The quid pro quo between the outgoing Bushites and the (they hope) incoming McLiar McSame maniacs is, Johnny guts all investigations, (in case Roberts R-KS isn't available or Lee Hamilton is tied up) and gets to use Rove in return plus contact with the Big Bucks, Rangers, Pioneers, CEOs, Sheiks....for back room deals to protect executive privilege and the unitary executive and preserve the Plutocracy with Dominionist fringes.
Rove's cloven print is all over this latest bullshit with General Wesley Clark. The MSM is complicit and criminal...they're corporate shills in whom Krugman has more trust than I. Why the entire news media hasn't focused on John McCain's constant lying, flip-flopping and distortions is bordering on treasonous. withholding information of substance on a presidential candidate is unethical and immoral...so for sure we're not going to get much truth. The media's talking heads, one can hardly call them journalists or reporters, are paid by corporations intent upon keeping the status quo for their own massive financial gain. Perhaps I'm too cynical....nah.
Krugman,
Rove's Third TermBut the McCain campaign went beyond condemning General Clark’s remarks; it went out of its way to distort them. “This backhanded slap against John as not being a worthy warrior because he just got shot down is one of the more surprising insults in my military history,” said retired Col. Bud Day, who participated in a conference call organized by the campaign. In fact, General Clark had said no such thing.
The irony, not lost on Democrats, is that Col. Day himself has done what he falsely accused Wesley Clark of doing: he appeared in the 2004 Swift boat ads that impugned John Kerry’s wartime service.
The willingness of the McCain campaign to engage in these tactics, employing such tainted spokesmen, tells us that the campaign has decided to go negative — specifically, to apply the strategy Karl Rove used so effectively in 2002 and 2004 (but not so effectively in 2006), that of portraying Democrats as unpatriotic.
And sure enough, Adam Nagourney of The New York Times reports signs of the “increasing influence of veterans of Mr. Rove’s shop in the McCain operation.”
Will Rovian tactics work this year?
In 2002 and 2004, Republicans were so successful at playing the patriotism card thanks to a combination of compliant media and cowering Democrats. At first, the Clark affair suggested that nothing has changed. News organizations reported as fact the false assertion that General Clark criticized Mr. McCain’s military service, and the Obama campaign rushed to “reject” his remarks.
I don't know about the media having changed. Every once in a while the Times tosses the left a bone to distract from the bigger picture. This feels like a bone. I hope Krugman is right. There will be far more shenanigans and outright crimes between now and November. Rove is a criminal and belongs in prison. What was that about a subpoena? What happened Mr. Conyers? Sometimes our Democrats make me cringe more than the Republicans..I expect them to be vile and sickening...I always give the Democrats the benefit of the doubt only to be smacked yet again upside the noggin.
I detest Yahoo news links as they invariably die soon after publication. In this case there's no other story yet to point to this further
bullshit Rovian tactical maneuver...McCain's campaign has inundated reporters with e-mails suggesting Obama was prepared to shift his stance.
Some things never change but somehow "modern" dirty politics seem worse. Maybe it just feels worse due to overamped technology and 24/7 propaganda.
WaPo
The Founding Mudslingers
...
As Election Day draws nearer in the current campaign, the attacks will sharpen. Even if McCain and Obama try to remain above the fray, their partisans will continue to make their case. Adams privately decried the charges against Jefferson's faith and family life but publicly did nothing to stop them. Jefferson, for his part, secretly funded the most scurrilous of the anti-Adams scandalmongers, James Callender. In a widely reprinted rant that damned the sitting president as a British lackey, Callender concluded, "Take your choice between Adams, war and beggary, and Jefferson, peace and competency!" Some will paint the choice between McCain and Obama in equally stark terms. For good or for ill, negative campaigning is part of the American way.
Atwater and Rove could have taught Adams and the Federalists a few nifty tricks. Jefferson's life under a microscope? My, my, my.
When the L.A. Times fired Robert Scheer it was the final straw for me. I canceled my subscription. Now I see they're having to lay off workers. Perhaps printing the truth would have made them more relevant. It's about ad revenues not accuracy to them. Scheer told the truth. He had to go.
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