Dean's World

Dunno Dean.

I blame television.

This Terrorism mini-series has gone on way too long, and the writers are starting to repeat themselves. Lets wrap it up, and close it out.

That new series "Let The Good Times Roll" is about ready to debut, and according to the promos, it has some new angles that will really grab ya.

Rich

Maybe the left "hates" Bush because of embarrassingly hypocritical things he does soley of his own free will, such as the 81 specifics points made in this article . If you would, please look through this list and give me your opinion, Dean, as I would like to hear what someone on the right would think of these.

I'm always amused to be called a member of "the right." That probably described me for about a year back in the early '90s. Oh well, people on the right do it too, then they get all pissed at me when I tell them I support national health insurance, gay marriage, medical marijuana, and am pro-choice on abortion.

But anyway: You, uh, want me to provide an off-the-top-of-my-head response to a long and slanted list of charges? And let me guess, if I don't have an instant answer for you, it "just proves" that there is no response?

I gotta ask, how long have you been reading about politics, James? These kinds of lists are common, and they're always shallow. The right plays the game as well as the left and it's always unhealthy in the long run, because it doesn't let you get to ideas, it's merely an indictment. You want me to provide you a link to a list of charges against Kerry calling him a war criminal, a traitor, weak on defense, racist, homophobic, anti-science, and anti-American? I'm quite certain some of my right-wing readers will be happy to provide you with same.

You can take any President--no, scratch that, you can take ANY PERSON ALIVE--and create a list of reasons why they are bad and why anything they've decided to do is stupid or selfish, especially if all you do is concentrate on the negative and don't bother to ask that person to defend himself.

Just off the top of my head, look at "Day 83." It quotes Scott Ritter, a man with a background as a child molester and who has been shown to have said completely contradictory things about weapons inspections in Iraq such that he has to be a liar. But this is a trusted source? And where is the link to a defense of this described action by the Bush administration?

Look at "Day 82": Is there any attempt to quote any scientific source that agrees with the administration's decision? Or any explanation from the administration? So why should I take it seriously?

"Day 81" -- The arsenic in the water bullshit again. An incredible amount has been written on this subject to explain why the administration acted as it did. You want the short version? The Clinton administration sat on the arsenic issue for 8 years and did nothing on it because it was going to be hideously expensive, was opposed by many local communities that would have been hurt by it, and the science, while fairly good, still had its detractors, and ALL SOURCES agreed that the risks entailed by not lowering the standards was TINY and affected only a few communities (communities in which, again, there was resistant to making the change because it would have been expensive and they didn't see a need). In the last moments of his administration, Clinton finally put the new standards in, knowing he would have no political fallout from it, and the Bush administration said, "hold on, we want to review this."

Get it? The standards had been the same for years, with many saying "we don't need the expense of lowering these, it's safe enough as it is." They also had no effect on most of the country at all. And the new administration said, "Hey, wait a minute, we want to look at this."

That's IT. THAT'S what got spun by the Democrats into "Bush wants to raise the arsenic in your drinking water!" It was the worst case of demagoguery of 2001 so far as I and a lot of other people are concerned.

That enough for starters?

Oh my God, I'm going to be accused of plagiarizing Dean's post
:)

Dean! You dog! You plagiarized maor's post!

Yes, La Shawn.
I just read a comment on another blog yesterday in which the author mentioned seeing some lapel buttons with the word "Christian" having a red circle and slash through it.

At a state-level Democratic convention.

I think that's where a lot of the hate comes from, and the umitigated, guiltless lying that goes on to propagate their moral view. I keep thinking the old-guard Christian Dems- Catholics and Baptists come to mind- and wonder what they think of their party now.

I know what those folks think around here.

It isn't their party anymore.

Now, what I would like to hear is an explanation from someone of the Jewish faith as to why many Jewish people still plan to vote Democratic. I just don't get that- there must be something I'm missing.

The Orthodox Jews now trend Republican. The Reform, who are larger in number, vote overwhelmingly Democratic, despite the fact that their party is home to most of the virulant Israel-haters. It probably has to do with Reform Jews' paranoia of Christianity, which the left wing of their party is also paranoid of.

In a sense maybe it's good, though. If they left the party then the Dems would almost certainly turn completely against Israel.

There are a couple other things that drives people batty about Bush: "white" and "male" and unapologetic about it.

Dean -

Good stuff. I think maybe one thing that VP left out, was that this hatred was sparked in 2000, and would have normally died out by '04, but, as she notes, the hatred found a way to spread by transmuting the fear of terrorism into hatred for Bush.

Her assertion is also interesting in that it ties together, fantastically well, the correlation between Bush's handling of the GWOT and his ratings.

Virginia Postrel is definitely on to something. Bush is not nearly as harsh in his style as were Nixon and Agnew, who were hated by the Democrats and the Left, nor is he as consistently conservative in opposition to the welfare state as was Reagan, who was also hated. Yet, Bush is hated far out of proportion to any of these things, and the hatred clearly intensified with the War on Islam's Terror, so it stands to reason that this is indeed a displaced fear.

I think the hatred is coming from several directions. One, right-wing jerks did go after Clinton, big-time. While blogging only came in toward the end of his last Administration, the BBSs and chat rooms, as well as talk-radio were psychotically anti-Clinton.

Another, for sure, is the election. Democrats really thought they had won it and when it was snatched from between their lips, they threw (and continue to throw) a fit. Not all Democrats, just too many of them. They've managed to stoop to the level of the real right-wing wingnuts.

For Peg Kaplan:

No, even the liberals will let you keep your religion, even Christianity. You just have to keep it invisible and silent. They really can't take outward professions of any faith. They dump on any religion--and particularly conservative religions--that dare raise their voices or--shudder--practice their faiths in public.

Well LaShawn, I think you're missing Hatcher's point. Some on the left see contempt for Bush as payback for all the mean things some on the right said about Clinton. Indeed, that's part of the reason the MoveOn people exist.

Of course, Bush opposed Clinton's impeachment and publicly castigated the hard right for being too negative. But it doesn't seem to have earned him any points with the hard left.

And actually I'm not sure why Bush is perceived as more friendly to the "Religious Right." The Christian Coalition was much bigger and more influential during Reagan's administration. They were responsible for the pro-life plank in the Republican platform under Reagan, Reagan had friendly ties with not just Pat Robertson but also Jerry Falwell. The Reaganites were pretty down on pornography, too.

This perception of Bush as being closer to the religious right is an interesting one.

I had thought so, too, at the time, and I must confess that I was against Reagan in his early term for his association with Falwell. My view of him has changed since then. But I remember that he defied Falwell by appointing Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court. Then, Goldwater, to whom Reagan was closer ideologically, pointed out that every good Christian should kick Falwell in the ass. By the way, it is an insult to my Christian friends to imply that Falwell or Robertson speak for them.

I oppose censorship of pornography, though I must note that the Meese Committee report advocating such censorship was more suggestive than most pornography, as is so often the case, which is one main reason I love to read conservative books -- sexy in their denunciations of sex. I absolutely opposed Reagan's biggest blunder, the aborted appointment of totalitarian Bork to the Supreme Court, but then Reagan turned around and appointed Bork's antipode, Justice Anthony Kennedy, stalwart defender of freedom.

I must note that where Reagan agreed with the "Christian Right" was on the more benevolent aspects of their agenda, e.g., allowing prayer in schools, protecting the right to life of the unborn. I opposed his stand on abortion then and for a long time after, but I agree with it now.

Bush, unfortunately, has signed on to the most malignant part of their agenda, i.e., the anti-homosexual movement. His support of the FMA was reprehensible. Reagan would never have done such a thing. I'll probably vote for Bush, but only because he would be a better Commander in Chief of our armed forces in this War than would Kerry be. But I must make it clear that I condemn all of Bush's pandering to the anti-homosexual movement.