Posted on 12/07/2006 4:35:32 PM PST by lowbridge
Posted by Noel Sheppard on December 7, 2006 - 13:57.
Wednesday, December 6, 2006, will certainly go down in history as the day the media used the release of a bipartisan report on the Iraq war as a way to thoroughly lambaste the president of the United States. Though this wasn’t surprising, the glee on the faces of those reporting what should have been bad news was quite striking.
For those that were interested in seeing such a merry bashing, MSNBC’s “Scarborough Country” was certainly the place (video available here, hat tip to NRO’s Media Blog). Host Scarborough nicely set it up for his guest, “Meet the Press’s” Tim Russert: “And I asked Tim if he ever remembered seeing a president undercut in such a dramatic way.” Russert didn’t disappoint: “I`ve never seen anything like this, Joe.”
You’ve never seen anything like this, Tim? How about impeachment proceedings against the former president? Might that qualify as a president being undercut in a dramatic way? What about a televised deposition of said president? Or a lawsuit filed against said president? Or the televised Iran-Contra hearings in the '80s? Or the televised Watergate hearings in the '70s? Did these historical moments in your lifetime conveniently elude your memory in your zeal to bash this president, Tim?
Regardless of the answers, Russert continued:
You know, this morning the president said that this report was a, quote, "tough assessment." That`s an understatement. Just look back less than a month ago. Donald Rumsfeld was the secretary of state. (SIC) The president said, “We`re make making progress.” The vice president had said within the year that we`re in the last throes of the insurgency, and that we were winning. And now you have a secretary of defense incoming saying, We`re not winning. You have the former secretary of state for Bush 41 saying we -- in effect, we`ve traded one nightmare for another, Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton saying this may not be enough, Leon Panetta, the former Clinton White House chief of staff saying this is one last chance. And I think the most important thing said today, Joe, was that we may not have lasting influence on the ground, that events may, in fact, be slipping away, that we may be heading to complete anarchy and chaos, that this may not be enough. This was such a sobering report -- powerful, passionate, bipartisan, unanimous. I think it`s not only a wake-up call for the Bush White House but I think for the whole country. We are in very difficult straits.
The dour duo weren’t done, for Scarborough set Russert up for another presidential whipping: “Do you get the feeling that this panel is trying to send a signal to the president, Hey, this is your last chance, this is your best hope for saving yourself, saving your legacy, and saving this country from further bloodshed?”
Russert again hit this softball out of the park:
One of the most senior Republicans in Washington, D.C., said to me, It`s over, and we have to convince the president that it`s over. We need to find a way for the Congress to come together, more important, the country to come together, and lock arms and say what`s in the best interest of the United States to deal with Iraq. I mean, when you sit here and read these recommendations, it is numbing how passionate, how bold they are and how bleak the assessment is.
Yes, Tim, and it’s also numbing how passionate and excited you seem to be about all of this. After all, if the assessment was so bleak, why were you smiling as you reported it?
It shows how bad things currently are when James Baker of all people can be considered by anyone as coming to the rescue. Don't forget, this is the same James Baker that helped W. steal Florida in 2000 ... so we can blame Baker for all of W's foreign policy messes in the first place. It's Baker's duty to try to attempt a rescue.
Of course, Bush won't listen to him. "Victory" seems to be the only word W. will hear and the V-word doesn't receive serious consideration in the ISG Report.
I haven't watched Scarborough since his Katrina coverage. That's one boycott that I had no problem sticking with.
We stole that election fair and square. Sure Baker helped, but it was more of a Rove operation, when Rove was still off of most people's radar screens.
Time for you to get educated again:
Ballot Counting Coup
by Christopher Clukey
Saturday, December 02, 2000
Even though we need truth and objectivity during the 2000 election season, I can't be too hard on the media for their reticence about the big, braying donkey in the living room. After all, imagine what life would be like for the first journalist to break ranks and say, "Well, it looks like Al Gore might be trying to steal this election." I don't think their career prospects would be very stellar after that; not because of media bias necessarily, but because you need to be on a firm foundation when hinting that the Vice President of the United States might be involved in a power grab. The bold journalist in question would be lucky to avoid spending the rest of their career saying "Dateline: McDonald's. Do you want fries with that?"
The problem is, few journalists are even displaying the healthy suspicion of Gore's motives (and Bush's) that they should be. Not surprisingly, the actions of the number two man in the Most Ethical Administration In HistoryTM give us plenty to be suspicious of. The Vice President and his supporters have repeatedly told us that their desire is simply a fair and accurate count of every vote. Consider then, this list of things that must be true (or at least, believed by them) if the current counting methods and the further counts they advocate are truly fair, full and accurate.
• There is a need to hand count tens of thousands of discarded ballots in heavily Democratic Palm Beach County but not in heavily Republican Duval County.
• The fact that Palm Beach County threw out 15,000 ballots in 1996 is irrelevant.
• It's completely innocent that half of the new gap-closing Gore votes from the machine recount came out of Palm Beach County.
• The discarded butterfly ballots in Palm Beach should be assumed to go for Gore, and we shouldn't assume that the voters were smart enough to get new ballots and cast their votes correctly. Also, the fact that these non-recasting voters did not follow the instructions and that both campaigns approved the ballot is irrelevant.
• The chads in question (swinging, hanging, singing, dancing, etc.) still attached to the ballots violated the laws of physics by remaining attached while passing through a slot in the counting machine specifically designed to remove them.
• Perforated ballots intended to be machine counted and designed so that the chads could be easily punched out will still properly reflect voter intent after being handled multiple times by volunteers.
• The Vice President has been in elected office for 24 years and doesn't know how a voting machine works or that the ballots are not designed to suffer hand counts.
• Even though Brian Williams of MSNBC couldn't intentionally create a dimpled chad in several tries, thousands of Florida voters did so by accident in one try.
• Katherine Harris, the elected Republican Secretary of State, is biased and should recuse herself, but Bob Butterworth, the Democrat Attorney General and all the Dem-dominated canvassing boards are above reproach.
• The frequent rule changes during the recounts were not only innocent and unbiased, they made things more fair.
• The Gore team's efforts to "count every vote" were served by sending a five page brief to predominately Democratic counties detailing ways to disqualify military ballots with technicalities.
• The national presidential undervote percentage (1.5%) and the Miami-Dade percentage (1.6%) are a mere coincidence, the undervotes should be examined for voter intent.
• Voting machines guaranteed by the manufacturer to produce 6 or fewer errors per million votes are much less reliable and prone to bias than volunteers and boards working long hours.
• Changing both the deadline and the available counting method in the Florida election is not a violation of a Federal law which prohibits changing election rules after the date of the election.
Believing all this, or believing that anyone as intelligent as Gore and Lieberman believe it all with the firm conviction they project is tough stuff. I submit that when one considers all this, only two possibilities remain: Either Mr. Gore is knowingly engaging in vote theft, or (more likely) he is just plain sure he really won Florida, and he's now willing to engage in any Machiavellian scheme needed to make the count suit him. No matter which is true, Mr. Gore has not been looking for fairness; he has been looking for votes that were never cast. More recounts cannot make him the winner; he can only be named President. This counting coup must come to an end, for the wheel has turned... and it is time for him to go.
Now, MurryMom, time for you to answer the pertinent question: Do you believe the 14 items listed in this column?
Scarborough isn't even worthy of being called a RINO.
Not this FReeper.
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