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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CalculatedRisk who wrote (64927)	4/21/2006 3:24:36 PM
From: SiouxPal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 362633

No Rush To Figure Out This Song by Bob Kerr You have to check out this guy Rush Limbaugh. I don't know if you've heard of him, but he's the guy who's been singing "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life" as the right wing melts down to a fetid puddle of indecision and beneath-the-dirt approval ratings. If you've never heard the song, it was featured in Monty Python's "The Life of Brian" to mark another dark moment in human history. Limbaugh, of course, does his own rendition. It isn't quite as musical. The first time I heard Limbaugh I knew he had to be doing some kind of spoof on rabid, foam-at-the-mouth right wingers. He was too goofy to be serious. Then somebody told me he was actually considered a new and vital voice of conservative America. I caught the Rushter recently during a traffic backup due to some construction. I punched the buttons and there he was, like a toxic belch steaming out of my radio. Actually, I was a little surprised to hear The Rushman on the air. The last thing I'd heard was that he was taking time off to deal with some medical issues, but that might have been a long time ago since I don't keep a daily "Dittos Log" as I'm told some of his disciples do. Many years ago — maybe after the time I expressed my fascination with the idea that Rush was actually taken seriously — some people invited me to take a bus trip to New York to catch his act live. I thought about it, but then I declined due to concerns over what kind of recreational pharmaceuticals might be served on the road to a Limbaugh gig. The other day, in traffic, Rush reminded me why so many people with twisted inner feelings find a certain comfort in his words. He tells them it's OK to feel the way they do. He also reminded me why he is so beloved by those who would have us believe what they tell us rather than what we see, hear, feel and smell. I might be paraphrasing slightly, but I feel confident I am conveying the essential meaning of Rush's dispatch from the battered right the other day: "We are winning the war in Iraq, but losing it at home." I haven't heard one that good since Spiro Agnew back in'71. "Global warming is just a lot of hooey ..." So, uh, the scientists are wrong? The polar ice cap isn't melting, it's just sweating heavily? Then there are the generals. The generals are a right-wing nightmare. There are half a dozen of them and they are saying the war in Iraq is a military disaster. They want Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to face his failures and get out. What's the keeper of the flickering right-wing flame to do? After all, the military is supposed to be solidly in the conservative corral. Well, Rush didn't get to be Rush by just passing along the facts. He has a nasty change of pace in his repertoire and he served it up. He didn't take on the generals, because their credentials are far too battle tested. Instead, he took a hard right turn away from the issue and pointed out that the liberals love these particular generals and liberals hate the military. But Rush is wrong. Again. I'm a liberal and I have great respect and admiration for the military and its generals. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if the generals had been allowed to be generals, we wouldn't be in the colossal mess we're in. Rush wouldn't understand that, of course. He took a pass on his generation's war. He hasn't had the "boots on the ground" experience. Neither have the geniuses he's trying so hard to cover for. Published on Friday, April 21, 2006 by the Boulder Daily Camera (Colorado)

To: CalculatedRisk who wrote (64927)	4/21/2006 7:01:43 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 362633

Rove's New Mission: Survival ___________________________________________________________ By E. J. Dionne Jr. Columnist The Washington Post Friday, April 21, 2006 Here's the real meaning of the White House shake-up and the redefinition of Karl Rove's role in the Bush presidency: The administration's one and only domestic priority in 2006 is hanging on to control of Congress. That, in turn, means that all the spin about Rove's power being diminished is simply wrong. Yes, Rove is giving up some policy responsibilities to concentrate on politics, but guess what: The possibility of President Bush's winning enactment of any major new policy initiative this year is zero. Rove is simply moving to where all the action will, of necessity, be. As one outside adviser to the administration said, the danger of a Democratic takeover of at least one house of Congress looms large and would carry huge penalties for Bush. The administration fears "investigations of everything" by congressional committees, this adviser said, and the "possibility of a forced withdrawal from Iraq" through legislative action. "I don't think they see much chance of accomplishing anything this year," said this Republican strategist, who preferred not to be quoted by name. "The bulk of their agenda, let's say, has been put on hold." Rove never stopped being political, even when he had formal responsibility for policy. What's intriguing about the shift in the direction of Rove's energies is that it marks a turn from the high politics of a partisan realignment driven by ideas and policies to the more mundane politics of eking out votes, seat by seat and state by state. Most of Rove's grander dreams have died as the president's poll numbers have come crashing down. It's forgotten that the president's proposal to privatize part of Social Security was not primarily about creating solvency in the system, since the creation of private accounts would have aggravated deficits for a significant period. It was part of a larger effort to reorganize government and bring the New Deal era to a definitive close. The president's "ownership society" was a political project designed to increase Americans' reliance on private markets for their retirements and, over the longer run, on their own resources for health coverage. The idea was that broadening the "investor class," a totemic phrase among tax-cutting conservatives, would change the economic basis of politics -- and create more Republicans. The collapse of the Social Security initiative was thus more than a policy failure. It was a decisive political defeat that left Bush and Rove with no fallback ideas around which to organize domestic policy. And just as the growing unpopularity of the war in Vietnam after 1966 forced Lyndon Johnson to abandon his Great Society programs -- partly because of large GOP gains in Congress during that year's midterm elections