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The Conservative Argument Is That The Economy Is Like The Weather, That It Just Operates Automatically.

-Sidney Blumenthal

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The Conservative Argument Is

Sidney Blumenthal

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The Conservative Argument Is That The Economy Is Like The Weather, That It Just Operates Automatically.

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In A Sense, George W. Bush Has Used The Tragedy Of The Terrorist Attacks Of September 11th And The Nightmarish Expansion Of His Idea Of A War On Terror To Overshadow His Actual Conduct In Office On The Redistribution Of Wealth Upward Through Progressive Tax Cuts That Actually Penalize The Vast Majority Of The Public, And Shift Their Resources To A Narrow Band At The Very, Very Top.

The Bush Administration, And Particularly Bush's Chief Political Strategist And Deputy Chief Of Staff, Karl Rove, Have Been Expert In Both Galvanizing And Mobilizing The Fears And Resentments Of People. A Good Part Of Their Politics Consists Of Being Against Others Who Are Defined In Stereotypical Terms. These Others Don't, In Actual Reality, Exist. The So-called Democratic Elitists, For Example, Are A Stereotype Who They Can Hate. Anyone Who Watches Fox News Or Listens To Rush Limbaugh Knows That This Hatred Of The Other Is At The Core Of Their Politics.

The Conservative Argument Is That The Economy Is Like The Weather, That It Just Operates Automatically.

George W. Bush Has Deliberately Polarized And Divided America For Political Purposes, Politicizing The Most Basic Questions Of War And Peace For Partisan Advantage.

It's Absolutely Crucial For The Democrats To Have A Sense Of Their History, Of Who They Are, In Order To Be Able To Project Their Values And Stand Up For Them.

If There Were Any Clear Investigation Of 9/11, They Wouldn't Let Louie Freeh Off The Hook.

Who Was It In Afghanistan Who Screwed Up In Tora Bora And Let Bin Laden Escape? It Was The Bush Administration. Who Leached All The Resources, Military And Civil, From Afghanistan, Creating The Instability That We See There Today In Order To Prepare For The Misbegotten Invasion Of Iraq? It Was The Bush Administration. If There's A Terrorist Problem Today, Who Is Responsible Now? Bush Has Not Done The Job.

Bill Clinton Was In The Line Of Great Progressive Presidents Who Faced The Realities In His Own Time And Applied Innovative Solutions To Problems.

In Every Single Case, The Truth Is That The Atmosphere Created By The Iraq Invasion And The Staggeringly Mismanaged Occupation Has Incited Terrorists To Act. It's Been A Contributing Factor. It's Unavoidable Throughout Europe - In Spain, In Germany, In Britain. The Truth Is That We Need Long-term American Policy To Shift In Order To Really Soak Up And Get Rid Of These Sources Of Terrorism That Threaten Our Western Allies.

I Call George W. Bush A Radical Because He Is Undertaking A Fundamental Transformation Of Our Constitutional System Of Government And Of Our Longstanding Policies That Have Been Accepted For Literally Generations. He Thinks To Concentrate Unaccountable Power In The Executive. He Thinks You Alter The Laws So That, As Commander In Chief, He Can Determine, Under What He Says Are Wartime Conditions, What The Laws Are, Which Laws Should Be Enforced, And Declare By Fiat What Our Policy Should Be, Even Abrogating Longstanding International Treaties.

Clinton Was A President Who Used His Office, In Creative Ways, To Try To Reinvigorate The Federal Government To Benefit The Majority.

The George W. Bush Universe Of Threats Is A Constantly Expanding Universe As He Moves To Politically Higher Ground, Escaping From Failure After Failure. He's Not Only Radical, But The Consequences Of His Radicalism Have Been Catastrophic.

Expanding Universe

George W. Bush Has Exhibited Hostility To Science That No Other President Has Ever Displayed.

22 Million New Jobs Under President Clinton. 3 Million Lost Under Bush.

The Incubator For Terrorism, After The Middle East, Is Europe, Partly Because Of Proximity, Partly Because Of The Existence Of Large Muslim Communities There.

It Was An Absurd Theory That By Cutting Taxes You Would Increase Government Revenues, Because The Growth Of The Economy Would Create An Overflow Of Taxes That Would Fall Into The Government Coffers.

The Attack On Clinton On Terrorism Is Entirely Politically Inspired By The Right-wing Of The Republicans, And Has No Basis In Fact Whatsoever.

Clinton Took Very Tough Decisions On The Economy.

As I Said, If You Don't Stand Up For Yourself, People Aren't Going To Think That You Can Stand Up For Them.

Stand Up For Yourself

It Was The Biggest Suppression Of Voting Rights In Our Country's History Since Jim Crow. And The Thread Of Race Runs From The Beginning To The End Of My Book.

We Barely Missed Killing Bin Laden. There Were Numerous Findings Issued By The President To Kill Him. We Rolled Up Terrorist Cells. We Stopped The Millennium Bombings.

And Louis Freeh Was A Completely Dysfunctional Fbi Director, Who Was Actually Waging His Own Private War Against The Clinton Administration.

On The Contrary, It Might Even Be A Projection Of What The Truth Is Of The Bush Administration's Complacency And Ineptitude On The Terrorism In Its First 9 Months In Office.

Even On Education, His One Accomplishment, The Leave No Child Behind Act, And He Has Left It Unfunded.

Clinton Was Very Early On Aware Of The Problem Of International Terrorism.

But Presidents Matter. That's One Of The Biggest Lessons I Learned Being In The White House.

When Most People See The Word "radical," They Think That It Must Refer To Something Left Wing. Some People Also May Think Of It As Referring To Far Right-wing Marginal Groups. But Here We Have A President Of The United States [george W. Bush] At The Center Of Power, Sitting In The White House, Who Is A Radical.

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