Have You No Sense of Decency, Sir?

With those immortal words, Joseph Welch, the Chief Counsel for the US Army, shone a spotlight on Senator Joe McCarthy's bullying tactics before a national television audience in 1954, and began the end of McCarthy's reign of terror. Listening to my parents talking about that moment is my first political memory -- but I'm chagrined to say that a sense of decency, which was still expected when I was nine, has apparently been consigned to the dust bin of history by the reactionary right.

I offer you several recent examples: First, the coal industry, upset that Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius had opposed its proposed Sunflower Coal Plant, ran an ad comparing Sebelius to Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The ad claimed that "the decision by the Sebelius Administration means Kansas will import more natural gas from countries like Russia, Venezuela and Iran." In fact, Kansas exports natural gas to other states, rather than importing, because it cannot consume even what it produces. None of the 50 states imports a single cubic foot of natural gas from Venezuela, Russia, or Iran. So the entire ad is a fabrication.

What's striking about this ad, though, is that it's almost identical to other ads used by the reactionary right on other issues. Here, for example, is an ad run by a group called the Center for Union Facts. The ad shows photos of Idi Amin, Ahmadinejad, and UNITE-HERE! labor union president Bruce Raynor, asking which one was quoted as saying "There's no reason to subject workers to an election." The answer, of course, is Raynor, but the whole point of the ad is the comparison to Amin and Ahmedinejad -- just as the point of the Kansas City Star ad is to smear Governor Sebelius by implying that she is allied with people like Putin and Chavez. (Her actual public approval rating, however, is up since her decision. Kansans are not so easily fooled.)

If putting mug shots of your opponents up against those of corrupt dictators doesn't work, the reactionaries do have a second arrow in their quiver -- pick on kids.

A few weeks ago, Senator Mitch McConnell tried to cover up his complicity in slandering a young boy, Graeme Frost, whose family lacked health insurance. McConnell denied he had anything to do with the smear, but his staff had already told the press the truth.

And then yesterday, when Congressman Ed Markey had a hearing on global warming, one of his witnesses was a 13-year-old Inuit girl, Cheryl Lockwood, from St. Michael, Alaska. During her testimony, while describing how global warming was causing her family's house to fall into the ocean, she broke into tears. Rush Limbaugh promptly started running the teary part of her testimony for the amusement of his audience, saying it was all "just a scam," and derisively commenting that Cheryl should "go to New Orleans." (One would have thought that Limbaugh might not want to remind his viewers that Inuits aren't the only people losing their homes to flooding.)

So shame won't work on these people. The only thing they will understand is when the public turns its back on politics and business as usual and truly and irrevocably commits this country to a new energy future based on hope.

Comments

[Desiderata]

And with the sucessful sabotage by Democrap Stenny Hoyar__with the pile-on help of many other Congressional Democraps__the efforts of Dennis Kucinich to launch a way overdo impeachment of Dick Cheney dies in an empty committee.

And Conyers__so intent on investigations when he was in the minority__now goes on Fox to plead that Democraps have no intention of pursuing the very scrutiny he used to call for.

Conyers was a real hero back in the day when he had little power. I guess power does corrupt.

After all of this at the end of the day, is there no shame.

And those reading this, take the time to go to the "Countdown" MSNBC site and listen to Keith's commentary of last night. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21644133/

[oldpotsmuggler]

"lots of people have to move when they don't want to" was one comment of El Crushbore that I caught yesterday. And his people were not only eating it up, as usual, they were piling on. It was considered to be underhanded liberal politics.

This from a guy who has incorporated two new slogans into his show which have to qualify as
as possibly two of the most offensive things to ever come out of even his foul mouth. "Doing a service to humanity by just showing up". Apparently his mere presence on the planet is supposed to be a blessing to all mankind. "The man who runs America." If I found myself in agreement with a single word of anyone who could insult his listeners so thoroughly (unbeknownest to them, just like the victim believes that the abuser really loves her), I would immediately sit down and reexamine my entire belief system.