Hat tip to my fellow traveler Ka1igu1a at Freedom Democrats for the following video of the breathless and moronic Kevin James, conservative talk show host and devout ditto head.
As I watched and chuckled, I recalled MacBeth for some strange reason:
"Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Says Ka1igu1a:
The reason that the GOP Dog Food needs to be removed from the shelves is because it's been marinated in hot air for the last 8 years. This is comedic gold...
The funny part is watching the usually out spoken and big mouthed Chris Matthews be a beacon of calm decorum and reserve as James rambles on in sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Chris Matthews to James:
The problem is that you don't know what you're talking....this is pathetic!...we're not getting anywhere....If don't know what appeasement is don't use the word.
Agreed. This guy James spends a little too much time listening to himself.
__________________________
To those whose historical memory is wholly encompassed by WW2...
...every problem looks like Hitler.
__________________________"Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence." - George Orwell
I've also heard that Obama
I've also heard that Obama is anit-Bauhaus and loves landscape paintings on postcards...
__________________________In our society, people are rewarded for pretending to be certain about things they're clearly not certain about. -- Sam Harris,
Amazing that a guy (this
Amazing that a guy (this jackass Kevin James) could have such a big mouth and not have a clue what he's talking about. I sometimes dislike Matthews, but he was right on in this case, not just in the point he was making about appeasement, but on the fact that James was just spouting a buzzword/talking point and had zero idea what he was really talking about. Good job, Matthews! I had never heard of this guy Kevin James, but based on this performance, he brings to mind the saying that "a sharp tongue and a dull mind are often found in the same head."
Ronald Reagan: Chamberlainian appeaser of the 1980s
This morning Glenn Greenwald wrote a column titled as thus.
He said:
"One of the most significant political developments over the last decade or so is that the defining views of what was once the extremist right-wing fringe have become mainstream. Few things illustrate that development more than this week's branding by George Bush, John McCain and Bill Kristol of Barack Obama (and anyone who prefers negotiations to knee-jerk wars with Israel's enemies as the optimal method for conflict resolution) as a Neville Chamberlain-like "appeaser." This is the same exact insult, grounded in the same war-cheerleading mentality, that was hurled by the extreme Far Right at Ronald Reagan in the 1980s because he sought to negotiate with that decade's Evil Empire. Conservative Caucus Chair Howard Phillips, for instance, "scorned President Reagan as 'a useful idiot for Kremlin propaganda,'... The people who think this way, who casually toss the Chamberlain slur around towards anyone who doesn't crave more war, today claim the Canonized Ronald Reagan as their Patron Saint of Strength and Greatness. But, back in the 1980s, people who thought that way were so far on the crazed fringe that they believed Ronald Reagan was too far to the Left, that he was the New Neville Chamberlain, "appeasing" the Soviet Union by sitting down and speaking with them in an effort to achieve a negotiated peace. Today, those same people and their core mentality dominate and define the Republican Party."
"According to the January 19, 1988 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, when Pat Robertson was campaigning for President in Missouri in 1988, he "suggested that President Ronald Reagan could be compared to Neville Chamberlain. Newt Gingrich -- who today regularly invokes the "Chamberlain/appeasement" cliche for anyone who does not crave war with Iran -- denounced President Reagan's rapprochement with Gorbachev in 1985 as potentially "the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Chamberlain in 1938 at Munich." Don Rumsfeld -- who gave a controversial 2006 speech likening war opponents to 1938 appeasers (and used the same 1939 quote as Bush just used from the U.S. Senator who wanted to talk to Hitler) -- has been tossing around the Chamberlain insult in order to promote his pro-war views for almost 30 years."
+10
because +5 simply wasn't enough.
Redundant statment
It wouldn't take much
to draw most hawks into a war.
__________________________In our society, people are rewarded for pretending to be certain about things they're clearly not certain about. -- Sam Harris,
Here's the thing that's so
Here's the thing that's so obvious most people miss it: We appease most of the time! If NOT going to war against any nation that acts aggressively or threatens explicitly or implicitly to do so constitutes appeasement, then appeasement is the norm, not the exception. Otherwise we would constantly be at war, and that's just including aggressors and supposedly would-be aggressors that arguably threaten our interests in some way.
Did we go to war against the Soviet Union when they invaded Afghanistan? Sure, we provided Stinger rockets to the Mujahideen, but we didn't go to war with the Soviets, right? Well, that's appeasing an aggressor! Ditto for the blockade of West Berlin and the Soviet military interventions in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Hungary in 1956 -- if we went to war against the Soviet Union, I must have missed it. Did we go to war against China over their occupying Tibet or threatening Taiwan? Have we gone to war against North Korea lately? Have we launched a full-scale war on Iran for supplying, training (and probably also advising and helping on the ground) insurgents in Iraq who kill U.S. troops, or for threatening to obliterate Israel?
I could go on, but I think the point is clear. Anyone who says "We should never appease an aggressor" must not be sitting down, or his/her voice would be inaudible or at least muffled, if you know what I mean. If we followed that rule, we probably wouldn't be alive today. "We" meaning humans. Cockroaches would have a better shot.
The War We Need to Fight
Is on these ridiculous talking points!
We appease terrorists every time we fill up our gas tanks. Duh!
__________________________It is the economy, stupid.
It depends where one goes to fill up our gas tanks.
Whenever possible, go to gas stations where their oil isn't imported from the Middle East. Sunoco and Hess, if there are any in your general area, are at least two examples of gas stations whose oil isn't imported from the mideast. It would be a good start in the right direction.
But even then
you are supporting oil as a whole. Buying oil from Venezuela still helps prop up the price of Saudi Arabia's oil, for example.
Unfortunately we've allowed our infrastructure to become intensely oil dependent. Ecologically a species that heavily adapts to a niche may flourish in the short term, but long term they generally die out because the overall environment that determines which niches exist is constantly changing.
__________________________I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
The ingenious argument
is Bush's.
He has rallied his minions of mindless soldiers, claiming the left are appeasers who would negotiate with Hitler.
We have evidence here of the rabid right's ignorance.
Every time this dude Kevin James goes to the gas station he is appeasing terrorists and the enemies of Israel.
Like a good little German, James is a stenographer for the right's talking points.
Is it too much to grasp that Bush was selling the Hitler card to Israel one day, and the next day cozying up to the Saudi's, who don't recognize Israel's right to exist.
__________________________It is the economy, stupid.
Adults Only
Kudos to Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews.
This is video
of a further discussion, grown up style, on this business about calling people names in foreign lands.
Chris is spot on here. The point of all this appeaser talk is to shut down debate, by calling people in essence 'unpatriotic' or some other version thereof, like Nazi appeasers, in an effort to stifle dissenters.
This is, if you didn't already know, my total pet peeve. This liberals are unpatriotic meme set out with ridiculous slogans like 'cut and run' or flag lapel pins', etc.
It is no different than the smears Hitler pulled against the Jews after losing World War l. Hitler went on a propaganda campaign to label all Jews as liberal anti-war pacifists, blaming the 'evil unpatriotic liberal Jews' for Germany's fall.
__________________________It is the economy, stupid.
Packin' Heat
For you pro-second amendment advocates that think a ban on assault weapons is just the very last straw against your liberty, that conceal and carry is the cats meow, that guns in schools is the next best thing to viagra:
Consider this
At the massive NRA gunfest celebrating guns and glory, in Louisville, Ky., a huge sign was posted at the entrance, "No Firearms Allowed", coupled with a bevy of metal detectors before the NRA members could enter the "Celebration of American Values and Leadership Forum".
Is this a mixed message? Were the pro-heat advocates worried about a little thing like....... safety? Pansies!
__________________________It is the economy, stupid.
On the contrary,
I think that our liberties stand to be abriged if people were allowed to carry guns when and whereever they pleased. I'd hate to think that I, a family member or a friend would stand more of a chance of being the victim of somebody's gunfire because that person was in a hostile mood and wanted to "get" whoever crossed their path, if one gets the drift.