NY Daily News Denis Hamill: A liberal dose of facts, Rove

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "John F. McMullen" <observer () westnet com>
Date: July 3, 2005 9:50:11 AM EDT
To: johnmac's living room <johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com>
Cc: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Subject: Denis Hamill: A liberal dose of facts, Rove


(johnmac -- Denis, you could have said "balls")

From the New York Daily News -- http://www.nydailynews.com/news/col/ 
story/324790p-277605c.html

A liberal dose of facts, Rove
by Denis Hamill

When I first read Karl Rove's recent speech to the New York State  
Conservative Party at the Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan, the liberal in  
me wanted to get him some therapy.

But then the Brooklyn in me wanted to throw him a fair one.

Then I figured I should show some restraint before commenting.

My problem is that I'm a liberal from Brooklyn. Which means I turn  
the other cheek. And then kick you in the unmentionables.

Rove's problem is that he doesn't know jack about "liberals" in the  
very city where he delivered his punk speech that dishonored the  
fallen of Ground Zero 3 miles south. As did President Bush's lame  
"stay the course" pep talk to the nation on Tuesday night, for  
recycling the same debunked lies trying to connect 9/11 to Iraq.

In the last presidential election, 75% of New York City, where nearly  
3,000 people were murdered on 9/11, voted for a "liberal" named John  
Kerry. They did this not because they thought it would be therapeutic  
for the terrorists but because they resented the lies coming out of  
this administration that had given up the search for Osama Bin Laden  
for a bait-and-switch war on Iraq.

New Yorkers knew Bin Laden was the monster responsible for that act  
of barbarism in our city, where almost every one of us - liberal,  
conservative and otherwise - knew someone who'd been killed.

And so on Election Day, we who had trudged in the dust of our dead,  
who had lived with the bagpipes and the funerals, and who were sick  
of the lies out of the White House, marched to the polls to vote for  
a liberal named John Kerry, a decorated war hero.

Last week, Rove visited this city and stood in the Sheraton and said,  
"Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare  
indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. In  
the wake of 9/11, conservatives believed it was time to unleash the  
might and power of the United States military against the Taliban."

Total crap.

Every single liberal and conservative I met in post-9/11 New York  
City from Bayside to Bay Ridge supported the invasion of Afghanistan.

So I challenge Karl Rove to wear his ignorant words on a sandwich  
board and parade them from the Sheraton Hotel down to Ground Zero and  
let him sample some wimpy, liberal New York. The only therapy he'd be  
offered would be physical therapy.

Rove brayed, "It was a time to summon our national will and brandish  
steel."

Right. And so here in New York City volunteers from every political,  
ethnic and socioeconomic walk of life descended on Ground Zero to  
brandish shovels, picks, acetylene torches and backhoes to dig for  
the lost.

All over "liberal" New York citizens rushed to recruitment stations  
and grown men and women were called up in the National Guard and  
reserves.

And yet this rice cake in a suit has the audacity to stand at a  
podium in this gutsy city and say, "I don't know about you, but  
moderation and restraint is not what I felt when I watched the twin  
towers crumble to the ground."

No, what chicken hawk Rove, who avoided the draft during Vietnam, saw  
was a Bush reelection campaign commercial.

And where did our fearless conservative leaders go on or after 9/11?

Let's see: Bush flew to Omaha! Cheney hid in a hole, like Saddam  
Hussein. And Karl Rove cooked up a Bush campaign commercial visit to  
Ground Zero three days after the attack, when the coast was clear.

A popular Republican named Arnold Schwarzenegger would label all that  
as the actions of "girlie men."

I can tell you where Karl Rove didn't go: He didn't go to Ground Zero  
to swing a steel pick. If he brandished a steel shovel at the  
Pentagon, I missed it.

Warmongering Rove also didn't go to a recruitment station to grip the  
steel stock of an M-16 before catching the next C-130 to Kabul. Or  
later, Tikrit. Even though the war in Iraq is being fought by troops  
the same age as Rove, who is 54. Which is the same age as a bus  
driver from Brooklyn with six grandchildren I wrote about in this  
space recently who spent the past year in Iraq as an Army reservist.

The only steel Karl Rove brandished since 9/11 has been King George's  
bloody shilling.

So you can blow into town, the Pearl Harbor of the terror age, and  
pop off about liberals being wimps, Mr. Rove. But to paraphrase  
Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca," there are certain New York  
neighborhoods I wouldn't advise you to invade.

All contents  2005 Daily News, L.P.
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                          John F. McMullen
   johnmac () acm org johnmac () computer org johnmac () m-net arbornet org
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