Author: Gerardo Orlando (Page 161 of 169)

Great new ad

September 13, 2006 / Gerardo Orlando

VoteVets.org has a powerful new ad targeting George Allen and his failure to vote for improved body armor for our troops in Iraq. The ad is very simple yet very effective.

The organization is raising money so they can continue to show the ad and to create similar ads targeting other Senators who voted against this important protection.

The bottom line is this – when our government sent these troops to Iraq, many of them were not given the ncessary body armor to protect them. Many soldiers had to purchase this body armor on their own because the government would not foot the bill. Many units also did not have armored humvees.

This is a disgrace, and it undermines the chest-thumping claims of patriotism by the Bush Administration and the GOP cheering section. It’s time to hold them accountable.

Jim Webb has closed the gap in Virginia. This ad might help him score a huge upset and help the Democrats take over the Senate.

Iraq War, Senate 2006, War on Terror

Bush’s political speech

September 12, 2006 / Gerardo Orlando

Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey of Newsweek posted an excellent article explaining how Bush’s 9/11 address to the nation last night in prime time fits into his political strategy. Money quote:

The most important hallmark is a passive-aggressive strategy—to land a punch without looking like you’re in a fight. So Bush took the high road of patriotism, as he called for Democrats to stop opposing his policies in Iraq and elsewhere. “Winning this war will require the determined efforts of a unified country,” Bush said, “and we must put aside our differences and work together to meet the test that history has given us.”
Nothing in his speech, and nothing outside it, suggests that President Bush is ready to meet his critics half-way in setting aside their differences. In the president’s view, the people playing politics—and dividing the nation—are those who oppose his approach. That may not be explicitly partisan politics, but it is political debate dressed up in patriotic clothes.
Earlier in the speech, he was more explicit about the most important of those differences: about how to end the military operations in Iraq.
Bush’s rhetorical strategy is twofold: first, issue a statement of fact about your own position; second, caricature your opponents to look foolish. First the statement of fact: “We’re training Iraqi troops so they can defend their nation. We’re helping Iraq’s unity government grow in strength and serve its people. We will not leave until this work is done,” he explained.
Second, the caricature: “Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone,” he said. “They will not leave us alone. They will follow us.”
Are there any senior Democrats who have said that troops should leave Iraq in the hope that “terrorists would leave us alone?” The Democratic argument is that troops should leave Iraq either to encourage Iraqis to take control, or simply to avoid greater casualties in what looks like a low-grade civil war.

They nailed it. When you break it down, it becomes apparant how offensive this strategy can be.

Now, instead of complaining about the tactics, the Democrats need to fight back. They need to challenge his statements and hit back hard.

Iraq War, War on Terror

Iraq War War on Terror

MSNBC is a joke

August 24, 2006 / Gerardo Orlando

MSNBC just interupted one of its programs for BREAKING NEWS!! What could be so important? They had live footage of John Mark Karr’s plane landing in Colorado.

Are they trying to become a caricature of themselves? How lame can cable news get?

I was hopeful that things would improve at MSNBC when Dan Abrams took over. He made a couple of good moves, like dumping yanking Rita Cosby’s show. But now we’re getting tabloid TV at its worst with the Jon Bonet coverage, and the nightly “Doc Block” documentaries are embarrassing. Instead of covering violent prison life over and over and over again, do you think a news organization like NBC could manage a documentary or two on the Middle East, stem-cell research or some other issue affecting our nation?

Meanwhile, MSNBC seems to have stopped covering the Iraq War. Maybe their reporters need a break following the around the clock coverage of the war in Lebanon, but some coverage of the fiasco in Iraq seems appropriate.

Pathetic. I can’t watch FOX. Maybe I’ll have to go back to CNN.

Media

Lanny Davis is hysterical

August 8, 2006 / Gerardo Orlando

This is the only conclusion I can come to after reading the ridiculous column Mr. Davis wrote for the Wall Street Journal. His basic thesis – that liberals are also capable of “McCarthyism.” He came to this conclusion after campaigning for Jo Lieberman in the Connecticut Senate primary.

I came to believe that we liberals couldn’t possibly be so intolerant and hateful, because our ideology was famous for ACLU-type commitments to free speech, dissent and, especially, tolerance for those who differed with us. And in recent years–with the deadly combination of sanctimony and vitriol displayed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage–I held on to the view that the left was inherently more tolerant and less hateful than the right.
Now, in the closing days of the Lieberman primary campaign, I have reluctantly concluded that I was wrong. The far right does not have a monopoly on bigotry and hatred and sanctimony. Here are just a few examples (there are many, many more anyone with a search engine can find) of the type of thing the liberal blog sites have been posting about Joe Lieberman:
• “Ned Lamont and his supporters need to [g]et real busy. Ned needs to beat Lieberman to a pulp in the debate and define what it means to be an AMerican who is NOT beholden to the Israeli Lobby” (by “rim,” posted on Huffington Post, July 6, 2006).
• “Joe’s on the Senate floor now and he’s growing a beard. He has about a weeks growth on his face. . . . I hope he dyes his beard Blood red. It would be so appropriate” (by “ctkeith,” posted on Daily Kos, July 11 and 12, 2005).
• On “Lieberman vs. Murtha”: “as everybody knows, jews ONLY care about the welfare of other jews; thanks ever so much for reminding everyone of this most salient fact, so that we might better ignore all that jewish propaganda [by Lieberman] about participating in the civil rights movement of the 60s and so on” (by “tomjones,” posted on Daily Kos, Dec. 7, 2005).
• “Good men, Daniel Webster and Faust would attest, sell their souls to the Devil. Is selling your soul to a god any worse? Leiberman cannot escape the religious bond he represents. Hell, his wife’s name is Haggadah or Muffeletta or Diaspora or something you eat at Passover” (by “gerrylong,” posted on the Huffington Post, July 8, 2006).
• “Joe Lieberman is a racist and a religious bigot” (by “greenskeeper,” posted on Daily Kos, Dec. 7, 2005).
And these are some of the nicer examples.

This might be the dumbest argument I’ve ever seen from a well-known pundit. He’s comparing the vitriol we regularly hear from prominent right-wing idiots like Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Ann Coulter to the stupid and offensive comments of . . . . ANONYMOUS POSTS on liberal blogs. Is he joking? Can he be this stupid? Limbaugh, Savage and Coulter have millions of supporters and defenders on the right. Who is out there promoting or defending these hateful statements from anonymous posters? The answer = nobody!

He has the nerve to call this “Liberal McCarthyism?”

The only point Lanny has proven with his silly column is that there are jerks on the Internet who like posting crude and hateful comments on blogs. The same type of comments can be found on liberal blogs and conservative blogs. Sites like DailyKos.com regulary have flame wars where readers trade insults through the posts. They are not serious political commentators – just people looking for a good fight online.

His failure to highlight hateful speech from any prominent bloggers or commentators on the left in this column demonstrates that the left has been very respectful in most of the commentary involving this race – despite their burning desire to get rid of Lieberman.

Senate 2006