Saturday, August 20, 2005

Clueless

Saturday is a busy one for me, but when you suffer from blog-compulsive disorder, that just means more cutting and pasting than usual.

But yesterday, in a rare Friday piece, Doc Altmerman summed up the mendacity of the Wall Street Journal Editorial page using a typical example:

A License to Lie: A column on the (tax-payer subsidized) Wall Street Journal editorial page is a license to lie. How else to explain this (sub) by Deputy Editorial Page Editor Daniel Henninger, slandering Cindy Sheehan (about whom I have not yet written a word). “Now we've got Cindy Sheehan, Media Mom superstar. She's using her center-ring moment to divide an entire country over a war…” Only a liar—yes Mr. Henninger I am calling you a liar—or someone living inside a sealed bio-dome without access to any news of any kind — could blame Cindy Sheehan for ‘dividing’ the country over Mr. Bush’s war. Every single monthly poll by the Gallup organization this year—eight in a row—have shown a majority of Americans saying the war was not “worth it.” As Ron Brownstein and Mark Mazzetti reported in the L.A. Times on August 13, here:

In a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released this week, 54% of Americans said "no" when asked if they thought "it was worth going to war in Iraq." A majority has answered "no" all eight times Gallup asked that question this year.

Strong majorities of Americans believe the president and his advisers deliberately misled the country to trick Americans into supporting it. One poll even found a majority of those who answered the poll blaming Bush, rather than Saddam Hussein being its primary cause. Since a minority of the country—and a majority of the MSM--continues to support this misguided adventure, it is fair to call the nation “divided” rather than fully opposed to the war. What Ms. Sheehan has succeeded in doing is not dividing an already quite divided country, but in focusing the conservative media on the war’s majority opposition, though they apparently can’t quite bring themselves to admit it.

In any case, let’s put this plainly: Mr. Henninger, you are lying to your readers in order to slander a woman who lost her son to a failed war you and your political allies promoted, on the day after her mother suffered a stroke. Have you no sense of decency?


Um, no, he has no sense of decency. One does not touch base with reality on the WSJ Editorial page, making the Journal the most bi-polar paper in the country. Reporters as good as any paper in the country, and opinion page worthy of the New York Post.

Besides, don't you people realize that it is the fault of those who opposed this misadventure from the beginning? If only we had closed our eyes and prayed harder, clapped louder, genuflected toward our Lord and Chimperor more earnestly, the higher father would not have abandoned us and our cause have been victorious. Don't you realize we are all a "Fifth Column of Traitors" for being doubtful, for using logic and rationality?

And now that "Fifth Column" is 60% of the country and Bush's War has Vietnam-like popularity look for the drums of scatgoating to get louder than ever as the asshole patrol makes a last desperate attempt to shout us down.

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