Philosoraptor

Sunday, January 03, 2010

The Republican Double Standard: Shoe Bomber/Underwear Bomber Edition

Conservatives want us to believe that Bush deserves credit because "he kept us safe"...after, y'know, that one thing. (And note that it is fairly rare for liberals to argue that Bush deserves much blame for 9/11.) As I've long maintained, things would be very different had a Democrat been president on 9/11. It is very unlikely that a president Gore would have received the unqualified support of Republicans after such an attack. In fact, I have little doubt that he would have likely been the target of a concerted impeachment effort. Republicans certainly would not have praised him because there were no major, successful attacks after 9/11. And had Democrats been so bold as to suggest that he should receive credit for keeping us safe after that, they would have been laughed out of D.C.

Of course Republicans have always denied that they apply such a double standard--but we've got an extremely clear test case now. The case of Richard Reed, the shoe bomber, and Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the underwear bomber. The attempted bombings were extremely similar, as were the responses of the Bush and Obama administrations. There was no Democratic criticism of the Bush administration's response; there has been significant Republican criticism of the Obama administration's response. (Here's Politico on the similarities in the cases and the differences in GOP and Democratic responses. (Wow--bad enough that Politico noticed!))

Of course it's always possible to nitpick insignificant differences, but history rarely provides us with such a clean experiment as this. Here we have significant confirmation of what has long been clear: that, though Republicans demand that we rally 'round Republican presidents after such incidents, they employ them as opportunities for political criticism. Were Democrats to act like Republicans, Republicans would call them unpatriotic...or traitorous.

This is just one aspect of the pervasive Republican double standard, and that double standard is just one aspect of the pervasive irrationality of the contemporary Republican party.

Winston Smith

¶ 1:54 PM (2) comments

Saturday, January 02, 2010

Contagious Cancer Killing Tasmanian Devils Began in One Animal's Nerve Cells

This kinda freaks me out.

Winston Smith

¶ 7:32 PM (1) comments

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Snow

Wow. It's hard to tell what we've got here in the central part of the Shenandoah valley because the wind has been gusting up around 35 mph, so there's lots of drifting, but we seem to be getting close to a foot on average in the immediate vicinity, and it's giving no sign of slowing down. They say we may get another foot before it's over.

Flying out to Missouri on Monday...allegedly. Dulles should be a blast.

Winston Smith

¶ 12:35 PM (0) comments

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Michael Steele: The Earth is Cooling, Obama is like Nixon...Ignorance is Strength

The conservative decoupling from reality proceedeth apace.

On the bright side, I guess this means that at least some conservatives are finally willing to admit that Nixon was bad...

Winston Smith

¶ 1:42 PM (0) comments

Monday, December 07, 2009

Pearl Harbor Day

What can be said?

Winston Smith

¶ 8:39 PM (0) comments

Sunday, December 06, 2009

Mary Matalin is an Idiot

It's not like this is news, of course.

Here's some recent bullshit from her. I was going to refute it...but really--why bother?

She doesn't know anything, she's a complete partisan tool, and she doesn't even seem to be trying to say anything sensible. It's all about power for such people, and that means all about the polls. Everything she says is an attempt to influence Obama's poll numbers down. She wouldn't know a sensible point if it bit her on the ass.

Winston Smith

¶ 8:34 PM (1) comments

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Obama's West Point Speech

IMHO this is an eminently reasonable course of action. It's easy to sit back and quibble, but when the man is smart and reasonable and has access to much better sources of information and analysis than I do, quibbling would, I think, be foolish.

I was struck again tonight, as I so frequently am, not by his speaking abilities so much as by the content of his words, and by the fact that they are so obviously his ideas (even if not always penned entirely by him). And even more striking is the fact that virtually every note resonates perfectly with my own beliefs, attitudes and inclinations. The guy's view of America may be wrong, but if so then mine's wrong, because he is, according to me, right on the money.

Winston Smith

¶ 8:45 PM (1) comments

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