I like E.J. Dionne, I really do. But seriously, he joins the ranks of those liberal elites oh so shocked about their behavior towards 12 year old Graeme Frost and his family:
And of what were the Frosts guilty? Well, they own their own home, which they bought for $55,000 in 1990 and is now worth about $260,000; they invested in a commercial property, valued at $160,000; Halsey Frost, a self-employed woodworker, once owned a small business that was dissolved in 1999; and Graeme attends a private school on scholarship. I rely here on facts reported this week in The Baltimore Sun and The New York Times, both of which set straight the more outlandish claims made by the Frosts’ attackers.
The right is unapologetic. "The Democrats chose to outsource their airtime to a seventh-grader," wrote National Review’s Mark Steyn. "If a political party is desperate enough to send a boy to do a man’s job, then the boy is fair game."
OK, the Democrats are "fair game," but a 12-year-old? No wonder nobody talks about compassionate conservatism anymore.
Dionne was around during the Clinton bashing days – many times he was one of the few liberals allowed on the news to argue about the insanity of it all. I know for sure he’s been writing throughout the Bush presidency about the mendacity, viciousness and thuggery of the opposition movement/party.
Why must we pretend as if these people are rational, honest, scrupulous human beings? They are not.
These are the same people who cheered the idea of making "head shots" versus federal agents when the Attorney General was Janet Reno. What makes you think they’ve grown morals since then?
Watch this
Now, supposedly the 15 year old girl was being arrested for violating curfew. Putting aside the question of why a 15 year old girl dressed like she could be going to church needed to be cuffed and arrested (I don’t know the details), check out the video at about the 2/3 mark (7:22:15). The girl tries to bite the officer, but clearly fails as she has her teeth on him for less than a fraction of a second. The officer then justifies the use of pepper spray by claiming intense pain from the bite. Uh, he lost his temper with an uncooperative, panicked 15 year old, and it’s blatantly obvious.
However, more telling, and apropos of the discussion of how far the right has descended into violent authoritarian dementia is the resulting thread on that bastion of lunacy, Free Republic.
Check out these comments.
Note the dominant belief that the officer wasn’t violent ENOUGH with the young girl and that clearly she was on drugs or something.
Unfortunately, nearly every thread on FR is like this and far from being an aberration, FR is clearly indicative of the vicious, even murderous core at the heart of what now constitutes the conservative movement in the U.S. Mr. Dionne and the rest need to get over the notion that simply because a particular course of action seems unfathomable to them that it must therefore be abhorrent to everyone, even those who have shown time and time again that they suffer no such qualms, particularly when it comes to the consolidation of power.
There is nothing that the right can do that would surprise me anymore. Nothing.
I just wish there was a way to fight them at their own game without losing our humanity in the process.
Another point, using Paul Krugman’s latest column.
It’s called projection. Whenever the right attacks someone, whatever the charge, you can bet they are guilty of what they accuse their opponents of doing.
Wait in the country of liberty for all you have curfews ?
wtf ?
I’m afraid this hasn’t been the “country of liberty” for quite some time now.
and in particular its routine reliance on character assassination in place of honest debate.
Says the “You’re a chickenhawk who wants to kill sick children and the elderly!!!” crowd.
Wow. Paul Krugman is a crowd now. Who knew?
Farris is right. Conservatives don’t want to kill sick children and the elderly. Let’s not smear them with that falsehood.
Conservatives don’t care if sick children and the elderly suffer and die, but that’s not the same thing as wanting to kill them.