April 05, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

TIME FOR PROGRESS AGAIN

There are differing opinions as to when the country went into reverse and swayed to right-wing politics and philosophy. In this article E. J. Dionne makes the case that it occurred when Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. It was a traumatic year. Robert Kennedy was assassinated just weeks later. The Democratic convention in Chicago was beset by rancor and violence. Vietnam was dragging on and diverting us from what we should have accomplished. Now, 40 years after King's death, and after suffering from toxic conservatism under Reagan, Bush, and Bush, maybe it's time to pick up where we left off in 1968. This column is at www.tnr.com:

Forty years ago, American liberalism suffered a blow from which it has still not recovered. On April 4, 1968, a relatively brief but extraordinary moment of progressive reform ended, and a long period of conservative ascendancy began.

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the ensuing riots that engulfed the nation's capital and big cities across the country signaled the collapse of liberal hopes in a smoky haze of self-doubt and despair. Conservatives, on the run through much of the decade, found a broad new audience for their warnings against the disorders and disruptions bred by reform.

A shrewd politician named Richard Nixon sensed the direction of the political winds. When President Johnson's commission on urban unrest released its report in early 1968 and blamed the previous year's rioting on "white racism," Nixon would have none of it. The commission, he said, "blames everybody for the riots except the perpetrators of the riots." He urged "retaliation."

THEY AREN'T SO SMART AFTER ALL

The old adage is that you can fool some of the people all of the time and some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. The right-wing that has controlled the Republican party and its benefactors has succeeded in fooling some of the people all of the time. Even after the train wreck of the Bush administration, there are still hardcore supporters of Bush, his war, and right-wing economic policy. But reality is hitting home for most Americans now. This administration should be taught in history classes as the way not to run a country. This article by David Michael Green is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

The only amazing thing about the desperate attempts by BushCo to wring the very last drops of middle class wealth out of an imploding economy is the breathtaking shortsightedness of the monied class in whose name it’s all being done. Were they all absent from kindergarten that day when Miss Kinnian went over the parable of The Goose That Lays The Golden Eggs? Just who do they imagine will be shelling out the shekels needed to fuel their yachts, once they’ve wrecked the system itself? Lenin was right. These fools are so greedy, and so short-term in their focus, they’ve sold the rope with which to hang themselves. Unfortunately, by the time that happens the rest of us will have long ago drowned in the mud and the blood lapping up against the scaffold.

Brilliant, eh? Well, if the economy has come a cropper, at least the good news is that we’re not condemned to repeat history when it comes to that stubborn little conflict in Iraq. You know, the one that is sucking up all our money, wasting lives by the millions, ruining our military and trashing our good name abroad. Just like in Viet... er, never mind.