Konservo on March 27th, 2009
As James Kirchick notes in Commentary’s Contentions:
Yglesias writes about the Foreign Policy Initiative, a new think tank/advocacy group founded by Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan. He opines:
When I was a kid, I remember hearing that cockroaches would not only survive the sure-to-happen US-Soviet nuclear holocaust, but actually emerge stronger than ever as they devour our irradiated corpses. Similarly, there’s a new think tank in town, headed by Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, and former Coalition Provisional Authority spokesguy Dan Senor.
The use of the word “cockroach” to describe undesirable persons has a long history, but there’s a specific and ugly context that is most pertinent. In the run-up to the Rwandan genocide of 1994 — in which nearly 1 million people were massacred over the course of just 100 days — “Hutu power” radio stations used the word repeatedly to describe members of the minority Tutsi tribe.
This is exactly right. The Hutu power spokesmen used the radio to spread propaganda and indoctrinate Rwandans with hatred toward Tutsis. Additionally, Hutus who did not follow the extremists were labeled traitors, meeting the same fate as the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of other innocent Rwandans who were killed in the mid-1990s.
Kirchick rightly comments:
As an expert on nearly everything, surely Yglesias is aware of the word’s loaded history.
If this is so, then what would Yglesias have us believe?
It’s obvious. He knows what worked for the Hutus and he’s adopted their method. His targets are clearly “neo-cons.”
Check out this comment:
- kid bitzer Says:
could we just bring back tom delay to hose them all down with roach-killer?
Konservo on June 4th, 2008
Today the head-propagandist at Think Progress, Faiz, has a post that points Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as a war-monger who, somehow, pulls the strings of US politicians:
The Israeli press is reporting today, during a White House meeting today, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will urge President Bush to prepare an attack on Iran
…
The Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin writes that “there are some signs that [Olmert will] have a receptive audience” in his White House meeting. Speaking at AIPAC yesterday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice delivered an “unusually sharp” verbal assault against Iran. Olmert himself told the audience, “We must stop the Iranian threat by all possible means.”
Think Progress
Faiz then goes on to list several “neo-cons” who agree that the Iranian threat is real and who think it’s possible that there might be an American-Israeli strike on Iran before Bush leaves office.
Clearly, Faiz is trying to smear the “neo-cons” as war-mongers and puppets of Zionists in Israel. What Faiz forgets to mention, however, is none other than ultra-liberal Nancy Pelosi has also stated that no option should be written off, this is a clear indication that even Pelosi recognizes the possibility of the need to use force.
But Think Progress would never want to lump Leftists and Liberals like Pelosi in with the evil neoconservatives.
Eric Odom on May 21st, 2008
Now that gas prices are rising at record rates, the liberal hotbed at Think Progress is going wild with anti-free market rants against oil companies and others who simply aren’t to blame.
Average national gas prices have hit another record high on May 16, climbing to $3.7929 a gallon for regular gasoline. At the same time, average gas prices rose above $4 a gallon in Chicago and New York’s Long Island for the first time. Trilby Lundberg, the editor of the nationwide Lundberg survey of about 7,000 gas stations, says that gas prices “could rise to $4 a gallon on a national average basis.”
Do you notice how Think Progress does nothing other that state “gas prices are high and it will suck for you”? I mean, shouldn’t they mention the reason gas prices are high? Shouldn’t they maybe dive in to some numbers with regards to, say, taxes?
When you consider the fact that gas station owners only end up with about 15 cents per gallon of gas sold and that Exxon was only making 28 cents on a $3.00 gallon of gas?
Or how about the fact that ExxonMobil paid 83 percent of the $8.4 billion it earned in a quarter, $7 billion, $2 billion more than a year earlier, in just federal income tax — and a lot more in other taxes?
Either Think Progress is just celebrating high gas prices for kicks, or they’re doing a heck of a job pushing their “progressive agenda”.
