BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Sep 08 - 06:36 PM

"Isn't it worthy of mention that The Shrub has been doing exactly what Goering said, and that McWar plans to keep on doing it?"

Darn right it is, and I did mention it (regarding Bush). Check the end of my 3rd paragraph in that post. Yes, I do expect McCain to keep on doing it.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 17 Sep 08 - 05:03 PM

Westbrook Pegler. Herbert Hoover. Do these names mean anything to a voting population that thinks the Desert Storm is ancient history?

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: GUEST,Jill
Date: 17 Sep 08 - 04:50 PM

Palin was just the mouthpiece for a machine that uses people like Pegler when convenient.


http://www.counterpunch.org/dickson09162008.html
"The speech was written by Matthew Scully, who worked for President George W. Bush for five years, and was part of the team that drafted the President's post-September 11th addresses and every major speech of the first term. No stranger to the art of creating statesmanship in the barely literate, Scully had been hired before the surprising selection of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as vice-presidential candidate; portions of the speech touching on Senators Obama and McCain had been written before her selection was announced.

Scully and Palin sat together and developed-over "hours and hours and hours and hours" according to Mark Salter, McCain's closest aide, speechwriter, and co-author-what would become the defining, and indeed pivotal, moment in the current Presidential campaign.

Scully has described the process of speechwriting with loving and useful detail as a collaborative effort, informed by historical precedent, and a careful understanding of, and appreciation for, the politician meant to deliver the speech. In settling scores with his former colleague, Mike Gershon, in a long 2007 piece in The Atlantic, Scully depicts a meticulous, creative, solemn, collegial process where scores of drafts are revised and edited, both by the speechwriting team and by political higher-ups: a process where every reference is carefully chosen, and every phrase is weighed for rhetorical punch and discursive balance.

As Scully sat with Palin, many of the McCain campaign's most senior staff were most likely called upon to review and comment the emerging speech's leitmotiv: small town values of decency, service and integrity, facing off against the unreliability of the community-organizing urbanites in truly fighting for the interests of the people, or for the nation's war efforts. The novelty of a relatively young woman speaking to the RNC was offset by a retro feel: something from bygone days when things were simple, and moral response to enemies something that one didn't have to think too hard about. Something harkening back to the Truman years."

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Donuel
Date: 17 Sep 08 - 09:46 AM

I would agree with Jonah that taking words out of context is is fascile and to be expected during silly season.

Pegler was not as dangerous a man as Lindberg who could be most easily manipulated by national socialists. The Financial Republicans would love to have a Lindberg on the presidential platform today.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Genie
Date: 17 Sep 08 - 03:25 AM

Richard Bridge: "Isn't it worthy of mention that The Shrub has been doing exactly what Goering said, and that McWar plans to keep on doing it?"

Certainly.

Obvious, perhaps. True, definitely.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 Sep 08 - 02:44 AM

Or was it so obvious that it didn't need saying?

Oh, and 100

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 Sep 08 - 02:43 AM

Isn't it worthy of mention that The Shrub has been doing exactly what Goering said, and that McWar plans to keep on doing it?

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Sep 08 - 01:20 AM

Ha! Thanks, Genie. Spaw and I love to pretend we're angry at each other and slag each other off in that fashion now and then. I, of course, am not deserving of such cavalier treatment because I adore Winona Ryder and I love dachshunds. Spaw, on the other hand, praises Cheech Wizard and keeps Weimaraners. This, needless to say, means he deserves the absolute worst, because he is beyond the pale. ;-)

*********

'Of course the people don't want war - that is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." ------- Hermann Goering (Adolf Hitler's deputy) at the Nuremberg trials, 1946, quoted in "Nuremberg Diary" by G M Gilbert]]

That is indeed the Goering quote that you have there, all right, Genie, and boy is it EVER spot on. Truer words have seldom been spoken regarding how governments bamboozle and control their public when they wish to promote a war of aggression. I would have no trouble attributing the statement to Goering, and it is a statement that all people should be made well aware of...it would help them protect themselves against their own regimes that might lead them into lawless and needless wars of aggression....as the Bush regime has done.

Goering served a very wrongful cause in Nazi Germany. That doesn't mean that there is nothing he said in his Nuremberg testimony from which we cannot perhaps learn something useful.

Most people DO say something useful sometime during their lives...and they also usually say some things that are stupid, wrongful, and destructive sometime during their lives. You just have to look what they said...not in terms of who they are...but in terms of exactly what they said, period, and in what context.

In other words, look beyond your habitual political correctness habits that you are so defensive about and consider each statement strictly on its own merits. That statement of Goering's is dead accurate and it has plenty of merit, regardless of the source.

Goering sometimes spoke the truth. He did on that occasion, because he had nothing left to lose. He knew he was going to die soon.   Everyone sometimes speaks the truth, and the truth WILL set you free...if you bother to listen to it and then act on what you heard.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 10:49 PM

I don't think anyone who supported Joe McCarthy and what he was doing could accurately be described as someone who "hates big government". They might accurately be described as someone who hates some kinds of big government, but they obviously love some kinds of big government. Big police-state types of government, for instance.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Genie
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 10:30 PM

Gawd, Little Hawk! You and Spaw are so beeyootiful when yer angry!!

G
; D

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Genie
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 10:24 PM

Little Hawk said: "If the world was voting, Obama would win by a landslide."

So true. And, sad to say, far too many Americans would vote AGAINST him precisely BECAUSE of that fact.

I think our American populace, abetted and deceived by the monopolistically-held infotainment media and the heavily-funded campaigns of the opposition, has become increasingly arrogant about our place in the world.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Genie
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 10:17 PM

IrishEnglish said: [[I believe this is the quote Little Hawk was referring to:

"To quote an expert: 'Of course the people don't want war - that is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." ------- Hermann Goering (Adolf Hitler's deputy) at the Nuremberg trials, 1946, quoted in "Nuremberg Diary" by G M Gilbert]]

Goering's analysis is, unfortunately, spot on.   I'd eagerly use that quotation -- AND clearly state where it came from. The source is an important reminder of why its truth is something we need to keep in mind.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Riginslinger
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 10:02 PM

That's a good piece, robomatic.
    I rarely agree with Jonah Goldberg. I do, mostly, this time, and I don't remember Westbrook Pegler. But at the end of it all, I still think Henry Wallace really did have the best interest of the American public at heart.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Genie
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 09:52 PM

pdq said: "Without speeches, politicians would just stand there and have nothing to say."

You mean, as opposed to just standing there and talking and STILL having nothing to say?

G

Subject: RF Kennedy, Jr. - Palin quotes Westbrook Pegler
From: Genie
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 09:51 PM

Jack the Sailor said:
"Kennedy has reason to hate the man. A man who called for his father's murder before it happened.

If Palin is quoting a man who said such words, the public has a right to know. ... "

Many (especially opponents) are taking Barack Obama to task for his "lipstick on a pig" quip (about McCain's policies) on the grounds that "he should have known how it was likely to be interpreted by most people" (as a backhanded retort to Gov. Palin's "pitbull" quip).   I'm not a subscriber to that view, but if that principle is to be applied to Obama's use of a metaphor about McCain, then it should be applied equally to Palin's quoting the Right-wing extremist who called for the murder of Democrats, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Either she, or at least her speechwriters, should have realized the subliminal message that quoting Westbrook Pegler might send to Right-wing zealots hearing her words.   

As I said, I wouldn't hold either of the campaigns to that kind of principle.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: robomatic
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 08:58 PM

Here is what Jonah Goldberg has to say about Westbrook Pegler and those who quote Westbrook Pegler and those who label him a fascist when they've inherited a lot of dough from their rich fascist grandpa. He backs up what I writted earlier about writing in other voices a la Mencken, (and he even mentions Mencken). But I'm quoting him with attribution because I think what he wrote is very perceptive in putting Pegler into context:


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Westbrook Pegler

I'm not much interested in defending Westbrook Pegler. But I find this very earnest screed by Marty Peretz, in which he beats up Sarah Palin for a completely innocuous quote by Pegler quite amusing. (Thomas Frank apparently got the ball rolling last week). The line Palin used: "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity." And from that Peretz launches into a parade of horrible quotations from Pegler, some of which may well be out of context.

I guess Palin should have found some other homage to small town America from a less controversial writer, if for no other reason to avoid this sort of attack during political silly season. But there's an irony here. The New Republic led the chorus of "serious liberals" who said the entire approach of my book was illegitimate because there's no way you can hold contemporary liberals accountable in any way for the nastier views of their heroes of yesteryear (Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Margaret Sanger et al). This was a mischaracterization of what I do in my book (and total bad faith given how that very approach has always been a vital M.O. of the left's attack on the right). But that's an old argument.

Regardless, here's Sarah Palin referencing Pegler — even though Peretz concedes that Palin probably doesn't even know who he was — and Peretz seems to think it says a great deal about...something.

Since I know I'll get email asking what I think of Pegler, I might as well offer some useful clarifications (at least by my lights). I'm no expert on Pegler, but I read up on him a bit for the book and I'd talked about him with my Dad before he died. And my Dad was, simply, the most impressive expert on American political columnists I've ever known.

Anyway, I don't dispute Pegler wrote many indefensible things. Indeed, I never much liked Pegler's style. It struck me as lower-brow Menckenism (and I'm not sure Pegler would have disagreed). That said, while I don't have time to hunt down the context of Peretz's various quotes, it might be kept in mind that Pegler often spoke in other people's voices, often to mock them. In the 1930s — when he was with Scripps-Howard, not Hearst — Pegler skewered the Klan with this literary device. If memory serves, he also pretended to be Jimmy Hoffa in a column attacking Bobby Kennedy. For all I know that's where the gross Kennedy quote is from.

But it is also worth noting that by the 1960s Pegler went off his feed and became even more of a crank. In his prime, however bilious, he was one of America's great columnists and sportswriters and won the Pulitzer in 1941 for his exposé of Chicago labor unions. As a sportswriter he was one of the first to attack discrimination against blacks in professional sports. And while Peretz is careful in some of his wording, the average reader would get the impression that Pegler was nothing but a fascist and a bigot (Robert F. Kennedy Jr., calls Pegler an outright fascist, but it's at least worth noting that RFK Jr. is an unreconstructed buffoon when it comes to his understanding of fascism). It's impossible to defend the totality of Pegler's work against the charge of bigotry, nor would I want to try. But it should be said that Pegler — unlike the decidedly leftwing Father Coughlin — opposed Nazism and Nazi anti-Semitism with admirable passion more passion than could be found in many quarters of American liberalism like, for example, within Kennedy's own family (grandpa Joe was somewhere between an appeaser and outright Nazi sympathizer) or Harvard University. Indeed, Pegler's famous (or once famous) 1936 essay on the Jewish children of Europe puts him ahead of the New York Times in the moral-courage-on-the-Holocaust-department. (Indeed, the Nazis tried to deny Pegler his press credentials at the Berlin Olympics). Some might find it interesting that Pegler initially supported the New Deal, though not as passionately as Coughlin, but broke with it for the right reason: It was too statist. Coughlin broke with the New Deal because it wasn't statist enough.

Anyway, my feelings about Pegler are as follows: To the extent there was such a thing as the Old Right, he was emblematic of its contradictions. He hated big government, hated attempts at social engineering, and had a populist's romantic faith in "real America." He was a man with much hate in him indeed, he championed hate as a universal human liberty which, after all, it is.   Bill Buckley was a nuanced fan of Pegler, but he nonetheless understood the necessity of purging the bigoted strain from modern conservatism that Pegler sometimes represented (today, I doubt 1 in 100 committed conservatives under the age of 50 would even recognize the name). But Pegler was also right about a few important things: the kindred evils of Communism and National Socialism, the racket-like aspects of labor unions and the New Deal, the loony-tunes ideas of one-time New Republic editor and Communist fellow-traveler Henry Wallace and, self-evidently, the goodness of American small towns.
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Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 06:35 PM

Well, okay, I understand your feelings on that. Do whatever it is you feel is right for you, I guess.

There'll be a lot more between now and November.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: irishenglish
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 06:30 PM

LH, I have no intention of starting a battle here, but thats not really much of an answer. I'm sick of hearing that after years of being pushed around, we can't fight back. You call that partisan sniping, I call it the day I finally smacked the school bully in the head after putting up with a lot of shit for a long time. (Yes, that happened to me). Telling us to mark our calendars, or that this is a fortuitous moment is not fair either. If the shoe had been on the other foot, the gasbags (O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Coulter, et al) would have been raking the Dems over the coals for its inclusion.

Let me put this another way. I am royally pissed that again, I have to hear that because I express OUTRAGE, I have to mark it on my calendar in a year to see if I remember it, all because I'm supposed to refrain from fighting back. I am concerned about a lot. Look at the thread Amos started about just the issues that are important. I have a lot of concerns for this country. Obama is not a saviour, but he represents good in my opinion. I can talk issues, I can talk about what I think needs to happen in this country. I can also say that quoting from a man who was about as un-American in character as almost anyone I can think of is highly dubious and questionable, and speaks to the darkest fears amongst some people.

I'm sorry, thats a rant. But I feel this country is the schoolyard now. A lot of us are sick of being picked on by the bully.

Robert

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 06:09 PM

"Would YOU have attributed the quote to the author of it by name?"

I don't know. It would depend which quote I was using and what for, I guess...I personally would probably not have chosen to use that quote at all in a speech, since it's just another transparent attempt to suck up to small town white folks and implicitly attack other people who aren't small town white folks, but I'm not sure if that's what you mean.

I'm saying that it has proven very fortuitous for Democratic critics of Sarah Palin that the quote came from a known extremist. It's like a dog searching around for carrion and finding some day-old roadkill. Yippee! This is what people like Karl Rove and the sharks who work for him are trained to keep their eyes peeled for at all times.

Whether Palin knew that he was an extremist or regarded him as such, I don't know. Whether she even knew who the quote came from, I don't know. Should she have known? Yes. Is it a vitally important point or moment in this election on the basis of which her entire candidacy should rest? I don't think so. But it has certainly succeeded in generating a lively thread on Mudcat.

Tell you what...mark your calendar for a year from now. Put it up on the wall. When that year has elapsed, check back on this particular issue and see if it still matters all that much.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: irishenglish
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 05:47 PM

LH-Would YOU have attributed the quote to the author of it by name? I'm not doing partisan here. I'm asking, if you would purposely use a quote from ANYONE, controversial or otherwise, and not attribute it? You brought up the Goering quote yesterday, I posted the main part of it above. You implied that us liberals had no problem using it because we agreed with it. You can see my answer to that above. I'm just real tired of seeing an argument such as this:
"because Pegler just happens to be an author whose views are extreme enough that he makes a good target for raising a little outrage."

Just because Pegler is a name unknown to most, does not justify some stupid speechwriters use of it, or low key use of it. You keep harping on partisan, partisan, partisan. Well...I'm sorry. You wouldn't casually insert a quote from Hitler that was innocent enough, just because it happened to fit your speech. Nor would you for Martin Luther King. You would attribute it right? If you wouldn't, how can you say, us liberals are playing a partisan game of nitpicking? Bad choice to include in a speech. Bad decision to keep them in a speech. Bad idea to have the speech given using the words.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: robomatic
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 05:30 PM

Adolf Hitler saying "two plus two equals four" doesn't make it wrong, (Although it might make one wish to convert to another base).

So quoting Westbrook Pegler on a particular subject does not automatically make one a sharer of each and every view nor a condoner of each and every quote.

Also note that other famous and famously quoted people, notably H.L. Mencken, have been quoted saying somewhat unsavory things, but Mencken made a lot of purposely inflammatory statements which do not automatically make him, say, an anti-semite. Some of the Pegler quotes I saw may very well be similar in nature.

As for Palin, I think of her as "Willy Stark - With Lipstick!"

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 05:27 PM

I like that the author of those comments was naming the thing that lies at the core of the strategy of the people pulling the strings behind McCain/Palin. I also like that he or she identified what the antidote is for those kinds of tactics. Actually, I think that's the most important part. Once the strategy is identified, describe the most effective response to it.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 05:19 PM

I agree with the stuff in Carol's last post.

To quote a brief part of it: "Since what is being implicitly said is that there are "true Americans", which precisely are those "small town Americans" ("good people" with "honesty, sincerity and dignity") represented by Sarah Palin (the true "volklish" leader, being a "hockey mom", a "pittbul with lipstick" and all).

Quite so. I have been bothered by this sort of implicit ersatz folk mythology fascism implicit in American politics all of my life. It is an endlessly repeated message underlying the rhetoric of almost all American politicians and seen again and again in popular entertainment, but it is usually employed more effectively by the Republicans than by the Democrats...because the Republicans draw their strength from those rurual people most inclined to believe the myth...since it tells them that they are the "good people" and that there's someone "bad" out there that they must band together against and defeat (destroy).

Yes, it's really a form of volk fascism, and I can't stand it. To focus on this one line out of Palin's speech, though, is merely to draw attention to the 10 millionth time this kind of message has been used in the last 100 years. There's nothing the least bit unusual about it. It's merely a matter of momentary convenience to liberal minds that she happened to use a quote from Pegler to say something that has been said so many times already that it's like a feedback hum in the American consciousness. She could have used any one of about 50,000 quotes from other American writers and have said the same thing....but she or her handlers made an error and chose Pegler....OH JOY!!!!

So it's a windfall for those specific people who hate the conservative movement, because Pegler just happens to be an author whose views are extreme enough that he makes a good target for raising a little outrage.

This only matters to the people who would never have voted for Sarah Palin or John McCain in the first place.

If people here are questioning the myth itself, great. It should be questioned.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Amos
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 04:32 PM

No, I was sensitive to the humor in what Donuel posted--it just made me feel snippy! :D No offense intended, and I hope none taken.


A

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 04:32 PM

Well, if you're looking for small towns, Wasilla's a pretty good candidate. Ketchikan is even better--they must breed demigods there.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 04:23 PM

Regrets LH but you were excusing her for putting forward the views of a fascist whose "authority" arises because he was a fascist, to support her own bigotry.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 04:21 PM

That is quite a penetrating analysis, Carol, and goes a lot further than my questioning of the deification of small towns above.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 03:41 PM

I found this interesting (in the comments section)...


'One does not have to be an expert on fascism to understand that such a contextual reference to " small town Americans" is unmistakibly fascist.

Since what is being implicitly said is that there are "true Americans", which precisely are those "small town Americans" ("good people" with "honesty, sincerity and dignity") represented by Sarah Palin (the true "volklish" leader, being a "hockey mom", a "pittbul with lipstick" and all).

And one of the main features (if not the main feature) of fascism is the creation of an identity BY EXCLUSION (these ones are the "true" ones, the others are the "degenerated" ones) represented by a leader that carries in "his blood" and in "his soul" the "volklish spirit".

The guys at the propaganda machine behind Sarah Palin's speech surely read their Leo Strauss (and ultimately their Carl Schmitt) very well, creating a narrative and simultaneously an identity by exclusion (exploring an "exclusive identity" with a "true representative").

And they did it because they had to offer an alternative narrative to the one associated to Barack Obama, as a representative of the American dream and simultaneously of an INclusive identity.

As I said in other threads, the Dems seemed to have panicked instead of desmantling the Republican move. Because it can be desmantled if you insist on the narrative associated with Barack Obama as a "place" of American identity (which at the end of the day is the one that is quitessentially American: an universalist identity, an identity of INclusion, not of EXclusion).

Please understand that in Sarah Palin's speech there were two essential moves: to ridicule Obama (the community organizer, the author of two biographies) and to present herself as truly "volklish". They knew that they had to target the Democrats strongest point: Barack Obama himself as a place of American identity. And they knew that they had to offer an alternative narrative (that, to be alternative, had to mean an EXclusive identity).

And please tell at the people behind Obama that they must read and understand Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss very well in order to understand what the Republican propaganda machine is doing through Sarah Palin.

And one must not forget that THERE IS AN ANTIDOCTE to such an unmistakibly fascist move. Insisting: BARACK OBAMA, the representative of the the American dream, the "place" of true American identification since he means an INclusive identity (an identity without "enemies").'

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 03:16 PM

Amos, I don't know how, but you seem to think that Donuel was putting forth his own ideas in that post.... (?)

You must be joking. Read it again.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Joe Offer
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 03:15 PM

Palin was getting flak for having been mayor of a small town and governor of a small state. Could it be that the quote was used simply to defend that experience, and not to slam city folks or to subtly brainwash Americans into fascism?
I thought progressives were progressive...and tolerant. Could it be that they're just as much into conspiracy theory as the right-wingers are?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Alice
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 01:49 PM

I live in a small town in a rural state, too, and it is filled with ALL KINDS of people, just as cities are.

What this all boils down to for me is that Palin is being programmed by the neo-cons of the Republican party. They are in bliss that they have a new face to promote their agenda and a clean slate in her - they can mold her. She is not the old McCain style Republican at all. I actually had some respect for McCain before he chose her.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Amos
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 01:25 PM

What an unfathomable crock of piggly-wiggly horse manure, Donuel!! You should hire out to Palin's speechwriting team.


A

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Riginslinger
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 12:58 PM

Yes, sir!

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 12:25 PM

Ah. Well, that makes it all crystal clear, doesn't it? ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 12:16 PM

This is the evangelical party line: Hurricaine God.

Unless one understands the basics in this Spiritual and spiritual warfare, one is going to be blindly picking at the physical in trying to decipher what is going on in this world from Russia, the Middle East and the United States.
America has a huge problem in the Spiritual rebellion and rejection going on here. This nation was tamed from a wilderness by God's children in His Promise. As the children moved away, God's Peace has departed in where storms before were moved around cities that in the past few years they now they smash into them to the epic hits America is about to start to experience.

If I might digress a bit to address our Democratic brothers who attempted to use a hurricane again during the GOP convention in mocking God and Republicans as evil in public. I ask people to revisit Katrina which only wiped out the debauchery sections of the south, how later the Texas hurricane ran out of steam surprising people at Houston when people prayed. Revisit Gustav as a category 4 being unplugged to a category 2 for some unexplained reason.
This isn't weather modification. This is God Who does not appreciate being mocked nor for a political group of His children branding another political group as being nailed by God, because a natural hurricane is occurring.

This doesn't have a thing to do with John McCain being a better person than Barack Obama. If you note they both have children who are well adjusted and smiling, so they and their wives are protecting those children to be good citizens. It does though go back to the Spiritual and spiritual.
John McCain is an American Secularist who lives under God he met in Vietnam in the worst of possible situations and knows his imperfections.
Barack Obama is a Marxist who allows himself to be called the messiah while seeking a way to glaze God over his mission of supplanting God with government.

These facts are not going unnoticed by God no more than the horrid smears going on in this election

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 11:58 AM

Richard, I was in no way "apologizing" for Sarah Palin. I absolutely can't stand her, and I deplore her political and social values.

What I was doing was drawing attention to the utterly petty and trivial partisan sniping that people are descending to (as usual) instead of dealing with some issues that actually matter.

Spaw put it perfectly: "These "political threads" are about horseshit on a platter anymore. Almost all are bashing the hell out of someone and virtually none are........................why am I even bothering? Trash Talk Politics is the new norm............and more's the pity."

When the general public starts behaving as ludicrously as the politicians and their handlers, what hope is really left for bringing any kind of decent political system out of the mess?

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 11:24 AM

Was it one of McCain's speechwriters I saw on "Dinner with Portillo" last night (a chubby self-satisfied looking woman - reminded me of Miss Piggy on the Muppets) quite clearly on national UK TV refer to Arabs as "ragheads"?

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Bobert
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 10:42 AM

The quote was picked out specifically to play to the rural American voter who has been blindly led since Bush I honed the "hate elitists" strategy during his election... It's no wonder that it has been dusted off and reintroduced ever 4 years since then... It is juts another way to make rural voters feel that educated urbanites look down on them... But the sad thing about this is that because this strategy has worked so well that to a certain extent, there is an element of truth to it as better educated urbanites ***do*** consider themselves more ***open minded*** and less influenenced by divisive trickery...

Who knows??? Maybe we are all being manipulated by differnt forces???

B~

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Riginslinger
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 10:13 AM

"You may grow good people in your small towns, you may grow rednecks who murder out of homophobic and redneck hate,.."


                Yeah, and you may grow Will Rogers, or John Stienbeck, or Larry the Cable Guy, or Abe Lincoln, or...

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Wolfgang
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 09:47 AM

All propaganda has ... to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent.

As a Christian I ...have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice. (A. H.)

Little Hawk has just stated the obvious. But since the obvious is so often overlooked in the political threads these days it was worth stating it.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: catspaw49
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 09:44 AM

I'm kinda' with Father Joebro here.........These people are carrying tons of bad policy baggage and still we look for minutiae. I think they're major assholes and won't vote for them.   But McCain and Palin are not great intellects and have marginal speaking skills with half-assed speech writers......so we slam them for it. Clinton was intelligent, one of the best speakers of the past 100 years, and deeply involved in his own speechwriting........so we slammed him for beiing "Slick Willie."

I doubt that 5% of the populace has ever encountered the name Westbrook Pegler let alone know anything at all about the dork. It was dumb of course to quote him but a simple paraphrase of that quote is something many Americans believe in along with baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet.

These "political threads" are about horseshit on a platter anymore. Almost all are bashing the hell out of someone and virtually none are........................why am I even bothering? Trash Talk Politics is the new norm............and more's the pity.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Alice
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 09:14 AM

Joe, I agree that the quote sounds innocent enough. But I DO hold her responsible for knowing what her speech writers are putting in her mouth. If it had not referred to "a writer", it would have just been a line in a speech. But obviously, those creating her scripts have sources they are referring to and those sources are part of the ideology of what the next four years of the US presidential administration would be if the Republicans win. I'm sure if you were going on TV as a VP candidate to introduce yourself with a speech, you would have made sure you understood every part of what that speech referred to. This is only one of the small straws that are stacking up to show how she is being exploited for her veneer, not that she is a substantive candidate for VP.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: GUEST,Spartan112
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 06:59 AM

"We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity"?


The thing is it's not that the quote by itself is offensive at first blush. It sounds great...we grow good people in our small towns...ok, but the inference is that we grow something else in our big towns and cities. Pegler was creating an "us v. them" mentality just as Palin and McCain (make no mistake about who is the top of this ticket) are trying to do. Who is "them"...who doesn't grow up in small town America? Blacks? Hispanics? Jews? The elite?

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Joe Offer
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 04:18 AM

Yeah, but if you put lipstick on the pig....

I'm sorry, but I think all these attempts to defame a candidate by slips of the tongue and ancient history and a plethora of trivia, are just ludicrous. How many of you found any fault at all with this quote before today? Could you honestly say it was objectionable, before somebody pointed out its source today? Can Palin be expected to investigate every quote that's written into her speeches, especially one as innocent-sounding as this?
There are substantive issues in this campaign, and yet all the discussion is on minutiae.

-Joe Offer, living in a small town full of honest, sincere, dignified, good people-

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 04:11 AM

No! There are many points in this. You may grow good people in your small towns, you may grow rednecks who murder out of homophobic and redneck hate, you may grow the xenophobia that so much drives so many in the USA today, but the words in that quote are not the point, albeit I am not that keen on seeing the small-town agenda made a well-spring of political thought.

We know that Palin is (or at least was, and there has been AFAIK no backtracking yet) prepared to consider banning books. The books of this particular writer, calling as they did directly for the assassination of a politician (JFK, but that too is not the point) merit banning, yet Palin uses them to support her agenda.

It may be that Hitler or Mussolini said some things that were correct. Would a politician properly say "As Adolf Hitler rightly said...", and then go on to add whatever it was that Adolf Hitler did rightly say?

Many pigs are, if left to their own devices and not forced by man to live in appalling conditions clean and sweet-smelling animals (or so I have been told) but in the conditions in which domestic pigs live, if you lie down with a pig you will get dirty.

In this case, Palin has lain down with a pig. We now know a little more about her thought process. It was never pretty, but day by day it gets uglier.

LH, you are wrong to apologise for her.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Joe Offer
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 03:34 AM

"We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity."

And she's called a fascist for saying something like that? Gee, and it sounded so innocuous.

Well, that's them pinkoes fer ya - they see a Fascist behind every Bush...

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 02:50 AM

Geez. Hmmm...well, I have total respect for Carol, and she knows that, and I have no problem with Jack either, we just sort of stumbled into a political argument there kind of willy nilly, partly because I got a bit carried away myself and spoke somewhat carelessly when I used the term "despise". I did not make myself as clear as I might have.

No point adding any more fuel to that fire, folks.

******

But now then...    Spaw!    GEEZUS...now there is a man totally beyond redemption or even pity. I swear, even Tony Montana on a bad day has got more class than that witless, chuckleheaded, vacant son of a maundering jadrool. He is the laughingstock of the entire Midwest. Anyone who would slag Winona Ryder AND dachshunds AND Major Tom in the same post while praising Cheech Wizard (!!!) is simply beneath my not inconsiderable contempt, and my wish is that he be drawn and quartered with a rusty razor and the sections scattered under a gigantic portrait of Bush and Cheney and that his wretched remains be left there to stand as a warning to simple-ass jadrools everywhere! And then there's his collection of little plastic statuettes! All Weimaraners, if you can believe it. He's got hundreds of the stupid things cluttering up his place. Those should be given to impoverished kids in places like Schenectady and Scranton, and they can use them to take shots at with zip guns and slingshots. There simply isn't any other real use for a tiny statue of a Weimaraner. I know, cos the flea market here used to sell them. You seen one Weimaraner statue, and you're set for life. ;-)

GAWD-flippin'-AWFUL things, but at least they don't smell half as bad as the real item.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 01:57 AM

And by the way, the person with whom JtS is having an argument is one of my very best friends in the Mudcat, with whom I have only disagreed once in all of the eight years I've known them, and I will not be accused of harboring any animosity against this person whatsoever by anyone, especially not a pathological liar and abuser such as the one who is dragging me into a fight in this thread that I had nothing to do with.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 01:52 AM

Whether or not he deserved it, I had nothing to do with it. The remark about our "household" was nothing more than yet another gratuitous attack on me from someone who apparently is so obsessed with me, they just can't bring themself to leave me alone, even on threads on which I have not been participating.

No, someone like that has no credibility when they accuse others of being the worst offenders when it comes to personal attacks. Someone like that will make up any kind of lie to justify their addiction to making personal attacks on those they have chosen as their victims.

Subject: RE: BS: RFKennedy, Jr., - Palin quotes fascist
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 01:17 AM

Glad to meet your expectations: No apologies here--the best you'll get is "it takes one to know one"--but you two are by far the worst offenders, by several orders of magnitude.

Regardless of this, LH didn't deserve the swill JtS served up.

SRS