Shh! The Adults Are Talking!

I didn't want to write about any more idiot town hall shouters, but I didn't know they'd be invited to President Obama's Congressional address last night.

Yeah, I'm sure you've heard. Representative Joe Wilson, R-SC, shouted "You lie" during President Obama's health care speech. Christ, what an asshole.

In the aftermath, Democratic leaders have called for a censure of Wilson, Wilson's Democratic challenger has raised over $200,000 since last night, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have criticized Wilson.

Ironically, Wilson's childish outburst came right after Obama chastised the politicians and commentators who are making wildly bogus claims about health care reform:

Some of people's concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.

So Wilson's outburst was one more lie punctuating the president's remarks, because Wilson's outburst was, in fact, more misinformation coming from the Republican party. It is not hard to fact check: In the Senate Finance Committee working framework for a health plan, which Obama's speech seemed most to mimic, there is the line: "No illegal immigrants will benefit from the health care tax credits."


And I will duly note Wilson's prompt apology. Funny, it seems to be a good week for Republican apologies. But Wilson wants us to believe his heckling was all spontaneous. I'm skeptical.

To the Republicans, theatrics are all they have. Theatrics amount to distractions. And notice how everybody is concentrating on the dumbass heckler and not the content of Obama's speech?

The discussion should be about Obama's plan. We deserve an honest and intelligent debate just like we deserve health care reform.

Cheney Rats Out Bush

I was counting on this happening eventually, but I thought it would come as the result of a criminal investigation. Vincent Bugliosi explained how and why Bush administration officials would start ratting each other out:

What I'm saying is that even people of character aren't usually loyal to each other when their own life is on the line. But these moral weaklings will all probably sing like canaries against each other, since they all appear to be almost amoral individuals who are devoid of any character. If they are willing to lie to the American public about a matter of war and peace that resulted in the deaths of over 100,000 people, certainly they'd be willing to tell the truth to save their worthless hides from the gas chamber or electric chair. Indeed, I suspect that the prosecutor's biggest problem won't be to get them to talk to save their lives, but to make sure they don't embroider the truth and start telling lies in an effort to get a better deal from the prosecutor.

Well, they're starting to sing even without any prosecutor (if video doesn't show, click here):

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Dick Moves

“Politics is just show business for ugly people” -- Jay Leno

The theme this week, courtesy of the McCain campaign, is that Barack Obama is a celebrity. Of course, before starting this new narrative, they scrubbed the McCain web site! Yes, McCain and his people are slowly learning about the Internet. However, they desperately need to learn what a Google cache is:

March 1, 2007

Article Excerpt

NEW YORK (AP) - Republican Sen. John McCain said he will officially enter the presidential race ... with a formal announcement in early April after a trip to Iraq.

The Arizona senator discussed the timing of the long-expected announcement with reporters at an awards reception Wednesday evening a few hours after taping an appearance on CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman."

On the talk show, McCain told Letterman: "I am announcing that I will be a candidate for president of the United States," then added that he would give a formal speech to that effect in early April.

He later told reporters that he would visit Iraq first and that his campaign would be about "whether I have the vision, experience and knowledge to lead the nation."

Former New York Gov. George Pataki introduced McCain to reporters before the Irish-American 10th Annual Awards reception Wednesday night. Asked about polls showing him trailing former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, McCain said: "We keep doing the best we can. We're very happy with the way things are going."

There had been no doubt that McCain would eventually become a full-fledged White House candidate, and he had been expected to make his candidacy official in the spring.

The 2006 midterm campaign had just ended when McCain took the first formal step toward a presidential run in November. He formed an exploratory committee and gave a speech casting himself as a "common-sense conservative" in the vein of Ronald Reagan who could lead the party back to dominance after a dreadful election season by returning to the GOP's core principles.

A political celebrity, McCain is considered a top contender for the nomination.

McCain's own press release last year referred to him as a celebrity. But the humor doesn't end there. In a nationally televised ad, McCain attempts to equate Obama's fame with that of the annoying, narcissistic socialite Paris Hilton. I wonder how Paris Hilton's parents feel considering they donated $4600 to the McCain campaign. Jon Stewart describes this dick move:



So why does the GOP air these ads? They know that simply by raising a question like "is Obama arrogant," it will be debated over and over again in the media. Media Matters explains how these narratives emerge:

But attacks don't just stick and narratives don't just emerge. The only reason that the topic of the week was whether Obama is presumptuous instead of whether McCain is a liar who will do anything to get elected is that the news media decided to make Obama's purported flaws the topic of the week -- even after debunking the charges upon which the characterization is based. It's as though the news media -- so concerned about lies (that weren't really lies) in 2000 -- have suddenly decided that it doesn't matter that the McCain campaign is launching false attack after false attack. That it's the kind of thing you note once, then adopt the premise of the attack.

So even after an attack has been debunked, the MSM devotes an extraordinary amount of time to the lie repeating it like some kind of he-said-she-said lover's quarrel.

When a claim is proven to be false, don't call it "misleading." Call it a lie! And then move on to some other ugly business. There's plenty out there.

Bush? A Liar?

Earlier this week, A long-delayed Senate committee report concluded that President Bush and his aides built the public case for war against Iraq by exaggerating available intelligence and by ignoring disagreements among spy agencies about Iraq’s weapons programs and Saddam Hussein’s links to Al Qaeda. You can read the report here (PDF), and public statements here (PDF). (Unfortunately, these files contain scanned images of the report, and are therefore not searchable.)

This Senate report is important because the committee analyzed major policy speeches that were central to the decision to go to war. The speeches examined included:

• Vice President Richard Cheney, Speech in Tennessee to the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention, August 26, 2002.
• President George W. Bush, Statement before the United Nations General Assembly, September 12, 2002.
• President George W. Bush, Speech in Cincinnati, October 7, 2002.
• President George W. Bush, State of the Union address, January 28, 2003.
• Secretary of State Colin Powell, Speech to the United Nations Security Council, February 5, 2003.

Then the committee examined whether these public statements were substantiated by intelligence information. For example, Bush said this:

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." - President George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, January 29, 2003.

But not all intelligence sources agreed. The Department of Energy (DOE) disagreed with the CIA's conclusions regarding the aluminum tubes, and assessed that it was more likely that the tubes were intended for a different use, such as a conventional rocket program. The Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research also disagreed with the CIA.

Bush, Cheney, and Powell made similar deceiving statements regarding biological and chemical weapons programs. They lead the public and the international community to believe that intelligence was conclusive when it was not. The mainstream media can describe Bush's prewar claims as exaggerated, overstated, inflated, unsupported, or oversimplified, but I say he lied.

I'm not alone in my assessment: [video below or click here if it doesn't show.]


I agree with Richard Clarke's sentiments regarding Bush, Cheney and company: "I just don’t think we can let these people back into polite society and give them jobs on university boards and corporate boards and just let them pretend that nothing ever happened when there are 4,000 Americans dead and 25,000 Americans grievously wounded, and they’ll carry those wounds and suffer all the rest of their lives."

This article marks my 101st blog post this year. I've decided to republish my news blog from 2001 - 2002. Many of the links are no longer available, but some of the titles demonstrate the prewar hysteria as well as some early signs of sanity.