Fringe? For How Long?

(10:30PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

In case you missed this gem, Bob Cesca wrote a great piece for the Huffington Post.  It is one of the most honest pieces I’ve seen in a while.

If the Republicans ever manage to retake Congress, they will absolutely try to impeach President Obama. And it’ll be based upon a supremely ridiculous charge such as, say, the president refusing to nourish our crops with a sports drink instead of water.

Okay, so maybe the Idiocracy example is over-the-top, but if we follow the current trajectory of far-right attacks to their logical yet insane conclusion, it makes sense in a very eerie way. Have you seen the television commercials solemnly defending our right to poison our kids with “juice drinks and soda?” There you go.

I’ve been following the Republican descent into the realms of the bizarre for some time now, and it wasn’t until the “czars” thing broke that I became convinced that if they retook Congress the Republicans might try to impeach the president. The grounds for both the impeachment and the language used to sell it will likely be fabricated by either Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh.

And, as great as this entire piece is, and trust me, you want to read it word for word through its entirety, there was one part of it that floored me…

Cesca writes:

Nevertheless, there’s a growing conventional wisdom in the press alleging that both sides of the political spectrum are equally guilty of wackaloon attacks and conspiracy theories.

Granted there might be one or two very fringe exceptions but this is otherwise a false equivalency written by the establishment media as part of their self-conscious effort to seem balanced. The distinction is that any “fringe” attacks from the left during the Bush years weren’t mainstreamed and legitimized the way the wingnut attacks are today, even though the fringe attacks from the left turned out to be mostly accurate.

On the right, we’re hearing about communist takeovers, birth certificates, Oval Office dress codes, teleprompters, death panels, czars and a return to segregated buses. During the previous administration, on the other hand, the left insisted that Iraq didn’t have WMD. This turned out to be true. The left insisted that there wasn’t a connection between Saddam and 9/11. Also true. The left alleged that George W. Bush was incompetent. The rest of the nation caught up with the left when Katrina slammed into New Orleans, shattering the levees while Bush was eating cake with John McCain.

Some, but not all, of the left thought Bush had prior knowledge of the September 11th attacks. It’s a matter of record that he knew an attack might be imminent based upon the famous PDB titled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.” So that one was partially true.

Wait.  Bob Cesca admits that there are known facts about 9/11 that are, indeed, facts?  Cue black helicopters! Check.  Cue twilight zone music! Check.  Cue banning from Daily Kos… 3… 2… 1…

Ok, seriously, it isn’t like Bob Cesca is endorsing a theory, conspiracy or otherwise, but, there are journalists from the Left that are finally getting it.  Maybe some of us aren’t as crazy as they thought.  Maybe when you see a little smoke, there is indeed a fire (large or small).  And, maybe there are facts that simply are facts, even if they might be misinterpreted.

As I noted last night, Glenn Greenwald can be (by some people’s definition) added to the CT crowd:

The factions that exert the most dominant influence on our foreign policy have only one principle:  a state of permanent warfare is necessary (the public and private military industry embraces that view because wars are what bestow them with purpose, power and profits, and the Foreign Policy Community does so because — as Gelb says — it bestows “political and professional credibility”).  In his 1790 Political Observation, James Madison warned:  “Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded. . . . No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”  Can anyone doubt that “continual warfare” is exactly what the U.S. does and, by all appearances, will continue to do for the foreseeable future (at least until we not only run out of money to pay for these wars — as we already have — but also the ability to finance these wars with more debt)?  That proposition is indisputable; it’s true by definition.  Doesn’t turning ourselves into a permanent war-fighting state have some rather serious repercussions that ought to be weighed when deciding if that’s something we really want to keep doing?

There are plenty of examples throughout history of our government lying to its people, especially when it comes to going to war.  Once we are in that war, the lies simply keep coming.  Vietnam.  Mai Lai.  Killing squads like Tiger Force.  Torture.  Executions.  Prisoner death from being tortured.  You name it, we’ve already been told the lies.

We’ve already had the whistleblower’s.  Tyler Drumheller.  Ray McGovern.  Paul O’Neil.  Sibel Edmunds.  The list goes on and on.  

We’ve already had very suspicious incidents.  McConnell, Bush’s IT guru, has his plane crash.  Nuclear weapons are transferred from Minot AFB to Barksdale AFB and nobody knows it.  

We’ve already watched the same names involved in past crimes surface time and again.  Dick Cheney.  Donald Rumsfeld.  Negroponte.  Elliot Abrams.

We are already finding out that campaign promises mean nothing to President Obama.  DOMA.  DADT.  Public Option.  Transparency.  Rule of Law.  We now have Volcker flat saying that Obama wants to maintain “too big to fail”.

So, maybe it’s not that we are the nuts, the “fringe”, but, simply the people who aren’t bought and paid for, who actually think for ourselves.

Maybe we are the people rightfully asking how is it that John McCain loses the Presidential election by the largest margin in recent history, yet, is continually all over the talk shows?  How is it that media, almost every “mainstream” media out there, continually bows to the conservative agenda?  How is it that nobody seemed to know, or when they did care, that “sneak and peek” searches were being abused when we knew six months after the Patriot Act that the Dept. of Justice was out teaching law enforcement how to abuse it?

“Within six months of passing the Patriot Act, the Justice Department was conducting seminars on how to stretch the new wiretapping provisions to extend them beyond terror cases,” said Dan Dodson, a spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. “They say they want the Patriot Act to fight terrorism, then, within six months, they are teaching their people how to use it on ordinary citizens.”

We see things.  We read things.  We question.  Establishments don’t like that, and frankly, when people are being paid, they go along with much so that they can continue being paid.

I don’t think we are a “fringe”, nor, do I believe we hurt ourselves by posting here.  Keep in mind, DK and other sites didn’t grow overnight.  They grew because people wanted, needed, a new outlet that was different from the mainstream crap they were being fed.  

Keep that in mind…