David Brooks Calls Palin a "Fatal Cancer"

[Rohirrim]

To the Republican Party.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/1..._n_133001.html

Brooks is really coming out with some jaw-dropping comments about the "anti-intellectualism" of his Party and its candidates. He also has remarkable things to say about Obama (including that he has a "great intellect") saying he has put together on his team "the most impressive people in the Democratic party."

Brooks is the second (Kathleen Parker was the first) of the vanguard of the old conservative Buckley wing to show disgust for the direction the GOP is going. It seems while McCain is shoring up the radical Right religious base, he's losing the Old Guard. This article really makes me wonder if Brooks (and many of the other old time conservatives) will vote for Obama or not vote at all.

[TexanBob]

The elitism and bigotry in this thread is just breathtaking to behold.

Unless you're an Ivy League-educated atheist, you're just a bible-thumping moron cowboy, eh?

What's * * * * E D up this country more than anything else is Ivy League "intellectuals" of both parties, including Bush I & II. The only truly great president we've had in the past 30 years was Ronald Reagan who was the only one who - surprise! - wasn't educated in an Ivy League school. The rest have done just a spectacular job of screwing this country over big time.

[Rohirrim]

No comment? Come on. This is amazing coming from an old hard line conservative like David Brooks.

[cutthemdown]

IMO this is a great time for the Republicans to re think what they want to stand for.

[BroncoBuff]

"Fatal cancer" is too much. Barack is trying to inspire us to rise above the mudslinging.

The point about anti-intellectualism, while true, has been beaten to death these last eight years. The oft-repeatred lament, 'why did we elect the guy we wanted to have a beer with?' I suppose it's still very relevant in that the GOP has nominated another anti-intellectual, know-nothing, war-mongerging, shoot-first-ask-questions-later cowboy ... but I do wish we could make these points without using the 'C' word.

[BroncoBuff]

When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options.

That's the relevant line ... that there are options betwen ivory-tower intellectuals and Bush-McCain-style know-nothing cowboys. Too bad the GOP has lost sight of this.

[cutthemdown]

IMO it's the religious aspect of the party that is bringing it down.

[BroncoBuff]

Read these two paragraphs, and then try to tell me how you can justify voting for the know-nothing cowboy:

Obama has the great intellect. I was interviewing Obama a couple years ago, and I'm getting nowhere with the interview, it's late in the night, he's on the phone, walking off the Senate floor, he's cranky. Out of the blue I say, 'Ever read a guy named Reinhold Niebuhr?' And he says, 'Yeah.' So i say, 'What did Niebuhr mean to you?' For the next 20 minutes, he gave me a perfect description of Reinhold Niebuhr's thought, which is a very subtle thought process based on the idea that you have to use power while it corrupts you. And I was dazzled, I felt the tingle up my knee as Chris Matthews would say.

And the other thing that does separate Obama from just a pure intellectual: he has tremendous powers of social perception. And this is why he's a politician, not an academic. A couple of years ago, I was writing columns attacking the Republican congress for spending too much money. And I throw in a few sentences attacking the Democrats to make myself feel better. And one morning I get an email from Obama saying, 'David, if you wanna attack us, fine, but you're only throwing in those sentences to make yourself feel better.' And it was a perfect description of what was going through my mind. And everybody who knows Obama all have these stories to tell about his capacity for social perception."

"Dazzled" is definitely the word. My thoughts exactly.

[Dudeskey]

Originally Posted by cutthemdown

IMO it's the religious aspect of the party that is bringing it down.

Most Goldwater-type conservatives would probably agree w/ your opinion...™

[BroncoBuff]

Originally Posted by cutthemdown

IMO it's the religious aspect of the party that is bringing it down.

There is a definite correlation and overlap between the religious and anti-intellectual cowboy wings of the GOP. Too bad the smart Barry Goldwater-Pat Buchanan-George Will wing has been abandoned.

Just look at the red state-blue state map. The red states are uniformly and near without exception less educated than the blue states. That is not a coincidence. And we have eight years of catastrophic ruin to prove it.

[Rohirrim]

If history has proven one thing over and over and over it's that religion and politics do not mix.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Speaking of the "Fatal Cancer..."

Palin wrongly suggests Congress bans oil exports

By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer 14 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, touted by GOP presidential candidate John McCain as his expert on energy, seemed to have problems Thursday explaining whether the government bans oil exports — especially from her state's North Slope fields.

A questioner at a town hall-style meeting in Wisconsin said he had heard that at least 75 percent of the oil drilled in Alaska was being sold to China and said, if true, he would like to know why.

"No. It's not 75 percent of our oil being exported," Palin said, suggesting some of Alaska's oil, in fact, may be going abroad but not that much.

"In fact," she added, "Congress is pretty strict on, um, export bans of oil and gas especially."

No Alaska oil has been exported since 2004, and little if any since 2000, according to the Energy Information Administration and the Congressional Research Service.

And Congress has never imposed outright bans on oil exports. Congress prohibited exports of Alaska oil in 1973 when the Alaska oil pipeline was built. But that ban was lifted in 1996 when there were large volumes of Alaska oil coming down from the North Slope and U.S. demand was soft.

The Alaska ban has never been reinstated.

"It's been discussed recently as part of talk about drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf," said Bill Wicker, a spokesman for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. But he said there's been no active legislation that would reinstate the Alaska ban or any thought on Capitol Hill of banning other U.S. oil or natural gas exports.

Natural gas exports must be approved by the Energy Department under a 1938 law, although such authorization for gas shipments to Mexico, Canada and Japan have been granted for many years. The Energy Department recently indicated it is ready to renew authorization for shipping Alaska liquefied natural gas, or LNG, to Japan.

There are no such restrictions when it comes to oil.

Between 1996 and 2004, about 95 million barrels of North Slope oil, roughly 2.7 percent of Alaska's production, was exported to South Korea, Japan, China and Taiwan, according to the Energy Information Administration.

There have been little or no oil exports since 2000, according to the Congressional Research Service. The EIA said there have been no Alaska oil exports since 2004.

The United States exports a relatively small amount of oil and petroleum production as Palin acknowledged as part of her answer, which largely focused on the need for more domestic drilling.

"It's not a huge portion of any domestic supply being exported," Palin said toward the end of her response, and seemed to contradict her earlier view that Congress bans exports.

Last year, the United States exported 523 million barrels of petroleum products, of which only a small amount was crude oil. That year it imported more than 4.7 billion barrels of oil and oil products.

The United States exported 822 billion cubic feet of natural gas, almost all by pipeline to Canada and Mexico, and a small amount of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, to Japan and Mexico in 2007, according to the EIA.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081010/...in_oil_exports

[USAFBronco]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

If history has proven one thing over and over and over it's that religion and politics do not mix.

Which is why when we were founded it was stated to keep church and state seperated.

Religion should, imo, have ZERO to do with the elections and our politicians.

[Bronco Bob]

Originally Posted by BroncoBuff

"Fatal cancer" is too much. Barack is trying to inspire us to rise above the mudslinging.

The point about anti-intellectualism, while true, has been beaten to death these last eight years. The oft-repeatred lament, 'why did we elect the guy we wanted to have a beer with?' (

Personally I'd rather have a beer with Obama than McCain. He seems
to have a good sense of humor and knowledgeable on a wide range of
subject. McCain just comes off as a grumpy old man who would
piss and moan the whole time.

[Bronco Bob]

Originally Posted by TexanBob

What's * * * * E D up this country more than anything else is Ivy League "intellectuals" of both parties, including Bush I & II. The only truly great president we've had in the past 30 years was Ronald Reagan who was the only one who - surprise! - wasn't educated in an Ivy League school. The rest have done just a spectacular job of screwing this country over big time.

It's true, couldn't agree with you more. Reagan was as dumb as a fence post.

[Hogan11]

It's amazing to me that anyone or anything would declare themselves "anti-intellectual".....it's like saying "we're stupid and proud of it".

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by Bronco Bob

It's true, couldn't agree with you more. Reagan was as dumb as a fence post.

Red Ink Reagan laid the groundwork for the wealth redistribution scam which facilitated the collapse of the financial system we're seeing today.