Some loose ends

Three completely unconnected things:

FAIR on the "Chavez is anti-semitic" meme (found via LGFW). Norm raised this issue and dealt with it long before anyone else jumped on the bandwagon. I don't want to defend Chavez - he is a megalomaniac authoritarian whose rule is based on a cult of personality - but he is not the dastardly threat to peace and security that the conservative blogosphere think he is.

Google Blogocoped and Ars Technica on Google's jumping into bed with the totalitarian Chinese regime. China: everything bad about Stalinist dictatorship combined with everything bad about free market capitalism. Those people who are dissappointed in Google are foolish, though - corporations are corporations are corporations, whatever their mission statements are their primary objective is profit, and thinking some are groovier than others is daft.

Harold Meyerson
on Bush the incompetent. I'm getting sick and tired of George Bush - tired of defending him and apologising for him, tired of trying to persuade my friends he's not as stupid as he looks. Despite his correct decisions on some key foreign policy issues, his domestic policies have been probably the worst of any American president ever.

Comments

Alexander Wolfe said…
I can't figure out the right's irrational obsession with and fear of two-bit demagogues who dare to criticize us, and how that reconciles with their perfect willingness to ignore the threat of two-big demagogues who dare to criticize us and have nuclear weapons (hello North Korea.) Let the guy rant. The only thing we do is look ridiculous by even paying any attention to him.
Anonymous said…
"his domestic policies have been probably the worst of any American president ever": Not to nitpick, but presumably you mean any president since 1860 - since all of them before 1860 tolerated or even promoted slavery, for a start (and their attitudes to Native Americans and Mexicans weren't exactly enlightened either).
As for the record since 1860, is Bush really worse than Harding or Coolidge? or, for that matter, Nixon? Or his own father? Or Reagan? Really?
Hmm, this needs more thinking and less knee-jerking, I suspect.
bob said…
Eleanor, you are of course right. I was in a Friday bad mood when I wrote that. I guess I really meant 'recently' rather than 'ever'. The slavery point is very important, as people's short memories and narrow frames of reference mean they jump ('jerk') to daft statements like mine, or, worse, like 'Bush is the real terrorist' or 'America is becoming fascist'.

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