Molly Ivins: The downward path

[Dudley_DUright]

Let us stop to observe a few mileposts on the downward path to the utter degradation of political discourse in this country.

A recent newspaper advertising campaign by "independent" groups supporting President Bush shows a closed courtroom door with the sign, "Catholics Need Not Apply," hanging on it. The ad argues that William Pryor Jr., attorney general of Alabama and a right-wing anti-abortion nominee to the federal appeals court, is under attack for his "deeply held" Catholic beliefs.

Actually, Pryor is under attack because he's a hopeless dipstick. That he also happens to be Catholic and anti-abortion has nothing to do with his unfitness for the federal bench. The only person I know who believes one's closely held religious and moral convictions should make one ineligible for the federal bench is Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia argued last year that any judge who is opposed to the death penalty should resign, on account of it is the law.

By that reasoning, any judge who is opposed to abortion out of deep moral conviction should also resign. Even though that would include Scalia's resignation, an eventuation devoutly to be wished in my opinion, I think he's wrong.

more...

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=15418&CFID=8879518&CFTOKEN=87355146

[Vitruvius]

1. And Ivins all-but-says that the downward path ends with Bu$h FASCISM:

see her last two paragraphs:

...I am becoming increasingly uneasy. This is more than just, "Boy, do their policies suck." There's a creepy advance of something more menacing than bad policies.

I keep thinking of Mussolini's definition of fascism: "Fascism should more properly be called ‘corporatism,' since it is the marriage of government and corporate power." When was the last time we saw this administration do something that involved standing up to some corporate special interest in favor of the great majority of the people?

[ex_jew]

2. She is SO right...

"If showing evidence of elementary common sense is grounds for a subpoena, stick a fork in us, we're done."

We ARE done ! Americans are too distracted/feeble-minded/ideologically blinded to deal with reality in any meaningful sense. When the Admin admits that Iraq has nothing to do with Al-Qaeda yet somehow it is the "primary battleground" in the war against terror, I see it as a sign that there is mentally no one home. Has television rotted our collective brain to such an extent ? What else could it be ?

[billbuckhead]

3. Rove says he aims campaign at people watching TV with sound turned down

The population of a nation ultimately deserves the government it gets. Imagine if Gore would have been POTUS instead of Chimp.

[julka]

4. exactly

and he learned it from the first real master of that tactic: Mike Deaver.

see "Bush's Brain" and "On Bended Knee" for extended treatments of this very effective approach to propaganda.

and don't kid yourself on Rove's not being a very assiduous student of Bernays, Goebbels, Reifenstahl, either?

ever hear the stories of the traveling light show/stage set they used when monkeyman was traveling in Europe last year, IIRC?

straight out of Triumph of the Will

[Vitruvius]

5. And Mike "Bitburg" Deaver was also an assiduous student of Goebbels,

Reifenstahl, et al.