posted on May 27, 2004 09:18:25 PM newI want you to go back to the website last week or the week before. I guess it was the week-before last. I want you to grab Kate O'Beirne's column that she wrote on National Review Online placing in context my comments about Abu "Grab," as Gore called it. Didn't he say Abu "Grab"? What's on his mind? He calls it Abu Grab Prison. At any rate, find out in Gore lingo what "Abu" means and we could really be onto something. But go back and get that Kate O'Beirne piece, because she had called me. She sent me an e-mail. She wanted to know what is this? I just sent her the transcript for the whole show from which those comments that these guys are isolating and taking out of context were taken, and she wrote a great piece that puts it all in context and perspective and explains what it was that I was saying in her own words. I mean, it's one thing for me to say it.
So I want you to re-link to that, or just post it, whatever. Put it up there now, Koko. Don't waste any time. Just get it up there now. Get this, folks. There's something going on. I mean, every day now somebody is out there trashing me and mentioning my name from someplace, and it's all these comments. These comments are two weeks old. Now they've even got Gore mouthing these comments. Last week we got a call innocently enough from somebody at TIME magazine. I guess they've got a section -- I don't read TIME magazine so I had to be told about this -- "Ten Questions For" and they change the American every week. Last week they wanted to do ten questions for me, and I agreed to do it. "What the hell, it's ten questions. Yip yip yip yip yahoo," but they pulled out at the last minute. They went to the editors meeting at ten o'clock Friday morning and decided to move it to this week, which is tomorrow. They're going to do this, right here on the heels of all this.
TIME and Newsweek have both, in cover stories, mentioned these quotes that you heard Gore just say about me. It is an all-out concerted effort. I'm honored by it, but I am intrigued by it. I have never seen a media figure targeted much the same way the president of the United States is being targeted, and now the president of the United States, who's got really important things to do, has been told or challenged by Gore to condemn me. (Tapping desk.) So I'm wondering about this TIME magazine. I'm still going to do it, but I'm going to be loaded. I'm going to be ready. In fact, they want to take a picture. I ought to show up in prison guard garb, or maybe take the picture with a hood on and say, "Here, I'm the Statue of Liberty. I showed up today to do my show as the Statue of Liberty. Take a picture of me with this hood on. Send a copy over to MoveOn.org." (Laughing.)
This is nothing more than the incoherent raving of an egotistical idiot...Sound and fury signifying nothing...the furious thrashing about of a miserable hypocrite whose time has come and gone.
I'm going to be loaded. indeed...he must have been really loaded when he let this slop out of his fat mouth....
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When a dog howls at the moon, we call it religion. When he barks at strangers, we call it patriotism. - Edward Abbey
posted on May 27, 2004 09:28:28 PM newLinda, I believe that your tactic in calling your opponents socialists is intended to discourage our participation in this forum.....
ugh...no you'd be wrong again. It's YOUR side that's always telling everyone who shares an opposing view to leave....not me...
posted on May 27, 2004 09:41:26 PM new
Here's a review from the WSJ on Gores vein bustin' speech.
Guilty Gore Goes Gaga
"It is now clear that Al Gore is insane," writes the New York Post's John Podhoretz. "I don't mean that his policy ideas are insane, though many of them are. I mean that based on his behavior, conduct, mien and tone over the past two days, there is every reason to believe that Albert Gore Jr., desperately needs help. I think he needs medication, and I think that if he is already on medication, his doctors need to adjust it or change it entirely."
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times agrees. When he delivered a speech to the far-left outfit MoveOn.org yesterday, she writes, "Mr. Gore hollered so much, he made Howard Dean look like George Pataki." She says the erstwhile veep represents "the wackadoo wing of the Democratic Party."
Well, give Gore credit for helping liberals and conservatives find common ground in this era of polarization. Pretty much everyone agrees Gore is nuts.
Well, OK, we did get one e-mail in Gore's defense, from a reader whose name we'll withhold because that's the kind of compassion we practice here at Best of the Web Today:
Al Gore spoke the truth, the real truth, and American truth. The hate speech that we are exposed to on a daily basis comes from the likes of you and the rest of you lying fascist scum that contaminate this country. You are the Republican taliban.
This charming missive pretty much captures the tone and spirit of the Gore speech, though our correspondent at least understands the virtue of brevity. Gore's speech, by contrast, ran more than 6,500 words. Maybe he's hoping for Fidel Castro's job.
How did things go so terribly wrong for Al Gore? When he ran for president in 1988, he was a fresh-faced, moderate "new Democrat."
He lost the nomination to the electrifying Michael Dukakis, but he was only 40 and his future looked bright. Yet he never lived up to his potential, and today he is a pitiful, though scary, old man.
An Associated Press account of yesterday's speech notes that "Gore, who served in Vietnam, predicted greater problems for America's involvement in Iraq."
The AP apparently means to suggest that Gore suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder, since the Vietnam reference is otherwise a complete non sequitur. But according to WebMD, "symptoms of PTSD usually occur within three months of the traumatic event." True, "they can occur months or years later"--but three decades later?
We've got a better theory: Gore, in our view, has cracked under a crushing burden of guilt.
To explain why, it helps to remember that a desperate anger pervades Gore's entire party at the moment. That's not surprising. For the first time in half a century, the Democrats are out of the White House and have a majority in neither house of Congress. A decisive GOP victory in November would leave the Dems a minority party for a very long time.
Oh, they put on a brave face, noting excitedly every Bush swoon in the polls. They say the president is manifestly incompetent and John Kerry will beat him easily. Maybe they'll even turn out to be right. Who knows? Certainly some Republicans are spooked about Bush's re-election prospects. But the shrillness and hysteria of the Democrats' rhetoric tells us they are far from confident.
Still, the immoderation of Gore's words, combined with the fury of his tone, puts him in a class by himself, or very nearly so, even among angry Dems. And while political candidates routinely engage in hyperbole in order to stir up the party faithful, Gore isn't running for anything.
Dick Gephardt stopped ranting about Bush's being a "miserable failure" when he left the presidential race.
Gore has nothing to gain by sacrificing his dignity in this way.
How did the Dems come to such a pass? In large part, it's Gore's fault.
The Democrats held the White House in 2000, at a time of apparent peace and prosperity. They should have won the election that year, and they surely would have had they only had a decent candidate. But instead they had Al Gore. Even he came close enough to winning that he was tempted to try to steal the election.
There's a telling line right at the beginning of Gore's speech: George W. Bush, he says, "has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon." Here Gore is engaging in what psychologists call "projection": attributing one's own faults to others.
The most dishonest president since Richard Nixon obviously is the one who was impeached for lying under oath--the president, that is, whose No. 2 was none other than Al Gore.
Gore would have become president had Bill Clinton resigned after his 1998 impeachment, or had 17 Democratic senators voted to convict him in his impeachment trial.
President Gore likely would have been re-elected in 2000, since he would have had the advantage of incumbency and been free of the Clinton taint that (unaccompanied by the Clinton charm) hurt him so much in the "red" states.
Instead, party discipline held, and the Senate acquitted Clinton. This was another missed opportunity for Gore.
Had he publicly broken from Clinton and called on the president to resign, other Democrats might well have followed his lead. Instead, he appeared at a White House rally immediately after the impeachment vote and described Clinton as "a man who I believe will be regarded in the history books as one of our greatest presidents."
Thus it was Al Gore, more than anyone else, who assured the election of George W. Bush as president. And if Gore actually believes all the paranoid nonsense he utters about "global warming," "an unprecedented assault on civil liberties," the "American gulag," the "catastrophe" in Iraq and so on, he let down not only his party but his country and the world, which will soon be destroyed thanks to Bush's decision to withdraw from the Kyoto treaty.
That's more guilt than anyone should be forced to endure.
posted on May 28, 2004 07:48:09 AM new ugh...no you'd be wrong again. It's YOUR side that's always telling everyone who shares an opposing view to leave....not me
No, linda. You've been accused of trying to run off or shut down opposing political viewpoints before on this board. I'm not the only poster who has noticed that ugh ugly tactic.
posted on May 28, 2004 09:05:19 AM new
"A Shadow on the Land"
by Douglas O'Rourke
LOS ANGELES, May 24, 2004 (www.columnleft.com) -- They've brought America to its knees. They're a ruthless band of fundamentalist religious fanatics that respect no international laws and seem destined to cause only death, misery, and destruction. They strike without warning using stealth, torture, lies, and deception to rain down violence without regard to innocent lives lost. They cynically exploit the World's media. They constantly invoke the name of their God, to justify every cruel act for their holy cause. They'll use and sacrifice innocent believing kids as warriors. Most of the world already hates and fears them, and no country on Earth is safe from their rage or terror.
They are the new evil in the World.
So much for the Bush folks. Those al-Qaida guys are no picnic either.
If there is a single way the Cheney-Halliburton Administration could have made a bigger mess out of this country before the eyes of the World in just under four years, it doesn't come to mind, but you can bet there's probably even more bad news waiting to leak out.
Bush to Titanic: Stay the course!
The only difference between the current Administration and a line of lemmings about to walk off a cliff to drown in the sea, it's that at least lemmings are cute and cuddly. There is nothing at all cute about these people. It will take a generation to get the smell out of the White House carpets.
They claim the ‘good news' about Iraq just isn't getting out. OK, oil companies and Bush friends who got fat no-bid contracts are doing just great in Iraq. That's the sum total of the ‘good news.' When oil men make war, only rich men benefit.
Sure, Saddam is gone, but at what cost? The Iraqi's think they've swapped one tyranny for another, minus their working phones and utilities. As Islamic nation builders, we suck. The once and future felon Ahmed Chalabi was the Republican's grand idea of Iraq's bright future.
All the good things this country has ever done for the people of the World are getting lost in the arrogant malfeasance that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the faceless, soulless, greedy idealogues behind them have done in our names. The real shame of the prison pictures from Abu Gharib is that these deeds were in effect done by all of us. America piled up those scared, naked men, and America beat that guy in the plastic bag to death. In this savage, leaderless quagmire, we have become what we hate. America's moral center has been replaced by flag waving, false piety, and bumper sticker thinking. All hail the idiot son!
We started a war for the very first time just because a bunch of clowns who never served a day in combat read too much Tom Clancy and wanted to play soldier. Our valiant sons and daughters have given their lives and limbs for neocon hubris and Halliburton's bottom line.
The Republicans apparently made war on Iraq just because they could.
People who knew better gave them a Congressional and media blank check. They cashed it with the blood of our faithful troops. How can Iraq hope to become a true democracy under Bush when America isn't?
The Republicans have made a generation that endured Watergate and Iran-Contra long for the classic simplicity of a few comical idiots like Gordon Liddy or Ollie North who lied, got caught, and ran their whole crazy train off the track. Nobody died in Watergate, or chasing Monica, but a whole lot of people have died on both sides for the WMD that wasn't, and the lies that were. More will yet die. For what? Why? Freedom fries anybody?
Our neoconservative, holier-than-thou President has brought shame on us all. You can spin that anyway you like, but history will not be as kind as Fox News. A leadership founded and built on personal and public ignorance can only prevail when the ignorant remain so. As the death toll of our under-supported and incompetently deployed troops heads towards one thousand, a lot of folks are starting to wake up and get pissed off. Voices of caution are finally being raised from even the most rabid conservatives. Surprise. The Dixie Chicks were right all along. A full two thirds of Americans polled think we're on the wrong track in Iraq.
Meanwhile, the Administration and those in LimbaughLand compare the prison abuses to ‘college hazing' and imply the detainees had it coming anyway. They're upset that good people are upset! We're America. At the end of the day we're supposed to be better than this. We used to be. Doubtless we will be again. We must. The Bush people promised us a happy Capra film, but we got the Manson Family, in expensive suits.
How did this happen? Simple. The greedy guys who sell oil, guns, and bombs, and the nutsy ones who think the Teletubbies are gay and the Rapture is cool, plus the crooked guys who brought you Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco and then sent your job overseas so they can pocket your salary, all got together and formed the Coalition of the Stupid and Greedy. They started a war with a bunch of angry religious folks from the Dark Ages. It's a fundamentalist thing. Ours against theirs. The joke is -- these aren't even the ones that were behind 9/11.
The Bush people had no plan, just a quick need for glory. Over seven hundred American kids who saw Mr. Bush strut on that aircraft carrier last May as he declared the Iraq ‘Mission Accomplished' have since died there.
It's fitting that Mr. Bush chose the Army War College to deliver his keynote speech on our pending 'triumph' in Iraq, which the four major networks opted to skip. It was a chilling War College study from before the war that predicted we'd be in exactly the mess we are now. A lot of professional soldiers told the Administration as much, but they knew better.
You can read the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute report yourself at http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pubs/2003/reconirq/reconirq.htm.
As we pump that pricy, post-Iraq 'Mission Accomplished' gas into our vehicles consider that the image of the tragic Columbia Shuttle disaster might well be an apt logo for the whole Bush Presidency -- a once proud U.S. institution tumbling from the sky in shattered pieces. They have been so busy, how did they find the time to sell out the environment and the poor?
Never in the history of human conflict have so many owed so much to the ignorance of so few.
That thumping sound you hear in America on these warm Spring nights is our Founding Fathers, old Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and FDR -- all turning over in their graves.
The Republicans have the worst re-election poll numbers since Herbert Hoover -- good thing they're only facing John Kerry and the Democrats or they might be in serious trouble in November.
A lot of shady people have a big stake in getting George W. Bush four more years in power and expect them to do or say anything to pull that off. If you've had quite enough 'compassionate conservatism' for one lifetime then start getting your friends registered to vote. Get informed, get busy, get political....
No election in our history will matter more than this one.
posted on May 28, 2004 07:03:56 PM newYou've been accused of trying to run off or shut down opposing political viewpoints before on this board. I'm not the only poster who has noticed that ugh ugly tactic.
Helen
You have TOTALLY lost your mind, helen.
NEVER have I told anyone to leave....NEVER.
Anyone who's posted here for any length of time knows you are lying. I've have always said I enjoy opposing views...and like arguing/debating my position.
You're beginning to sound like al gore....hysterical.
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