How quick Karl Rove was to criticize the left and go home without signing any books in Beverly Hills when members of Code Pink dared to confront him.  

Considering what Karl Rove has done in his political career beginning when he was still in his teens, disrupting a book signing rates as minimalist activity.  This man has an extensive track record of which he is proud beginning with the days when he emulated the tactics of his idol Richard Nixon.

Rove launched his dirty tricks activities when he handed out handbills to the downtrodden, particularly of the inebriated variety, encouraging them to attend a campaign headquarters opening for Alan Dixon in Illinois when the future U.S. Senator was running for secretary of state.

Then there was that occasion when Rove reported that he found a bug in his office when he was seeking to lift the sagging campaign of his lackluster Texas gubernatorial candidate Bill Clements against Democrat Mark White.  

Check American History and you will find that patriotism was defined and consisted of far different practices than occurred following World War Two.

It was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, an American leader the right maligned when he was in office and continued to malign after his death, who began the practice of singing the Star Spangled Banner at baseball games.  This became a practice during the war to instill greater patriotism and love of country during a period of sacrifice.

During World War Two there was a spirit of patriotic unity based on inclusion.  There was a task to be performed and by forming a common front and purpose the goal of victory became attainable.

Look what happened following World War Two.  The two leaders, one deceased by then, who had been at the helm in the effort to thwart Nazi totalitarianism, Roosevelt and his successor Harry Truman, began to be reviled as disloyal Americans by the same type of intolerable right wing extremists that form today's Tea Party.

With Karl Rove arrogantly proclaiming not only that he did nothing wrong, but that he is very much on the correct side of history, it is interesting to look back and see how he would fare in accordance with the standards of his first political hero, Richard M. Nixon.

As a young man growing up in Salt Lake City, Rove adhered strongly to the Nixon Vietnam position.  He accepted Nixon's position of demonizing opponents of the Vietnam War, including questioning their patriotism.

After Nixon's death progressive historians asserted that Nixon and his administration's foot soldiers demeaned true patriotism by embracing a narrow standard wherein, if they failed to support a flag waving posture operating lockstep within Nixon's narrow dogma relating to Vietnam, they were labeled as unpatriotic.

Like so many of Nixon's stalwart young supporters, including of William Kristol, Dick Cheney and others, Rove had no stomach for traveling to Southeast Asia and fighting for a cause he verbally supported.

Amid the swirl of commentary following Obama's West Point speech in which he laid out his Afghanistan War policy the commentary that was the most brutally perceptive and historically decisive was that of Rachel Maddow on MSNBC.

Maddow followed the historical roots of Obama's comments and reached the conclusion that he sounds like George W. Bush in 2002 enunciating what was thereafter called the Bush Doctrine, which tragically espoused an aggressive concept of preventive war based on a posture of what might happen in the future.

A clip was played of retired U.S. Marine General James Jones, Obama's National Security Advisor, stating that there is no current threat to America's security from Afghanistan.  

Meanwhile Obama made his frequent effort to link Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, indicating that the deploying of 30,000 more troops can help head off more of the same kind of terrorist action.

When then Congressman John Tunney was running in the California U.S. Senate primary in 1970, a race which would culminate with his unseating of Senator George Murphy in the November election, he made reference to the still raging Vietnam War as a "mirage."

Tunney used the word to accent what he perceived as a wrong-headed view of the United States being able to resolve conflicts through a continuing military commitment.  The people of Vietnam would see that the best hope for their future resided in linkage to American power.

The Vietnam War ended with over 59,000 U.S. losses.  The foreign losses, counting Cambodia as neighboring offshoot as well as Vietnam, is unknown in any kind of precise calculation but estimated at 2.5 million or more according to some estimates.

The tragic human suffering did not end with the termination of life.  The dropping of Agent Orange to remove the heavy jungle forestation that U.S. strategists were convinced would make it easier to fight a hit and run smaller guerilla force did not deter a determined enemy that engaged and disengaged under its own strategic terms.

For anyone who has worked as a professional reporter the ultimate attribute so many hope to achieve is the ability to develop a critical eye toward the present and future and shift gears when needed.

The one element that prevents so many from achieving success in reporting is intransigence.  Aided frequently by pressure, sometimes through a stubborn instinct, other times through refusal to apply the hard work and corresponding judgment to follow through, reporters will fail to observe an important trend.  

Walter Cronkite was someone who began reporting as a teen and was delighted to be in journalism.  This showed when he demonstrated a refreshingly youthful buoyancy over a positive achievement such as America placing astronauts on the moon.

On the sober front of international relations, Cronkite shook the collective collar of middle class America, those regulars who watched his network news broadcasts, when he asserted that to look for victory in the morass of the Vietnam War quagmire was to seek the impossible.  

When one asks why Rush Limbaugh has so strongly attacked the nomination by President Obama of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the obvious rejoinder is another question:  "Why wouldn't he?"

Give Limbaugh credit of sort for knowing his own audience.  He is not seeking to ultimately build a Republican Party base.  Rush looks out for himself first, last, and always and that means appealing to the vicious and faithful following whose support has made him a multimillionaire.

Pound minorities!  This is what the mean-spirited Limbaugh base wants and so he will faithfully comply.

How many of us have known far right Republicans?  I have and have heard many in their ranks slam minorities and engage in hateful bigotry, especially after a few drinks or after talking to you long enough to where their prejudices jump to the fore.

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

In the age of Barack Obama, both the Republican Party as well as the South appear marginalized and out of step with the rest of America. Yet it wasn't so long ago that the South represented the foundation of America's conservative hegemony. Starting with Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, the Republican Party prevailed in nine out of the next fourteen presidential elections with a reliable Southern base.

Specifically, the Republican Party exploited white Southern resentment against the cause of civil rights and integration. The "Southern strategy" as it was later called, enabled Republicans to end the Democratic Party's previous domination of the South following the Civil War. A key figure in that realignment was the renowned evangelist Billy Graham.

Since the Republican right is seemingly incapable of looking forward and only looks backward, meaning backwards to America's most cruel political and economic past, it is interesting to examine the antecedents of the current robo calls being made in important battleground states by the forces of John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Richard Nixon made his first foray into national politics after being discharged from the Navy after answering an ad placed by a committee of right wing professionals seeking a candidate to run for the seat of 10-year veteran Congressman Jerry Voorhis.

Nixon was intrigued.  The district included Nixon's hometown of Whittier.  The young lawyer demonstrated himself to be politically active as he ran successfully for student body president at Whittier College.  

He would also prove adaptable at serving the needs of his professional benefactors, as was later exemplified by the secret fund established by them for his personal use after he was elected.  

This gave rise to the teary-eyed Checkers Speech when he denounced that he was not giving up the Cocker Spaniel that his daughters had been given by a citizen admirer, hardly on point, but then again when the facts are clearly against you, what do you do if you are Nixon?

With all the recent talk about a different John McCain and all the mud being hurled in the presidential campaign, someone unfamiliar with the history of the Republican Party in the post-World War Two years might think that something new is occurring.  Even a cursory look at the record reveals a familiar story.

After Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman established the New Deal and Fair Deal respectively along with confronting the Nazi and Fascist menaces in winning World War Two, a Republican Party hungry for victory as the fifties beckoned used the Cold War against the Soviet Union to advance their presidential aims.

The era of McCarthyism-Nixonism was launched.  While grand smears were launched questioning the patriotism of loyal Americans and targeting those who opposed them, a party that had been out of power for twenty years achieved the presidency under World War Two military hero General Dwight David Eisenhower.  

As perceptive journalists said at the time, the apolitical Eisenhower took the "high road" and his aggressive vice presidential running mate Richard Nixon traversed the "low road."

It might be asked of Senator John McCain if he has any decency left.  Whatever he had he apparently checked at the door long ago in quest of the presidency as a Republican, where standards of decency are as antiquated as any mention that the Republicans are the "Party of Abraham Lincoln."

Remember, this is the John McCain who was happy to be called a "Maverick Republican" and proclaimed to be a supporter of campaign reform and fiscal responsibility.

We recall what happened when McCain sought the Republican presidential nomination against none other than then Texas Governor George W. Bush in 2000.  The South Carolina primary, a must win situation for Bush, was arguably the slimiest such contest in the annals of a party that, since the fifties, had seen the likes of smear artists Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy and in 1988 featured the antics of George Bush the Elder.

Karl Rove, in the tradition of his idol Nixon and as direct successor to sleaze artist Lee Atwater, had his highly financed manure tossers attack McCain, his wife, and even his daughter.  The adopted daughter, who came from Bangladesh, was referred to as "McCain's black daughter" while his sanity was called into question and all stops were pulled out in pursuit of the victory that resulted.

Walter Mondale stated it correctly when he was running against the Reagan machine as well as a vigilant mainstream media in 1984, explaining, "They know that if they ever ran on the issues they would lose, so what they do is try and trick the majority of the American people to vote against themselves."

Richard Nixon came out of the Navy in 1946 and made a quick peace time adjustment by waging war of his own.  His target was Congressman Jerry Voorhees, who was a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee with impeccable anti-Soviet credentials as the Truman administration rolled up its sleeves as the Cold War began.

Nixon's smear stalwarts impugned Voorhees's patriotism with series' of anonymous calls to people residing in the Whittier area district stating, "We just wanted you to know that your congressman, Jerry Voorhees, is a Communist."

Four years later Nixon and his fat cat benefactors decided it was time for him to move up to the senate.  This time his target was Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas and the same game was in active play.  Nixon uncorked his memorable barb of the campaign that "Congresswoman Douglas is pink right down to her underwear."

Study post-World War Two and you see the tragic example of right wing Republican smear artistry at work in which Cold War passions raged and loyal Americans were constantly smeared, many with their lives destroyed in the process, by Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon.

Look at how it all ended with Nixon, someone a misguided Bill Clinton saw fit to provide with a hero's sendoff after his ultimate demise.  The same Clinton who sees the Bushes father and son as good and dedicated Americans is so beholden to the New World Order that he fails to appraise history realistically.

A hypothetical question to raise is what would have happened if a liberal Democrat seeking the presidency had placed an agent of the government of Communist China in the law firm where he worked, which did lucrative business with foreign governments?

After that, when this same liberal Democrat achieves the presidency, he does such a whopping amount of business with this same individual, who now occupies a stronger position than ever as a leader of a major international funding group, to the point where this person and the Red Chinese government he represents hold sufficient leverage to ultimately bend the government to serve its nation's will.

Jimmy Carter's timely criticisms of George W. Bush's executive stewardship call attention once more to another war and impeachment discussion with comments by a besieged Richard Nixon alongside a George W. Bush who has currently shrouded himself in escapist fantasy.

As Richard Nixon, after winning office through a successful joint effort with Henry Kissinger to jettison Lyndon Johnson's effort to secure a Vietnam peace agreement was hovering on the brink of impeachment when he escaped into historical fantasy by comparing himself to a revered American president.

Nixon compared his travail to that of Abraham Lincoln in his bleakest moments during the Civil War.  Bruce Catton, considered one of America's most eminent Civil War historians and a Pulitzer Prize winner for his thoughtful work, "A Stillness at Appomattox," delivered a terse comment concerning Nixon's putative parallel.

"I frankly don't see any comparison," Catton stated dismissively.

The topic below was originally posted in my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

So when did you first realize our country was led by liars? Was there a particular incident, campaign or speech resulting in an epiphany? Did a cynical role model let you know our country's decision makers could not be trusted to tell the truth?