Noting that it is The American Way to engage in “paint-peeling political hyperbole during presidential campaign years” and then “backing off from it all” post-election,” New York Times reporter Jim Rutenberg writes that this time around “the intensity of some of the charges that have been made in the past few months, and the historic nature of Mr. Obama’s election” will produce “whiplash-inducing … before-and-after contrasts”:

The shift in tone follows the magnanimous concession speech from Mr. McCain, of Arizona, who referred to Mr. Obama’s victory Tuesday night as “a historic election” and hailed the “special pride” it held for African-Americans. That led the vice president-elect, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., to get into the act. During the campaign, Mr. Biden said he no longer recognized Mr. McCain, an old friend. Now, he says, “We’re still friends.” President Bush, in turn, also hailed Mr. Obama’s victory, saying his arrival at the White House would be “a stirring sight.”

Whether it all heralds a new era of cooperation in Washington remains to be seen, and it may be downright doubtful. But for now, at least, it would seem to be part of an apparent rush to join what has emerged as a real moment in American history.

Natch, the only examples of heated campaign rhetoric Rutenberg cites came from the McCain-Palin side, and he completely ignores the Obama-Biden ticket’s unjustified accusations of racism as well as the ugly misogynistic attacks on Palin by surrogates and supporters (second item). Ah well, victors always get to rewrite history and in this case, Obama’s army of winged monkeys in the MSM are all too happy to perform this one last service for him by doing it in real time.

Rutenberg’s colleague, columnist Gail Collins, wags her finger at “gloating winners and sore losers,” admonishing the former that “you cannot be angry with Republicans for supporting the Republican presidential candidate. It’s like getting angry at squirrels for climbing trees.” And here’s her lecture to the latter:

Another bad role model on the postelection manners front is the House minority leader, John Boehner, who called Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s future White House chief of staff, “an ironic choice for a president-elect who has promised to change Washington, make politics more civil and govern from the center.”

The only possible argument for this kind of language was that it was actually not all that inaccurate.

Still, nobody should want to be first in line to trash an administration that doesn’t even exist yet. Would it have killed Boehner to say something conciliatory? Something like: “It will be good to see a familiar face in the new White House, and I want Rahm to know that I am not mad anymore about the time he bit me on the ankle.”

But elephants have long memories, and are not inclined to forget what attorney and investigative reporter Jeffrey Scott Shapiro calls “the classless disrespect many Americans have shown the president” in this op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal:

During his 2004 victory speech, the president reached out to voters who supported his opponent, John Kerry, and said, “Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust.”

Those bipartisan efforts have been met with crushing resistance from both political parties. …

The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.

This is one reason conservative talk show hosts, pundits, columnists and bloggers are unlikely to adopt the “postelection manners” Collins would prefer (which may become moot, if they are imposed on us through a revival of the free-speech squelching Fairness Doctrine).

But there’s another reason that Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, among others, “want to hold on to their anger” and “are intent on poisoning the soil before bipartisanship can take root,”as Los Angeles Times reporter James Rainey put it. Syndicated columnist Ann Coulter explains:

How many times do we have to run this experiment before Republican primary voters learn that "moderate," "independent," "maverick" Republicans never win, and right-wing Republicans never lose?

[T]he only good thing about McCain is that he gave us a genuine conservative, Sarah Palin. He's like one of those insects that lives just long enough to reproduce so that the species can survive. That's why a lot of us are referring to Sarah as "The One" these days.

Like Sarah Connor in "The Terminator," Sarah Palin is destined to give birth to a new movement. That's why the Democrats are trying to kill her. …

For now, we have a new president-elect. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, we owe it to the Democrats to show their president the exact same kind of respect and loyalty that they have shown our recent Republican president.

The Stiletto is starting out with the premise that that Barack Hussein Obama (it’s OK to use his middle name now; The New York Times says so) is a fraud and a charlatan, because  nothing he said during the campaign convinced her otherwise. So he has to prove himself to her. Every day that he is in office. There is no honeymoon, no grace period, no benefit of the doubt, no learning curve allowed. The Stiletto will judge Obama with the same unyielding harshness that Bush was judged by Dems and libs. The only difference is, The Stiletto was raised by her (legal) immigrant parents to respect the office of the presidency, thus she will refrain from using crude barnyard epithets as nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs when writing about him and his vice president, Joe Biden.  

What Part Of “Loose Lips Sink Ships” Doesn’t The New York Times Understand?: Part III

The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials.

These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized by a classified order that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld  signed in the spring of 2004 with the approval of President Bush, the officials said. The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States.

In 2006, for example, a Navy Seal team raided a suspected militants’ compound in the Bajaur region of Pakistan, according to a former top official of the Central Intelligence Agency. Officials watched the entire mission — captured by the video camera of a remotely piloted Predator aircraft — in real time in the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorist Center at the agency’s headquarters in Virginia 7,000 miles away.

The Times relied on leaks from “more than a half-dozen …current and former military and intelligence officials as well as senior Bush administration policy makers” who spoke “on the condition of anonymity because of its politically delicate nature.” Translation: If the rest of us knew who they were, we’d probably beat the snot out of them for divulging military secrets that endanger the lives of our sons and daughters serving overseas – especially those carrying out these very dangerous missions – as well as potentially endangering the lives of every American here at home.

To read other posts in this series, click here and here.