And here we see the emergence of the excuse that Democrats will whine about for years to come: Bush won because of "slander and lies."

Ah, the Pink Lady. Boy can the Left hold a grudge. But I believe that Sidney Hook's autobiography (Out of Step) recounts him attending Communist Party parties at Helen Gahagan Douglas' home. As a kid growing up in San Diego, I remember getting 'pink sheet' flyers identifying Communists and pinkos in the media, entertainment industry, etc. Those were the days.

What is this nut saying?
Is he claiming that the Bush family forced John Kerry to pal around Paris with the North Vietnamese?

Meyerson should be a good leading indicator of how things are going in KerryWorld. Mark Steyn had a good line in today's Chicago Sun Times. He said that at the rate things are going, the Kerry camp would be in the post-election defeat recrimination phase by about mid-September.

Meyerson, like so many others who had pinned their hopes on Kerry, appears to be tumbling off the rails. He unleashed a similiar howl of enraged frustration the other day. Dionne and Kinsley, the WaPo's other leading liberal op-edsters, are in similiar unhingement mode. They're facing up to the reality that their man may not only lose, but lose badly, and it's an ugly sight to see dreams exploded.

Old Zell standing there with his piercing eyes staring out from under fierce eyebrows looked like the personification of the American eagle, stating everything many Americans feel in their hearts. Moore must have shook in his boots. What a contrast.

By the way, wasn't McCarthy proven essentially correct about Hollywood?

"By the way, wasn't McCarthy proven essentially correct about Hollywood?"

Yes, see "Hollywood Party" for details:

http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1018/Hollywood%20Pa.htm

McCarthy engaged in pernicious overkill. You have to understand how miserable the 30s were, to understand the appeal that Communism had, and also you need to understand the cleverness of the Communists in weaving themselves into the woodwork.

When my dad was in Brooklyn College before WWII, there was a campus organization which supported equal rights for all Americans, a decent wage, Social Security, etc. Most, if not all, the Jewish students including my father and my uncle joined it. Then the organization's newspaper started publishing editorials praising the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and the last straw was a headline that said 'Finland Attacks Soviet Union.' Most of these students, like my father and my uncle, quit the organization once it became clear how disgusting it was. Both my father and my uncle enlisted on 12/8/41 and my father served in WWII as an enlisted man, went to West Point after the war and served in the Korean conflict. He voted for Goldwater in 1964. My uncle went into the Navy, then dental school and became wealthy and a big enough contributor to the GOP to get himself invited to the Reagan Ranch. Hardly Communists, I would say.

Both of them were investigated by the FBI in the McCarthy period and were cleared but it was a harrowing experience, especially as my father is 60% disabled from wounds received in the American Army in the Korean police action.

My dad and my uncle are voting for Bush, although D'Amato and Giuliani are much more their style. My uncle was tight with Arthur Finkelstein and was a big fundraiser, in the Jewish community, for the Fonz out on the North Shore of the Guyland.

Bart:

Why shouldn't they have been investigated? If two brothers today were members of an organization that praised 9-11 we'd hopefully investigate them.

Because they quit the organization when they found out what it really was and well before any governmental prompting, and they participated in America's wars against Nazism and Communism, both being severely wounded in the process.

There was about a 13 year time span in between quitting and being investigated. And it was pretty clear from the way that the organization went from being all over campus to,in my dad's words, not even having enough for a minyan(10 people) after they started with the Communist propaganda to know that people joined for the most innocent of reasons. If the FBI investigated the people who remained in the organization after it had shown its true colors, that would have been fine. If you think Finland attacked Russia or that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a good thing, you should be investigated. Ed Asner feels that Stalin gets an unjustified bad press. He should be investigated.

The FBI and HUAC and the rest went after a lot of good people for no good reason, unless you consider being Jewish, Black or Italian a good reason. At the same time, NKVD penetration of American security services proceeded apace as did the Vatican/CIA ratline.

Genecis:

Actually it was HUAC proven right about Hollywood. McCarthy's focus was on the federal government (mainly the State Department).

Bart:

That's what an investigation would reveal, not reason not to investigate.

Fred:

Which was likewise thouroughly compromised, though McCarthy should not have been the one taking the lead.