MSNBC: Is Bush an Idiot? blast from the past

[Gabi Hayes]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whhbPVrb5KM

the first part speaks for itself, a great compendium of his, uh, idiocies

"I know that human being and fish can coexist peacefully" is one of my favorites...used to be my answering message

then Morning Joe leads a discussion with Lawrence ODonnell and the completely reprehensibly loathsome John Fund, who quotes Voltaire, saying Bush has, basically, common sense!

why don't you find some more helpless women to beat up, John?

half way in he plays a clip of Bush on pigeating (German visit) from the Daily Show

well worth watching, except for Fund's insipid blather

[Gabi Hayes]

1. two recs, no comments......these things aren't so very funny anymore

are they?

how could this have happened?

Glenn Greenwald has a pretty good answer

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/05/04/1988/

Sunday May 4, 2008 06:42 EDT
The media, the right and 1988: Endless deja vu
(updated below)

A large bulk of the political and pundit class are forever stuck in 1972, reflexively viewing every political conflict through its myopic prism (any war-opponent-candidate = George McGovern = loser). But as a New York Times article by Robin Toner this morning illustrates, the far more relevant precedent for this year's election is 1988. Toner quotes something I wrote after Barack Obama's Philadelphia race speech to define the critical question:

Sometimes, as Senator Barack Obama seemed to argue earlier this year, a flag pin is just a flag pin.

But it can never be that simple for anyone with direct experience of the 1988 presidential campaign. That year, the Republicans used the symbols of nationhood (notably, whether schoolchildren should be required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance) to bludgeon the Democrats, challenge their patriotism and utterly redefine their nominee, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts.

The memory of that campaign -- reinforced, for many, by the attacks on Senator John Kerry's Vietnam war record in the 2004 election -- haunts Democrats of a certain generation. . . .

Mr. Obama, of Illinois, has promised a different politics, one that rises above the fray and the distractions of wedge issues. As Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for Salon, recently put it, "The entire Obama campaign is predicated on the belief that it is no longer 1988."

But is that true?

That is the central question in 2008. For exactly that reason, I devote a substantial portion of Great American Hypocrites to analyzing the twisted, petty personality-based themes that dominated that election -- and that led to the victory of an extremely unpopular and distrusted political figure: George Bush the First -- because that is when the GOP pioneered the manipulative playbook that they have been using ever since to destroy the "character" and personality of Democratic candidates. And the circumstances that prevailed in the 1988 election make it an almost perfect parallel to this year's election.