Douchebags of Liberty

Lies, distortions and general scumbaggery…on a daily basis we are bombarded by the ugly rhetoric of the Republican Party.  Spread out through a days worth of news, the total effect tends to be diluted, so what follows is a compilation of the more egregious examples culled from yesterday’s headlines.  

Presented in no particular order…

Arlen Specter:

Specter said that election-season politics may be what’s standing in the way of finding a solution to the insurgency in Iraq. “My instinct is, once the election is over, there will be a lot more hard thinking about what to do about Iraq and a lot more candid observations about it,” he said.

Well sure.  After all, there have only been 2703 servicemen killed in Iraq, so let’s wait until after the election to be honest and to start thinking about a solution.  

Dick Cheney:

…Democratic leaders aren’t doing enough to fight terrorism and said Americans must “reject any strategy of resignation and defeatism in the face of determined enemies.”

Indeed.  How dare the Minority Party question the “stay the course” strategy of the war that the latest National Intelligence Estimate says, “has made the overall terrorism problem worse.”  And speaking of the NIE…

Tony Snow:

In short, the news reports contain nothing that the President hasn’t said.

Funny, I don’t remember Bush mentioning that his war is making the terrorism problem worse or that, “the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo” has “stoked the jihad movement.”  And in a related story, there was this reaction to the unofficial Democratic hearings on Iraq…

Trent Lott:

They better stop this. This will be the last one or there will be retribution. They’re abusing the system.

As opposed to abusing the Constitution by the complete abrogation of their oversight duty by the Republican Party?  And on that same hearing…

John Cornyn:

Today’s `hearing’ is an election-year smokescreen aimed at obscuring the Democrats’ dismal record on national security.

I repeat, Minority Party and NIE.  ‘Nuff said. And let’s move from National Security to personal bigotry…

Felix Allen:

The story and his comments and assertions in there are completely false. I don’t remember ever using that word and it is absolutely false that that was ever part of my vocabulary.

And macaca was a nickname for Mohawk, or he made the word up, or he had never heard of it and by the way, that Confederate Flag was a part of a collection and he had no idea that the CCC was a racist group.  And speaking of vile…

Peter Roskam:

Peter Roskam, the Republican candidate for Illinois’s sixth district, trotted out the familiar line that his Democratic opponent wanted America to “cut and run” from Iraq.

Yes, this Republican chickenhawk accused Iraq war veteran and double-amputee, Tammy Duckworth, of wanting to cut and run.  Not much else to add here, eh?  And how about another well-known veteran commenting about what he knows about his torture “compromise”?

John McCain:

In concrete terms, it could mean that waterboarding and other extreme measures such as extreme deprivation — sleep deprivation, hypothermia and others would be not allowed

It could mean it…or not…the important thing is, he stood up to Bush and is a maverick.  And let’s finish with a prediction…

George W. Bush:

I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma…

The Douchebag-in-Chief.