Dunque Cosi: Hate, and the hating haters who hate bush

When we suggest that Michael Moore be appointed to a significant government position, get back to me. j/k, mainly.

 

Ha, well Bork is nothing like Michael Moore. I was letting Fisher know that politics of personal attacks and personal destruction happened way before the Falwells and Robertsons in the 90's. The Repubs certainly didn't invent it.

You guys need Moore to run for something, we've got Arnold and I hear they are getting Dennis Miller to run for something too.

 

AH, yes, the rallying cry of republicans everywhere. An arch-conservative supreme court jurist was rejected because he was arch conservative. The part about dirty politics and personal destruction is a conservative urban legend, just like supply side economics and the myth of big government

In other words, it's a lie, but has been repeated often enough by right wing demagogues so that people believe it:

Try again.

 

Wow, thanks, Sam.

I had believed the subpoena also.

 

That article seems quite weak. It bases it's argument on 2 things- 1. That the Democrat subpoena did not introduce the videos to the public. 2. George Will's column (wtf?)

On point 1, did the Democrats still issue the subpoena or not? It seems like they still did, regardless of whether a newspaper introduced the evidence already. Secondly, the newspaper story is precisely how these hate politics are carried out. Someone leaks something or reveals something to the media or some partisan, who then writes about it. Special interest groups or other people oten do the dirty work.

On point 2, that is just a joke. Maybe Will wanted to focus on the substantive issues and not the political games being played.

I just did a quick search and found some non-editorial articles that say the opposite of your opinion article:


http://www.cbn.com/CBNNews/News/030729b.asp


"In 1987, President Reagan nominated Robert Bork for the Supreme Court. Bork was a critic of liberal activist judges. He was also one of the most famous judges and legal scholars in the country, and the American Bar Association gave him its highest possible rating: "extremely well qualified."

But Democrats, who controlled the Senate, put off hearings on Bork's nomination for two months. That gave liberal special interest groups time to mobilize. They put on an unprecedented publicity campaign against Bork, and it worked. The White House, embroiled in the Iran-Contra affair, was caught off-guard. In a vote almost completely along party lines, Democrats defeated Bork 58 to 42."


http://www.siu.edu/~siupress/titles/f98_titles/vieira_gross.htm

President Ronald Reagan's nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court met with a fierce opposition that was apparent in his confirmation hearings, which were different in many ways from those of any previous nominee. Lasting longer than any other Supreme Court confirmation battle, the Senate hearings dragged on for eighty-seven hours over a twelve-day period. Bork personally testified for more than thirty hours, outlining his legal philosophy in greater detail than had ever before been required of a Supreme Court nominee. Nor had any previous Supreme Court nominee faced the number of witnesses who testified at the Bork hearings.

Deriving their material from hundreds of in-depth interviews with those who participated in the confirmation hearings, Vieira and Gross present a firsthand account of the behind-the-scenes pressure on senators to oppose Bork. Special-interest groups, they note, attempted to control the confirmation process, with both the media and public-opinion polls playing major roles in the defeat of the nomination. Both liberal and conservative groups used the Bork debate to raise money for political war chests. "


I'll take my links over the hack piece you posted.

 

The debate was personal destruction v. policy debates. The article I posted says that it was a conservative myth that the Bork nomination degenerated into a personalized smear campaign rather than a hotly contested policy debate.

You said it was "hack piece", and cited two articles (well, more like one article, see infra) allegedly to the contrary, but they are not.

Your first article (from Pat Robertson's or is it Falwell's? I forget) Christian Broadcasting Network (a "non-editorial" source? good choice!), doesn't say anything about personal destruction and sideshow issues, in fact it describes it as a clash between interest groups who put on a "publicity campaign". That hardly equates to a personalized smear war. If anything, the fact that it was an interest group clash tends to reinforce that it was about policy rather than personality.


Your second article, which isn't really an article, more of capsule review for a book, apparently, contains the following blurb"

"Bork personally testified for more than thirty hours, outlining his legal philosophy in greater detail than had ever before been required of a Supreme Court nominee"

Again, he wasn't answering questions about whitewater or his johnson, it was his legal philosophy

Neither of these articles contradicts the one I posted. In fact they support it.

You can keep believing the myth if you want. I'll believe it too when you show me the subpoena for Bork's video records.

And I guess those capsule book reviews and the CBN are better than my "hack pieces"

How much would it kill you to retreat on this? would it be that difficult?

 

I thought that first link was CBS. Oops. But the second article makes quite clear that the Bork process was completely different than what had ever happened before.

Anyways, you don't have to believe it. The bottom line is there was an escalation of partisan politics played, and then it continued through the Clinton years and now to Bush.

It's got nothing to do with the video anyways. I have never even heard about any video. And just because both sides asked questions about his philosophy is like saying that the 90's Republicans only asked questions about Clinton's alleged crimes. I mean, come on. You know the politicans will keep their own public records clean as they destroy other people. Meanwhile the special interest groups work through the media and introduce the truly damaging stuff.

Why on earth would I retreat? You are the one doing the Macbethian- style revisionist history while proclaiming that the other side is revisionist.

 

It would be like Sisyphus versus Tantalus! j/k

 

It would be like the Holocaust vs. American slavery.

Sorry if that was tasteless.

 

No it wasn't. There is no evidence that it was anything other than your regular Washington run of the mill power struggle.

Indeed, if you want to trace it all the way back:

Lyndon Johnson nominated Abe Fortas to be Chief, and Strom thurmond filibustered and it ended up blocking nominee Homer Thornberry as well;

then as payback for that, Nixon nominated a Haynesworth to the Supreme Court and he got rejected, then he nominated an even more conservative named Carswell who was also rejected.

So it's really not. Yes, Bork testified for longer, fine. And the Washington CIty Paper did a bad thing, that was roundly condemned and not used against him.

So does the blame ultimately fall on Strom Thurmond for starting off dirty politics? Hardly.

To claim that the Bork affair was a smear campaign that changed the game is wrong. I suppose it did change it in that it was a battle that the republicans lost and then they decided to start draggin things down (willie horton made his appearance not long after), but to say that the affair itself was not about policy is incorrect. People didn't like Bork's politics, and they criticized him for such, at length.

It's not revisionist history; it IS history.

Now, let's get back to the larger point. How does criticizing the president's fiscal and foreign policies equate to: the Whitewater investigation, the Vince Foster sham, calling Hilary a lesbian, and any other number of smear tactics used unashemedly for the better part of a decade and still used?

 

I didn't even open it.

 

I don't think it does. Then again, you have people who believe that Bush lead a war for oil, that he is an imperialist, a war criminal, that he is leading a "neo-con" conspiracy to protect Israel, that he is worse than Saddam. How does that compare to accusing Bill Clinton of crimes?

 

Mr. Clutch,

It is fruitless to keep this argument with the SplinterCell king. I have no idea if he has a job, but I don't see how considering how he can continually pull things up to get that last word in. It is truly a remarkable talent. But to continue against him is akin to banging your head on a piano like that one puppet on Sesame Street, Don Music.

Now, I have always heard that the media is liberal for the most part (Fox News is a big exception). If this is true, how can anyone on the opposite side of the liberals prove any of their points by newspaper, website, book, etc without someone who is liberal crying "Bah, that is biased as it came from the National Review or Fox News!"

Does there not exist one site in this country that does not favor either side?

 

SamFisher, what is your job? Thanks in advance.

 

Good for you, basso!

I listened today to:

"Miles Smiles" by Miles Davis
"Maiden Voyage" by Herbie Hancock
"Saxophone Colossus" by Sonny Rollins
"Portrait in Jazz" by Bill Evans

Good stuff.

 

I'm listening to the soundtrack of "Blade Runner.
Vangelis... sweet.

 

Deckard, do you really have a choice?