On Thu, 14 Oct 2004 10:17:53 -0700 (PDT), Sam Morris
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> So sad to see people whine like this.
>
> By the way, where the hell is Park Place? Isn't that
> in Atlantic City?
>
> -sm
>
>
>
> --- Sandy Clark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > We're Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore
> > By Garrison Keillor August 26, 2004
> >
> >
> > Something has gone seriously haywire with the
> > Republican Party. Once,
> > it was the party of pragmatic Main Street
> > businessmen in steel-rimmed
> > spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were
> > devoted to their
> > communities and supported the sort of prosperity
> > that raises all ships.
> >
> > They were good-hearted people who vanquished the
> > gnarlier elements of
> > their party, the paranoid Roosevelt-haters, the flat
> > Earthers and
> > Prohibitionists, the antipapist antiforeigner
> > element. The genial
> > Eisenhower was their man, a genuine American hero of
> > D-Day, who made it OK
> > for reasonable people to vote Republican. He
> > brought the Korean War to a
> > stalemate, produced the Interstate Highway System,
> > declined to rescue the
> > French colonial army in Vietnam, and gave us a
> > period of peace and
> > prosperity, in which (oddly) American arts and
> > letters flourished and higher
> > education burgeoned - and there was a degree of
> > plain decency in the
> > country.
> >
> > Fifties Republicans were giants compared to today's.
> > Richard Nixon was
> > the last Republican leader to feel a Christian
> > obligation toward the poor.
> > In the years between Nixon and Newt Gingrich, the
> > party migrated southward
> > down the Twisting Trail of Rhetoric and sneered at
> > the idea of public
> > service and became the Scourge of Liberalism, the
> > Great Crusade Against the
> > Sixties, the Death Star of Government, a gang of
> > pirates that diverted and
> > fascinated the media by their sheer chutzpah, such
> > as the misty-eyed
> > flag-waving of Ronald Reagan who, while George
> > McGovern flew bombers in
> > World War II, took a pass and made training films in
> > Long Beach.
> >
> > The Nixon moderate vanished like the passenger
> > pigeon, purged by a
> > legion of angry white men who rose to power on pure
> > punk politics.
> > "Bipartisanship is another term for date rape," says
> > Grover Norquist, the
> > Sid Vicious of the GOP. "I don't want to abolish
> > government. I simply
> > want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it
> > into the bathroom and
> > drown it in the bathtub." The boy has Oedipal
> > problems and government is his
> > daddy.
> >
> > The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified
> > into the party of
> > hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills,
> > faith-based
> > economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles,
> > Christians of convenience,
> > free lanceracists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking
> > midgets of AM radio,
> > tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brown shirts in
> > pinstripes, sweatshop
> > tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks,
> > Lamborghini libertarians,
> > people who believe Neil Armstrong's moonwalk was
> > filmed in Roswell, New
> > Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of
> > us, Newt's evil spawn and
> > their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man
> > suspicious of the free
> > flow of information and of secular institutions,
> > whose philosophy is a
> > jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk.
> >
> > Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world
> > thinks we're deaf, dumb
> > and dangerous.
> >
> > Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in
> > the forest! Wild
> > swine crowd round the public trough! Outrageous
> > gerrymandering! Pocket
> > lining on a massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in
> > committee rooms and write
> > legislation to alleviate the suffering of
> > billionaires! Hypocrisies
> > shine like cat turds in the moonlight! O Mark
> > Twain, where art thou at this
> > hour? Arise and behold the Gilded Age reincarnated
> > gaudier than ever,
> > upholding great wealth as the sure sign of Divine
> > Grace.
> >
> > Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for
> > reelection on a platform
> > of tragedy - the single greatest failure of national
> > defense in our
> > history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with
> > box cutters put this
> > nation
> > into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the
> > White House fought to
> > keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up
> > to the hubcaps, thanks
> > to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to
> > lead us into a box
> > canyon of debt that will render government impotent,
> > even as we engage in a
> > war against a small country that was undertaken for
> > the president's
> > personal satisfaction but sold to the American
> > public on the basis of brazen
> > misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract
> > us from an enormous
> > transfer of wealth taking place in this country,
> > flowing upward, and
> > the deception is working beautifully. The
> > concentration of wealth and
> > power in the hands of the few is the death knell of
> > democracy. No republic
> > in the history of humanity has survived this.
> >
> > The election of 2004 will say something about what
> > happens to ours.
> > The omens are not good. Our beloved land has been
> > fogged with fear - fear,
> > the greatest political strategy ever. An ominous
> > silence, distant sirens,
> > a drum beat of whispered warnings and alarms to keep
> > the public uneasy
> > and silence the opposition. And in a time of vague
> > fear, you can appoint
> > bullet-brained judges, strip the bark off the
> > Constitution, eviscerate
> > federal regulatory agencies, bring public education
> > to a standstill,
> > stupefy the press, lavish gorgeous tax breaks on the
> > rich. There is a stink
> > drifting through this election year. It isn't the
> > Florida recount or
> > the Supreme Court decision.
> >
> > No, it's 9/11 that we keep coming back to. It
> > wasn't the "end of
> > innocence," or a turning point in our history, or a
> > cosmic occurrence, it
> > was an event, a lapse of security. And patriotism
> > shouldn't prevent people
> > from
> > asking hard questions of the man who was purportedly
> > in charge of national
> > security at the time. Whenever I think of those New
> > Yorkers hurrying along
> > Park Place or getting off the No.1 Broadway local,
> > hustling toward their
> > office on the 90th floor, the morning paper under
> > their arms, I think of
> > that
> > non-reader George W. Bush and how he hopes to
> > exploit those people with a
> > little economic uptick, maybe the capture of Osama,
> > cruise to victory in
> > November and proceed to get some serious
> > nation-changing done in his second
> > term.
> >
> > This year, as in the past, Republicans will portray
> > us Democrats as
> > embittered academics, desiccated Unitarians,
> > whacked-out hippies and
> > communards, people who talk to telephone poles, the
> > party of the
> > Deadheads. They will wave enormous flags and wow
> > over and over the footage
> > of firemen in the wreckage of the World Trade Center
> > and bodies being
> > carried out and they will lie about their economic
> > policies with astonishing
> > enthusiasm.
> >
> >
> > The Union is what needs defending this year.
> > Government of Enron and
> > by Halliburton and for the Southern Baptists is not
> > the same as what
> > Lincoln spoke of. This gang of Pithecanthropus
> > Republicanii has humbugged
> > us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for the comfy
> > and school prayer and
> > flag burning and claimed the right to know what
> > books we read and to dump
> > their sewage upstream from the town and clear-cut
> > the forests and gut the
> > IRS and mark up the constitution on behalf of
> > intolerance and promote the
> > corporate takeover of the public airwaves and to
> > hell with anybody who
> > opposes them.
> >
> > This is a great country, and it wasn't made so by
> > angry people. We
> > have a sacred duty to bequeath it to our
> > grandchildren in better shape than
> > however we found it. We have a long way to go and
> > we're not getting any
> > younger. Dante said that the hottest place in Hell
> > is reserved for those
> > who in time of crisis remain neutral, so I have
> > spoken my piece, and thank
> > you,
> > dear reader. It's a beautiful world, rain or shine,
> > and there is more to
> > life than winning.
> >
> >
> >________________________________
>
[Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
