The Smackdown (Mary Lyon -- From The Left)

[Tace]

Mary Lyon, From The Left -- World News Trust

There’s some good and some bad to come out of Bill Clinton’s confrontational interview with that smarmy Wallace boy on the Pox “news” channel. Most of it’s good, of course -- watching Clinton seize the opportunity and go on the offensive while defending himself against too many unfounded accusations from the Dark Side. That was a thing of beauty. LONG overdue. Which brings us to the downside. What on earth took him so long???

It’s LONG past time when he should have stepped up and smacked down all of the insidious crap that’s been flung at him since, well -- since he first emerged on the national political scene. Conservatives and republi-CONS were gunning for him from the very beginning. He usually did what most Democrats do. He took the high road, which gets you precisely nowhere except straight over a cliff with these people.

I’m beyond delighted to see Clinton get his dander up and grab some of those obnoxious, never-ending, and overwhelmingly false accusations against him by the collar, yanking them to attention. That’s what you have to do these days, and I hope Democrats, liberals, and progressives everywhere get the message. THIS is how you play the game with the adversaries at hand -- those who’ll stop at nothing to flay you alive and feed your entrails to the dogs. You have to get in their faces and shove it all back, and HARD. I guess it tends to take the folks on our side a little long for lessons like these to sink in.

There happens to be quite a bit to sink in, at that. At the moment we’re almost too loaded up with useful ammunition with which to take aim against those on the other side of the aisle and their hate-spewing friends and collaborators. There’s the newly-issued National Intelligence Estimate that verifies from the highest and most credible quarters what many of us in the anti-war movement have been saying since the beginning: that the Iraq War would only aggravate terrorism, make us more enemies, and lose us more ground -- literally AND figuratively. It’s made us less safe. Period. Despite what the White House wants you to believe. There are now more retired generals speaking out (from a safe distance of course) in concurrence. We’ve even seen another one of them, Colin Powell, now putting his fears in writing about how our charming new torture policies have cost us the moral high ground we once had, and will gain us neither any advantage NOR useful intel.

But back to the Clinton Smackdown on Pox “news.” It tells us a great number of things:

more

http://www.worldnewstrust.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=217

[calimary]

1. Thanks, Tace!

As usual!

[Tace]

4. I Know You've Been Writing Columns For A Long Time...

but I think you're getting better and better. : )

[calimary]

17. Thank you so much, Tace - I'm so honored to be featured on such

cool sites - yours and DU (and Democrats.us, also) - they keep me afloat in these dark times. As they said in promotional material for "The Big Chill" - sometimes you need your friends to keep you warm.

:toast:

[underpants]

2. Well done

:thumbsup:

[calimary]

3. Thank you!

:hi:

[trof]

5. Oooo..I LIKE "POX" News.

good 'un
:thumbsup:

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7. Well, aren't they?

As a retired newsperson myself, I regard them as that - on my former industry. They ARE a pox. On ALL our houses with cable.

Glad you liked it. Steal it if you like! 'Cause that's what they ARE. Chicken POX on the complexion of the news business.

[trof]

9. It's already in my lexicon. Thanks again.

[ljm2002]

6. Excellent article!

I read it earlier today -- good for you!

Hoping, hoping this is the crack in the wall that unleashes the fury of the waters that have been held back for lo, these many years...

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8. Thanks much!

At least it was a crash course to other Dems, and Howard Dean's statement indicates that HE got it.

[applegrove]

10. Thanks for posting!

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15. Glad you liked it.

Thanks for kicking!

[madfloridian]

11. Thanks, well put.

:hi:

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16. I appreciate the support - hugely!

:toast:

[DemReadingDU]

12. Pox “news” channel, LOL

Thank you, good article!

K&R

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18. I say POX on Pox "news."

They're certainly a pox on our country. Glad you liked it. Thanks!

[Sapphire Blue]

13. My question, too: "What on earth took him so long???"

If memory serves me, wasn't he the one telling us to "be nice" during the 2004 campaign? Heck, didn't he even ask if he was the only one in America who liked both John Kerry & georgie boy? No, let's not accuse georgie of being a liar. Let's not accuse him of being a war criminal. Let's all get along. Let's all be good little boys & girls & take the high road. Yeah, look where that got us.

So, the RW had to attack him on his efforts to fight terrorism for him to fight back? Pffffttt!

Yes, it's looonnnng past time!

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19. A LOT of people were saying "take the high road! Don't be like them!

Rise above it!" And it gets us precisely NOWHERE - FAST. Like I said in this column and elsewhere here - straight over a cliff. That is unfortunately NOT how the game is played. To call politics rough-and-tumble is to damn it with faint praise. It's mud-wrestling. WWF. John Cena and Vince McMahon and friends. It's not polite afternoons of croquet with the Queen. Politics is dirty and if you want to win, that's how you have to play. It's not we here who've dictated that. It's the schmucks who've determined that THAT is the only way to win. So WE have to start winning, and I say - okay, FINE then. Let the games begin. There will be NO rising above it until we've won enough times straight that we've won overwhelmingly and vanquished them equally so. Only THEN can we start rewriting the rules and bringing a more civil discourse back into politics. As long as the bad guys control the game, we have to play it dirty like they do - to win, and to take the ball AWAY.

Thanks for the kick. It IS INDEED long past time. I just watched the latest Keith Olbermann deliciousness this evening and he said it so incredibly brilliantly! He said what increasing multitudes of us have been thinking - what NEEDS to be said, over and over and over. The free pass is OVER, mr. bush. OVER. Just like YOU are, george. Time's UP. Too bad, though, that it HAS taken this long. Should have been said some 29-hundred LIVES ago. Glad Bill finally snapped out of it. I guess enough was enough. For him, and for all the rest of us, too.

[Swamp Rat]

14. k&r

:thumbsup:

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20. An honor, my friend.

Gawd, I love your visuals!

[Swamp Rat]

21. Great writing!

Wanna help me finish my masters thesis? :D

I suck at writing. Ever since I started learning other languages, and after living abroad I CANNOT SPELL ANYMORE!!! :crazy:

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22. I always did like writing. And spelling was a forte, too, because dammit,

HAD to have those holy cards.

I went to Catholic school. Everything you did correctly, you were awarded with a holy card. They were like baseball cards but they were Nativity scenes, Crucifixion scenes, martyr scenes, Holy Family scenes, Madonna and child scenes, and what-have-you. Spelling bees were great opportunities to collect holy cards. And I'm just anal-compulsive enough to care about spelling. Always did. Needless to say, I wound up with a LOT of holy cards. While we were waiting in the pews for our turn for Confession, it was always - "I've got two Jesus with Mary Magdalenes outside the tomb - I'll trade you for a St. Lucy with the eyeballs or a St. Catherine with the torture wheel."

Why do you go to Catholic school? To generate material! And it made me a fairly competent speller.

[Swamp Rat]

23. "Why do you go to Catholic school?" - for the booze!

:rofl:

I went to Catholic school for a little while but I preferred the Episcopal school I attended. They still had Mass with bread and wine, but without all the guilt trips. :D

By the time I was 10, I figured out how to get a giant gulp of wine during Mass. I would press my mouth into the bottom part of the rim of the cup, thus forcing more wine to come out.

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26. Back when we went to Mass and they had the hosts in a dish

at the back entrance for you to take ONE, we never did. The routine was always to take one and put it in the gold-lined dish (remember when the Eucharist could NOT touch anything that wasn't gold?), and then pocket a few extras to snack on during Mass. Well, they weren't consecrated yet...

:evilgrin:

They never gave US any wine... probably knew better.

[DemReadingDU]

24. Ah, Holy Cards!

I remember those, and probably have a few saved in my old missal prayerbook. I sometimes get similar holy cards at funerals.

And spelling - it seems like everyone always is asking me how to spell words! I feel like I am a walking dictionary, LOL

[calimary]

25. AHA! Another refugee! We have "the mark" on our souls.

Too funny! I have five Pope John the 23rds. Got any St. Christophers crossing the river?

:hi: