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Do Neo-Con/Artists really believe their own B.S.?

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Vyan Donating Member (990 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-16-07 10:50 AM
Original message
Do Neo-Con/Artists really believe their own B.S.?

Do the wingnuts really believe their own bull-crap our are they just trying to convince the rest of us by convincing themselves?

Case in point: Poor Little Timmeh Griffin, in the midst of crying his eyes out because It's Hard out there for a Political Pimp, says he's been so misunderstood, and the Internets are so mean...

Obviously, I’ve seen the Internet stuff about caging. First of all, the allegations that are on the Internet and have spread through the tabloids are completely and absolutely false, number one. And ridiculous. Caging, as you may know, I had it looked up, is a direct-mail term for basically organizing returned mail. ... And I’ll just say that it’s so untrue. ... This is all made up and faux pas. I didn’t cage votes, I didn’t cage mail, I didn’t cage animals, I’m not a zookeeper.

Pardon me, but did he just call African American Soldiers in Iraq - Animals?

First of all, the entire "Caging" stuff didn't come from "The Internets" or from "Tabloids" - it came from the BBC and Greg Palast's New York Times Best Seller "Armed Madhouse."

Via Truthout...

A confidential campaign directed by GOP party chiefs in October 2004 sought to challenge the ballots of tens of thousands of voters in the last presidential election, virtually all of them cast by residents of Black-majority precincts.

Files from the secret vote-blocking campaign were obtained by BBC Television Newsnight, London. They were attached to emails accidentally sent by Republican operatives to a non-party website.

One group of voters wrongly identified by the Republicans as registering to vote from false addresses: servicemen and women sent overseas.

...

Here's how the scheme worked: The RNC mailed these voters letters in envelopes marked, "Do not forward", to be returned to the sender. These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney campaign as "undeliverable."

The lists of soldiers of "undeliverable" letters were transmitted from state headquarters, in this case Florida, to the RNC in Washington. The party could then challenge the voters' registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballot being counted.

According to these emails, Tim Griffin was intimately involved in these attempts to block black servicemen - who were very likely to be Democrats - from their right to vote.

"Caging" is not just a "direct mail term" - it's a violation of the Voting Rights Act and oh by the way - it's unconstitutional.

Amendment XV

Section. 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section. 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Tim didn't have to "have it looked up" - he was the one who told Monica Goodling about it as he bragged that the U.S. Press hadn't yet picked up the BBC story.

Palast first reported on the caging list operation for BBC Television’s premier current affairs show, Newsnight, in 2004. In a February 7, 2007 email obtained by subpoena from Rove’s office, Griffin boasted that, "No national media picked up" the BBC story. Griffin attached an excerpt of Armed Madhouse.

Griffin sent his remarks to Monica Goodling

It should also be noted, for the few of us who've been hiding under a rock for the past couple weeks, that Griffin's tearful depature as the Non-Senate Confirmed Interim U.S. Attorney for Arkansas ended abruptly after Greg Palast shared all of his documentation on that little "direct mailing scheme" of his with Judiciary Chairman John Conyers.

Tim Griffin, formerly right hand man to Karl Rove, resigned Thursday as US Attorney for Arkansas hours after BBC Television ‘Newsnight’ reported that Congressman John Conyers requested the network’s evidence on Griffin’s involvement in ‘caging voters.’

Coincidence? I think not.

This is not made up. This is not a faux pas.

Tim now says that "Public Service isn't worth it" as he goes from one public service job as a U.S. Attorney with no practical prosecutorial experience to a public service job working in the presidential campaign of a guy who hasn't yet announced he's running for president.

A regular Mr. Private Sector that Griffin is.

Maybe the fact that he couldn't find a job for a reputable law firm has something to do with it.

"His timing is just bad," says a Washington recruiter at a national search firm. "He’s a politico, not a litigator, which people just don’t care about. If you’re a U.S. attorney with no experience someone is not going to bring you on board to create or enhance a practice."

Now it's fairly unlikely that Justice will ever be served in Tim's case since his ole pal Monica and Brad Scholzman have already purged and politicized the DOJ's Civil Rights Division of practically anyone who might actually try to prosecute Mr. Griffin for his crimes by filling it with "Good (white male christian right-wing) Americans."

I admit I might be reading between the lines here but I wonder - why should they care if a few "black animals" lost their right to vote, eh?

Or even worse - if some of those Damn-dirty Democrats had their civil rights violated?

So Griffin can cry his crocodile tears about how he's been treated so unfairly and is now a pariah in the legal profession he's worked "so hard" to master, but he's still going to get off scott free instead of serving the five years in federal prison he deserves for voter suppression.

Who'se he trying to kid? The rest of us or himself?

Vyan

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librechik Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-16-07 11:29 AM
Response to Original message
1. They can add "I don't even know what that is" to "I don't recall"
and get through any appearance before congress!

my question is, Tim looked it up on the internet to find that "caging" is a direct mail term. How did Monica know that "caging" is a direct mail term? Is this the script they were given to read if anybody asked about caging?
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Demeter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-16-07 11:49 AM
Response to Original message
2. I Think That Deep Down In Their Hearts, Most Cons Believe Their Game
or at least, believe that their game is justified, if not legal. Many believe that it is legal and moral, besides.

But they aren't 100% sure, so they do a hard sell on everyone else at every opportunity. And they can't handle reality worth squat.

Nor can they handle reality-based people....so they tend to bunch together to share the delusion.
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Jackpine Radical Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jun-17-07 10:32 AM
Response to Reply #2
4. The followers of Leo Strauss--
Edited on Sun Jun-17-07 10:32 AM by Jackpine Radical
at least the ones who know who Leo Strauss was--believe that they are the only ones smart, visionary and pragmatic enough to actually run things, and they have to keep the ignorant masses deceived in order to continue exercising the power that only they are properly endowed to wield. Therefore any lies, deceptions, or collateral damage they might inflict on the benighted sheep are right and necessary. They govern with a degree of certitude that is accessible to only the most evil of narcissists--which is, of course, what they are.

I hope this comes somewhere near answering the rhetorical question you posed in your subject line.
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PurpleChez Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-16-07 02:44 PM
Response to Original message
3. IMHO, I think that you have it backwards
Edited on Sat Jun-16-07 02:44 PM by PurpleChez
in your opening comment -- I generally believe that the thugs are trying to convince themselves by convincing the rest of us. This bunch (the thugs on the street, as well as politicians, hate radio goons, etc., seem to have an unprecedented need to believe that this specific president posesses papal infallibility and must never, ever be questioned, and that those who nonetheless dare to question him must be discredited and destroyed. At 41 I remember the Reagan years from start to finish, and I know that people loved the old goon, even before he died. But I just don't remember people having this obsessive, almost psychotic need for him to have been right about Everything, Every time. People disagreed with him about apartheid, about "Star Wars," etc., and it didn't necessarily trigger some automatic frenzy of accusations (that those who disagreed were traitors), personal attacks, vilification, and so on. Not Reagan, not Bush the Elder, not Dole...I am dumbfounded that they have chosen THIS imbicile to be the focus of unquestioning devotion.
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diane in sf Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jun-17-07 02:48 PM
Response to Original message
5. I'm really hoping to see little Timmy arrested. But I won't hold my breath. eom
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