Monday, August 22, 2005

They're Dying For THIS?

That bubblehead Kellyanne Conway also said, the other night on “Real Time With Bill Maher,” that it was hypocritical for us in this country to criticize Iraq for not giving women their rights in the new constitution, equating this denial of basic liberties with the fact that we haven’t elected a woman president in this country, so how do we have the right to say anything (Bill Maher verbally slapped her down for that, by the way, noting Conway’s sleeveless dress and saying, “At least in this country, we have the right to bear (bare) arms” (supply your own rim shot).

Something that is definitely not funny, though, is this item from the Air America site to further refute what Conway said:

US diplomats gave their okay for Islamic law to be enshrined in the Iraq constitution on Saturday. One secular Kurdish politician was dismayed: "We understand the Americans have sided with the Shi'ites," he said. "It's shocking. It doesn't fit American values. They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state ... I can't believe that's what the Americans really want or what the American people want."
I guess they'll be breaking ground on the Iraqi Chamber of Commerce office in Tehran any day now.

P.S. - The Daily Kos is pillorying Wil Marshall of the DLC and Hillary Clinton today for, shall we say, being "vague" or "standoffish" (or just basically having no guts) in criticizing Bushco on the war. They should turn to who else but David Sirota, who reports that vets in Pensacola, FL interpret criticism of the war as an attack on the policy makers, if you can call them that, and not the forces themselves.

P.P.S. - The only thing more pathetic than Bushco's continued shilling for this war while Dubya's approval ratings sink like a stone is the total inability of the Democrats to capitalize on this situation, as shown in Dick Polman's column (Ed Kilgore epitomizes the bought-and-paid-for DLC establishment, by the way).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great post. Found your blog via Technorati search for Bill Maher (wanted to see what the blogosphere was saying about his latest show, which I just caught last night).

To call her a bubblehead is right on... I couldn't believe some of the spin this woman was selling. Do you remember when she said that the reason she can say that Iraqi women are doing better now than before the war despite the fact that journalists and reporters have said otherwise is that "as you know better than anyone, Bill, the media in this country doesn't always tell us the truth."

Oh, that's right. If Iraqi women were doing better, the media would want us to think otherwise! When we on the Left say that the media is distorting the truth, say by presenting White House PR as "the truth" or presenting America in the most favorable light possible, the reason we are able to prove this at all is because we know that press access to the White House is controlled by the White House (duh), and therefore, journalists don't want to piss off the administration too badly since that might cost them contacts in high places.

Would it offend anyone to provide definitive journalistic proof that Iraqi women are doing better after the Iraq war? Of course not! The White House would love an article like that, and we on the left wouldn't mind it either--after all, what, the hell, are we spending billions of dollars for if humans aren't even getting basic rights in Iraq?

But this bonehead Conway really is just a talking head of the right, who parrots what the right-wing machine tells her to say. She is what Paul Krugman recently called "an echo chamber", who simply assumes that what other people tell her in her conservative circles must be true.

Remember when she mentioned that John Kerry voted against what she called "the body armor bill"? She referred to the $87 billion package as "the body armor bill," even though FactCheck.org and other actual analysts have thoroughly proven the distortion in this claim (a distortion used by Bush to win the election of 2004). It pissed me off that Bill Maher didn't call her bluff and instead simply used the equally propogandistic "Well, Kerry fought in Vietnam."

In reality, the proper response would be to point out that the $87 billion package included $300 million for upgraded vests, yes, but that was a mere 1/3 of 1 percent (i.e. 0.33%) of the actual bill's spending.[1] Do you think what Kerry voted against was those $300 million, or is it more rational to assume that Kerry voted against the other $86,700 million dollars spent in that bill?

1. http://www.factcheck.org/article155.html

doomsy said...

Yep, isn't it funny how that $87 billion open-ended defense appropriations bill which ended up being a bonanza for Halliburton, among others, and which our supine legislators were supposed to swallow hook, line, and sinker morphed into the "body armor" bill? Sure, the reason our people and their vehicles aren't properly armored is because John Kerry voted against it - yeah, tell me another one. No, it wouldn't be because Rummy is an obnoxious, confrontational idiot with delusions of godhood (like everyone else in Bushco, now that I think of it). Of course, if I point that out, I'm not "supporting our troops" and the decal will automatically peel off my vehicle and take the paint off to the primer, I'm sure. Frank Luntz does it again! Thanks for checking in.