Picture of the Day
Dear Mr. Bush, you can chastise the majority of the country all you want for their opposition to the ports deal and how that's going to create image problems throughout the Arab world, if you can tell me how this series of pictures of Dick Cheney, as a main speaker at the AIPAC conference, receiving round after round of applause, for openly threatening Iran with military action, speaking in front of a hybrid Israeli-US flag, isn't far worse.
posted by mikevotes at
6:36 AM
3 Comments:
The editorial in the March 20th edition of The Nation begins, "Rise by fear, fall by fear." True, the xenophobia Bush complains is fueling others' alarm over the Dubai Ports World deal is the very same xenophobia on which he capitalized to retain his office. But no one can pretend that Bush has had a change of heart or ideology; certainly, he's still using xenophobic fearmongering in his characterizations of Iran, Iraq, North Korea and any other "rogue nation" he'll be sure to lump into the "axis of evil." If we play Greg Palast's favorite "follow the money" game, I'm sure the true motives behind Bush's drive for Dubai will be uncovered, and I'm equally sure his claim that the deal would have strengthened relations with moderate Arab allies is specious at best. Dubai's relinquishment to an American entity seems to have defused the issue, at least in its presentation and airtime in the MSM. Following the money might still be worth the trouble, though.
Later in the same issue of The Nation, Eric Alterman bemoans the Democrats' move away from issues such as, "trade unionism, regulation of the market, and various welfare measures." Alterman quotes Michael Kazin who said, "Liberals [have morphed in the public imagination] from people who looked, dressed and sounded like Woody Guthrie to people who look, dress and sound like Woody Allen." This may seem unrelated to the Dubai Ports World issue unless we think about what it means for our own economy that Bush wishes to outsource our infrastructural jobs, no matter to whom. Where are the Deomcrats who would speak for the American workers? Where are the Democrats who, rather than using Bush's own xenophobic rhetoric against him, would change the terms of the debate? Perhaps this is a good time to recall that Dennis Kucinich, when running (and losing) in the Democratic primaries, noted repeatedly that the American infrastructure was crumbling and that a neo-WPA would create jobs and strengthen our nation from within. One election and two hurricanes later, that view is as much a distant footnote in the MSM as Kucinich's campaign once was.
By
Left of Liberal, at 9:47 PM
Cheney is shameless. and that flag in the background? it speaks volumes.
By
Yukkione, at 7:36 AM
Corrina, first, I gotta say, I liked Dennis. I didn't agree with all of it, but I thought that more than anyone else, he was completely honest in his desire to change policy to improve the country. He proposed what he truly thought was best for the country and I respect the hell out of that.
And on the Bush Dubai deal, I don't know. Id idn't follow it all that closely, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were some Bush clan financial tie ins. (I heard some rumors of Carlyle tie ins but never found a reputable source.) I'm more concerned with the political implications of it and I find the Bush admonitions towards internationalism insincere.
What I was trying to say here is that after invading Iraq, abu ghraib, rnditions, torture and everything else, to criticize anybody for lowering our standing in the arab world is BS.
And Left, it just galls me how ridiculously bad this is. I refuse to believe that nobody in the White House thought about how this speech at the AIPAC conference would be seen.
Mike
By
mikevotes, at 8:36 AM
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