April 26, 2010

Jack Kelly Sunday

It's been a while, my friends. So let's get right back into it. Here's a short note on Jack's most recent.

In this week's column at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jack Kelly does his usual - this time projecting manufactured sins onto "thin-skinned liberals."

With his first rhetorical gesture we know the level of spin:
What a difference an election can make!

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism, we were told by leading liberal pundits and Democratic politicians from Jan. 20, 2001 to Jan. 19, 2009. According to these worthies, there were few more noble ways to express dissent than protest demonstrations, which were frequent during the Bush administration.

Their attitudes have changed since Jan. 20, 2009. Today, some criticism of the president is "borderline sedition," said Time columnist Joe Klein. It could lead to another Oklahoma City bombing, warned former President Bill Clinton.
Huh. No mention of what all those protests were about way back when. The illegal war? The illegal domestic surveillance? The illegal torture? Nope. Jack spins them all to just "dissent and protest demonstrations."

Now what about Klein's "borderline sedition." What's that all about? Recently there's this:



Though you'll note a few things. First he doesn't say "borderline sedition" that comes from this piece at Time.com.

There, Klein was pointing out two United States Republican Senators (Coburn and Inhofe) who prayed for the death or incapacitation of a Democratic Senator in order to derail a vote on Health Care reform as well as this from Coburn:
"The crisis of confidence in this country is now at an apex that has not seen in over 150 years, and that lack of confidence undermines the ability of legitimate governance," he said. "There's a lot of people out there today who...will say, 'I give up on my government,' and rightly so."
Klein explains what he's getting at when he calls it "borderline sedition":
This is borderline sedition. Coburn--who had a friendly relationship with Senator Barack Obama--is saying that giving up on the U.S. government is justified. This helps stoke the hatred of those extremists who see Barack Obama's presidency as illegitimate. It also comes dangerously close to incitement to violence. It certainly deletes Coburn from the list of those who can be considered loyal to the most important American ideals. He should clarify what he means by these statements--and apologize for his hate speech, immediately.
And you'll note that Klein wasn't discussing any criticism of Obama. The sedition Klein was writing about was any attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the government itself.

The more recent sedition quote from Klein said this:
I did a little bit of research just before this show - it's on this little napkin here. I looked up the definition of sedition which is conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of the state. And a lot of these statements, especially the ones coming from people like Glenn Beck and to a certain extent Sarah Palin, rub right up close to being seditious.
Thing is, brother Jack must've missed Klein's followup:
On the Chris Mathews Show Sunday, I said that some of the right-wing infotainment gasbags--people like Glenn Beck etc.--were nudging up close to the edge of sedition. This has caused a bit of a self-righteous ruckus on the right. Let me be clear: dissent isn't sedition. Questioning an Administration's policies isn't sedition. But questioning an Administration's legitimacy in a manner intended to undermine or overthrow it certainly is.
Kinda undermines Jack's whole case, don't it?

5 comments:

  1. Kinda undermines Jack's whole case, don't it?
    Nope.
    I trust you or Joe can give me a statement from Rush, Glenn Beck of Sarah Palin that was "borderline sedition".

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  2. "The illegal war?"

    You mean the one that Obama continues to promotes???

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  3. HTTT...you object? You think it's fine for those talking heads to intimate, hint at, outright state that people need to revolt against the government.

    Oh poor Rush, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. Where were they when plenty on the right were calling people who spoke out against the Bush Administration policies as un-American or aiding the terrorists. Oh, that's right...it was they who were doing that too.

    Clearly you can dish it out but you can't take take it.

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  4. Blue#2 even funnier the people screaming sedition are the same who claimed Dissent is the highest form of patriotism" and falsely attributed the quote to Thomas Jefferson
    Now it seems that History started at Jan 22,2010
    I am guessing you if I had the word IMPEACH at the top of my blog in huge letters you would consider me guilty of "borderline sedition".

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  5. What specifically, HTTT, would you say Obama should be impeached for? Do you remember the theory of the Unitary Executive? I suspect Sarah Palin's or Glenn Beck's head's would explode if Obama suggested he could assume the same powers that Bush claimed for himself.

    Exactly how are we to interpret the map with cross hairs and the comment "Don't retreat - reload"?

    rich10e, when we invaded Iraq, the reasons we gave were lies, and pretty clumsy ones at that. We have broke Iraq, and as Colin Powell pointed out (according to the Pottery Barn rule), we bought it. We are trying to get it into reasonably stable shape, so we can get out. Now, I will say that *I* think the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein. But once you start removing heads of state because they annoy you, where do you stop? Berlusconi? Sarkozy? I don't recall there being a UN resolution that authorized the US to install democracy in Iraq (maybe that's why Bush never tried very hard).

    So yeah, illegal. But even illegal wars take time to wind down. Meanwhile, our grandchildren will be paying for our sins. Or at least the sins of the Republicans.

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