Robert Altman, the man behind the lens on "M*A*S*H," "Nashville" and "The Player," died Monday night at a Los Angeles Hospital, his Sandcastle 5 Productions Company said Tuesday. He was 81.
The cause of death was not disclosed, but a news release is expected later today, Associated Press reports.
Altman was nominated for an Academy Award five times for directing, most recently in 2001 for "Gosford Park." He was given a Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 2006, where Altman revealed in his acceptance speech that he had a received a heart transplant a decade earlier.
Altman's most recent film was "A Prairie Home Companion," starring Meryl Streep.
Robert Altman's films have inspired me and has fueled my passion as a filmmaker. His work was unique and stood out in style and writing from any other American director. He's our Truffaut, Antonioni, A true master to learn by. His films span a generation. He made films till the end. For that is what its like to be an artist. To live it. To breath it. To ends one life doing what one loves. Today we lost a real original.
Aaron: The general name is Cometbus, but every issue has a subname.
Joe: Are the different names just to trick your way into getting more fanzines from Flipside?
Aaron: And records!
Joe: Has this actually happened before?
Aaron: Oh yeah, but mostly in the past. Then, they found out that I don't do reviews.
AL: Why didn't you ever review fanzines or records?
Aaron: I figured there were already plenty of others doing it and that people didn't really give a shit about my opinions. I want to be different, so I do book and movie reviews, cereal news and things like that.
AL: You started out as a small fanzine, right?
Aaron: It started out with me and a friend doing a weekly little newsletter during the summer of '81, when he was 12 and I was 13. When he left for Pittsburgh, I started doing my own, Tomorrow's Hope in October 1981. The names were never terribly important. They were just to confuse people and have some fun. Originally, it was 1/2 page size, but my printer thought it would be kind of a novelty to make them 3" X 2". So, we ended up printing them that small for two years until it got kind of boring. Then, I went bigger because I wanted to do more with graphics and stuff. Originally, it was only eight pages. Eventually, it got to be forty eight.
AL: I can't believe that you actually sold to distributors that small.
Aaron: No, because I didn't sell them. They were always free until about a half year ago because they were so cheap to print. It was always easy to distribute them because people would always put them in with their mailing. For example, MDC would send them out with albums.
AL: Do you prefer doing zines with hand printing instead of typing?
Aaron: I believe hand printing adds a personal feeling and quality. But, it's not always that easy because it takes a lot more time to do. I forgot how to type after I learned. So, now I have to use the two finger method which seems to take me just as long as writing.
AL: You mentioned that you took the pictures in the early fanzines.
Aaron: I used to do a lot more photography because I had a class at school which gave me a good opportunity. Later, I changed schools, so I can't do that any more. I did try having a darkroom in my basement, but the quality of the pictures just wasn't good enough.
AL: I know that many of the bands which you've interviewed became popular as opposed to bands that get together, you interview, then they brake up. What criteria do you use?
Aaron: The important part is the local aspect because I think that there are enough local fanzines covering only big out of town bands. I like to interview bands that aren't known. I don't wait until they have a record out. Right there, I think other fanzines miss out. I'll interview a band which has something interesting to say even if I might not agree with them. I think that, if you interview a band, it's not unfair to put them on the spot because they get the chance to prove themselves or come out looking pretty stupid. Either way, the interview turns out to be better.
Joe: What's kept you motivated over the years? Many people burnout on fanzines fairly quickly.
Aaron: If I didn't do it, I wouldn't feel right. I can't exist without being productive.
Joe: Have you ever thought of channeling your energy into another area?
Aaron: Well, I tried to channel it into a few other areas, like music and a few others: a tape magazine, four compilation tapes, and some radio stuff. But, when I was in school, it was pretty hard to slide through that and, at the same time, do a fanzine.
Joe: Do you find doing your fanzine a rewarding experience?
Aaron: Sometimes... I put more into it then what I get out, but I don't think that is necessiarlly bad because I want to do the fanzine and the rewards are just extra.
AL: Did you ever think about writing for another zine instead of doing your own?
Aaron: After the five year anniversary issue, I may be changing the way I channel the fanzine because it's going to be the best of the last five years. All the small issues that people, like Tim Yohannon, couldn't read are going to be in big print. After summing up those five years, I'm going to move on and I will probably not be doing Cometbus anymore, but I may be collaborating with someone else on something or contributing to a lot of fanzines or something. I still going keep the same mailing address and keep doing projects.
This stuff was printed in Flipside 50. RIP Flipside
For all that is going on in the world. I was taken back by news broadcast showing people fighting And rioting over the latest playstation 3 video game systems here in the United States. Is this a huge commentary on the United States people? In this apathetic country more concerned about huge cars and large wheels. These are the people that vote. These are the people that don’t understand why they are unemployed. Are these the people that end up in Iraq? Are these the people that believe this country is spreading democracy to the Middle East because they are so uncivilized to understand anything more? Are these the same people that will riot in the streets for a cause and then forget what the cause is?
Just one image among others—but this is the image that best symbolizes the stark power of Ten, a film by Abbas Kiarostami: A young Iranian woman is sitting in a car, on the passenger side. Conversing with the woman driving the car, she talks about a man who has left, a man she was thinking of marrying. She weeps. Then she loosens her scarf, suddenly uncovering her shaved head. Between laughter and tears, she admits she feels much better this way.
In a country where people know the force of these symbols—the scarf, hair—the seeming simplicity of the scene takes on a resonance all its own. That is how it is for Ten, which lays down its cards one by one, all the better to capture the full spectrum of Iranian society. Ten cards. Ten sequences. Ten encounters between a driver and her passengers: her son, her sister, a prostitute, an old woman, filmed with alternating stationary shots of each partner in the conversation. (Those familiar with Kiarostami’s universe can use their free time to reflect on the car as both a metaphorical element and one that drives the plot.) No, it is not boring, not for a single second.
Ten is an absolutely fascinating film, both cheerful and troubling. Kiarostami, who is already a master in the art of distillation, pushes his formal process to an extreme degree of systematization—the same types of scenes, the same value given to the shots, the same dramatic art based on a conversation—in order to better uncover the truth of the situations and the feelings that dwell therein. And through this radical stripping down, we manage to read the frustrations and hopes of a society that is both immobile and changing.
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Iraq. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Iraq. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.
"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Iraqi and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."
If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Iraq. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Iraq, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Iraqi people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.
We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary. Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Iraq. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.
As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Iraq and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Iraq a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors.
There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Iraq. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Iraq is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Katrina. They will be concerned about the Darfur genocide. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Iraq, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.
John F. Kennedy comes back to haunt us. "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When oil, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Saudi Arabia and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of torturing human beings of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
A speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City. This speech was changed to reflect our times now. Scary how times really have not changed.
Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture, and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings.
The same statistics also suggest that this girl’s parents believe -- at this very moment -- that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this? No.
The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.
It is worth noting that no one ever need identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, “atheism” is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (eighty-seven percent of the population) who claim to “never doubt the existence of God” should be obliged to present evidence for his existence -- and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. Only the atheist appreciates just how uncanny our situation is: most of us believe in a God that is every bit as specious as the gods of Mount Olympus; no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that such a God exists; and much of what passes for public policy in our country conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a medieval theocracy. Our circumstance is abject, indefensible, and terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high.
Consider: the city of New Orleans was recently destroyed by hurricane Katrina. At least a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and over a million have been displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: these poor people spent their lives in the company of an imaginary friend.
Of course, there had been ample warning that a storm “of biblical proportions” would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. But it was inept only by the light of science. Advance warning of Katrina’s path was wrested from mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. God told no one of his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn’t have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces. And yet, a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that eighty percent of Katrina’s survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God.
As hurricane Katrina was devouring New Orleans, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. There can be no doubt that these pilgrims believed mightily in the God of the Koran. Indeed, their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence: their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It would be remarkable if a single survivor of this tragedy lost his faith. More likely, the survivors imagine that they were spared through God’s grace.
Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is -- and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.
Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities, or He does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If He exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.
There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: the biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world’s suffering at face value. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion -- to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions, and religious diversions of scarce resources -- is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.
Tonight we got another one of Keith's special comments and this one was another top-notch job. Olbermann left no stone unturned while going through the exhaustive list of how the Republicans love to manipulate words and turn them into something they are not.
And finally tonight, a Special Comment.
On the 22nd of May, 1856, as the deteriorating American political system veered towards the edge of the cliff, Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina, shuffled into the Senate of this nation, his leg stiff from an old dueling injury, supported by a cane. And he looked for the familiar figure of the prominent Senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner.
Brooks found Sumner at his desk, mailing out copies of a speech he had delivered three days earlier — a speech against slavery.
The Congressman matter-of-factly raised his walking stick in mid-air, and smashed its metal point, across the Senator's head.
Congressman Brooks hit his victim repeatedly. Senator Sumner somehow got to his feet and tried to flee. Brooks chased him, and delivered untold blows to Sumner's head. Even though Sumner lay unconscious and bleeding, on the Senate floor, Brooks finally stopped beating him, only because his cane finally broke.
Others will cite John Brown's attack on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry as the exact point after which the Civil War became inevitable.
In point of fact, it might have been the moment — not when Brooks broke his cane over the prostrate body of Senator Sumner - but when voters in Brooks's district started sending him new canes.
Tonight, we almost wonder to whom President Bush will send the next new cane.
There is tonight no political division in this country that he and his party will not exploit, nor have not exploited; no anxiety that he and his party will not inflame.
There is no line this President has not crossed — nor will not cross — to keep one political party, in power.
He has spread any and every fear among us, in a desperate effort to avoid that which he most fears — some check, some balance against what has become not an imperial, but a unilateral presidency.
And now it is evident that it no longer matters to him, whether that effort to avoid the judgment of the people, is subtle and nuanced — or laughably transparent.
Senator John Kerry called him out Monday.
He did it two years too late.
He had been too cordial — just as Vice President Gore had been too cordial in 2000 — just as millions of us, have been too cordial ever since.
Senator Kerry, as you well know, spoke at a college in Southern California. With bitter humor, he told the students that he had been in Texas the day before, that President Bush used to live in that state, but that now he lives in the state of denial.
He said the trip had reminded him about the value of education — that quote "if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you can get stuck in Iraq."
The Senator, in essence, called Mr. Bush stupid.
The context was unmistakable: Texas;the state of denial;stuck in Iraq. No interpretation required.
And Mr. Bush and his minions responded, by appearing to be too stupid to realize that they had been called stupid.
They demanded Kerry apologize — to the troops in Iraq.
And so he now has.
That phrase "appearing to be too stupid" is used deliberately, Mr. Bush.
Because there are only three possibilities here:
One, sir, is that you are far more stupid than the worst of your critics have suggested; that you could not follow the construction of a simple sentence; that you could not recognize your own life story when it was deftly summarized; that you could not perceive it was the sad ledger of your presidency that was being recounted.
This, of course, compliments you, Mr. Bush, because even those who do not "make the most of it," who do not "study hard," who do not "do their homework," and who do not "make an effort to be smart" might still just be stupid — but honest.
No; the first option, sir, is, at best, improbable. You are not honest.
The second option is that you and those who work for you deliberately twisted what Senator Kerry said to fit your political template. That you decided to take advantage of it, to once again pretend that the attacks, solely about your own incompetence, were in fact attacks on the troops — or even on the nation itself.
The third possibility is, obviously, the nightmare scenario; that the first two options are in some way conflated.
That it is both politically convenient for you, and personally satisfying to you, to confuse yourself with the country for which, sir, you work.
A brief reminder, Mr. Bush: You are not the United States of America.
You are merely a politician whose entire legacy will have been a willingness to make anything political — to have, in this case, refused to acknowledge that the insult wasn't about the troops, and that the insult was not even truly about you either — that the insult, in fact, is you.
So now John Kerry has apologized to the troops; apologized for the Republicans' deliberate distortions.
Thus the President will now begin the apologies he owes our troops, right?
This President must apologize to the troops — for having suggested, six weeks ago, that the chaos in Iraq, the death and the carnage, the slaughtered Iraqi civilians and the dead American service personnel, will, to history, quote "look like just a comma."
This President must apologize to the troops — because the intelligence he claims led us into Iraq proved to be undeniably and irredeemably wrong.
This President must apologize to the troops — for having laughed about the failure of that intelligence, at a banquet, while our troops were in harm's way.
This President must apologize to the troops — because the streets of Iraq were not strewn with flowers and its residents did not greet them as liberators.
This President must apologize to the troops — because his administration ran out of "plan" after barely two months.
This President must apologize to the troops — for getting 2,815 of them killed.
This President must apologize to the troops — for getting this country into a war without a clue.
And Mr. Bush owes us an apology… for this destructive and omnivorous presidency.
—
We will not receive them, of course.
This President never apologizes.
Not to the troops.
Not to the people.
Nor will those henchmen who have echoed him.
In calling him a "stuffed suit," Senator Kerry was wrong about the Press Secretary.
Mr. Snow's words and conduct — falsely earnest and earnestly false — suggest he is not "stuffed" - he is inflated.
And in leaving him out of the equation, Senator Kerry gave an unwarranted pass to his old friend Senator McCain, who should be ashamed of himself tonight.
He rolled over and pretended Kerry had said what he obviously had not.
Only, the symbolic stick he broke over Kerry's head came in a context, even more disturbing: Mr. McCain demanded the apology, while electioneering for a Republican congressional candidate in Illinois.
He was speaking of how often he had been to Walter Reed Hospital to see the wounded Iraq veterans, of how, quote "many of the have lost limbs." He said all this while demanding that the voters of Illinois reject a candidate who is not only a wounded Iraq veteran, but who lost two limbs there: Tammy Duckworth.
Support some of the wounded veterans. But bad-mouth the Democratic one.
And exploit all the veterans, and all the still-serving personnel, in a cheap and tawdry political trick, to try to bury the truth: that John Kerry said the President had been stupid.
And to continue this slander as late as this morning — as biased, or gullible, or lazy newscasters, nodded in sleep-walking assent.
Senator McCain became a front man in a collective lie to break sticks over the heads of Democrats — one of them his friend; another his fellow veteran, leg-less, for whom he should weep and applaud, or at minimum about whom, he should stay quiet.
That was beneath the Senator from Arizona.
And it was all because of an imaginary insult to the troops that his party cynically manufactured — out of a desperation, and a futility, as deep as that of Congressman Brooks, when he went hunting for Senator Sumner.
This, is our beloved country now, as you have re-defined it, Mr. Bush.
Get a tortured Vietnam veteran to attack a decorated Vietnam veteran, in defense of military personnel, whom that decorated veteran did not insult.
Or, get your henchmen to take advantage of the evil lingering dregs of the fear of miscegenation in Tennessee, in your party's advertisements against Harold Ford.
Or, get the satellites who orbit around you, like Rush Limbaugh, to exploit the illness — and the bi-partisanship — of Michael J. Fox — yes, get someone to make fun of the cripple.
Oh, and sir, don't forget to drag your own wife into it.
"It's always easy," she said of Mr. Fox's commercials — and she used this phrase twice — "to manipulate people's feelings."
Where on earth might the First Lady have gotten that idea, Mr. President?
From your endless manipulation of people's feelings about terrorism?
"How ever they put it," you said Monday of the Democrats, on the subject of Iraq , "their approach comes down to this: the terrorists win and America loses."
No manipulation of feelings there.
No manipulation of the charlatans of your administration into the only truth-tellers.
No shocked outrage at the Kerry insult that wasn't; no subtle smile as the First Lady silently sticks the knife in Michael J. Fox's back; no attempt on the campaign trail to bury the reality that you have already assured that the terrorists are winning.
Winning in Iraq, sir.
Winning in America, sir.
There, we have chaos: joint U.S./Iraqi checkpoints at Sadr City, the base of the radical Shiite militias — and the Americans have been ordered out by the Prime Minister of Iraq… and our Secretary of Defense doesn't even know about it!
And here — we have deliberate, systematic, institutionalized lying and smearing and terrorizing — a code of deceit, that somehow permits a President to say, quote, "If you listen carefully for a Democrat plan for success, they don't have one."
Permits him to say this while his plan in Iraq has amounted to a twisted version of the advice once offered to Lyndon Johnson about his Iraq, called Vietnam.
Instead of "declare victory — and get out"… we now have "declare victory — and stay, indefinitely."
And also here, we have institutionalized the terrorizing of the opposition. True domestic terror:
– Critics of your administration in the media receive letters filled with fake anthrax.
– Braying newspapers applaud, or laugh, or reveal details the FBI wished kept quiet, and thus impede or ruin the investigation.
– A series of reactionary columnists encourages treason charges against a newspaper that published "national security information" — that was openly available on the internet.
– One radio critic receives a letter, threatening the revelation of as much personal information about her as can be obtained — and expressing the hope that someone will then shoot her with an AK-47 machine gun.
– And finally, a critic of an incumbent Republican Senator, a critic armed with nothing but words, is attacked by the Senator's supporters, and thrown to the floor, in full view of television cameras, as if someone really did want to re-enact the intent and the rage of the day Preston Brooks found Senator Charles Sumner.
Of course, Mr. President, you did none of these things.
You instructed no one to mail the fake anthrax. Nor undermine the FBI's case. Nor call for the execution of the editors of the New York Times. Nor threaten to assassinate Stephanie Miller. Nor beat up a man yelling at Senator Allen. Nor have the first lady knife Michael J. Fox. Nor tell John McCain to lie about John Kerry.
No, you did not.
And the genius of the thing, is the same, as in King Henry's rhetorical question about Archbishop Thomas Becket: "Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?"
All you have to do, sir… is hand out enough new canes.
