Tag: Republicans

The Art of the Kickback.

Meanwhile, Dubya has less to say about a sweetheart corporate tax package being pushed through Congress by the GOP, one that offers ridiculous handouts to various Republican-leaning business special interests. “[W]hat started as an effort to repeal a $5 billion-a-year subsidy has grown into one of the most significant corporate tax measures in years. The Senate bill, 980 pages long, includes more than $167 billion in business tax cuts over 10 years, handing out favors to NASCAR racetracks, foreign dog-race gamblers, Oldsmobile dealers and bow-and-arrow makers, to name a few.” Hmmm…might be time to invest in bow-and-arrow futures. Update: The bill passes the House.

Gipperpalooza.

So…you might’ve missed this little story in all the D-Day hullabaloo, but apparently former President Ronald Reagan died. Due to my cable issues, I’ve thankfully missed much of the canonization and hagiography of the past few days, although I’m sure the GOP will repeat it all at their upcoming convention anyway.

I know it’s bad form to speak ill of the recently deceased, so I’ll let others handle straightening the record about Ronnie’s not-so-stellar presidency. But, given all the revisionist history out and about at the moment, I do think this is a good time to consider the thesis of Reagan’s America by Garry Wills:

Much of Garry Wills’s argument in Reagan’s America can be encapsulated by George Costanza’s advice to Jerry Seinfeld, prior to Jerry’s being polygraphed about his Melrose Place viewing habits: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.” Over and over again, Wills scrutinizes the tales and myths told by Reagan about himself in his private speeches, public addresses, and autobiography, and finds them to be embellished, exaggerated, and – more often than not – patently false. And therein lies his uncanny appeal for so many people: Reagan’s myths are America’s myths…As Wills puts it, “the truth about [America’s] actual behavior, whether on the old frontier or the new, is as threatening to our sense of identity as the terrorist himself.” (452) And because Reagan believes so thoroughly in his own American myths, many Americans could join him in believing them as well…[Wills writes,] “Visiting Reaganland is very much like taking children to Disneyland…It is a safe past, with no sharp edges to stumble against. The more visits one makes to such a past, the better is one immunized against any troubling cursions of a real [American past.] If capitalist ‘conservatism’ canoot be rooted in the real past it works to obliterate, then it will invent a deracinating past, a nostalgia for the new, a substitute history to lull us in the time machine that travels on no roads, reaching goals no one could plan.” (459-460)

In sum, “Reagan gives our history the continuity of a celluloid Mobius strip. We rides its curves backwards and forwards at the same time, and he is always there.” (440) Put differently, the appeal of Ronald Reagan for so many is that he offers us a simulacrum of American history that is both appealingly mythic and appallingly untrue.

Well, at the very least, the effusive eulogizing going on right now may help topple barriers to stem-cell research. And, no matter what one’s political persuasion, I think we can all agree that helping to eliminate scourges like Alzheimer’s Disease would make a wonderful asset to Ronald Reagan’s legacy.

The Dubya Effect.

Democratic House candidate Stephanie Herseth wins in GOP-leaning South Dakota, and the Dems’ prospects in the South brighten. How much do you want to bet Karl Rove is pushing hard right now for a refocus on catching Osama before November?

Chairman Cheney Pads his Pocket.

Typical. Despite being oversight-crazy during the Clinton era, the Congressional GOP refuses to hold hearings about the “smoking gun” e-mail connecting Cheney’s office to a sweetheart Halliburton deal in Iraq. (And, as with the energy probe, Cheney’s office is stonewalling.) Good lord, what shadiness…is there no level below which these guys won’t stoop? Once again, the Bush administration and its Congressional cronies have proved themselves a national embarrassment of historic proportions.

That Woman? Not hardly.

By way of Value Judgment, Alexandra Polier — the woman whom Drudge et al earlier claimed had an affair with John Kerry — digs into the unsavory origins of her own non-story. The first half of the article is basically a recap of her situation and her actual connection to Kerry, but the second half — when she begins interrogating the journalists who breathlessly created this media scandal out of whole cloth — is quite interesting.

Attack! Attack!

Be afraid. Be very afraid. And don’t say we didn’t warn you. Nothing changes an undesirable news cycle quite like another terror threat, does it? As the AP article notes: “The sudden warning returns the nation’s attention to terrorism, the issue that President Bush has highlighted as a central theme of his re-election campaign, after intense focus on other subjects like Iraq and prisoner abuses in Iraq. Bush has lost ground in the polls, falling in approval ratings to the lowest point of his presidency.“

To be fair, releasing pics of the possible suspects is probably more helpful in preventing a future attack than the usual exhortations to buy duct tape. And nobody want to see another 9/11, particularly those of us who live in NYC. Still, the very fact that news articles have to concede that Dubya may just be pushing the Panic button for political points proves how untrustworthy this president has become. And don’t you love how Bush officials keep suggesting that Al Qaeda wants to “have some impact on the electoral process,” as if voting Democratic means the terrorists have won? Sorry, but you’ll have to count me among the many Americans who thinks that terrorists have more to fear from John Kerry than they ever would from Dubya’s haphazard and crony-driven homeland security agenda.

A GOP Blood Feud.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, Democrats abused their majority status at about a level 5 or 6,”[conservative think tank AEI’s Norman] Ornstein observed. “Republicans today have moved it to about an 11.” Salon delves into the growing rift between Tom DeLay and Dick Armey over conservative politics and principles. Hmmm…Mordor orcs or Isengard orcs, take your pick.