Blogging will be light to nonexistent until Monday. I won’t be checking email much either — in fact, you’re probably better off waiting to send anything until next week, if you don’t want your message to get lost in the inevitable avalanche. See you in a few.
As I mentioned, the wingnuts are all over the highly improbable teachers-taunting-students story. A reader points me to a talk radio host in Tennessee who is apparently planning to hold a fundraiser in which his listeners will be able to express their frustration with the French by smashing a Peugeot with a sledgehammer — god, it just makes your head hurt, doesn’t it? — and who now suggests that Maine schoolteachers might be a good target for those sledgehammers as well:
“Anti war” TEACHERS IN MAINE HAVE BEEN TAUNTING AND HARASSING THEIR YOUNG STUDENTS WHOSE PARENTS ARE SHIPPING OUT TO IRAQ, TELLING THEM THAT THEIR MOMMIES AND DADDIES ARE “BAD” FOR GOING TO WAR. FORGET THE PEUGEOT, WHERE CAN WE FIND A COUPLE OF THESE NITWITS.
The version of the article this thoughtful fellow links to is from the Washington Times, and if you take the trouble to actually read it, this is what you learn:
Mr. Albanese told the Bangor Daily News that only one complaint involved classroom remarks, after the child of a Guard member became upset during a discussion of Iraq when a teaching assistant “took up the anti-war” argument.
Other incidents, according to Mr. Albanese, involved a child who had requested to leave school early for a military-related activity and a student who was teased on a school bus because he has a parent in the military.
So in other words, what we’ve got here is one teaching assistant who may or may not have said something vaguely critical of the war effort, and a bunch of seven year olds teasing each other.
Maybe Bill O’Reilly can bring the little tykes on his show and expose them as enemies of the state.
I hope MWO will forgive me the lengthy excerpt from their site, but this is extraordinary:
Bill O’Reilly - 02/26:
“Once the war against Saddam Hussein begins, we expect every American to support our military, and if you can’t do that, just shut up.
Americans, and indeed our foreign allies who actively work against our military once the war is underway, will be considered enemies of the state by me.
Just fair warning to you, Barbra Streisand and others who see the world as you do. I don’t want to demonize anyone, but anyone who hurts this country in a time like this, well. Let’s just say you will be spotlighted.
Talking points invites all points of view and believes vigorous debate strengthens the country, but once decisions have been made and lives are on the line, patriotism must be factored in.”
Finally, the bait and switch. O’Reilly tells you that you must not only support American troops but support the Iraq policies of “the government” - Which means, of course, the policies, methods, and timetable of the unelected fraud who occupies the White House as a result of successfully fighting to crush democracy in America:
“This does not give the government carte blanche to do anything, but it does give the government the benefit of the doubt at least until that benefit is proven wrong as it was in Vietnam.”
No it doesn’t, you unAmerican loudmouth.
And how, pray tell, can government policy be “proven wrong” when Americans have been denied their freedom of speech? O’Reilly doesn’t tell his freshly frothed fans. He doesn’t have to - they’re Moron-American sheep who won’t ask.
But those patriots who believe the longer troops remain in Iraq the greater the risk to them and to American civilians as a result of an energized al Qaeda, winning new, insane, willing, suicidal recruits by the day are not only free to assert political pressure on the American government but morally obligated to speak out against that government policy.
No one is obligated to support policy that they believe risks the lives of American servicemen and ensures additional mass murders of thousands more American civilians at the hands of terrorists.
Re sponding to criticism from Democrats and to the mounting concern of state and local governments, the White House is now saying that the long delayed government spending plan for the year does not provide enough money to protect against terrorist attacks on American soil.
While “Donahue” does badly trail both O’Reilly and CNN’s Connie Chung in the ratings, those numbers have improved in recent weeks. So much so that the program is the top-rated show on MSNBC, beating even the highly promoted “Hardball With Chris Matthews.”
Although Donahue didn’t know it at the time, his fate was sealed a number of weeks ago after NBC News executives received the results of a study commissioned to provide guidance on the future of the news channel.
That report — shared with me by an NBC news insider — gives an excruciatingly painful assessment of the channel and its programming. Some of recommendations, such as dropping the “America’s News Channel,” have already been implemented. But the harshest criticism was leveled at Donahue, whom the authors of the study described as “a tired, left-wing liberal out of touch with the current marketplace.”
The study went on to claim that Donahue presented a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war……He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration’s motives.” The report went on to outline a possible nightmare scenario where the show becomes “a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”
An elaboration from Max Sawicky, for readers perplexed by the obvious:
Here are the arguments I could find…for why this war couldn’t possibly be about oil.
1. The oil companies have not agitated for war. They want to keep doing business with dictators.
2. The best way to keep oil flowing is to maintain the status quo.
3. Oil is not needed to explain the demand for war; an important justification is Iraq’s flaunting of UN resolutions, resolutions even endorsed by France.
Kucinich is held to be a ‘fool’ for not grasping these self-evident truths.
Regarding (1), of course an oil company would be foolish to advocate war when it has to maintain relationships with Arab governments. It would also be foolish to gloss over the difference between buying oil and selling it. As buyer an oil company is a mere middleman. As seller it collects the economic rents inherent in the resource. Now the division of these rents depends entirely on the deal struck between the owner of a resource and the concern that obtains the right to exploit it. As owner, I might strike a deal that gives me ten percent of the rents or 90 percent. What determines the split? It depends on bargaining power and political power. Guess where that would be with a U.S. military government in charge of Iraq?
It is fair to say that there is some ideal price of oil in the New World Order. Too high retards economic growth everywhere. Too low fails to reward the owners of the resource, or it encourages wasteful use. As Thomas Friedman noted in a column a week or so ago, there is some happy medium, an important ingredient of which is stability in price, shipments, and the like. Now you might disagree with this view, but it would be stupid to call it stupid, much less a “lie.”
(2) The status quo is unstable. It has already been proven so. Arab and Muslim regimes are none too stable. More effective cartelization is a possibility. Stability makes perfect sense as an argument for U.S. takeover. Indeed, a rationale for ejecting Saddam from Kuwait was to prevent him from going on to Saudi Arabia and becoming the master of a huge share of world oil extraction. Of course, it also makes sense to fear political instability and terrorism resulting from a greater U.S. presence in the region. Look what a more limited presence has brought us thus far. Once again, possibly wrong but not stupid.
(3) Iraq’s conduct with respect to the UN is arguably a legal or moral justification for war. But from this standpoint, such a war is not necessarily in the U.S. interest. Other countries are in violation of UN resolutions, but are not by virtue of that automatic objects of military threat from the UN. The “even France” argument is irrelevant. France is not (and should not be) dedicating itself to advancing the U.S. national interest.
Personally, I do not think the war is motivated by a desire to expropriate Arab resources. That’s a mere side benefit. I do think it is motivated by a felt need to control and stabilize the region. One such purpose is to prevent uncertainty in energy production from becoming a factor for instability in the world economy. A second is to enhance Israeli security. A third is to preclude Arab and Muslim nationalism from spinning into a more assertive anti-U.S. mode. A fourth is to beat back terrorist threats. Why do I think this? In part, because Perle and others in the Administration have been talking this line for the past ten years.
This doesn’t come close to passing it, though the wingnuts are apparently all over it.
What I see in this article are a lot of unsubstantiated allegations. I don’t see any specifics. I don’t know anything more about it, but this just reeks of something getting blown up all out of proportion. You know: some teacher says something innocuous about the debate over war, and the next thing you know, the leap-before-you-look crowd has translated this into “your daddy is an evil baby killer!”
…why Josh Marshall is being so coy, when it takes about twenty seconds to Google the mysterious article he mentions. (It’s about Dennis Kucinich, in case you can’t get through.)
It’s a long piece and I’ve admittedly only skimmed it, which is why I’ve edited this entry a bit. Curious to see where he’s going with this, though.
