Categorical Aperitif

On yesterday's Democracy Now!, Dennis Kucinich and George McGovern mixed it up with Joshua Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute:

JOSHUA MURAVCHIK: Senator McGovern, your powers of logic are failing you. I think it's perfectly appropriate for me, you or anyone else to criticize the policies of the US government or the execution of policies, which is what I was criticizing. But it's an entirely different thing to do what Congressman Kucinich did, which is to criticize and defame the motives of the United States in going into Iraq or anything else, to say that we had evil and sordid motives, that we wanted to kill all these Iraqis in order to steal their oil. That’s what --

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Who defames the United States? We went into a war based on lies!

JOSHUA MURAVCHIK: That is what Congressman Kucinich said --

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: We went into a war based on lies. Where's the defamation there? You defame the United States when you stand by a policy that says that we should stay in a war that’s based on lies.

JOSHUA MURAVCHIK: Congressman Kucinich, you said --

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: You’re sending the people to death based on lies. It's time to tell the truth! The American people want the truth.

JOSHUA MURAVCHIK: Congressman Kucinich, will you get off the stump speech and this sort of loaded politician --

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: The American people want the truth! Tell the truth, if you’re capable of it!

Read or listen to the whole thing if you dare. Muravchik trots out every tired cliché and smear in the warmonger book, and then has the gall to accuse McGovern of "failing" logic. Note to newly-empowered Democrats: let's have more elected representatives telling off think-tank sophists in public, please.

Elsewhere, Amy Goodman pauses to remember a terror anniversary that they won't be talking about on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, etc., and Rolf Potts pauses to remember the 40th anniversary of Ginsberg's magnificent "Wichita Vortex Sutra" (PDF).