Lou Dobbs said liberal columnists and Arab reporters couldn't stand Bush's success in Iraq in 2003

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12037180/

While George Bush and company were out invading countries that did not threaten us in any way, wasting trillions, killing tens of thousands, destroying functioning infrastructure, torturing innocents, inspiring hatred, and portraying America as a nation of incompetent, lying, torturing, illegal phone-tapping hypocrites to the entire world, what else was happening?



"Some journalists, in my judgment, just can't stand success, especially a few liberal columnists and newspapers and a few Arab reporters."
(CNN's Lou Dobbs, 4/14/03)

"He looked like an alternatively commander-in-chief, rock star, movie star, and one of the guys."
(CNN's Lou Dobbs, on Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech, 5/1/03)

[judaspriestess]

1. lou dobbs should start watching real

journalists like Bill Moyers and maybe he'll get a clue.

[Kelly Rupert]

3. Lou doesn't need a clue.

Lou Dobbs has a mini-empire of his own, capped with a massively popular prime-time CNN show. Bill Moyers has a niche audience on PBS. What incentive would Lou Dobbs have to emulate Bill Moyers?

[Catch22Dem]

14. Credibility

Something he doesn't have.

[Benhurst]

17. Yeah, but he'll never be a mega success like

Rush Limbaugh, a god among corporate media whores.

Shit floats.

[SammyWinstonJack]

2. What success?

:shrug: He looked like an idiot! Like someone playing dress up for a photo op, which he was.

[Kelly Rupert]

6. Well, for starters,

he had just managed to, in two years, launch and "win" two wars, rewrite the rules of international diplomacy, ram through everything he wanted in Congress, and had high popularity rankings. If you believed in the neocon dream, Bush looked like he had taken on the entire world and won.

[SammyWinstonJack]

9. I am reality based. Poor me!

:evilgrin:

[Kelly Rupert]

10. And fortunately, so are more and more people n/t

[Faygo Kid]

4. Lots of 'em were wrong in 2003. Could quote 'em all night long.

I am sure Lou regrets those words. Regret, however, doesn't get it done. Wish somebody like that would go after Bill Kristol. Kristol just popped into my head today. He's a cold blooded killer.

[muntrv]

5. Joe Scarborough was gushing over shrub back then too. Now he's

jumping off the SS Chimpy.

[Robson]

7. Dobbs and Olbermann

Dobbs has hammered Bush on most every issue, from unfair trade to Iraq to illegal amnesty. He has been especially critical of "Mission Accomplished". Dobbs has done more op-ed that has criticized Bush and benefitted Americans than any other pundit including Keith Olbermann.

[Kelly Rupert]

8. How does Lou's Mexican-baiting benefit Americans?

Illegal immigrants are absolutely necessary for our economy--and no reputable economist would claim otherwise. Lou's claims that "Illegals" are hurting the average American are unsupported and unsupportable. Moreover, neither Lou's ranting about Mexicans nor his distrust of China/India changes the situation. Rather, it just redirects American attention from meaningful economic issues to xenophobia.

To put it in somewhat-Marxist-sounding terms (which I very rarely do, but which might be slightly illuminating in this situation), hatred of outsiders creates a false cross-class solidarity, which preempts and prevents the natural solidarity between the working class against the ownership class. Lou is telling people, "All your problems are because of the foreigners. Forget unionization, forget single-payer health care, forget progressive taxation. You want to get rid of the foreigners."

His focus on "illegals" certainly does not benefit Americans.

[Selatius]

11. Well, then your problem is with American business.

As it stands now, the only ones winning in the race to the bottom are employers who knowingly utilize illegal immigrants in their attempts to smash unions and suppress wages in their sector of the economy.

With millions of manufacturing jobs being outsourced to China and an unknown number of illegal immigrants coming into the country and being exploited in a drive to crush wages and unions of US citizens, I am pretty certain that something is going to snap in terms of preserving a middle class.

Most Americans don't seem interested in granting amnesty to illegal immigrants, since Reagan and the Democrats did the same thing back in 1986 with no real proposal to control immigration. As it stands, immigration in the US is uncontrolled for the fact that there is weak border enforcement. If the solution is simply granting amnesty to 12,000,000 illegal immigrants, what proposal is there to ensure the border is secured? Or will it remain unsecured?

[Robson]

18. The middle class for most Americans is waning

I only wish every Democratic Party candidate was concerned about this. I sometimes sense they prefer having a cause than a cure.

[KharmaTrain]

12. It Benefits His Beloved Wall Street

You are correct...too many corporations are reliant on cheap, illegal immigrant labor and Lou rarely mentions both the amount of money these people represent to his beloved Wall Street or the economy on the whole. Would he advocate paying more for produce if it meant farms with unionized labor? Doubtful. It's easier to divert attention away from the real winners here...the corporates who busted the unions, outsourced more and now are using class warefare (through xenophobes like Lou Doobies) to create a strawman...namely the Mexicans.

To see it from Doobies world, only Mexicans are illegals...I have not seen him spotlight the large number of undocumented Poles, Russians and others that are also in this country illegally. Also he's been caught on various occasions spewing talking points straight out of the Minutemen and other racist organizations. This doesn't advance a solution to the problem, only inflames more.

You are very correct...this one-man crusade avoids more problems than it addresses.

Cheers...

[Robson]

19. Pontification?

I have a difficult time understanding how some Democrats can accept and even promote policies that will hurt those on the lowest rungs of our ladder most, while pontificating that it is righteous for Mexicans to illegally enter our country at will and compress the wages of Americans and turn shrewd businessmen into millionaires.

[KharmaTrain]

21. Mexicans Write Their Own Checks?

Now whose compressing those wages? Methinks its the same millionaires whom you characterize as shrewd. That's true as they've got proxies like Doobies who have turned this issue ass backwards.

Wanna end this "problem"? How about fining Con-Agra or Home Depot or whatever company hires people illegally $1,000 per illegal per day...make it worth their while to hire American...you'll see this "invasion" dry up in a hurry. Or tax American corporations that outsource the difference between what they pay for labor in Indonesia or Mexico vs. what the prevailing wage for the similar job is here. Now we're starting to get into the solutions of this "problem".

I'm not pro or con amnesty as I don't see this as a problem as much as a political stalking horse/opportunity. Yes, I see lots of Hispanics (they're not all Mexicans) and I've worked with many immigrant groups for over 30 years. I've met many Mexicans who are hard working people who face financial oppression in their own country...then they have to traverse a desert or hide in a truck or rely on a coyote and live in an underground world where they have little to no rights...and all this for the honor of building someone's luxuary home or cleaning up their mess.

Idea would be for a government to stand up for both workers in this country...weaning away from the millions the big corporate put in their pockets and to have a foreign policy that advocates better working conditions for workers as a stipulation to MFN and other special trading status with the U.S.

Cheers...

[Robson]

22. Agreed

I don't disagree with anything you say. What I want to see ended is an endless stream of cheap labor (Mexican, Indian, etc) into this country so that investors and CEOs can take home even more exorbitant compensation and profits on the backs of American workers. I'd like to see our trade laws stipulate that any country that sells to the USA have labor and environmental laws equivalent to our own, and tell the WTO that we are on our own..

[KharmaTrain]

23. The Problem Is Refocusing The Issue

This debate has to be shifted from an "immigration" or "Mexican" problem to one of Labor and Economic one. The intermixing of racist messages, xenophobia, linguistics and other external factors are used to mask this long-running problem. As always, the corporate media will look at the result rather than the cause as the result makes good pictures, while the cause requires serious thought and journalism.

Thank you for your thoughts...

:toast:

[brentspeak]

16. Thank you for those talking points, Mr. DLC/RNC/etc.

May your job be shipped to China.

[SemperEadem]

13. yeah, and exactly who are these 'liberal' columnists, Lou?

I'll bet you can't name either them or their newspapers.

[brentspeak]

15. And this latest episode of NNN0LHI's smearing of Lou Dobbs, brought to you by...

all those who want to see Dobbs' lone advocacy against "free" trade and imported cheap labor stopped dead in its tracks.

Cherry-picking a Dobbs quote from all the back in 2003? Methinks you're running out of smears, NNN0LHI.

[Robson]

20. What is their agenda?

Someone please tell me the agenda of those such as the OP who obviously would prefer if our country was turned into a third world country like Mexico just so they could say we welcome everyone regardless of skill or economic benefit.

[NNN0LHI]

24. A Third World Country?

http://cbs4.com/topstories/local_story_333174352.html

DeFede: Is Miami A Third World Country?

(CBS4) MIAMI When I first heard that Representative Tom Tancredo called Miami a Third World Country, my first reaction was to laugh and say, ‘Well yeah, tell me something I don't know.’

I mean, driving in some neighborhoods, you're just as likely to accidentally hit a chicken with your car as a dog.

But the more I thought about Tancredo's comments, the angrier I got. It's okay when we refer to ourselves as a Third World Country, but I don't like the idea of some xenophobic Congressman from Colorado calling us a Third World country.

It's like with family. You can make fun of your brothers and sisters all you want, but woe be the outsider that says anything unkind about your siblings.

And let's not kid ourselves, when Tancredo called Miami a third world country, that was code for brown skinned people. His point is that illegal immigration has ruined Miami. He argues that if you come to Miami it won't feel like you are in America anymore.

Well here's an update: Miami looks a heck of a lot more like America than the affluent suburbs of Denver that Tancredo represents.

[Robson]

25. Third World City/Country

In describing a city as a third world country I don't even consider skin color as relevant.

What I do consider as most relevant is would one feel secure in walking or driving through said city? Also would the individual get the opinion that there is massive poverty? Do people have pride in their residences or does it look like a shanty town with filth and trash strewn about? I don't know what Tancredo meant, but those are the parameters I would use.

My belief is that the unfettered influx of illegal immmigrants drives poverty to the USA because it pushes wages lower for all Americans some of whom often end depending upon welfare instead of jobs. Our economy needs educated skilled workers not millions more that are neither. We need the agricultural and construction industry to develop mechanized methods of doing things using skilled engineers and operators....and not depend on cheap labor. Most importantly those that hire illegal workers to advance their bottom line should face serious consequences.