Bob Herbert's MUST read column today

[Hawaii Hiker]

It is outstanding, one of the best, absoulutely accruate descriptions of the filithy GOP of today...

http://www.nytimes.com//2010/03/23/opinion/23herbert.html

One excerpt:

"For decades the G.O.P. has been the party of fear, ignorance and divisiveness. All you have to do is look around to see what it has done to the country. The greatest economic inequality since the Gilded Age was followed by a near-total collapse of the overall economy. As a country, we have a monumental mess on our hands and still the Republicans have nothing to offer in the way of a remedy except more tax cuts for the rich.

This is the party of trickle down and weapons of mass destruction, the party of birthers and death-panel lunatics. This is the party that genuflects at the altar of right-wing talk radio, with its insane, nauseating, nonstop commitment to hatred and bigotry"...

[Richardo]

1. I haven't read it yet and I'll rec

Herbert is one of the best columnists we have :patriot:

--------------
On edit: Now I HAVE read it and I'd like another rec, please.

[Control-Z]

37. I usually forget to rec.

I just read it, and am happy to give it that extra, well deserved rec.

[mfcorey1]

54. I could not have said it better myself......

:bounce:

[malaise]

2. Excellent

Rec

[DemoTex]

3. " .. it is way past time .."

"It is 2010, which means it is way past time for decent Americans to rise up against this kind of garbage, to fight it aggressively wherever it appears. And it is time for every American of good will to hold the Republican Party accountable for its role in tolerating, shielding and encouraging foul, mean-spirited and bigoted behavior in its ranks and among its strongest supporters."

Waaay past time, indeed, Mr. Herbert.

K&R

:kick:

[randr]

4. The obvious truth that needs to be shouted from the rooftops!

Thanks Bob. I hope your words are repeated until the rats scurry back to their holes.

[sufrommich]

5. Bob Herbert is one of the greatest editorialist of our times.

Spot on, as usual.

[Enrique]

6. i agree, it's a MUST READ

"toxic clouds" indeed. :thumbsup:

[Orsino]

7. The decades of damage which he quite rightly points out...

...have been abetted by Democrats at every step, alas.

[pilar007]

12. Democrats???

You are absolutely correct.

[Frustratedlady]

8. Herbert nails it. Great article. nt

[OregonBlue]

9. Yes, he pretty much sums it all up. Brilliant.

[Jim__]

10. I agree it's an accurate description. What can we do about it?

How do we reach the people that the republican hate machine appeals to? How do we get corporate media to call hate speech, hate speech? The republicans spread hate because it gets them votes; and I don't know what we can do about that.

[Hawaii Hiker]

13. You're right, don't know what we can do about it, IMO, this insane wing of the GOP took off

under Reagan (who REALLY ushered in this era of mean-spiritedness, racism, xenophobia, bigotory, absolute hatred of gays, poor people) & has only gotten worse today...

We got to keep voting repubs out of office, make them extinct like the Whigs...

Barry Goldwater would turn over in his grave if he saw the Republican party of today...

[KaryninMiami]

11. Excellent piece- thanks for posting. NT

[highplainsdem]

14. K&R

[NoSheep]

15. Good article.

[LuckyLib]

16. Well said. Voices need to get very loud about how crazy the Repug party has become.

Who would want to be identified with such idiocy? Shrink the party down to its basic crazy base -- all reasonable brain-functioning Republicans should be leaving in droves.

[wizstars]

17. Shrink it til it's small enough to drown in a bathtub!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:



(I'm a great admirer of my wit! )

[renate]

18. I would like to use my lifetime supply of rec's on this, please

I'll just do this :thumbsup: because this column is excellent beyond words.

[Mithreal]

19. Some of that trickle down thinking still happening and coming from our side.

[MissMarple]

20. Kick!

[closeupready]

21. Not surprising; Bob Herbert hits it out of the ballpark more than any other columnist I know.

n/t

[tilsammans]

22. K 'n' R!

Bob Herbert is spot-on, as usual! :applause:

[me b zola]

23. K&R!

Love, love, love Mr Herbert!

[RainDog]

24. excellent

and entirely true.

[newtothegame]

25. This was in a newspaper? This could have been off Faux Snooze about us. Drivel. n/t

[Wednesdays]

34. Um...wha--?

:wtf:

[XanaDUer]

26. *Love* Bob Herbet. Thanks for posting.

Nt.

[democracy1st]

27. K & R

[Roland99]

28. Nailed it.

[DebbieCDC]

29. K&R

Bob Herbert's columns are always excellent and this one is no exception. It makes me sick to my stomach to see what this country has become.

[Number23]

30. Amen! Preach, Brother Herbert!

"It is 2010, which means it is way past time for decent Americans to rise up against this kind of garbage, to fight it aggressively wherever it appears. And it is time for every American of good will to hold the Republican Party accountable for its role in tolerating, shielding and encouraging foul, mean-spirited and bigoted behavior in its ranks and among its strongest supporters."

Yes, they should be fought, but instead, people on both sides of the aisles have "sympathy" and "compassion" for the Joseph Stacks of the world and far too many are busy trying to find "common cause" with teabaggers instead of denouncing them. These people should most definitely be called out and exposed for their selfishness, their stupidity and their bigotry.

[Skittles]

31. Mr. Herbert is my favorite columnist

:thumbsup:

[mirrera]

32. Excellent... n/t

[sulphurdunn]

33. Republican is just a synonym

for fascist. Teabagger is just a synonym for Brown Shirt. Once the rednecks and skinheads take over from the pot bellied old white guys and grannies, we're going to have some real trouble in the streets unless this poison pedal gets quickly nipped in the bud before that happens.

[leftrightwingnut]

35. Woo hoo!

:woohoo:

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

36. Excellent editorial (nt)

[riderinthestorm]

38. Another excerpt and a huge K & R!

"Glenn Beck of Fox News has called President Obama a “racist” and asserted that he “has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

Mike Huckabee, a former Republican presidential candidate, has said of Mr. Obama’s economic policies: “Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff.” The G.O.P. poisons the political atmosphere and then has the gall to complain about an absence of bipartisanship.

The toxic clouds that are the inevitable result of the fear and the bitter conflicts so relentlessly stoked by the Republican Party — think blacks against whites, gays versus straights, and a whole range of folks against immigrants — tend to obscure the tremendous damage that the party’s policies have inflicted on the country. If people are arguing over immigrants or abortion or whether gays should be allowed to marry, they’re not calling the G.O.P. to account for (to take just one example) the horribly destructive policy of cutting taxes while the nation was fighting two wars.

If you’re all fired up about Republican-inspired tales of Democrats planning to send grandma to some death chamber, you’ll never get to the G.O.P.’s war against the right of ordinary workers to organize and negotiate in their own best interests — a war that has diminished living standards for working people for decades."

http://www.nytimes.com//2010/03/23/opinion/23herbert.html

[BrklynLiberal]

39. It is difficult to capture the pure evil and destructiveness of the GOP, but

Herbert has done it.+


James Howard Kunstler also did an admirable job here...
http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/03/the-party-of-cruelty.html#more

The Party of Cruelty
By James Howard Kunstler
on March 22, 2010 7:13 AM

It was amusing to see the Republican party inveigh against health insurance reform as if they were a synod of Presbyterian necromancers girding the nation for a takeover by the spawn of hell. This was the same gang, by the way, who championed the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, then regarded as the most reckless giveaway of public funds in human history. Along the way, they enlisted an army of nay-sayers representing everything dark, disgraceful, and ignorant in the American character. If the Republicans keep going this way, they'll end up with something worse than Naziism: a party that hates everything but believes in absolutely nothing.
The most striking elements of so-called health care in America these days is how cruel and unjust it is, and in taking a stand against reforming it the Republican party appeared to be firmly in support of cruelty and injustice. This would be well within the historical tradition of other religious crusades which turned political -- such as the Spanish Inquisition and the seventeenth century war against witchcraft. Whatever else the Democratic party has stood for in recent history, it has tended to oppose institutional cruelty and injustice, and notice that it has also been the party for keeping religion out of government.
Now a health care reform act has passed and there's some reason to hope that insurance companies will be prevented from doing things like canceling the coverage of policy-holders who have the impertinence to actually get sick, which has been their main device for revenue enhancement, and we'll see how they cope with the idea that being alive in a treacherous world is the fundamental pre-existing condition.

<snip>

I hope the American public begins to understand this, because they have been manipulated in their own pain and hardship by these dark forces, and their thrall to the likes of John Boehner, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush, Hannity, and the rest of these vicious morons could easily increase as their economic hardships deepen. We're facing a comprehensive contraction of wealth and economy that is going to challenge every shared virtue in our national soul, and we're not going to meet these difficulties successfully without a sense of mutual obligation and sympathy for each other. The Republican party is just itching to turn a giant thumbscrew on the US public -- that is, before they try to start burning their enemies at the stake. We understand that the Health Care Reform Act is a first stand against that.

[Hekate]

40. Herbert has gotten it right. nt

[jillan]

41. Excellent!!!

[saltpoint]

42. Damn, but that man can WRITE.

Thank you, Mr. Herbert.

Excellent post.

[patrice]

43. A fine clear voice out of the stench of putrifying media:

A party that promotes ignorance (“Just say no to global warming”) and provides a safe house for bigotry cannot serve the best interests of our country. Back in the 1960s, John Lewis risked his life and endured savage beatings to secure fundamental rights for black Americans while right-wing Republicans like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan were lining up with segregationist Democrats to oppose landmark civil rights legislation.

Since then, the right-wingers have taken over the G.O.P. and Mr. Lewis, now a congressman, must still endure the garbage they have wrought.

[Better Believe It]

44. K & R

[Canuckistanian]

45. "The G.O.P. poisons the political atmosphere..."

"...and then has the gall to complain about an absence of bipartisanship."

Couldn't have said it better.

[FirstLight]

46. Hear! hear!

I am right there with you...no more violence and batshit crazy please! let them remain the fraction they ARE, don;t give them the airtime. Unfortunately the 24 hour news cycle is addicted to this garbage ... so maybe WE have to just tune it out and keep moving forward?

[laughingliberal]

47. Rec. And here's the part that tells why the elite support this crap:

<snip> If you’re all fired up about Republican-inspired tales of Democrats planning to send grandma to some death chamber, you’ll never get to the G.O.P.’s war against the right of ordinary workers to organize and negotiate in their own best interests — a war that has diminished living standards for working people for decades. <snip>

The country not only needs to weed out this evil, our party needs to marginalize and quit legitimizing the failed supply side economic policies of Reagan. We should miss no opportunity to remind Americans that the neo Nazi vote goes Republican.

[CLANG]

48. Man, he sure knows how to get on your good side!

[Clyde39]

49. The party that genuflects at the altar of right-wing talk radio

How true and how completely disgusting.

[Captain Hilts]

50. Yes. Republicans have to disassociate themselves from these crazies. nt

[sam sarrha]

51. way beyond economic inequality... the bottom 80% americans hold only 7% of financial wealth..

i have the link upstairs i'll post it tomorrow.. top 1% hold 37% of financial wealth..

[sonias]

52. Well said Mr Herbert!

Bob Herbert has the kind of class those low-lifes he writes about could never achieve.

It's a damn shame that things never change with some people. Mean people suck!

[defendandprotect]

53. Hey . . . it's the "god" party . . . !!!! hmmmm....

[Oldtimeralso]

55. Fantastic Job

GOP the party of Greed Obstructionism and Perversion

[LiberalAndProud]

56. That link is a must click.

nail - hammer

Rec Rec Rec

[OneBlueSky]

57. and yet it's the Democrats who are in control in Washington . . .

should be a recipe for massive change, no? . . .

well . . . um . . . no . . .

[spicegal]

58. Great column Mr. Herbert. I'm not quite sure how as individuals we go about

standing up to these hateful lunatics. The media doesn't help matters at all. They should be exposing and analyzing this stuff. I fear we will seeing increasing acts of violence resulting in bloodshed (death) and property destruction. The GOP is inciting domestic terrorism. As Bush said, they're either with us, civilized Americans, or with them, the zealots who are trying to rip this country apart.

[deacon]

59. Wow. Awesome. k + r n/t

[eyepaddle]

60. Well, that NEEDED to be said. I've already recc'ed, now I'll

:kick: