David Duke is an asshole.
I feel pretty confident and comfortable saying that, because if there is an uglier human being on the planet, I don’t know who it is. An overt racist, member and founder of the Louisiana Ku Klux Klan, only to leave the organization to form the National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP), Duke is also an ugly anti-Semite who attributes the 9/11 attacks partially to Mossad, and who uses the “low” number of dead Jews as proof for his thesis.
If there was a scumbag Hall of Fame, David Duke would be the first initiate.
Why do I say all of this? Because of this little bit of free association from Michael Goldfarb the other day in what I consider one of the most disgusting smears I have seen or heard in a long time:
Elsewhere, David Duke has now weighed in on Freeman’s claim that it was the “Israel Lobby” — or what Freeman’s now calling the “Avigdor Lieberman Lobby” in a media blitz that seems designed to maximize the embarrassment this has all caused at the White House — that scuttled the appointment:
Charles W. Freeman…was forced to withdraw from his appointment as head of the National Intelligence Council because extremist Zionists were afraid he would put the interests of America over those of Israel.
Makes you wonder why Pincus didn’t just go straight to Duke rather than risk having his quotes garbled in translation from the original Arabic.
Did you follow that? Walter Pincus, a respected Pulitzer winning journalist, wrote a story that upset the folks at the Weekly Standard, so the first thing that must be done is to destroy him. What better way to do it than to smear him with David Duke? Putting aside the fact that there actually apparently is an “Avigdor Lieberman Lobby,” as that piece of human detritus was just appointed Foreign Minister in an agreement with Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, what Goldfarb is doing is clear- he is attempting to smear Pincus and Freeman with the ugly racist and anti-Semite David Duke. All Pincus did was report what was going on in the middle east from a viewpoint outside the AIPAC bubble, and he had to be destroyed for it.
And no one at the Weekly Standard even blinked. It didn’t even faze them. This is how they do business- just last week Goldfarb was attempting to smear Charles Freeman with the taint of the “pedophile lobby.”
But this latest offensive smear of Pincus made me wonder. Below are two statements:
Statement One:
Way back on Monday, Michelle Obama revealed that she felt no pride in her country prior to her husband becoming the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. Today she’s gone and done it again… And it strikes me that no candidate in history has benefited more from this country’s “uninvolved, uninformed” electorate than Barack Obama. Even his own supporters can’t name a single legislative achievement in the man’s record. If the American people had any idea how little Obama has done for his state and his country, they might have second thoughts. But they like his speeches, so they’ve gotten involved. They remain uninformed, and Michelle had better hope they stay that way.
Statement Two:
During the campaign, Mrs. Michelle Obama made a very revealing off-hand comment. The comment was so fundamental and natural to her sentiments that she couldn’t imagine that any negative response could come as a result of it… Let’s see. Michelle Obama was never proud of America when she read of the American Founding Fathers who heroically founded this nation and the wonderful rights and liberties they enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights.
She never had a moment of pride when she became aware that for the first time in history the footsteps of mankind were put on the surface of the moon, and that those incredible footsteps were made by Americans.
She has never felt pride in America for the thousands of scientific, technological and medical advancements that our people created and that she benefits from every day of her life.
There are thousands of things Michelle Obama could have felt pride in as an American, but she says she has never even once felt that pride until Barack found fame and fortune.”
Which one of those statements was from David Duke? And which one was from Michael Goldfarb?
And using the Michael Goldfarb standard for Walter Pincus and Charles Freeman, shouldn’t the Weekly Standard be a little bit embarrassed employing a hack who cribs from David Duke?
*** Update ***
Apparently the David Duke smear is a tried and true rhetorical strategy for these people.
itsbenj
ahh, more silly projection from the right-wing. funny, Goldfarb doesn’t realize that in pure ideological terms (rigidity, cluelessness, not specific ‘ideas’) he is pretty damn close to David Duke himself. he just doesn’t openly advcoate for race war. he does it behind closed doors with a keyboard, instead of outside with a sheet over his head.
NonyNony
Hm. I’d have to guess the first blockquote is from Michael Goldfarb, because it wallows in the kind of "Americans Suck" attitude that I’ve seen from Goldfarb. Plus, strangely, I think David Duke would be careful to keep his American bashing out of a piece accusing Michelle Obama of bashing America – I wouldn’t expect Goldfarb to be so careful.
If the Weekly Standard used "embarrassment" to decide who to fire and who to retain on staff, no one would be employed there.
chrome agnomen
so who’s the uglier one, david duke or michael goldfarb?
sgwhiteinfla
Why does anybody even take that asshole Goldfarb seriously let alone the Weekly Standard. I mean does ANYBODY on earth not agree that its a NeoCon publication and part of the "Likud Lobby" as Freeman referred to them? What I would love is for someone to sue that sanctimonious son of a bitch. Goldfarb is the residue from a wet fart and the fact that he is prominent at the Weekly Standard should destroy what ever tiny shred of credibility they ever enjoyed.
MattF
Hard to imagine sinking lower. Not counting Glenn Beck, though. Or,… aw, I’m not going there before lunch.
El Cid
Apparently there are a lot of David Duke-inspired anti-Semite followers within the Israeli Jewish media, because their analysis pretty clearly ties the Freeman rejection to complaints from Israel-hawk centered forces.
Shame on Israel for allowing so many David Duke following anti-Semites to run their newspapers and magazines and TV shows.
Lupin
I’m shocked, shocked, that Goldfarb will use every possible weapon, no matter how vile, to buttress his Likudnik policies.
The problem is not with Goldfarb, but those who listen to him. (This is true of Limbaugh, Coulter and a veritable host of other lunatics.)
In a normal country, they would be ranting on a soap box in a park or handing out greasy leaflets outside subway stations (*) Not affecting public debate.
(*) Come to think of it maybe they do here too. We don’t know what Goldfarb does after hours.
par4
They never learn,It’s time for somebody to run the republican pedophile list again.
NickM
Well played, sir.
TR
This is why I read this blog every day. Nicely done.
dougie smooth
I went to middle school with David Duke’s daughters. They were very sweet, but then again I’m not sure they knew I was Jewish.
dougie smooth
Well done.
El Cid
Israeli columnist in the conservative Jerusalem Post Shmuel Rosner, noted David Duke (fan of course) summed up the Freeman struggle this way after quoting NY Congressman Steve Israel:
He was wrong about two things though — the anti-Freeman forces actually ended up focusing much more on comments Freeman had retroactively made about the Tiananmen Square massacre, as though these opponents had at the time been opposed to Israel being the Chinese military’s #1 high-tech weaponry technology supplier during the entire time period of the uprising and slaughter.
The other thing is the notion that these zealots are "pro-Israel" — no, they’re just complete devotees to the militarist and war-hawk approach by the Israeli establishment. Ordinary Israelis don’t matter, just their militarist policy preferences.
slag
No more David Duke-Smarmy Goldfarb posts before noon, please. Gives me the wiggins.
norbizness
And using the Michael Goldfarb standard for Walter Pincus and Charles Freeman, shouldn’t the Weekly Standard be a little bit embarrassed employing a hack who cribs from David Duke?
This post needs a flow chart.
JimPortlandOR
You mean that there’s some separation between David Duke and The Weekly Standard? I thought they are comic-tragic embodiments of the same mind-meld. Scum tends to coagulate so I couldn’t be surprised at anything in the way of noxiouous effulivent they emit.
dr. bloor
Embarrassment requires the presence of a conscience, silly blogger.
Halteclere
Ever time Goldfarb is mentioned, I think back to this very intellectual exchange he had with Rich Sanchez of CNN.
Smarmy Goldfarb brought nothing to the table except unsubstantiated innuendos designed to attack Obama’s credibility with smears.
Dave L
But all of this serves a useful purpose: to make it vanishingly unlikely that anyone like Chas Freeman will ever again step into the crossfire.
You don’t have to win elections to win arguments.
Trinity
Bravo John.
Ricky Bobby
It is no joke that much of the extreme right wing neocons in this country take The Turner Diaries very, very seriously and this should be pointed out more than it currently is by us pacifist dems. And as some other poster pointed out, it’s the people who treat what these troglodytes write as serious journalism that really deserve our criticism.
The extreme racism of the David Duke’s of our country isn’t necessarily a broad current in our populace, but it runs very deep and manifests itself in lots of surprising ways. The right gets pissy when we Dems cry "RACISM!" too often (in their opinion), but they need to recognize what happens when they lay down with dogs.
wilfred
Learning how the game works, eh?
Joshua Norton
And for every advancement there was a cadre of right wing asshats running around screaming "it will never fly", "it’s against God’s will" and "it costs too much money".
Funny how they’re so willing to take bows for everyone else’s hard work. If we listened to most of them we’d still be reading hand printed bibles by candlelight and dying from plague.
Zifnab
@chrome agnomen:
David Duke had the balls to put his name on a ballot. Michael Goldfarb hides behind his screen name and lobs shit grenades from within his protective media cocoon.
That said, I’m going to have to go with Duke, simply because when he talks, people actually give a shit.
DougJ
We’re totally screwed as far as discourse on Israel goes. If you criticize anything the Israeli government does, you’re an anti-Semite if you’re not jewish and a self-hating jew if you are.
It’s that simple and it will probably never change.
wilfred
@DougJ:
That shit has gone on at this site for years and you never once saw fit to weigh in on the subject. I lost track of how many times I mentioned Daniel Pipes and his execrable Campus Watch, and the rest of the smear artists, many of whom have done the same things here a hundred goddamned times. It is the way it is because not enough people opened their mouths when they had the chance and should have. It’s never too late.
Of course saying it will never change benefits who, exactly?
DougJ
No one I’m sure. I’m all for fighting to change it.
But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t seem hopeless.
Most of the people I work with are Jewish and a lot (not all!) have pretty whacked ideas about the supreme goodness and rightness of Israel. I’m afraid to ever mention my views (which would probably be pretty mainstream among actual Israelis as opposed to members of the 101st Keyboard Commandos) for fear of having my career screwed with.
4jkb4ia
We interrupt three weeks of the glory of Pitt to yell in disgust that Lieberman actually got that appointment.
I could tell that Goldfarb was #1 because David Duke could care less if Obama had any legislative accomplishments.
4jkb4ia
(According to 4jkb4ia’s Mom, Villanova can take ’em. Has done so this year, even)
AhabTRuler
One of my poli-sci exams a couple of years ago referenced him in a question, and in the response I listed him as Daniel "Crack" Pipes. Unfortunately, the TA did not take the bait when grading the exam. Stupid fucking class, anyway.
El Cid
@DougJ:
The hypothetical shows this is still not getting to the core.
Suppose, by some massive change in mood of the Israeli Jewish population, that they elected a vastly different government whose goals were now to pursue the sorts of just peace in ending the occupation which the hawks scream against now.
Do you think that suddenly the pro-hawk Israeli militarist forces — even given the unlikely nature of this transformation — would give up their militarist, hawk views and begin demanding the U.S. establishment support "the Israeli government"?
No.
They would all turn on a dime and work as hard as possible to undermine or block such an Israeli government at each and every turn.
It’s not the government they’re committed to — it’s an ideological vision about war and occupation and control of the Middle East and lots of other factors.
wilfred
@AhabTRuler:
Good for you. Most people, including those on the left, never saw anything wrong with what he does, an absolute disgrace to American academics. Tom Harkin was the only one who stood up to him and, gasp!, the lobby when Bush wanted to give him a government job.
Pipes praised indicted espionage suspect Steve Rosen with leading the charge against Freeman.
kay
It’s remarkable, because the Walter Pincus piece is about as straight as it gets. Pincus is writing about the reaction to the Freeman insanity in the Arab press. Certainly relevant, because in the mideast there are (surprise!) A lot of Arab states. To do that, he uses quotes from…the Arab press. The article is essentially all quotes. Pincus injects nothing at all.
This is Reporting 101, right? You go to the place where a political decision (or really any news-worthy event) is likely to have an impact, and quote speakers in that place. The folks at the Weekly Standard are apparently angry that any Arab view is printed at all in the US, ever. We’re going to "discuss" the mideast, but we aren’t going to allow non-Israelis to speak, at all, ever, in the US press.
wilfred
It’s called zionism, and is the last colonial project but one. Everyone in Israel knows what’s going on. That’s how Netanyahu and Lieberman won the election.
wilfred
This is the condition of the Arab/Muslim subaltern. Vide the enourmous effort to prevent Tariq Ramadan from getting an entry visa after Notre Dame, that bastion of Islamic extremism, offered him tenure.
JonthePon
John –
I couldn’t quite see where you were going with that until the very end. Nicely done!
Unfortunately, shame is not a concept with which your typical conservative is familiar. Shame them you did, but sadly, it has not impact.
J
DougJ
You’re right. Of course they wouldn’t.
They’d call the new government “self-hating Jews” too.
liberal
Uh…Alan Greenspan?
El Cid
No, it’s more than Zionism, and if Israel weren’t there these people would be doing whatever they could to back the same exact policies.
If Israel had never been created as a state (or had been created outside the Middle East), these types would still be supporting the same old policy approaches in the Middle East. Overthrowing Mossadeq. Destroying any upstart nationalist Arab state. Undermining any regional power. And so on and so forth.
These people were usually to a person (Elliot Abrams, anyone?) just as enthusiastically backing of Salvadoran and Guatemalan death squads slaughtering civilians, women, and children in the name of fighting the commies as they are of bombing any Arab or Muslim nation they can.
kay
@wilfred:
I think they’re impugning their own credibility. The Pincus piece is just straight reporting. If that’s objectionable, I have no idea what passes muster, other than silence.
Anyone with access to the internet could have written that piece. He simply collected reactions, understandably, he did so in the area of the world that we’re discussing. He could have collected reactions in say, Idaho, I guess, instead, but that’s not really all that relevant.
liberal
@DougJ:
Sad to say, that’s a pretty reasonable fear AFAIC.
liberal
@El Cid:
I think you’re wrong here.
Yes, it was atrocious that we eliminated democracy in Iran in the mid-1950s.
Yes, the West doesn’t want nationalism to get too strong a hold in the Middle East, out of (I imagine) fears about what it would do to the price of oil.
But the manner in which US foreign policy has been captured by Israel (at least since the 1967 war) has worked against our national interest in ways that wouldn’t have happened in the counterfactual world you posit.
NonyNony
@El Cid:
This is exactly right. Zionism isn’t the cause of the insanity, it’s the excuse. If they didn’t have Zionism, they’d find something else to hold up as a "cause" to make their actions righteous and just. Much like the fear of Communism was used as a rationale for propping up dictators in South America, and "Manifest Destiny" was used to break treaty after treaty with the Native Americans.
If they didn’t have Zionism to use as an excuse, they’d find something else to use instead. There’s always an excuse lying around somewhere, and if you can’t find one, you can always create one.
liberal
@kay:
It’s long been clear that the so-called pro-Israel crowd is Stalinistic in their desire to completely eliminate any dissent on these issues.
Mike G
David Duke – an overt racist, member and founder of the Louisiana Ku Klux Klan
And, lest we forget, the Republican Party’s chosen candidate for Governor of Louisiana in 1991. But they’re not the party of racists, they keep insisting.
Krista
I can’t figure out if it’s a lack of reading comprehension, or if it’s deliberate misinterpretation, that made people read "For the first time in my adult life, I’m really proud of my country." as "I’ve never been proud of my country."
It’s called having varying degrees of pride in one’s country and recognizing its flaws as well as its strengths. This, as opposed to brainlessly cheerleading the country and walking around with a giant "America #1" foam finger, while questioning the patriotism of anybody who dares to mention some of the more unsavoury bits of America’s past (and present).
camchuck
OT, but a must-read for John:
Steelers owner Dan Rooney to be ambassador to Ireland
kay
@liberal:
It’s worse in my adult lifetime, liberal. The "debate" is much more narrow than it was even 20 years ago, and that’s frightening.
Go back and read some of Jimmy Carter’s early statements, and try to find an outraged reaction. You won’t, because his views were left of center, but well within the mainstream. Hell, you don’t have to go back that far. You can go back to Bush I. You’ll find an anemic debate, but there will BE a debate.
Compare. It’s narrowing. It’s about an inch wide. The door is closing completely. The assertion that it has "always been like this" simply isn’t true. It’s measurably worse than it was.
liberal
@wilfred:
I call BS on that one.
Yes, there are people who might not. Possible categories would be (1) faux left/liberals (Ronald Radosh, Paul Berman), and (2) people who really are liberal or left but are nuts on the topic of Israel. (Some of whom post in these comment sections.)
But there are plenty of people who are liberal/left who think Pipes is a scum, and I’m guessing there are plenty of people even in category (2) who think he’s a scum, given that (I assume) Pipes has talked about other things than Israel itself, e.g. the invasion of Iraq (which many albeit not all in (2) opposed), and behaves himself like Stalinist (meaning, one who thinks all dissenters should lose their positions, etc).
El Cid
@liberal: I don’t want to get into it in depth ’cause I have to head out of office, but I actually agree with those who analyze the U.S. foreign policy establishment to have been led largely by people who desired the same policies as the Israel hawks.
The Mobutu / Zaire lobby was pretty influential over decades, but the overwhelming factor was that Mobutu served the interests of the U.S. foreign policy establishment.
Now, sure, you and I would agree that supporting Mobutu was in any sane analysis against not only Congolese / Zairean / African interests but against real (i.e., my) interests, but the USFPE did everything they could to keep the maniac in power for decades, and the lobby back home made sure Congress kept things that way. And the lobby was as much U.S. business interests (interconnected with Belgian & French business interests & South African apartheid government interests) as it was a ‘foreign’ lobby.
If the Israeli establishment really strongly departed from what the U.S. foreign policy establishment wanted — which I don’t think it has, despite occasional bickering — then I think the ‘special relationship’ would change quite rapidly.
There’s almost zero chance of that happening, so it’s going to remain a time-limited hypothetical.
My main view is that the U.S. does those things it does with regard to Israel & the region because it’s actually what the U.S. FPE wants, and Israel fits into that — not vice versa.
r€nato
It’s ALWAYS a good time to run that list.
You can trace a direct line from this neo-conservative Israel Uber Alles mentality to where the neo-cons infected and took over the GOP, implementing their ‘smear the messenger’ tactics via Karl Rove and then on to the broader GOP proletariat, such that the average wingnut has thoroughly assimilated the lesson that when someone criticizes your dogma, you instinctively attack their credibility and smear the messenger.
It’s gotten so bad that your average winger really doesn’t know any other way to talk about their ideas. Until the right learns how to think for itself again (and until the ability to articulate conservative ideas and philosophies is re-learned by right-wingers), the cause of conservatism and its nominal political party, the GOP, will continue to drift aimlessly, their only hope for gaining power being waiting for the Democrats to screw up.
The classic example was the book mildly critical of the Israel lobby by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. I heard a Fresh Air interview with Walt regarding the book. In the interview, Walt stated that too often the pro-Israel lobby viciously smears anybody who criticizes anything Israel does with vile anti-Semitic innuendo.
Immediately following that interview was a segment with Abe Foxman, who runs the Anti-Jewish Defamation League. Guess what he did right off the bat? Smeared Walt and Mearsheimer as being a lot like anti-semitic bigots.
wilfred
@liberal:
yeah? I posted about Pipes on this site many, many times. Nobody even noticed
liberal
@kay:
No, the Stalinistic aspect of much of the pro-Israel crowd has been there a long, long time. Just because there was debate doesn’t mean they weren’t trying to crush it.
Now, how much debate there’s been (regardless of the attempts to crush it) is an interesting question. Bush I is an interesting point: AFAICT, he’s been the least pro-Israel president we’ve had since at least Carter. But I take that as an "exogenous" given.
It’s also hard to get a good view of these things. For one thing, the attitude of the American elites isn’t the same as the attitude of Americans overall. Then there’s the Christian Right, which represents a fraction of the population that perhaps has become larger and more vehement on the topic of Israel. There’s also the feedback between attempts to quash debate and actual facts on the ground: I assume attempts to quash debate will grow much stronger around the topics of Palestinian nationhood and Palestinian rights to land in the West Bank. So I figure the debate will cycle depending on progress or lack thereof on those issues.
Then there’s 9/11, of course…
valdivia
This is OT but Sullivan has a very good post summarizing the two trends in criticizing Obama over his terror policies and the inherent contradictions of these criticisms which are usually made simultaneously without batting an eye.
As for Goldfarb he worked for McCain and was responsible for scaring the jews, and anyone else who might buy their crap, away from Obama what else can we expect?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Krista: She made the statement twice, once she left the "really" out. That means she hates America, obviously.
wilfred
@Krista:
Cf. Schumer’s accusation that Freeman had ‘irrational hatred of Israel’ – Anyone ask him to explain.
Goldfarb is covering his own lack of loyalty – remember this isn’t about US support for Israel. They’ve killed thousands of Palestinians and nobody ever gave two shits enough to complain, so why now?
This about getting the US to attack Iran.
Krista
I could never go into politics, and if my husband did, I would seriously consider leaving him. How many of us have said things awkwardly, or phrased something in a way that could have been given a different meaning?
Imagine if we had a bunch of vultures just waiting to swoop down on everything we say and overanalyze the hell out it. They say Michelle’s angry? Fuck, I’d be angry if I was under the microscope that she’s been put under.
liberal
@El Cid:
Yeah…gotta sign off myself…I’m just posting to get rid of some agitation stemming from some asshole breaking into my worthless 1994 car last night.
But that’s connected to the cold war. Being pro-Mobutu was part of the entire tapestry of the struggle with the USSR. I don’t agree with what we did, even from the point of view of narrow, "selfish" national interest, but it fits that picture.
And there are more complicated examples. Angola, for one. Perhaps at the beginning business interests were in favor of supporting Savimbi, but AFAICT he lost Western oil company support long before the USSR collapsed, even though the American state remained firmly committed to Savimbi. At least there are quotes from oil company executives saying they were quite able and happy to do business with the nominally left-wing regime that Savimbi was trying to overthrow.
Yes, of course it might change. That misses my point. My point is that US "support" for Israel hurts our "selfish" national interest in ways that go well beyond what you’re describing.
Suppose that Israel had never been colonized. Would we have supported a Mobutu-like dictator in Palestine. Yes. Is it as damaging to narrow, correctly-construed US interests as our relationship to Israel is? No. Why? (1) Supporting a colonial project like Israel (warning: I’m not interested in a debate about the moral legitimacy of the project here) is bound to get much more attention and piss many more people off (whether that’s right or wrong). (2) The Israeli government has the support of a large number of Americans for ethnic/religious reasons, which wouldn’t be the case in the counterfactual world. The reason (2) drastically changes the landscape is that it means it’s very, very, very difficult to disengage and take a different tack than would otherwise be the case.
In my construing of the counterfactual world, if the Palestinian Mobutu had gone too far, we could cut support if the calculus showed that that support was costing us more than it helped us. There’s no such calculus now.
liberal
@wilfred:
I don’t think the US will attack Iran.
(a) It would really damage Obama’s presidency, and Obama knows it.
(b) The world is already in deep doo-doo because of the financial crisis; I don’t think the powers that be think we can handle an attack on Iran right now.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Krista: The problem isn’t being overanalyzed or being under a microscope for everything you say, the problem is automatic disqualification for the very appropriate response of "Fuck you".
JL
@wilfred: Pipes once wrote that some blacks in prisons are converted to Islam and after 9/11 he mentioned that it was important to be diligent. Talk about racial profiling for all except the wasp. I guess that the McVeigh’s and Duke’s are safe. Daniel Pipes has always been a dangerous person.
wilfred
I fecking hope not. But the point is that the effort to get us to do so will not stop unless enough people stand up to the Israel Firsters and their allies.
The first step is to stifle any dissent.
JL
@camchuck: I’m sure that John will have an open thread mentioning Ambassador Rooney. Maybe he’ll even give us an update on the pups.
wilfred
@JL:
Yeah, and precious few people took him to task. You have to remember that our Lieberman (Ind -Isr) managed to have Netanyahu speak in the US Senate. Nobody blinked at this either.
JL
@wilfred: It was after egregious statements as the one I read, when Bush nominated him for The Institute of Peace. I should read the Wikipedia bio for him to refresh my memory, though.
John S.
That’s how it goes.
I had a particularly amusing bout of here on BJ a few years back with Paul L. and Darrell. I believe it was around the time that the Quana = Jenin meme was being peddled, and the wingnut brothers were all over me until I pointed out that I was not only a Jew, but had holocaust survivors in the family.
They both shut up for a few hours, but in typical wingnut cognitive dissonant fashion, went back to accusing me of being an anti-semitic self-hating Jew.
TenguPhule
Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly.
Assholes need to shit.
Mike G
"For the first time in my adult life, I’m really proud of my country."
"I never really loved my country until I was separated from it" – John McCain
McCain was 31 years old and a third-generation commissioned military officer who ‘didn’t love his country’ until he became a POW. Yet the MURKA #1 foam-finger assholes never screeched with outrage over this remark he has made repeatedly in speeches.
John S.
Wow.
After skimming back over this thread from nearly three years ago, it is striking that where the topic of Israel is concerned, the more things change the more they stay the same.
It’s a real hum-dinger for anyone who wants to wade through it.
kay
@Mike G:
They give me the creeps when they attack Michelle Obama. I know she’s in the public square, or whatever, I suspect she’s tough as hell, which is a relief, but still. I never worry about her husband. I worry about her. The vitriol directed at her is weird and unhinged. She’s conventional. Michelle Obama is almost the ideal American Striver. She’s the freaking prototype of directed, disciplined womanly ambition and proper motherhood and wifehood. Why do they hate her so so much? What’s to hate? She could back a successful product line. Her name could be on clothing.
I was appalled at the rage directed at Hillary, but I understood it as "political". They saw that Clinton had political ambitions, and tried to slaughter that ambition right out of the gate.
I don’t know what the Michelle-hate is. Creepy and disturbing?
TenguPhule
The Wheel of Stupidity turns on and on, powered by wingnuts and wilfreds.
liberal
@John S.:
Heh heh…on the same thread, Demimondian wrote
[emphasis added]
LD50
"It’s not the government they’re committed to—it’s an ideological vision about war and occupation and control of the Middle East and lots of other factors."
This is true. Greenwald has pointed out several instances where the neocons have blasted American politicians for holding views which turned out to be shared by a majority of Israelis. The ‘Tibet Lobby’ represent the Likud first, Israelis second.
liberal
@TenguPhule:
Not to mention TenguPhules.
Persia
The great advancements from the Tuskeegee Experiments come to mind. Perhaps they should volunteer to get infected with syphilis and go untreated for a couple of years. You know, for the good of the country.
Just Some Fuckhead
@liberal: Yeah, I had the same thought. It never posts anything except "kill this or that" while waiting for an I/P thread to despoil.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John S.: We all have our blindspots. Some us don’t think there are enough Jews In Congress.
TenguPhule
@Just Some Fuckhead
In my defense:
1. Killing would solve a shitload of our problems right now.
2. All I/P threads come prespoiled as soon as wilfred pops in.
John S.
And some of us are horrified by the Jews that are already there (Cantor and Lieberman I’m looking at you).
ET
If Goldberg had wanted to make an argument that was nominally to be taken seriously the first thing he shouldn’t have done was cite David Duke – convicted felon.
When Duke was running and put on a legit face, even the GOP wouldn’t openly touch him with a 10 foot pole. The fact that one of the GOP’s mouthpieces is using Duke as a way to smear, downplay, etc. is another piece of incontrovertible evidence that today’s GOP is is the party of Dixie and has completely gone off the rails.
And on a side note, isn’t it odd that someone with the last name of Goldfarb is giving credence to a guy who trotted around in a Nazi-esque uniform and did the Nazi salute? Maybe he is just to young to remember that hot mess and since he is such a hack he obviously never did due diligence on Duke.
LD50
"Some us don’t think there are enough Jews In Congress."
Some of us don’t care whether or not our Congresspeople are Jewish, as long as said representatives aren’t stupid or evil.
Just Some Fuckhead
@LD50: It was John S. that made the original observation, not me.
Anonymous37
just last week Goldfarb was attempting to smear Charles Freeman with the taint of the “pedophile lobby.”
(beavis and butthead) Huh, huh, huh, huh (/beavis and butthead)
Ed Marshall
The anti-semitism brigade is bullshit and you can call them on it. They spin these fantasies that if you force them to spell them out loud they know sound ridiculous.
That’s why these things aren’t directly asserted, they are always formed in a kind of wondering way. Say you are talking about general assembly resolutions, it’s "hmmm, wonder why they pick on Israel so much." Ask them to spell it out, try and get them to say what they are implying, make them assert that the disproportionate amount of resolutions aimed at Tel Aviv is part of a global seizure of anti-semitism. Places that barely know what the hell a Jew is like Asia. They won’t do it, they know they bullshitting and that you are scared to call them on it. Don’t be, it’s silly.