Looking Back at Karl (by Paul Waldman)

[ailsagirl]

Those who haven't should read this piece Ron Suskind did about the Bush White House circa early 2003.

http://www.ronsuskind.com/newsite/articles/archives/000032.html

Here are a couple of choice parts:

Inside, Rove was talking to an aide about some political stratagem in some state that had gone awry and a political operative who had displeased him. I paid it no mind and reviewed a jotted list of questions I hoped to ask. But after a moment, it was like ignoring a tornado flinging parked cars. "We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!" As a reporter, you get around--curse words, anger, passionate intensity are not notable events--but the ferocity, the bellicosity, the violent imputations were, well, shocking. This went on without a break for a minute or two. Then the aide slipped out looking a bit ashen, and Rove, his face ruddy from the exertions of the past few moments, looked at me and smiled a gentle, Clarence-the-Angel smile. "Come on in." And I did. And we had the most amiable chat for a half hour...

"Sure, I know Karl," says one man who has worked on several campaigns with him. "At the end of long days, we'd always meet at one bar or another, everybody but Karl. Where's Karl? we'd wonder. The line was always 'Oh, he's out ruining careers.'"

http://gadflyer.com/flytrap/index.php?Week=200528#1985

[CAG]

1. a good, upstanding christian man. Honestly how do they reconcile

the fact that the right wing village idiot who supposedly is such a good, fine, christian, has this hatchet man running the show? Remember S. Carolina and McCain, people???

[ailsagirl]

2. I don't know. That's what really confuses me. How can they

justify their behavior? How can their supporters not mind
the outrageous (not to mention illegal) things they've done?

Must be that gross cognitive dissonance. :shrug:

[CAG]

3. I call it "lacking the self-hypocrisy detection gene" (nt)

[ailsagirl]

4. It's as good a reason as any. But it seems so pervasive. Or

perhaps those people get so much press that it just appears that
the country is overrun with them. I just don't know.

[ailsagirl]

5. kick