XPost: alt.fan.barbra.streisand, alt.fan.j-garofalo, alt.fan.julia-roberts   
   XPost: alt.politics.democrats   
   From: rbnhdzro@N0SPAM.Z0R0.0RG   
      
   On 12 Nov 2005 13:55:02 -0800, "Prof. Leland Milton Goldblatt , PhD.   
   Gop wants Starve kids and Old people!"  wrote:   
      
   >This was written by my friend Andrew Foster Altschul, a fairly   
   >successful fiction writer (which is to say he publishes and has a novel   
   >coming out) and lecturer at Stanford. He doesn't have a password to   
   >post here so I'm posting his rant for him. He writes excellent rants.   
   >-se   
   >   
   >Erratum   
   >   
   >I was wrong.   
   >   
   >   
   >It happens, from time to time, even to the political Nostradami, the   
   >greatest minds of our generation. And if we will claim glory when our   
   >predictions come true, then we must admit it when they are horribly,   
   >grotesquely wrong.   
   >   
   >Wednesday night at a cocktail party at the home of Julie Orringer and   
   >Ryan Harty, I held forth to Stephen Elliott and Peter Orner, as well as   
   >a small gaggle of my credulous and admiring graduate students, that I   
   >thought things were about to change. It was a defining moment for   
   >George W. Bush, the fulcrum of his presidency, I said. Even a baboon   
   >could not fail to notice that he was on the verge of permanent   
   >disgrace, the historians were sharpening their pencils to write of his   
   >failed presidency and its terrible cost: for American prestige and   
   >respect, for the U.S. economy, for lives lost in the Middle East.   
   >Perhaps most important, from his perspective, the "permanent Republican   
   >majority" is in jeopardy, the 1994 revolution's appeal, such as it was,   
   >lies in the tatters of New Orleans, Virginia's bellwether has rung   
   >loudly, the Terminator and the Exterminator have been terminated and   
   >exterminated. The Scooter Libby affair is a cancer that has given us   
   >the band-aid spectacle of White House "ethics classes"; the vow to   
   >"restore honor and dignity to the Oval Office" has become a punch line.   
   >As a second-term president, I said, Bush would be thinking about his   
   >legacy. It was time, I opined, to make some changes. It was time, I   
   >said, pleased with my metaphor, for Nixon to go to China.   
   >   
   >The President considers himself a fundamentally decent man, I said.   
   >Unlike Dick Cheney, who wants only to see himself as right and   
   >powerful, George Bush wants to see himself as decent. He could not   
   >ignore recent events, I said, reaching for the shrimp cocktail. They   
   >were humbling, chastening - or at least they made it clear that a tone   
   >of humility and chastity would be necessary in order to restore trust   
   >in his administration. After a long, thoughtful sip of cabernet, I said   
   >humility and chastity dictated some housecleaning. It dictated a move   
   >to the center, an engagement with the parts of the electorate he has   
   >sneered at. Bush does not want to be remembered merely for cutting   
   >taxes and licking the boots of bigots and Bible warriors, I said,   
   >eyeing a truffle. He himself is not truly a bigot, nor a Bible warrior,   
   >and the time when it was expedient to pose as one has obviously passed.   
   >   
   >I made other predictions which, in retrospect, are too embarrassing to   
   >reveal - though I still stand by them.   
   >   
   >"Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated   
   >the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to   
   >war," said Bush in his Veterans Day speech, raising higher an audacity   
   >bar that he and Cheney have already elevated to Himalayan heights. "The   
   >stakes in the global war on terror are too high and the national   
   >interest is too important for politicians to throw out false charges,"   
   >he said, reverting to the rhetoric of the pre-war marketing campaign   
   >and the post-Mission Accomplished backfill: If you oppose the war, you   
   >are a traitor; if you disagree with its architects, you are against the   
   >national interest. You might as well be shooting at our troops   
   >yourself.   
   >   
   >"We will never back down. We will never give in. We will never accept   
   >anything less than complete victory," he said, the day after three   
   >hotels in Jordan were bombed by al-Qaeda in Iraq, just weeks after we   
   >passed 2,000 American casualties in this vainglorious escapade. Only   
   >cowards and Democrats could question his omniscience, his goodness, his   
   >will - and never mind that moderate Republicans are speaking out   
   >against the war, demanding an exit strategy, abandoning ship on issues   
   >of torture and presidential prerogative. Even Rick Santorum doesn't   
   >want Bush around. And when a bottom-feeder like Rick Santorum won't   
   >return your calls, it's really time to check your deodorant.   
   >   
   >Meanwhile, Karl Rove took an I-didn't-get-indicted victory lap before   
   >the Federalist Society, where he beat up Federal judges, lamented the   
   >treatment of Harriet Miers (apparently forgetting it was the   
   >Federalists and Brownbacks who sank her), and impugned the patriotism   
   >of Democratic Senators Schumer, Durbin, Leahy, and Kennedy. (This, the   
   >day after Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney took applause following a   
   >reference to Kennedy as part of a "KKK, the Kennedy Kerry Klan.")   
   >Seeing as Rove most likely isn't allowed to urinate without permission   
   >these days, it's pretty clear that this was a calculated effort, a   
   >one-two punch, Butch and Sundance charging into a hail of pansy-assed   
   >liberal gunfire to prove once again: It doesn't matter if you're right   
   >or honest or successful, as long as you never stop calling other people   
   >dirty names.   
   >   
   >"Karl Rove has... come into the cross-hairs of criticism from the   
   >liberal establishment here in Washington," said David McIntosh,   
   >co-chairman of the Federalist Society. "When the establishment can't   
   >defeat the power of one's ideas, they crank up the engine of personal   
   >attack in order to distract the leaders." McIntosh seems to have   
   >forgotten that it was a Republican prosecutor, assigned by a Republican   
   >Justice Department, who investigated Rove and indicted a Republican   
   >Chief of Staff for his conversations with a hawkish journalist and the   
   >resulting column by a prominent Republican troglodyte. Inconvenient   
   >though it may be to Republican delusions, the truth is that Democrats   
   >were on the sidelines of this one. But why should the truth get in the   
   >way of the marketing campaign? Why examine your own weaknesses and   
   >errors when you can smear people instead and change the subject?   
   >Self-examination makes for bad PR.   
   >   
   >Clearly, there will be no turn toward the center. There will be no   
   >contrition, no reaching out, no soul searching. There will be no road   
   >to Damascus, no trip to China. Bush and Rove are going to try to shoot   
   >their way out of this, resorting to precisely the scummy smear tactics   
   >Patrick Fitzgerald just laid bare. They're going to keep trying to   
   >Swiftboat anyone who opposes them - except that Bush's approval rating   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)