Defending Myself, condemning the indefensible.
February 28, 2011
Most people know me from one of two places: either my YouTube page or from my weekly reporting of the Sunday Morning Talkshows over at Crooks & Liars.
At the end of all my posts is the following tagline:
Final Bush tally: 10,300+ DEAD
(3,000 on 9/11. 4,500 in Iraq, 1000 in Afg. 1,800 in Katrina.)
Debt: $11.3 Trillion
$4.00 gas; $147 oil.
Osama bin Laden still on the loose.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
Every so often, I’m criticized by fellow Liberals for only counting “American deaths” with that “10,300” figure. Some even then go as far as accuse me of being “a Republican” for “not caring about” foreign casualties. Good grief.
So why is it I “only” count the number of American soldiers killed by the policies of George W. Bush in my tagline? Not Iraqi’s or Afghani’s (I’ve noticed I’m never criticized for not including the number of Coalition troops killed.)
I do it that way for a few reasons: First, I’m combining the number of American soldiers killed with the number of Americans killed in two other events that took place in the U.S.: Katrina and 9/11. The figure isn’t meant as a slight to murdered Iraqi’s/Afghani’s, it’s a combined number of Americans that died in four different American events. No one in Iraq died because of Katrina.
Second, the “official” number of Iraqi’s/Afghani’s killed varies wildly based upon who you ask. Where some reports “estimate” over a million, the Pentagon claimed “less than 200,000″… and I’m not interested in arguing with Conservatives over just which figure is right. If you haven’t figured it out yet, Conservatives will single out a single weak point (eg: “Death Panels”) and obsess upon it so they may ignore/disregard the big picture. Which brings me to reason #3…
Third, the target audience for that tagline isn’t my fellow Liberals. it’s Republican Lurkers that are frequently oblivious to just how many Americans… the only people they really care about… died as a direct result of the incompetency of George W. Bush Administration.
None-the-less, because of my “omission”, I’m sometimes accused of being a “closet Republican”. It doesn’t help that the place most people see that tagline is attached to my weekly reporting of the Conservative insanity/hypocrisy/stupidity on “Fox news Sunday”. I spend exactly one hour a week watching Fox News, so naturally, I MUST be a Republican! Are you kidding me? If I didn’t subject myself to watching Fox once a week, we’d all miss out on gems like the clip below from yesterday’s show. See if you can follow the tortured logic of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels trying to explain why his advocacy of spending less money on people who are near death is neither “rationing”, nor is it what Sarah Palin called a “Death Panel”:
Democrats are a judgmental bunch, and I include myself in that generalization. But far too frequently, someone all too quickly turns that finger-of-blame inward on fellow Democrats. And to make matters worse, I don’t automatically dismiss/support everything anyone says just because of their political label. I can laugh at a joke from Bill Kristol, or criticize Michael Moore for rushing to judgment against Sen. Chris Dodd as easily as I can bash Rush Limbaugh or praise Howard Dean, and still call myself a Liberal Democrat. I have no patients for people that close their minds and automatically dismiss people based upon a single view on a single issue. Those people are called “ideologues”, and I have no use for them, no matter which side of the issue they’re on.
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February 28, 2011
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Admin Mugsy · 
One Comment - Add
Tags: GOP Republican Presidential candidate 2012 Mitch Daniels hypocrite death panel health care HCR rationing · Posted in: Election, Healthcare, Politics, Rants, War
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One Response
Because I was a Republican until my late 20’s (YAF in college, worker for Goldwater on the floor of the Republican National Convention, etc.), I have been banned from some of the blogsites operated by the “professional left”. I CHOSE the Democratic Party when the Party of Lincoln actively recruited southern racists in the late 1960’s, cozied up to the Moral Majority of Falwell/Robertson, and allowed itself to be hijacked by the neocons. But I get in trouble on some “left” blogs when I criticize Hamsher, Huffington, Greenwald, Moore, and most of the MSNBC staff now except for Rachel. I am wondering if controversy doesn’t sell at these sites as they don’t have George W. Bush to kick around any more. As a Republican, I was most often used to WINNING elections. My father, grandfather, brother-in-law served 30 years total in elected offices at the county and state level…as Republicans. Not that Republicans don’t have “dirty laundry” but they tend not to hang it out in public. I don’t get off on Democratic “ideologues” being so hypercritical of Obama and fellow Democrats when they are only giving sound bites for the opposition to use in ads later on. I can see where Reagan was going with his “11th Commandment”.
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