Delivering a speech to Ramtha cult devotees in Yelm, Washington last week, Bush-bashing enviro Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said the current administration veers dangerously close to fascism. The Olympian reported:
"The White House press corps has become stenographers for this administration," the environmental lawyer said. And the White House administration itself borders on fascism, he said. "Oppression is a continuum and we need to recognize that continuum if we're going to protect our democracy," Kennedy said. "Germany was a democracy that elected Hitler. Italy elected Mussolini."
Ah well. As Knute Berger notes in the current Seattle Weekly (scroll to bottom), this is the same guy who told a Seattle audience in January that, "Eighty percent of Republicans are just Democrats that don't know what's going on."
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at March 18, 2005 11:34 AM | Email ThisAs for the quip about Republicans who don't know what's going on, I suppose the quipper meant that 80% of Republicans are ignorant, otherwise they would be Democrats. That's a typically egotistic, if not narcissistic leftist opinion.
Try this quip -- "independents" are Democrats who are ashamed to admit it.
Posted by: Micajah on March 18, 2005 11:41 AMHitler was never elected by the German people. He managed to gain power through manipulation of the political process and through intimidation.
He is nothing more than a limo lib who loves wind power, as long as it does not spoil his view from Hyannisport. If it does, than don't build it there, build it somewhere else. He is such a hypocritical self serving moron that it makes me ashamed to admit that we are both Irish.
80% of all Republicans are just Demos who don't know what is going on???? What a presumptuous jerk he is.
Robert -- just go away...We are tired of anything that any one in your family has to say. You and your buffunic uncle need to just fade away into the history of the failed policies of a tired idiology.
Same old same old.
Posted by: Al Hedstrom on March 18, 2005 12:20 PM"When was the last time one of the MSM asked a tough question of this administration and insisted on a tough answer?"
Funny, that's exactly what I think of Seattle/Washington State MSM and both the Gregoire and Sims Administrations!!
By the way, Tom Delay is toast. Couldn't happen to a more deserving man.
Posted by: headless lucy on March 18, 2005 12:23 PM(But it does help divert the discussion from the inane stupidity uttered by Prince Robbie, doesn't it?)
The reason we don't dignify Kennedy's comments about the Bush Administration is that they are ludicrous and show a complete lack of historical perspective and understanding.
So the Bush Administration are Nazis, or like the Nazis? Hmmm...clarify for me...so is this 1933, or 1937? The concentration camps are....where? People are being herded onto train cars...when?
I visited both Auschwitz and Birkenau last April on a trip to Krakow, Poland. I would be happy to email some of the photos I took to you - especially the room full of woman's hair harvested from the gassed bodies to be used in the German Textile industry.
From that day forward I've never compared anyone nor any group of people to Hitler and the National Socialist Party of Germany. They were an evil unlike any other.
Care to comment?
Posted by: Larry on March 18, 2005 12:28 PMIf you want to call the Bush Administration fascists, fine. You're wrong, but that's your right.
Comparing them to Hitler, though? That's beyond the pale. Please see my comment above.
Posted by: Larry on March 18, 2005 12:30 PMAnother thing. Why does Tom Delay think he "is" the federal government? Where does it say that in the constitution? That sounds to me like a fascist statement.
Posted by: headless lucy on March 18, 2005 01:10 PMAnd I'm not going to back away from that position even one scintilla!
Posted by: headless lucy on March 18, 2005 01:25 PMBest thing the Republicans can do about the Gannon/Guckert fiasco is to ignore it and pretend it never happened.
Posted by: CandrewB on March 18, 2005 01:44 PMI don't think that you guys understand that corporate "private property" claims do not supercede the public interest. This administration always sides with corporate interests over the people. That's what fascism is! You could look it up!
Posted by: s-choir on March 18, 2005 01:59 PMOne identity per poster, please.
Posted by: Matt R. on March 18, 2005 02:06 PMBut if that is the basis of your arguement, Stalin must have been a Republican, Since it was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
It is probably would be good for everyone if we lost the facist/Hitler rhetoric for the right, just as if we lost the communist/Stalin rhetoric for the left in this country. But I'm not going to hold my breath, nor am I going to be terribly upset the next time someone calls me a commie/fag/hippie.
I am currious, though, if RFK had talked to any other religious group, would they be referred to as a cult on this site? Personally, I think JZ is a scam, but I think the same of Pat Robinson and Jerry Falwell...., I have problems with any person who lives well on religion. I will note that JZ's predictions are as good as Pat's or any other right wing Christian (ever read The Late Great Planet Earth? Great hoot that, we should all have been dead over ten years ago).
Just a few comments.
Posted by: JDB on March 18, 2005 03:02 PMHL, do you propose that we pay our military men and women the same as you in the Seattle School District? Or are you more deserving?
Posted by: chardonnay on March 18, 2005 03:15 PM
In more bad news for Sen. John Kerry, "Hanoi" Jane Fonda is once again stepping into the media spotlight, promoting her new book, "My Life So Far," and explaining that Kerry lost the election because he came across as "a wimp" and a "girlie man." Now, Jane assures us that John "Fing" Kerry is every bit as tough as the POWs who she "visited" in Viet Nam. "They didn't look so tough!", said the famous Ms. Fonda!! "They were kind of skinny, and they didn't dress well!" noted Jane.
What a load. The Nazi's were to the right on traditional racial and ethnic purity issues, but to the left on everything else. They were after all socialists. Hitler and Stalin both embraced Centralized planning and made it a core principle underpinning each of their economies. Though each adopted their own particular flavor.
Fascism's sin is the practice of raw unchecked racism, Socialism's sin in the complete subjugation of it populace. Both are totalitarian by nature and neither reflects the views of either the Democrats or Republican parties today in America.
I can't remember when a mainstream Republican leader branded a Democrat politician or policy as anything worse than LIBERAL. When if the truth were told, Liberal was too soft word, Socialist fit better. However, more and more I hear Democrats accusing Republicans of being Nazi's.
Sounds like the desparate cry from a party soon to be lost in the sands of time.
Ever heard of the Whig's...........
Posted by: BrianD on March 18, 2005 03:48 PMDid you read my post? I did not call you a Nazi, in fact I did not refer to you at all. My conclusion was that this sort of language should be excised from our debates on both sides, although I am not holding my breath.
I have not called you a racist either. Why do you even bring this up?
Why do you say I hate America? Just because we disagree, that doesn't mean either one of us hates our country. The United States has its flaws, And goodness knows I have troubles with the powers that be, but that hardly means I hate my country. Nor do I assume that you hate this country. It would be a shame if you do.
Thank you for the observation that Government is not God. Can you point to one person in the history of humanity has said it is? Government is formed through a compact of the people who give up certain rights to allow for a greater good. I would suggest that you read Locke, Hume and Rouseau (forgive my French, I might have spelt Rouseau wrong), then you would better understand the basis of our form of liberal democracy. You would also understand that it is foolish to refer to anything in the US as socialistic.
Your view of history is interesting. I'm guessing you have been reading old John Birch literature? You might want to broaden your reading list in general. I would be happy to give you several sources if you wish.
Thank you for your response. I am impressed that I inspired so much from you. However, I would highly suggest that you actually read my post next time before responding.
Posted by: JDB on March 18, 2005 03:50 PMDavid A - what an interesting concept: personal responsibility! I thought that died in the 60s!
s-choir/HL: "I don't think that you guys understand that corporate "private property" claims do not supercede the public interest." Where did you get this from? A corporation is an entity that has rights. The property or assets of a corporation are not up for grabs by the public whim. You do not seem to understand that individuals humans own corporations, whether it is union investments, personal 401Ks, or direct investment. This property cannot be confiscated just because someone feels they can do something better with it than the owners.
Posted by: Fred on March 18, 2005 04:06 PMThe Caesar's weren't far away, nor were a whole pile of pre-1800's governments. If I could translate any of the Arabic languages, I suspect I could provide you with contemporary quotes as well from both the Shia & the Wahabis. Comments about Al Sadr in particular.
One reason 'under God' is distinctly different than 'by God'.
Posted by: Al on March 18, 2005 04:23 PMThe backruptcy law revisions made it tougher to declare insolvency only for those who either fraudulently use the system or who have the means but try to hide behind loopholes.
I thought people like you wanted those with means to be responsible and not take advantage of loopholes. No one who is truly in need is denied backruptcy protection. Read up on what the bill means before you spout the party rhetoric.
The FBI estimates that roughly ten percent of bankruptcy filings have some amount of fraud in them, usually outright lying and concealment about the amount of assets and income that a debtor has to pay his creditors. To attack this problem, the bill creates new safeguards to make it easier to sniff out fraud.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/zywicki200503150744.asp
Last year there were 1.5 million consumer bankruptcies in America. In about 150,000 of those cases bankrupts were just lying about their assets. A debtor who fails to disclose his boat, Porsche, Corvette, and Ford Excursion, and values his home at $120,000 less than he paid for it — to mention one case investigated by the Department of Justice — is not a “family in distress” as most of us think of the phrase.
And why people believe that the wild fabric of ideologies held by people can be shoehorned into a one dimensional illustration (left to right) is completely beyond me.
Posted by: iconoclast on March 18, 2005 04:38 PMLook it up, s-choir!
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=fascism
fas·cism
1. often Fascism
a. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
b. A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government.
2. Oppressive, dictatorial control.
Says nothing whatever about backing corporate interests over citizens. In fact corporate interests fall under stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression, etc. Fascism is essentially the same as socialism (look it up!) except that instead of collective ownership of productive capacity, producers and citizens are allowed to own property but the central authority stringently controls what the 'owners' can and cannot do with it. That's precisely the oppression Kennedy advocates.
Ironic, isn't it?
Posted by: Chuck Dermody on March 18, 2005 05:12 PMFascists can be of the left or the right, so thats one piece of propaganda that is false - the brown shirts spread it themselves. Headless Lucy likes this kind of fascist claptrap from the left - therefore HL is a hypocrite ! Yes, this Kennedy sounds like a fascist...
Posted by: KS on March 18, 2005 06:22 PMHowever, I actually agree with your second paragraph. And I ment to say that Larry got it right too.
Nazi, Facist, Communist, Socialist are all overheated rhetoric in this country.
Posted by: JDB on March 18, 2005 10:24 PMI'm sure you support prosecution of corporate criminals right, this litmus test indicates your leaning towards republican. As a teacher, tell your union you don't support them telling you you have no choice but to donate money to a Republican, wrong, you are forced to donate money to something you don't believe in as long as you are a Republican. I'm sure you don't support Racism. Of course that means you definitely have Republican thoughts, shame shame. Don't you get it, you've been lied to and you swallowed it hook line and sinker. You have been made pawns and scapegoats. Is the Republican party perfect? No, not by a long shot. Still, they enact into law the things the Democrats profess but fought against when it was really important. Not budget problems, the R's took on the really deep and binding issues of national and international ethics and morality problems. If the D's had been anywhere near as successful we would probably have a world without war right now, especially if they had put aside partisanship as the R's attempted in their major, ground breaking legislative attempts.
If you want to know why the R's on this site are so disillusioned and sometimes so vehemently opposed to the D's here, it's cause you perpetuate the lie. Few of you use real facts. You propagate the lie from site to site. On this site I heard of the 100,000 dead in Iraq. The funny thing is it’s foreign invaders killing over 70,000 of the Iraqis so far, and the US is trying to stop the invaders from continuing the bombings and assassinations which are the leading cause of the deaths. No matter how you stack the facts. We are the good guys. You really should get the facts before you blather on and on. There are few D's on this site who actually do use facts in their arguments. Neither of you do. Because of that you have become a laughing stock on this site. Teachers? you need to learn before you can teach. Prove me wrong. Prove to me with clear facts I am wrong by showing me that Ann Coulter and Wayne Perryman lied. Prove to me that the Iraq war and the reasons behind it was a lie. Prove to me that your union doesn’t force you to donate by refusing to pay that part of your dues and demanding the refund the WEA is supposed to return to the teachers from the 1998 court ruling.
There is so much more I can stipulate, each capable of rocking your belief to its core if you actually made the attempt yet you will sit there like mindless couch potatoes and do nothing, take the lie, and breed dissent. Those D’s who have a brain and are trying to make things better by working inside their part, who can postulate on fact and truth. More power to you. Until a better party comes along for me to join, better as in better for personal freedom and the stability of our country, until then I am a conservative and a Republican.
Unkl Witz, Nelson, and JDB. We rarely agree but thanks for at least giving me facts and opinions of intelligence. The more I dig the more convinced I am of which side I am and should be on. More power to you in bettering your party. I feel your pain in that you have Headless Lucy and s-choir as your allies. Then again I have a couple raucous mouths on mine don’t I.
After being complemented, I hate to disagree, but it is what I do well.
First of all, please read some criticisms of Coulter. She is about as credible as Ward Churchill. They both write at the same level.
That being said, Roosevelt never supported Hitler. The Country on the whole was isolationist, and those who supported Hitler in this country, Henry Ford, Charles Lindberg, were Republicans.
Nixon open up to China, set up the Apollo Soyuz meeting. I'm sure there are other examples.
Coulter is everything that their is wrong with politics today. All attack and no care for the facts. Pure BS, in the tradition of Harry Frankfurt's "On BS." A good read. (The main differnece between lieing and BS, if you lie, you at least think you know the truth, if its BS, you don't care what the truth is).
Again, there are plenty of solid criticisms on the web of Coulter's works, and a detail of the bitter person that she is. There are also some wonderfully bitchy and funny ones too. Plus a few that are just foaming at their mouths..., Coulter does that to people. Of course, that is what she wants.
I can't imagine that I could get you to read some liberal sources, but if you want less insane republican/right wing sources, I suggest Oppinion Journal (The Wall Street Journals online free opinion service) or Nationl Review Online (NRO). Want to be a little risque for the right, try Andrew Sullivan. I have problems with all of these, and many of their contribs, but they at least make an effort to be serious.
Posted by: JDB on March 19, 2005 01:19 AMPtooey!
Posted by: Amused by liberals on March 19, 2005 11:05 AMYou want to discuss Nixon as well, he made an initial attempt along the lines of how Reagan later successfully outmaneuvered the USSR. Nixon realized (from his memoirs) that China had two things we needed; commerce which could lead to capitalism undermining communism (which has happened to some extent), and diverting the chinese attention while we dealt with the USSR our greater enemy. He was successful and correct on both accounts. Nixon also had the vision to attempt peace with the USSR through the exploration of space.
Thanks for this witty reparte. I love discussing facts and truths. As long as we don't call each other names I appreciate you three inspiring me to elevate my level of reasoning. Yes, I am still investigating the exact wording of some issues Unkl spoke of. But hey, I don't know everything. chuckle
"Was 9/11 'blowback' for American misdeeds abroad? Obviously, shouted Noam Chomsky, Susan Sontag, and many like-minded others. The U.S. war in Afghanistan? An imperialist adventure, most declared. Such responses have led (Michael) Walzer,coeditor of the socialist journal Dissent [to question the Left and its] 'barely concealed glee that the imperial state had finally gotten what it deserved.'
"The Left long ago 'lost its bearings ... from the Vietnam years forward, from the time of "Amerika," Viet Cong flags, and breathless trips to North Vietnam ... That's why many leftists had such difficulty responding emotionally to the attacks of September 11 or joining in the expressions of solidarity that followed' - and why they backed ineffective proposals such as turning the problem over to the United Nations.
"Clinging to a 'ragtag Marxism.' many of Walzer's ideological confreres are blind to the immense power of religion. "Whenever writers on the lift say that the "root cause" of terror is global inequality or human poverty, the assertion is in fact a denial that religious motives really count.' Minimizing the importance of Islamic radicalism, many have simply assumed that 'any group that attacks the imperial power must be a representative of the oppressed, and its agenda must be the agenda of the Left.'
"Opting for the 'moral purism of blaming America first,' many leftists cannot bring themselves to criticize the 'oppressed' elsewhere. Yet
even the oppressed are morally obliged 'not to murder innocent people, not to make terrorism their politics.'" - Wilson Quarterly, Summer 2002
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Most national-security Democrats (Biden, Bayh, Edwards, Richardson, Hillary Clinton) believe that the Party’s problems on the issue go deeper than marketing. They agree that the Party should be more open to the idea of military action, and even preëmption; and although they did not agree about the timing of the Iraq war and the manner in which Bush launched it, they believe that the stated rationale—Saddam’s brutality and his flouting of United Nations resolutions—was ideologically and morally sound. They say that the absence of weapons of mass destruction was more a failure of intelligence than a matter of outright deception by the Administration; and although they do not share the neoconservatives’ enthusiastic belief in the transformative power of military force, they accept the possibility that the invasion of Iraq might lead to the establishment of democratic institutions there.
In addition, national-security Democrats try to distance themselves from the Party’s post-Vietnam ambivalence about the projection of American power. In other words, they are men and women who want to reach back to an age of Democratic resoluteness, embodied by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy. Their mission may have been complicated earlier this year by Howard Dean’s victory in the race for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, although Dean, the most stridently antiwar of the major candidates in 2004, has promised to suppress the urge to comment on foreign policy.
Biden could find little to say about Dean, other than this: “No goddam chairman’s ever made a difference in the history of the Democratic Party.” His colleague Joseph Lieberman, who is perhaps the most conservative member of the Democratic caucus, said, “Dean was wrong on the war and what he was talking about was bad for the country. We’ll see what he does as chairman. If he devotes his energies to building a party at the base, as he talked about doing, good for him. If he continues to be a prominent spokesman on defense policy, I would regret it.” ... (Lieberman) is unapologetic about his defense of Bush’s Iraq policy, saying, “Bottom line, I think Bush has it right.” When I asked if he was becoming a neoconservative, Lieberman smiled and said, “No, but some of my best friends are neocons.”
For a Democrat who wants to cultivate an image of toughness on national security, the challenge is to adopt positions that, in some cases, are closer to those of Paul Wolfowitz than to those of Edward Kennedy while remaining loyal to the Party. This has become more difficult with the news from the Middle East over the past two months, which raises the possibility that the Bush Administration’s core argument—that the antidote to Islamic-fundamentalist terrorism is democracy—might turn out to be something more than utopian theory.
It is far too early to claim that the Middle East is moving irreversibly toward tranquillity and freedom. Fifteen hundred American soldiers have been killed, and thousands more have been wounded; the insurgency within Iraq—the assassinations, the car bombings, the hostage-taking—has continued unabated. But, at the same time, something appears to have been shaken loose. The Iraqi election in late January; the election in the Palestinian territories and the rekindling of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process; the protests of the Lebanese against their Syrian occupiers; and the move by the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, toward more direct elections have given the Bush Administration—and the neoconservatives who contribute much of its expansive ideology—its first good news in quite a while. Some of these events cannot plausibly be attributed to Bush. “This is a very lucky President,” Biden said. “Why did Arafat die on his watch? I mean, give me a break.”
Biden and other Democrats agreed, though, that their party should not appear stingy when the news favors Bush. “The Democrats need to stand with the President when he’s right,” Bill Richardson told me. “His emphasis on being more pro-democracy in the Middle East seems to have galvanized some movement. The Democrats need to establish their credentials on national security, and we get hurt by reflexive negativism.” ...
Biden says he is reminded of the Party’s difficult relationship with Ronald Reagan. “Everybody knew ‘Reagan is dangerous,’ remember? He talked about freedom, so what do we do? We say it’s a bad speech, dangerous speech.” Biden was referring to a 1982 speech delivered by Reagan to the British Parliament, in which he spoke of the power of democracy. Today, the Democrats are “making the same mistakes again,” Biden said.
From "THE UNBRANDING" by JEFFREY GOLDBERG: "Can the Democrats make themselves look tough?" The New Yorker, 21 March 2005
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In one of Lenny Bruce's classic routines an agitated Lyndon Johnson—freshly seated in the White House, and in the privacy of the Oval Office—is sweatin', swearin', and cussin' as he tries to say "Ni-Ni-Ni … Ni-groh" but instead keeps returning to a more familiar and vulgar word. Now, at the urging of the UC Berkeley cognitive linguist George Lakoff, liberal America's guru of the moment, progressive Democrats are practicing to get their own reluctant mouths around some magical new vocabulary, in the hope of surviving and eventually overcoming the age of Bush. ...
Much more than an offering of serious political strategy, (Lakoff's book) is a feel-good self-help book for a stratum of despairing liberals who just can't believe how their commonsense message has been misunderstood by the eternally deceived masses. Liberal values are American values, they say, but somehow Americans just keep getting tricked ...into thinking and voting against their own interests.
So what's an earnest, honest liberal to do when nobody wants to hear the truth? Why not turn to personal therapy disguised as politics, psychobabble as electoral strategy? Lakoff, revealingly, provides nary a word on reshaping the Democratic Party itself, blunting the influence of corporate cash, eliminating the stranglehold on the party and its candidates by discredited but omni-powerful consultants, reversing its estrangement from the white working class, finding some decent candidates, or just about anything else that might require actual strategic thinking ... (T)he Democratic liberal and activist crust does indeed seem ever more in denial about the depth of its defeat, about its detachment from what it claims as its "traditional base," and about its apparent willingness to pursue little more than a self-referential, self-indulgent political aesthetic. It's much easier nowadays to fancy yourself a member of a persecuted minority, bravely shielding the flickering flame of enlightenment from the increasing Christo-Republican darkness, than it is to figure out how you're actually going to win an election or, God forbid, organize a union. ...
(T)he liberal left (is) the new incarnation of the John Birch Society, the black-clad beneficiaries of studio residuals and university tenure -- often banking family salaries deep into six figures (or much, much more), their offspring booked into $20,000-a-year prep schools -- (posing) as the last-standing defenders of enlightenment and democracy. At one liberal party last year ... where Aaron Sorking and Rob Reiner clinked glasses with Laurie and Larry David, the Chanel-clad hostess (a very wealthy industrialist) mounted her staircase and, speaking to the all-Democratic crowd, vowed to dedicate her energies to fighting George W. Bush. To thunderous applause she announced, "We are tired of being disenfranchised!"
In the weeks following the election, as these same liberals were convincing themselves that another dark conspiracy had rigged the vote, the after-dinner chatter sometimes veered toward fleeing to Canada (from Jesusland). Few are the Democratic activists who simply accept the unavoidable fact that they lost, that George W. Bush fairly and, um, squarely beat the stuffing out of them. Instead liberal -- and especially progressive -- rhetoric is increasingly laced with paranoia. A month after the vote the country's flagship progressive publication, The Nation (where I am a contributing editor), compiled the post-election analyses and prescriptives of two dozen left-of-center notables, (some) had definitely gone round the bend(:)
* Kerry got beaten in Ohio partly by a nefarious plan ... How many (lost votes) is unknown ... e-fraud ... one more stolen election ... (N)o need for us to change. The blame is all external ...
* (T)he election results forced a choice between "two nightmares": either 60 million Americans "knowingly" ratified Bush's "right-wing ideology" or "we have just witnessed a second successive nonviolent coup d'etat -- a massive voter fraud ... (W)e're facing something worse than fraud: that other F-word, fascism. ... (S)ome fascist demagogue -- maybe like George W. Bush ... stoked into becoming brownshirts ...
(T)rendy MoveOn.org, the motor force of the so-called "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," (to whom) the biggest problems liberals face are those damned voting machines and Fox News ... Groups like MoveOn are fundamentally echo chambers for Volvo Democrats whose lives aren't much affected by whether a Democrat of a Republican is in the White House, and who think it's a politiclly significant act to go with an audience of like-minded souls to view a flockumentary like Fahrenheit 9/11 or Outfoxed, to set their TiVo to Jon Stewart's the Daily Show, or to pass around lefty spam containing fiery warnings of creeping fascism. A far more challenging exercise after the election would have been for MoveOn to order its troops to meet with and listen to ten people who disagreed with them -- instead of taling, as usual, only to one another. -- "THINKING OF JACKASSES: The Grand Delusions of the Democratic Party," MARC COOPER (contributing editor, The Nation), The Atlantic Monthly, April 2005
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(T)aken as a whole, (Air America) is already infected by the corrosive negativity, strutting egotism, and bizarre paranoia that marked much of what traversed the conservative airwaves in the late 1990s.
Angry liberals surely take pleasure in hearing a host call President Bush a "lazy sack of crap," or shrug at complaints about the network's absurd speculation that Bush knew about 9/11 in advance and permitted the attacks for his own political gain. Yet the notion that such nonsense is politically beneficial retains a subliminal credibility with true believers of every stripe.
Much of what Air America carries is anger-laced polemic that plays to the farthest-left element of the electorate. The early Limbaugh was a populist at once funny and capable of maneuvering outside the party line; but few liberal hosts display any enthusiasm for attracting people beyond the segment that is already passionately attuned to their brand of smug, hostile liberalism (with Randi Rhodes suggesting that the Fredo Option -- assassination -- would be a useful way to take care of George Bush.) -- "THE AIR AMERICA PLAN," JOSHUA GREEN, The Atlantic Monthly, April 2005