The Mindset

The latest NYT/right wingnut flap (the pictures of Cheney's and Rumsfeld's vacation homes in that staple of terrorist reading, the Weekend Travel section) gets a good summary from Glenn Greenwald.

Byrd evidently believes that she knows more than both Rumsfeld himself and the Secret Service about security issues surrounding Cheney and Rumsfeld, as she continues to insinuate that the NYT story really did pose a security threat even though both Rumsfeld's office and the Secret Service said that it did not. Just pause for a moment to contemplate the level of denseness and imperviousness to reason which that reaction requires -- and then consider that Malkin, Horowitz and Maguire are levels beyond (or, as it were, below) that, given that they continue not merely to insinuate, but to insist, that they were right all along.

Y'know, I could have told you stuff like this would happen. I've followed the right-wingnut creationists and IDiots for awhile now, and they are completely impervious to facts. Why should the political right-wingnuts (who are mostly the same people) be any different? Ann Coulter's comments on evolution and Paul Cameron's "research" on gays are good cases in point: when all else fails, lie about it.

Given that so many people believe this, the piece I published in the last post isn't so far off base.

Read Greenwald's whole post -- lots of information there about how completely out of touch with objective reality the icons of the right are.

Atrios has a post that quotes extensively from a piece by Nicholas Kristof (behind NYT's TimeSelect firewall) that attacks the same issue from a slightly different angle:

With President Bush leading a charge against this "disgraceful" newspaper, and a conservative talk show host, Melanie Morgan, suggesting that maybe The Times's executive editor should be executed for treason, we face a fundamental dispute about the role of the news media in America.

At stake is the administration's campaign to recast the relationship between government and press.

The "fundamental dispute" is really much wider than Kristof describes: we have a political faction that is determined to do away with our form of government by removing any checks on the executive. I have to say, the press has had a hand in its own . . . well, "demise" is perhaps too strong a word. But, let me hold it up to all you journalists out there: this is what happens when you don't ask questions.

And maybe the liberal PC attitude that we must respect all opinions, no matter how valueless or lacking in substance, has only added to the nightmare. Sure, in a context in which people are used to thinking critically, that might work, but we have a context in which people are not used to thinking at all.

It's all of a piece: an independent press is "disgraceful." An independent judiciary is "activist." Disagreeing with the administration's policies is "treason." Congress under the Republicans is a rubber stamp that will retroactively legalize anything the president wants to do.

Next to this, anything the Democrats can do to screw up the country is insignificant.