"Remember the Maine" was the battle cry for revenge against Spain for sinking her. The troubling detail is that Spain didn't do it but that didn't stop Hearst and Pulitzer, two of the most famous names in American news, from hyping a case against Spain to drive the Spanish/American War. The Maine was just an excuse and America had been systematically trying to push Spanish colonial influence out of the Pacific but this was a chance for a war and they took it.
Whether Hearst and/or Pulitzer called the Spaniards 'terrorists' is unknown but they probably had the lingo of their day for use in the same manipulative way as Fox News and CNN. This part was a surprise to me as Hearst and Pulitzer are two of the biggest names in American journalism but they were just as scabrous as the ones pushing wars today.
The beauty part of this is that it was well over a century ago and the political and policy corruption was evident even then. You can't blame Bush solely for starting phony wars, he didn't even invent the technique.
The novel part is that it was Democrats, with purple press support from Hearst and Pulitzer, who forced McKinley into it and thus came the Spanish/American War. As you see, America still didn't get Cuba a century later so that trumped-up war ended up exactly the same as all the others (i.e. lots of dead people and no meaningful result).
That Democrats started it is irrelevant as Democrats are not Democrats anymore but neither are Republicans. Back when the Republican Party had reputable people in it, they warned about the dangers of a corporate state (Teddy Roosevelt), they warned of a dominant military/industrial complex (Eisenhower), and they warned about religion taking over the Republican Party (Barry Goldwater). As we've seen from modern-day Republicans, they ignored all of that and did all of those things anyway.
Bill O'Reilly asks in his typically simple fashion whether 'women can save the Democratic Party' and obviously his only purpose is to make a point of the Democratic Party failing and he doesn't give a flying fuck if anyone can save it. What he ignores altogether is that women can't save the Republican Party either as neither one of them has any idea where their centers are.
Today Obama said 'we may have underestimated the threat of ISIS' and he doesn't even modify the text in the playbook. Any day now we will see a press briefing from the White House as follows:
President (your name here) announced today that aggression by (pull-down menu of countries to kill) in (pull down list of victim countries) gives me no alternative except to kill the motherfuckers.
The Cadillac Man still rates Obama as average-bad, about the same as Bush, but I'm going with so spineless that you couldn't make a pipe cleaner even if you used his entire backbone. Obama is going yeah, yeah, I'm a Democrat. After all, I gave you a medical system that was pretty much the same as the old one and Republicans have bitched like it was penis reduction surgery. So that kept Republicans amused while Obama bombed seven countries. That's not a Democrat. He's not even a President. In technical terms, the best rating he gets is 'tool' ... just as McKinley became one a hundred years ago.
Whether Hearst and/or Pulitzer called the Spaniards 'terrorists' is unknown but they probably had the lingo of their day for use in the same manipulative way as Fox News and CNN. This part was a surprise to me as Hearst and Pulitzer are two of the biggest names in American journalism but they were just as scabrous as the ones pushing wars today.
The beauty part of this is that it was well over a century ago and the political and policy corruption was evident even then. You can't blame Bush solely for starting phony wars, he didn't even invent the technique.
The novel part is that it was Democrats, with purple press support from Hearst and Pulitzer, who forced McKinley into it and thus came the Spanish/American War. As you see, America still didn't get Cuba a century later so that trumped-up war ended up exactly the same as all the others (i.e. lots of dead people and no meaningful result).
That Democrats started it is irrelevant as Democrats are not Democrats anymore but neither are Republicans. Back when the Republican Party had reputable people in it, they warned about the dangers of a corporate state (Teddy Roosevelt), they warned of a dominant military/industrial complex (Eisenhower), and they warned about religion taking over the Republican Party (Barry Goldwater). As we've seen from modern-day Republicans, they ignored all of that and did all of those things anyway.
Bill O'Reilly asks in his typically simple fashion whether 'women can save the Democratic Party' and obviously his only purpose is to make a point of the Democratic Party failing and he doesn't give a flying fuck if anyone can save it. What he ignores altogether is that women can't save the Republican Party either as neither one of them has any idea where their centers are.
Today Obama said 'we may have underestimated the threat of ISIS' and he doesn't even modify the text in the playbook. Any day now we will see a press briefing from the White House as follows:
President (your name here) announced today that aggression by (pull-down menu of countries to kill) in (pull down list of victim countries) gives me no alternative except to kill the motherfuckers.
The Cadillac Man still rates Obama as average-bad, about the same as Bush, but I'm going with so spineless that you couldn't make a pipe cleaner even if you used his entire backbone. Obama is going yeah, yeah, I'm a Democrat. After all, I gave you a medical system that was pretty much the same as the old one and Republicans have bitched like it was penis reduction surgery. So that kept Republicans amused while Obama bombed seven countries. That's not a Democrat. He's not even a President. In technical terms, the best rating he gets is 'tool' ... just as McKinley became one a hundred years ago.
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