Dear Christ Andrew Sullivan nails it again

Look, the guy is a conservative, but lately he's been spot-on. Here goes:



Oo fuckin rah.

EDIT: add the link: http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/05/john-yoo-still-a-war-criminal.html

...add a handy link?

Unless you have one of those digital clocks with that am/pm light thingy on it then only once a day.

And we do ultimately want to get back to the situation where we respect our political opponents. I have read Sullivan for almost a decade because he challenges my thinking honestly and well. But on this topic we agree whole-heartedly.

....trusting the u.s. government in this era is a sign of low intelligence or brainwashing.

Of course, I assume and I may be wrong, if I don't agree with your response,
I may be accused of low intelligence or of being brainwashed, Correct?

Must mean that I trust the government.

While I find it very ironic that I am defending this government, your statement is,
excuse me and I heartily apologize if I am wrong, a sign of low intelligence and/or brainwashing.

I trust the commons.
I trust that I will receive my mail, have help if I have, god forgive, a fire in my home.
I trust the police will respond to my distress.
I trust that the snow, in the winter, will be somewhat removed from my streets, making my trip safer.
I trust those pesky potholes will be filled, after I complain numerous times.
I trust the airplane over my head will not just fall from the sky. Ok, maybe not government on this one, but.....
I trust that I will be safe tonight as I sleep.

These are little things we take for granted, does not mean the government was not involved.

Quite a blanket statement for one of such high intelligence and lack of brainwashing.

Further, I generally distrust conspiracy theorists or people working from the assumption that the government is evil by design.

It looks to me like your list is dependent on, or a product of, being in an affluent neighborhood/suburb. Commons (public parks and public schools?), post office, fire department, police, snow plowing, pothole filling... these are all public services that are being cut left and right in all but the most affluent neighborhoods/suburbs. Parks are being closed as staff funding is cut, firehouses are being "consolidated", new police aren't being hired as fast as administrators might like, city/county/state maintenance workers are being laid off and services reduced... everywhere that I know of. Except in the affluent (rich) neighborhoods/suburbs.

It's easy to have trust the government when you're rich. The government in the US is geared to serve the interests of the rich (if the government had any intention of serving the poor equally... there would've been campaign finance reform 150 years ago... but there wasn't and there won't be because the whole point of forcing politicians to raise money from the rich to run for office is to make sure that those pesky changes that allowed non-property owners, not to mention non-whites and non-males, won't change "what makes the country great").

Let's look at your last item in more detail though.

"I trust that I will be safe tonight as I sleep."—Once again, this is a sentiment that speaks of an affluent neighborhood/suburb. For all those in a city or even a rough suburb, there isn't any such trust, there is only the habit of hope/resignation. The government doesn't keep us safe at night when we sleep, statistics of improbability that we, specifically, will be the ones killed tonight are the only thing that we can "trust" in.

Overall, it sounds to me like all your trust in the government is a litany of your giving credit to the government for maintaining order in a place that is orderly by its very nature (the orderliness of the affluent who aren't desperate enough to misbehave in the kind of numbers that will begin to overwhelm the resources that the government decides is convenient to spend on "maintaining order").

The fact that you are here giving that credit to the government, rather than the affluence of the area, is reminiscent of the "spin" that is epitomized by the cliché notion that the police, etc., are the line of defense between good upstanding citizens and the criminals... when they are mostly just out on the streets protecting the property of the corporations and wealthy representatives of those corporations (though they will intervene on behalf of a non-rich citizen too, if it's not too much of an inconvenience to anyone that really matters).

When you've swallowed the spin, and you turn around and regurgitate it at the world... I call that being brainwashed.

Let's test the theory though, shall we? Why don't you go to your nearest big city (Boston, New York, Saint Louis, Chicago, Denver... whatever), find Martin Luther King (St., Dr., Blvd., whatever... because MLK is always in a "dodgy" neighborhood in any city)... and go ahead and lay down on the sidewalk there and go to sleep for the night.

Then, answer for yourself, the question: Did you trust that you would be safe as you slept that night?

If the answer is no... it's not the government that you trust, it is your own wealth. ;)

I am very wealthy, with the love and abundance that comes from family and friends.

I live in a mobile home that is 35 years old, in a community that has around 50% unemployment.

My wife and I run a cleaning business that lately has been slipping due to the economy.

I made less than $20,000 last year, my wife about $10,000.

I am almost 60. I remember the times before Reagan when we were in this together and still have
those rosy attitudes. It will happen again. Those days will come back. I may not see them, but I work
not only for me, but for my community.

My nearest large city Detroit or Pontiac, Michigan I am located almost smack dab in between.

when i talk about trusting the gov't i mean at a high level of trust that they are telling me what the real deal is in both foreign and domestic and general economic affairs.

they don't, and i reiterate: low intelligence or brainwashing.

maybe, just maybe, the osama killing happened just as we have been told (i don't trust that is so). but that is not the point. i can assure you with 99.9999% certainty that what we have been told about what happened on 9/11 is a lie. to believe otherwise is well...you know....so the death of bin laden is irrelevant, except in the sense of that just like sadaam hussein, we will not get to hear their stories. dead men tell no tales.

and this doesn't even get to your specific examples, which i can also assure, there are plans to private and make you pay further through the nose for, for less.

I live in Michigan, 2 of 3 of my kids are teachers, tell me about privatization, I know.

9/11, yeah sure, those buildings were "designed" to collapse in their own footprint!

No, we are not told the entire truth, ever. Question is do we really want to know?
I mean really know, everything, to paraphrase an old movie line "I don't think we could handle the truth".

I have been married for 38 years, believe me, as honest as my wife and I are with each other, there are little secrets.

I was in the Army Security Agency (ASA) when I served. I saw documents back in 1974-6 that no one in this country
should have seen. My job was redacting parts to change the classification, I.E. from Top Secret to Secret.
Rocked my world!

We as a people just do not need to know somethings, call it National Security or whatever.
All governments have secrets, the "need to know" is a real thing.

I am not of low intelligence and I feel as I am not brainwashed in that regard.
Its just we don't need to know everything. It could paralyze us as a people.

I have heard all the arguments over time, I still believe that statement.

our government lies to us all the time. this is inarguable. how can any people be expected to make reasonable decisions in a participatory democracy without the real info? can't happen.
we are being led astray and you trust, even knowing what you know.

paralysis? i think that is wildly speculative on your part. seems to me an equally likely outcome would be a revolution in government as we know it. i'm for ZERO secrets UNTIL we have a government that has PROVED its trustworthiness to me.

The only way to identify the time when the broken clock happens to be right is to have a working clock to compare it with.

he's not a total pub.

No, I mean, I've met the guy (DC is a small town) and I actually do like him. This is just some of the most forceful language I've seen him use.

But he eventually realized his idols were psychopaths who wanted him dead. Gotta give him some merit for that.

because he can't.

All I can say is that I'd gladly take more conservatives like him. Especially compared to the current crop.

I'd like an honest debate between honest people on the role of market vs. politics. Sadly he's exiled from the GOP.

What about him is conservative?

Most Liberals are personally fiscally conservative. That doesn't count.

He is a Liberal no matter what he says.

He's against radicalism from the left or the right. And he is inclined to let market forces decide outcomes when possible, much more than I think is reasonable, but he has shown himself willing to listen to reason about, for example, how that's a stupid idea when it comes to health care.

If you look at normal business, restaurants for example, I support "market forces" deciding success and failure. Who doesn't?

Point is, that isn't conservatism, it's a myth about Liberals created by the Republican party.

If you look at normal business, restaurants for example, I support "market forces" deciding success and failure. Who doesn't?

Castro, I suppose.

A friend of mine described it as the "iPods and Interstates" spectrum. Pretty much the entire world agrees that the iPods should pretty much only be distributed by market forces, and that Interstates should pretty much only be distributed by public decisionmaking (the positions to the right and left of that are largely caricatures at this point). We all have different levels of comfort with different spots between those two, though.

One thing he'd like more market forces involved with is education. Another is pharmaceuticals. His main concern is that public decisionmaking inevitably becomes political favorgiving (and has done devastating critiques of our agriculture and food policies based on that premise).

That is the great fallacy of modern "free market" theory. All the virtues they ascribe to it arise from active competition. Take away the competitive aspect and you end up with something very much like the old Soviet centrally planned economy, or maybe worse. Businesspeople have a dirty little secret--they all want to corner their markets and become monopolists. They hate competition. It makes them work too hard. It makes them slaves to the whims of their customers. That's exactly what we need, and exactly what they praise when extolling the advantages of a "free market." Then they try their hardest to destroy that.

Take the pharmaceuticals industry. Suppose you had active competition between dozens of drug companies, fighting for customers on price and effectiveness of their products. Innovation would flourish. Patients would benefit, and find cures. Now suppose one or a few companies colluding with each other dominated that market. Why innovate? Why cure people? Why not stick customers with treatments they would need to take for life at whatever prices the companies felt like setting? They could use their extreme wealth and power to buy legislation preventing, oh, say, importation of cheaper drugs from a neighboring country. They could buy up any new competitors before they upset the balance of power, and their lobbyists could persuade the legal and political authorities to agree not to pursue anti-trust charges. Customers can only choose between what's offered them. If they are offered no real choice, then the natural selection part of a Darwinian marketplace doesn't exist, and the market can't evolve.

monopolists."

Wow, with one sentence you may have nailed nearly everything that's wrong w/ the neolib ideologues. What they want is outright domination of their opponents. If the capitalists' ethos was more akin to the Greek agon, where it's about gamemanship and pushing each other to perform at their best, we all would be much better off. But the capitalist is usually a heartless predator, not a sportsman. They'd kill us all if it meant bagging more profit.

Bookmarking your post. So eloquently expressed!

When you get out of the realm of small business and into the realm of large corporations, government is a servant, not a hindrance. Government happily codifies your demands into law, shovels tax money into your operation, enforces your will outside the nation with military force when need be, and takes your calls on Sundays with an anxious "yes sir".

Big business is absolutely dependent on government, and many of them would be bankrupt in a year if they had to operate like actual businesses.

1. He's British (OK, American now, but still a Brit). 50 or 30 or 20 years ago, conservatives in the UK were about as conservative as the Republicans in the US. There has been significant rightward drift in the US Republican Party, though, whereas the Tories have stayed pretty much where they were under Thatcher--very conservative, obviously, but not freaky crazy like our Republicans have become.

2. The next bit is more complicated. Though he earns his living writing, Sullivan holds a Ph.D. in political science, as do I. Coincidentally, his dissertation adviser was Harvey Mansfield, who also the dissertation adviser to one of my own dissertation readers. It's a small club. Mansfield himself was, of course, one of Leo Strauss' students. The students of Strauss and Strauss' students is a rather small club and, though I don't know Sullivan and have met Mansfield only once, I understand where he's coming from. Sullivan himself is not a Straussian, but wrote his dissertation on Michael Oakeshot, which, again, puts him firmly in the camp of traditional British conservative (liberal) political theory. Sullivan's credentials as an academic conservative are absolutely impeccable, and the things that he believes are in line with what conservatives have traditionally stood for: it is, again, a token of how crazy the modern GOP has become that someone like Sullivan sounds like a liberal in comparison to the standard bearers of the GOP, though Sullivan himself would certainly classify himself as a liberal, but used, of course, in the traditional sense of the definition of liberalism you would find in the UK or in political theory. As an academic conservative, Sullivan still believe in ideas. He can discuss them rationally, and would probably be an agreeable person with whom to hold a conversation about politics, even if, or especially if, you happened to disagree with him. In contrast, I would argue that the modern GOP literally stands for nothing, nothing except naked power. They have an ideology, sure, but more than that they have a central body that disseminates an orthodoxy in the form of talking points to those who wish to ape them. There is no thought involved. This is not, traditionally, what conservatives have believed in, nor is it what most academic conservatives stand for today.

they are beyond the debate for universal health because they know it is a good system - even when it needs help. My Aussie family are "liberals" in the same sense. The Liberal Party is the right wing party in Australia it's not the Wacky Wing like the GOP is here. Here they are just empty suits, devoid of ideas, hungry for money and power and will do anything to get it. They cannot govern.

The closest comparison to the current GOP imho is the BNP or Nationalist Party in Australia. And, right or left no one really wants those guys to have any real power. Though in some parts of Australia they get a MP in and when they do all hell raises up.

Been living in the US again for 11yrs now. And have seen this country take huge steps to the right - what concerns me is that the Democrats also lean to the right as the center keeps being moved. The center is no longer a true center but right of Ray-gun imho, we must pull back toward the left to gain a true center again.

Cheers
Sandy
Edit to add: my eldest is named Andrew Sullivan, Australian born. He's a Democrat though LOL.

British conservatives are for the most part not at all like American "conservatives" who are not conservative at all in any historically significant meaning of the word; American "conservatives" are extremist right-wing reactionaries.

Conservative used to mean "leave the constitution alone and read it word for word", like it or not.

Now it means "Rip the whole thing up, and follow a Protestant interpretation of the Bible".

Libitarians are truly conservative. Talk to one. I'm not guaranteeing that you will like everyting, or anything, that they say, but that's the conservative arguement.

Neo-cons, are just selfish bastards trying to get over the poor by dominating the political conversation.

that today's US rightwingers are not conservatives, but reactionary regressives. His contempt and disdain for them and their bagger ilk is boundless and he expresses it with great regularity.

He has repeatedly and sincerely regretted his support for the Iraq war, is as staunch a defender of gay marriage as exists (and is married to his husband Aaron), and seems like a thoroughly decent sort of duck. I disagree with him often but he is intelligent, relfective and willing to admit when he is wrong.

We would all be a whole hell of a lot better off with more like Andrew Sullivan and a hell of a lot less Gingriches, TurtleMen and Orange Boners.

"Because when the full truth of these past years are fully in focus, they will be revealed as some of the greatest criminals ever to have wielded power in America."

just saying...

Sorry... but yeah I know that whole bear look is tres chic now. I feel a parallel heartache every time I see Rachel.

Did you see her on TDS the other night, with the glasses?! :loveya:

:loveya:

Sullivan used to be very right wing.,....

Though for that matter I am too in some ways (I think big systematic changes can do more harm than good). But, yeah, he's written a lot about how his views haven't changed in the past decade but suddenly the country went way to the right of him.

from the GOP in crowd. He flipped over the torture debate and while I still get furious at him at times, he will listen, he has changed his mind on many issues but what is fascinating to watch is how he sees his former buds in the GOP. He is shocked at what we've been living with for 30 years. With the dishonesty, the GOPs ability to take over the dialogue, how mean spirited and immoral it is.

He is interesting to read. He'll never be one of us (he loves Reagan and Thatcher...still...(shakes head)) but he is interesting.

But Tories hold some views that modern American conservatives would call socialist.

Also, agreed: he's one of the few conservatives who can still change my mind about some things.

I too read him. It used to be a kind of "know your enemy" (whilst admiring his writing damn him) but now I just enjoy his thought processes. He's interesting. I'd love to go to dinner with him.

An excellent OP. Thanks for posting. K & R.

He has changed my mind on a few things, and he's been refreshingly open to having his mind changed. Plus his beagles are cute (he lives a few blocks from me and I see them most weekends).

I subscribed to "The Economist" for years in order to get a well reasoned, well written, small "c" conservative viewpoint.

I also used to describe myself as "slightly left of center".

I would argue that neither I, nor The Economist, nor Mr Sullivan have changed views dramatically. However, now I'd but Mr. Sullivan as "right of center", the Economist as "small l" liberal sometimes, and myself as "slightly left of Gandhi.

sad that almost 50% of our population is delusional

So the good news there, is that group psychoses tend to peter out sooner or later.....they kind of are self-limiting.

At the same time, it's excrutiating, waiting for it to cycle through, I must admit...... :(


Among other things, this is A MASSIVE break through the propaganda lies. It is just what was needed,

Thank you President Obama,
the ripples out from this will be very positive for jolting people out of the Kool Aid Kafe.

He believes in the things Barry Goldwater believed in. He's the kind of conservative we can talk and even work with toward a common goal.

Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, the late and unlamented Jesse Helms, Charles and David Koch, Dick Armey, Scott Walker, Rick Snyder, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Jim DeMint, Steve King, Pam Geller, Mitch McConnell, John Boener, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and too many others of today's GOP/Tea Party who call themselves conservatives are right wing ideologues, racists, sectarian bigots, homophobes, imperialists, fascists, misogynists and even just plain crooks. None of those just named has any more right to call himself a conservative than does the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

at some point, and we can all roll up our sleeves and engage in real political debate. But as long as we practice and enforce crook capitalism, it's the crooks we will have to deal with. The world is in need of a labor resurgence like never before. A few more decades of this and neoliberalism may well go on to dominate the world for an unthinkably long time.

Astonishing.

there are a few left that I respect, not many... I used to like Chuck Hegal

used to be I could respect someone rational with a differing view, now that differing view is most often so different I can't even recognize it as something from my realm

Should someone tell Obama's new CIA head, when he's defending waterboarding?

:shrug:

n/t

The Bushies began spreading lies and disinformation on Monday morning. . . They came crawling out of the woodwork to cover their butts: Andrew Card, James Baker, Condi Rice, Ari Fleischer, Rumsfeld, heck, Cheney was even pulled off the respirator to give a quick plug for torture.

These people have no shame. They were never held accountable for the eight years of hell they brought down on this country. So it will go on and on.

It is the media that allows them to spin their little hearts out. Anyone speaking the truth is pretty much ignored or at least mitigated by the so-called "moderates" who go along for the ride. As for full truth emerging at some point. It will never happen because the media doesn't want it to. The few with access to mass media who do call the revisionists out for their lies are called rude and "partisan."

Rec

the Iraq invasion from the beginning? No time to do the research, sorry, but I don't remember him doing that. I maintain that there were a lot of influential people who were smart enough to understand that Bush and Cheney were lying like crazy to get their war but only started speaking against it after things started going south. Those people, and there are a lot of them including high ranking Dems, deserve no credit at all.

His line is that he believed Rumsfeld had a plan for the occupation; once it became clear he didn't, he dropped his support.

Here's his explanation in Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2187098/

no one should ever allow Sullivan to forget how vehement he was in his support of Bush and Cheney and all they did for so long. In addition to putting his own opinion out there, he took it upon himself to characterize those who protested or even questioned the war in terms I would call McCarthyite. He was part of the whole process, and he did so without question because of his political ideology. Sure, people can be wrong and later learn better, but when a person never ceases presenting themselves as a source of wisdom after shameless cheer leading for what he now sees was criminal behavior, after slandering those who were correct about such important matters, it is always worthwhile to remember the facts of that person's past. Sullivan has on a few occasions been recklessly and dogmatically incorrect about issues of life and death, and that when he has done so, he never stops selling the next opinion, being a propagandist for criminals does not seem to give the man personal pause. He simply brushes off his part in making that war and in making the divisive environment that silenced opinions outside the Sullivan views.
I mean, he said he was comforted by the idea of Cheney being present on 9-11. He's a chump, clearly. Correct sometimes, and well spoken, but I'm sorry, comforted by Cheney, and thus engaged in promotion of criminal actions and the slandering of liberals.
It just should not be forgotten, all that he wrote, all that he said, the energy he expended and how massively wrong he was.

nt

and who said releasing Obama's birth certificate was a mistake.
Guess he's right on some things, sometimes.

time we had a president who was eager to get bin Laden.

he has said he was wrong, talked about the mistakes he made, and changed the way he treats government information sources.

IMO.

...disqualifies them from ever speaking about anything.

This is actually a crime in some circumstances. Obviously, not with regard to what Sullivan did, but if you can so casually accept his apology and 'let bygones be byones', maybe you're a better person than me, but I can't let that go.

But oh that more "conservatives" were even capable of admitting they were wrong.

:hi:

without the benefits that some of these highly sophisticated, presumably educated, and supremely connected arseholes have. And, yes, why should they ever talk about anything again, I say. With all of those resources and all of that access, they were wrong, period.

Apologies are worthless. The original act did whatever damage and apologies don't do crap.

has changed his mind and said he was wrong to support the Iraq war. I like a person who admits when they were wrong.

Thanks for the thread, Recursion.

They have absolutely no decency at all. I am in horror when I think of the 8 years of Bush. (And the Corp media seems more like the national enquirer.)

The Bush cartel was/is a fascist coup.

Fascists, are by definition conservative too. BTW.

has been the Obama Administration itself, shielding its predecessor.

And as I said before O was inaugurated, if we don't get the full truth on what happened during the Bushler years quickly, while the blood is still fresh and the small fry are scared enough to talk, then we never will. It's much worse than never getting closure: a precedent will have been set. The next Closet Fascist repuke President will be enabled to go much further than Bush and Cheney did, since all their crimes will have been in effect rendered normal and permissible. It's not enough for Obama to simply choose (slightly) different policies that are more in line with our Constitutional tradition. Where Bush and Cheney crossed the line, prosecutions MUST follow, or else that tradition is lost - it will be no longer our tradition, a constitutional tradition, since following it is evidently optional.

What you expressed has also been my concern, and my primary argument why it is absolutely necessary to bring the Bush criminals to justice. It's not about partisan political retribution -- it's about the prevention of similar or worse crimes in the future by administrations emboldened by the new "norm" of what they can do with impugnity.

govs in Mi, WI, FL to name a few. They are emboldened, they ignore court orders and continue forward with their agenda of massive land/power grabs - inside the US. My huge fear is someone like Gov Snyder of MI becoming President - what we see these states going through we would see on a federal level. The right has always been able to get the worst of it's agenda passed - and lets not forget the Iraq war would not have happened without the assistance of Dems in the House/Senate (Kerry, Clinton, Edwards to name a few).

I take some hope in Snyder's EMS/Benton Harbor take over being ruled unconstitutional and an immediate halt called for by the court. Everything these bastards get through and get away with ups the ante if/when one of them gets into the WH (which is a matter of time unless someone goes to jail for the land/power grabs. RE: international diplomacy/Iraq war crimes I have little hope anyone will be held responsible. Though the people are fed up with these wars which would make it harder for them to continue to do w/o the support of the public)

Scary days ahead, I sincerely hope some major change happens over the next 6yrs to stop the wan ton abuse of the law.

Cheers
Sandy

/rant off

For Obama to shield the W administration is an absolutely horrific thing for this country.

Wish there was a "greatest posts" page, which is where this belongs.

place. That was the reason Cheney had so much power in government. He had been a political appointee for so long (as was Papa Bush - who was in Nixon's WH) and helped make sure he had plenty of folks on their side via appointments in departments that we do not hear to much about but they are the real players behind the scenes.

When Obama didnt (couldnt?!) clean house when he took over the WH I knew we were in trouble. We have a Democrat President surrounded by people appointed by the Bush Administration. From the Pentagon to the Justice Dept. Those folks still work for Cheney and co. It's no surprise that they havent gone after the criminals. The criminals are still in charge.

Cheers
Sandy

THAT is the question.

COWBOY SWAGGER loses.

He must be like Jim Carrey in Me, Myself & Irene

But didn't most all repubs vote against the repeal of dadt.

Whenever I see Andrew Sullivan, the first thing I think of is "your on the wrong team"

:kick:

:eyes:

We can make any shit up we please I guess now.

The Bush gang deserves much more credit for their hideous failures.

But he has always been solid left leaning.

He's always made sense.

Conservative?

in a political climate that pushes the political debate further and further to the right. In any other Country he would be centre right.

You can't argue with these people they are 2 dumb for words.

pre
during
and post

and it's like he's relaying some kind of incredible miraculous revelation.

I admit, it is rare and almost miraculous for a conservative to see and speak truth, (yay) but WTF?

330 recs? For what? Because it was said by a conservative, and this gives it weight, and validity?

There is nothing new here. I've been reading basically this same thing on DU for almost a week now.

It's really very disturbing.

Yeah, this guy. The racist who promoted the Bell Curve. The misogynist who has just amazing attitudes towards female politicians. The asshole who spent the better part of the 1990's calling liberal LGBTers attack queers. The religious hypocrite who told any Middle American who would listen about how gay men are promiscuously ruled by their craven libidos while he secretly advertised for unprotected sex while he was HIV positive. The wonderful human being who called liberals a fifth column after 9/11 and intimated we were all a bunch of treasonous bastards. The brave, independent commenter who is, even now, explaining why the poor and middle class have to have their entitlements taken away while he receives only the best of care and takes entire months off to deal with his own illnesses. The Andrew Sullivan who, just last month, called Paul Ryan the only serious fiscally-minded politician in the room.

That Andrew Sullivan.

The man sticks his finger in the wind and goes where he thinks he will benefit. For now, he's all about Obama. But just wait. If the Democratic Party's fortunes change and a Republican becomes popular, he'll turn on a dime and go back to being the One True Conservative cheering on the destruction of America's underclass.

I wish people would pay attention to just who they think is awesome any given week. This guy has been destructive in a way that few pundits have, and I for one will not forgive or forget simply because he's coming down on our side for the time being on a handful of issues.

:applause::applause::applause: