corrente

(New things we are NOT ANGRY about are in blue.)

We at Corrente have worked humbly and tirelessly to bring civility in American
political discourse to the next level.

So that's why, when alert reader acorn expressed his sincere surprise and distress that "you folks on this site are so full of hatred and anger," I felt acorn's distress keenly.

Readers, I was mortified.

So, in the spirit of "brighten the corner where you are," I decided to make a list of the things that we aren't angry or hateful about.

And whaddaya know? It's a very long list:

1. We are not angry at Bush for his war of choice in Iraq.
1. We are not angry at Bush because 2,000 Americans have died in Iraq, together with many thousands of Iraqis.
2. We are not angry at Bush because in Iraq "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
3. Nor are we angry at Bush because the WMDs were not found.
1. Nor angry that the aluminum tubes story was not true.
2. Nor angry that the drones story was not true.
3. Nor angry that the bioweapons story was not true.
4. Nor angry that the "yellowcake uranium" story was not true.
4. Nor are we angry at  Colin Powell because nothing he said in his UN speech to justify the war was true.
5. Nor are we angry at Bush for claiming that Iraq and 9/11 were connected when they were not.
6. Nor do we hate the members of the press who enabled Bush's war of choice.
1. Especially we do not hate Judy Miller whose WMD reportage helped Bush "fix the facts"
1. Nor her boss, Bill Keller.
1. Nor his boss, Arthur Sulzberger.
7. We are not angry at Donald Rumseld because his "Revolution in Military Affairs" resulted in sending our troops into urban warfare in Iraq without proper armor.
1. Nor do we hate Donald Rumsfeld because after three years the problem is not yet corrected.
2. Moreover, we do not hate Donald Rumsfeld for using an automatic signature machine to sign condolence letters to the parents of dead soldiers.
3. And furthermore, we do not hate Donald Rumsfeld for taking souvenirs from the Pentagon site on 9/11, a felony.
8. We are not angry at Alberto Gonzales for writing memos purporting to justify torture.
1. Nor are we angry at the higherups who set up torture camps and then let their subordinates take the blame when the truth came out.
1. Nor do we hate the higherups who got promotions after torture occured on their watch
2. Neither do we hate the doctors and psychiatrists who violated their Hippocratic oaths by abetting torture at Gitmo.
3. And if the torture techniques we have spread in Iraq are ever used in this country, we promise not to get angry about it.
9. We are not angry at the Republicans for losing $8 billion dollars meant for Iraq.
10. We are not angry that Iraq has become what it was not before the war, a training ground for terrorists.
11. And we promise we will not get angry if Iraq ends up as an Islamic theocracy.
1. And we further promise not to get angry that 2,000 Americans will have died to make that happen.
12. And we promise never to hate the members of the White House Iraq Group (Hughes, Libby, Card, Matalin, Wilkinson, and Rove), who worked together to make it all possible.
1. Even if Bush gave them all promotions. Every single one of them.
2. We are not angry at Bush for stealing election 2000 in Florida by using the "felon list."
1. Nor do we hate those who helped him to do so.
1. We do not hate Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris.
2. We do not hate Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Bush's brother
3. We do not hate the freepers who staged the "bourgeios riot" to intimidate the vote counters, not even Buckhead.
4. We do not hate the majority in Bush v. Gore, not even Antonin Scalia
5. We do not hate Al Gore for not getting all the votes counted.
2. Nor are we angry at the Republicans for claiming a "Bush Mandate" in 2000.
3. Neither are we are angry at the press for dropping the story.
3. We are not angry at Bush for stealing election 2004 in Ohio by preventing Democrats from voting
1. Nor do we hate those who helped him to do it
1. We do not hate Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell
2. We do not hate any Republican election official
1. We do not hate Tom Noe and his wife, Bernadette, even though they steered contracts to Diebold for machines that left no paper trial.
2. We do not hate the Republicans in Warren County who closed their building during the count, claiming a terrorist threat when there was no threat
3. Nor do we hate any of the electronic voting machine manufacturers
1. We do not hate them, even though they are all Republican contributors
4. Nor do we hate any of the authorities that certify electronic voting machines
1. We do not hate them, even though they too are all Republican contributors
2. Nor are we angry at the press for refusing to cover the story.
4. We are not angry at Bush for making all his appearances before screened audiences of Republicans only.
1. We do not hate Bush for doing this during the campaign.
2. We do not hate the Republicans for removing citizens who visibly did not support Bush from campaign events.
1. We do not even hate the Republicans for removing schoolteachers and then stripsearching them.
3. We do not hate Bush for doing the same thing during his Social Security barnstorming
1. Nor are we angry because we, as taxpayers, must pay for events that we will never be allowed to attend.
4. Nor are we angry because White House political operatives removed citizens from a barnstorming rally while impersonating Secret Service agents.
1. Nor are we angry that the White House will not tell us the name of this operative.
5. Because we consider hypocrisy the tribute that vice plays to virtue, and a natural part of the human condition, we do not hate any Republican who exhibits it, not even those put forward to us as moral exemplars
1. We do not hate Rush Limbaugh, even though he had a 30-a-day Oxycontin habit
1. In fact, we do not even hate Rush Limbaugh because he got his housekeeper to buy his drugs for him.
2. We do not hate Bill Bennett, even though he had a million-dollar gambling habit.
3. We do not hate Bill O'Reilly, even though we can't forget the word "loofah."
4. We do not hate Newt Gingrich for handing his wife the divorce papers when she was in a hospital bed recovering from cancer.
5. We do not hate Henry Hyde for his "youthful indiscretions."
1. Or Robert Livingstone
1. Or Arnold
6. Especially we are not angry at the Republicans for spending $70 million investigating a blowjob.
7. We do not hate war-backers who do not or have not served their country in the military
1. We do not hate any administration official who has not served the country in the military.
1. Above all, we do not hate Dick Cheney for having "other priorities."
2. Nor do we hate Bush, even though his missing year in TANG has never been explained.
3. Nor do we hate those Republican war-backers who do not ask their eligible adult children to serve.
1. Not even Bush.
4. Especially we do not hate Jonah Goldberg, even though he says he can't serve because he has a job and kids.
8. We do not hate gay Republicans who back a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.
1. Not even Ken Mehlman.
1. Let alone "Jeff Gannon."
6. Nor are we angry that Bush used Homeland Security as a pork barrel in the red states while leaving blue state cities unprotected against nuclear attack.
7. We are never angry at Beltway Dems even when they are gutless and feckless.
1. Especially we are not angry at John Kerry for taking the Swift Boat attacks lying down.
2. Nor are we angry at John Kerry for not keeping the Ohio 2004 in the forefront of the public mind.
1. Even though he solicited contributions for doing precisely that
3. Nor are we angry at Tom Daschle for losing the 2002 mid-terms because he wouldn't confront Bush on the war.
4. Nor are we angry when Joe Lieberman attacks other Democrats on FOX.
5. Nor are we angry when the Democratic Leadership Council calls war opponents "anti-American."
1. Not even when they don't call Republican war opponents, like Chuck Hagel, anti-American.
6. Nor do we hate any Democrat who voted for Bush's war of choice in Iraq, not even John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, or Evan Bayh.
1. Even though the Democratic netroots had Bush dead to rights on this one from the start.
7. Nor are we angry at any Beltway consultant, not even eight-time-loser Washington General Robert Shrum.
8. We do not hate Rush Limbaugh, or any Republican, or any member of Little Green Footballs, even when they call us traitors and call for our exile or summary execution.
9. We do not hate any member of any Republican think tank, not even the Discovery Institute.
10. We do not hate the right wing for calling political operatives "scholars."
11. We do not hate any so-called Christian.
1. Not the so-called Christians at the Air Force academy who called their fellow pilot a "filthy Jews."
2. Nor Pat Robertonson, who supports assassination as a way to get rid of Hugo Chavez.
12. We are not angry at the billionaires who funded the right.
1. We do not hate Richard Mellon Scaife, who funded the attacks on President Clinton.
2. We do not hate R.J. Rushdooney, who funded the Dominionists
3. Nor do we hate Koch, Olin, Coors, or Bradley
1. Nor the Bush Rangers and Pioneers, even though many of them are criminals
13. We are not angry that 50 million Americans don't have health insurance.
14. We are not angry that the No Child Left Behind Act is designed to destroy public education by requiring tests but not funding the teaching for the tests.
15. We do not hate Doctor James Dobson, or any other theocrat, not even Reverend Moon, or Reverend Moon's backers on Capitol Hill.
16. Nor are we angry that Bush is trying to destroy Social Security.
17. Nor are do we hate the CEOs who make hundreds of millions of dollars while their companies fail and workers lose their jobs.
1. In fact, we don't even hate Bush's top contributor, Enron's Ken Lay, who is not yet in jail.
1. Even though Enron's market manipulation caused California Democrat Gray Davis to lose the governorship to a Republican.
18. Nor are we angry that ...

NOTE I'd like to throw in the links, but it's late and I must retire to my tiny cot in the room under the stairs in The Mighty Corrente Building. And you know what? I'm going to sleep just fine...

UPDATE I forgot to say that I don't hate Karl Rove for being an Episcopalian.

UPDATE This post met with a reasonably enthusiastic response, so I thought I'd update and repost it. Maybe this bill of particulars against the malAdministration can become a permanent feature at the renovated Mighty Corrente Building (a "book," in CivicSpace parlance) that we can maintain and add to.

I also note that this is not yet a list for RDF's "cockroach people," who are probably NOT ANGRY about a lot of different things. We should add those things.