Category: Awards

Hewitt Award Nominee

"Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel's existence. Think about it. If I have thought of this Tom Clancy-type scenario, don't you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel's most inner circles? Another way of putting "three" in perspective goes something like this: How far would you go to save a nation comprised of seven million lives … Jews, Christians and Arabs alike? You have got to believe, like I do, that all options are on the table," – Andrew Adler, publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times. He has now apologized.

Telling that a pro-Greater Israel fanatic thinks it's conceivable for the "most inner circles" of an ally to attempt to assassinate the president of the United States.

Hewitt Award Nominee

95572450

"[I]t goes too far, as Perry did, to accuse the administration of having 'disdain' for the military. The definition of disdain is a 'feeling of contempt for someone or something regarded as unworthy or inferior.' Rather, the president simply puts the military, repeatedly, as a lower priority than the rest of the government. If not disdain, it is at the very least an inversion of priorities. Domestic spending grows astronomically; he slashes the military budget. He faces a tough reelection effort and his base is restive; he sets arbitrary withdrawal deadlines that threaten the gains in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is not enough for a commander in chief to go to Memorial Day celebrations, or focus on health care in the VA. For men and women risking their lives for us, their safety and morale should come first. In this administration is just isn’t so," – Jennifer Rubin, WaPo.

The vileness never ends, does it? Ending one war, and winning another, doesn't help the troops morale? And remember the bulk of the defense cuts are because of the GOP's refusal to raise taxes along with steep spending cuts last summer. Sequestration was not Obama's first choice.

(Photo: US President Barack Obama (R) salutes during the dignified transfer of Sergeant Dale R. Griffin of Terre Haute, Indiana, at Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware, October 29, 2009. Obama traveled to the base to meet the plane carrying the bodies of 18 US personnel killed in Afghanistan on October 26, including Griffin. By Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images.)

Hewitt Award Nominee

"It matters not where he was born; this man is deeply and fiercely alien to the American tradition. He thinks ordinary Americans "cling" to Gods and guns because we are "bitter." He believes we should "redistribute the wealth." He thinks cops are "stupid" for politely asking a Harvard professor to show proof of residence when a neighbor reported a burglary in progress. He thinks that if Congress doesn't immediately do his bidding, he can ignore the Constitution because he supposedly has a superceding need to"act." He thinks government has a right to tell people when they have made "too much money." He is an alien menace," – Quin Hillyer, American Spectator. 

Hewitt Award Nominee

"Instead of being a merit society, we’re an entitlement society, where government’s role is to take from some to give to others. What I know is that if [President Obama and the Democrats] do that, they’ll substitute envy for ambition. And they’ll poison the very spirit of America and keep us from being one nation under God," – Mitt Romney. 

Why has it not been more noticed that Romney has been the crudest, nastiest McCarthyite in this race so far? Only Santorum comes close, with his statement of the president involved in “absolutely un-American activities," to this deranged analysis of Obama's handling of the Green Revolution:

We sided with evil because our president believes our enemies are legitimately aggrieved and thus we have no standing to intervene.

We sided with the opposition but because they asked us not to give a propaganda coup to the regime, we did so without grandstanding. But notice that Santorum has all but accused the president of "siding with evil", with the enemies of the United States. This is an accusation of treason. It appears that it will be a central plank in the GOP platform this fall – and Romney has spearheaded the charge.

Moore Award Nominee, Ctd

Many readers are protesting this post:

I always get a little suspicious when a quotation starts with "In short" and is only one sentence long. So let's take a look at the next sentence Gorbachev wrote: "Instead of a new world order—that is, enough global governance to prevent international affairs from becoming dangerously unpredictable—we have had global turmoil, a world drifting in uncharted waters." And herein is the actual crux of the piece. The end of the Cold War was supposed to bring about more widespread peace and prosperity, and yet it hasn't. That seems to be relatively matter-of-fact and agreed-upon statement. I recall going to the Spy Museum in DC, where a former agent in a video likened the post-Soviet era as "slaying the dragon, only to find a thousand snakes spilling out of its severed head".

You can blame The Nation or Gorbachev for playing up the "Isn't it Ironic?" factor with the title, and similarly you can debate whether Gorbecev's analysis of how we got here is a bit off, but a heartfelt yearning for the days of Mother Russia this ain't.

Another reader:

Seriously?  Gorbachev's well-reasoned, qualified and politely addressed essay is "divisive, bitter and intemperate left-wing rhetoric"?  He never said we'd be better with an ongoing Cold War, just that the path since 1989 has been in some important ways a turn for the worse.  Considering our ongoing economic and environmental calamity, creeping authoritarianism both here and abroad, and stunning divergence between the haves and have-nots, surely you agree with this point?  I have to wonder if you actually read his essay, and if you did, whether you are just nominating him because you disagree with him.

Another:

I'm not going to sit here lamenting the demise of the USSR or of European communism in general; both were totalitarian in practice and needed to be buried. But there is a very big difference between saying the world is a better place without the Soviet Union (it is) and saying it's "a safer, more just, or more stable" one.

Is the world safer now? Ask the victims of 9/11 and 7/7, the terror suspects treated like factory farm animals at Gitmo, the people who've been mowed down by the repressive reaction to the Arab uprisings, the families torn apart by famine and warlords in sub-Saharan Africa. More just? Even in contemporary Russia, elements of the KGB still linger (not to mention Putin's near-dictatorial regime); and that doesn't even count what China's government does to dissenters, or countries in the Arab world, or even the American citizens denied their habeas corpus rights by being targeted by the United States government. More stable? I think the Arab Spring, the countless new republics that seemed to spring up weekly post-USSR, and the completely anarchic nation-states in Africa might have something contrarian to say about that.

Another:

Not to be pedantic here, but Ackerman pleads for us to sympathize with people from Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary when reading Gorbachev's letter. Those countries were never part of the Soviet Union, and one of Gorbachev's policies was explicitly that he would not interfere in their internal matters. Furthermore, his overall reform program for the Party was inspired to some extent by the Prague Spring – a movement with which he had intellectual and personal connections. If Ackerman wants to criticize Communism in a more general sense, I'll join him. But in this case I'm afraid Ackerman is the one being overly simplistic here.

Moore Award Nominee

"In short, the world without the Soviet Union has not become safer, more just or more stable," – Mikhail Gorbachev, The Nation. Ackerman screams:

I’m embarrassed as a liberal by this shit. The liberals I know — those of my generation, certainly — have no nostalgia for an empire whose chief characteristics were slaughter and mass immiseration. The Nation would rather be Soviet Union Truthers.

Moore Award Nominee

"By all accounts, Barack Obama is a nice guy. He’s a good father, a good husband, a family man. To hear his supporters tell the story, he really is a liberal in his very heart who has just been constrained by the circumstances. Maybe that’s all true. Let’s, again, stipulate it. It still remains the case that he governs like a mass-murdering sociopath. He kills brown people on the other side of planet because he feels like it. He thinks there is nothing particularly problematic about ordering the execution of American citizens without a trial. And, lest we forget, he is responsible for more deportations than any other president. Ever. If salvation requires faith and good works, this is a man who will burn in hell," – Ryan Bonneville.

Moore Award Nominee

"[S]eeing how South Korea has turned out — its Koreanness utterly submerged in neon, hip-hop and every imaginable American influence, a romantic can allow himself a small measure of melancholy: North Korea, for all its faults, is undeniably still Korea, a place uniquely representative of an ancient and rather remarkable Asian culture. And that, in a world otherwise rendered so bland, is perhaps no bad thing," – Simon Winchester (£), The Times. Massie is aghast.