Posted on 04/17/2006 5:53:27 AM PDT by mathprof
FOR THOSE who have ever wondered when a promise of protection becomes a protection racket, this is your moment.
We now have the forced admission that in 2003 George W. Bush himself approved the leaking of classified intelligence gathered before the Iraq war. He didn't let it all leak out. He authorized a trickle of information buttressing his case that Saddam Hussein had been a nuclear threat. Information that had already been discredited.
After manipulating this faucet of fear, the president then defended the war in the name of national security, casting himself as the country's father-protector. In short, he sold himself as the person we needed to protect us from the fear he provoked. Welcome to the protection racket. And lest you forget, his reelection campaign was run by the same racketeers. George W. was transformed from a conservative who was compassionate to a commander in chief who was unflappable. John Kerry was accused of the unmanly crime of nuance and caricatured as flip-floppable. We were subjected to an endless strongman debate with Arnold Schwarzenegger leading the attack on ''girlie men."
A stock figure of the election cycle was the soccer mom transformed into the security mom. The woman scared right -- into the arms of the president. In this favorite story line, women who mock husbands who don't ask for directions fall for the politician who insists that he knows where he's going. The security mom was something of a cartoon figure, and the balloon over her head now reads: ''What was I thinking?" There are enough second thoughts in the citizenry to make Bush's approval rating look like the ''Summit Plummet" ride at Disney World. But I'm afraid the racketeers aren't filing for bankruptcy yet.
Consider the success of Harvey Mansfield's book, a last-ditch defense of ''Manliness."
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
"A last-ditch defense of 'Manliness'?"
Does it need a defense?
Also, what's this ''Summit Plummet" in Disney World? I was just there last week and didn't see it.
Ellen is just jealous that MoDo gets more attention than she does.
I am astounded that, less than ten years ago, the press was fawning over the Clinton Administration's ability to "frame" their issues and "control" the media.
She seems scattered. I think she's trying to hang her argument on a different topic in each paragraph, but is not stringing them together in any meaningful way. She's a bad writer who isn't smart enough to grasp complex situations.
When a President allows classified information to go out isn't that known as declassifying information?
I would think that only someone who does not have the authority to declassify information could leak information.
I've heard that Ms. E. Goodman's madness is the result, of being bitten by Al Franken.
Uh Ellen, a caricature only works when there is an existing trait that lends itself to caricature.
Is there a little "penis envy" between them?
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