opponents with heroic Vietnam résumés: John McCain, Max Cleland, John Kerry. Two points have to be made here. First of all, if one wants to decry character assassination, perhaps one should not engage in it. Unfortunately, that would leave the serially dishonest Mr. Rich out of a job. Second, the transformation of Swift Boat into a verb implies that the 250+ veterans of the Viet Nam war lied about their testimony regarding the in-country and post-war behavior of John Kerry. If Rich wants to get back into that debate, he's welcome to it, because the Swift Boat vets have not been disproven in any of their major allegations -- while Kerry was forced to retract his Christmas in Cambodia tale, the arrogation of Tedd Peck's service record on PCF 94, the battle stories including David Alston as a member of his Silver Star engagement, and so on and so forth. Besides, if Rich wants to argue that this country cannot abide any criticism of the political rants of a Gold Star Mom, how can he tar these men who actually served in battle as liars? Does that make any sense to anyone at all? Why not just address the criticisms themselves? True to form, the attack on Cindy Sheehan surfaced early on Fox News, where she was immediately labeled a "crackpot" by Fred Barnes. The right-wing blogosphere quickly spread tales of her divorce, her angry Republican in-laws, her supposed political flip-flops, her incendiary sloganeering and her association with known ticket-stub-carrying attendees of "Fahrenheit 9/11." Let's let Cindy speak for herself, and let people make up their own minds. Here she is in April of this year: We have no Constitution. We’re the only country with no checks and balances. We want our country back if we have to impeach George Bush down to the person who picks up the dog sh-t in Washington! Let George Bush send his two little party animals to die in Iraq. It’s OK for Israel to have nuclear weapons but we are waging nuclear war in Iraq, we have contaminated the entire country. It’s not OK for Syria to be in Lebanon. Hypocrites! But Israel can occupy Palestine? Stop the slaughter! Or in Dallas: “And the other thing I want him to tell me is ‘just what was the noble cause Casey died for?’ Was it freedom and democracy? Bullshit! He died for oil. He died to make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East. We’re not freer here, thanks to your PATRIOT Act. Iraq is not free. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you’ll stop the terrorism,” she exclaimed. “There, I used the ‘I’ word – imperialism,” the 48 year-old mother quipped. “And now I’m going to use another ‘I’ word – impeachment – because we cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail.” As the veterans in Dallas rose to their feet, Sheehan said defiantly, “My son was killed in 2004. I am not paying my taxes for 2004. You killed my son, George Bush, and I don’t owe you a penny...you give my son back and I’ll pay my taxes. Come after me (for back taxes) and we’ll put this war on trial.” Cindy Sheehan has every right to protest in this manner. However, reasonable people reading her rants come to the understandable conclusion that she represents the most radical leftist positions possible without advocating violent overthrow. Rich writes that this characterization comes from a Fox-led effort to associate her with people who attended Fahrenheit 9/11, but Sheehan herself made that association plain when she began posting her views on Michael Moore's website. Did Fox arrange for that to happen? captainsquartersblog.com In Rich's little world, the First Amendment applies only to those whose views he shares, and the use of free speech to criticize the political stands of his comrades amounts to character assassination. Harry Truman said it best when he advised the heat-sensitive to stay out of the kitchen. Sheehan has gone on speaking tours and courted the national media that has treated her far too generously thus far. Her pronouncements are fair game for criticism, and if she and Rich can't abide it, they can go back to the oblivion for which they seem eventually destined. Posted by Captain Ed