Quote of the Day

Peter Daou, in a column dissecting the myth of the liberal, anti-Bush media, writes a paragraph to remember:

[F]or the past 5+ years, one of the overarching narratives about Bush is that he is ‘firm’ in the face of criticism, a victim of events rather than a precipitator, under attack by whining Democrats. The mess in Iraq is due to faulty intelligence, Katrina is a generic “failure at all levels,” his disastrous second term is attributed not to him but to the benign-sounding “second-term curse,” 9/11 happened on his watch but mysteriously terrorism is his strength, he can defy the law on warrantless spying and the thrust of reporting is about how polls are split, the Plame leak is Libby’s fault or Rove’s fault or McClellan’s fault or the Democrats’ fault or the media’s fault, and on and on. Bush is rarely, if ever, directly blamed for the mess he’s created. The subtext, therefore, is that he is infallible. It’s no accident that when asked at a presser, Bush couldn’t think of a single mistake he’d made. And it’s no accident that the administration never admits errors in judgment and is pathologically incapable of firing anyone, no matter how egregious the screw-up. As far as Cheney is concerned, he shoots a man in the face and the victim apologizes to him. Need I say more about infallibility?

Daou is one of the most brilliant and least partisan bloggers out there (look at his column, which always gives views from both sides). Today he wins the ultimate honor, a place on my coveted blogroll.

The Discussion: One Comment

A good buddy of mine, a libertarian who voted for Bush – twice! Even as he expressed reservations for doing so – called me tonight and said, “you were right about everything, you can say ‘I told you so,’ I think I am even angrier than you about how Bush has betrayed the country.” He said he even might vote Democratic! Though probably not, he’d just go back to voting Libertarian.

he’s a smart guy and always had smart things to say about Bush even as he half-heartedly supported him. Tonight he was calling Bush and the neocons “extreme nationalists,” which I think is a good way of looking at them.

The port deal was for him the icing on the cake. “For five years they’ve been talking about security, and now they’re saying, ‘we need to make some money, so just trust us.’ All they’ve done all along is sell this country out to foreign interests so they and their buddies can profit.”

He’s especially concerned because he sees the deteriorating situation in Iraq as opening up the door to a regional war between Shi’ites and Sunnis.

March 1, 2006 @ 12:35 am | Comment

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