Posted on 12/31/2003 4:50:40 AM PST by PJ-Comix
Dominique de Villepin Snottiness Award for Whining About the War |
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I want to speak to you today about war and empire.... We are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige and power and security....We have forfeited the goodwill, the empathy the world felt for us after 9/11, we have folded in on ourselves....We are far less secure today than we were before we bumbled into Iraq. We will pay for this, but what saddens me most is that those who will by and large pay the highest price are poor kids from Mississippi or Alabama or Texas who could not get a decent job or health insurance and joined the army because it was all we offered them. New York Times reporter Chris Hedges in a May 17 commencement address at Rockford College in Illinois, as quoted by the Rockford Register Star. The graduates booed Hedges off the stage. [82 points] |
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In the past several weeks, your policy on Iraq has generated opposition from the governments of France, Russia, China, Germany, Turkey, the Arab League, and many other countries; opened a rift at NATO and at the UN; and drawn millions of ordinary citizens around the world into the streets in anti-war protests. May I ask what went wrong that so many governments and peoples around the world now not only disagree with you very strongly, but see the U.S. under your leadership as an arrogant power? ABC White House correspondent Terry Moran to President Bush at a prime-time press conference, March 6. [43] Lesley Stahl: The Powell Doctrine in military terms is that you throw a massive force, if youre going to go to war, make it huge. There are now criticisms, were beginning to hear, that this force isnt massive enough. We should change our attitude toward the United Nations. There has to be some power in the world superior to our own....We should not have attacked Iraq without the okay of the United Nations....Now we have to live with that mistake. Were living with it, and too many of our guys are dying with it. |
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You became First Lady like no other First Lady before you. You had your own interests, you got involved in public policy. No First Lady had done that without being severely criticized. Did you realize what you were getting into? |
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Senator Hillary Clinton is at Ground Zero this morning to attend the September 11th anniversary ceremony, and she joins us now. Good morning, Senator Clinton....Youve fought so much for the heroes of 9/11. You have sought money for firefighters, youve taken the EPA to task for toning down their report on air quality at Ground Zero. Has enough been done for the heroes, the people who fought so bravely on that day? CBSs Hannah Storm to New York Senator Hillary Clinton on The Early Show, September 11. [27] HBOs Bob Costas: How, from where you sit, have you maintained your dignity, and how can you be so controlled under circumstances that would be trying for the best of us?...If you became President, what kind of First Gentleman would Bill Clinton be?...What are your best and worst qualities as a politician? John Cochran: Remember the $8 million advance Hillary Clintons publisher gave her? Turns out it was a bargain. She has earned every penny and then some. Her book is a best-seller in eight countries....She has not only signed 20,000 copies of her book, she has also put her name on more legislation than any other Senator in this Congress, sponsoring or co-sponsoring 396 bills, ranging from resolutions on Girl Scouts Week to funds for rebuilding Iraq and- |
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The size of the demonstrators, at least here, at least in Europe, seems to underscore, Chris, that there are now perhaps two world superpowers. Theres the United States and then there are those millions of people who took to the streets opposing U.S. policy. MSNBCs David Shuster to Hardball host Chris Matthews, February 17. [81 points] |
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Across the country, citizens have been coming out to voice their opposition, all calling for the same things. They want government accountability, they want environmental justice, and most of all, theyre calling for peace....While protesters like today are a statistical minority, in American history protests like this have been prescient indicators of the national mood. So the government may do well to listen to whats said today. ABC correspondent Chris Cuomo previewing an afternoon protest rally planned for Times Square, on a special five-hour Saturday edition of Good Morning America, March 22, three days after the war began. [70] It was a party a hundred thousand strong, flowing haltingly below the slated mansard roofs of Pariss stately avenues, accompanied by balloons and banners and vendors selling foot-long hot dogs and fries. If there is one thing the French know how to do, it is how to conduct a demonstration. |
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Left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore: What happened to the search for Osama bin Laden?...You dont think they [the U.S. government] know where he is? |
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Being a man, Ive got to say that weve got this guy in the White House who thinks he is a man, you know, who projects himself as a man because he has a certain masculinity, and hes a good old boy, and he used to drink, and he knows how to shoot a gun and how to drive a pickup truck, et cetera, like that. Thats not the definition of a man, God dammit! Craig Kilborn: Use the words compassionate and conservative in the same sentence while being neither ironic nor scornful. |
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This is the worst President ever. He [George W. Bush] is the worst President in all of American history. Hearst White House columnist Helen Thomas at a Society for Professional Journalism banquet, as quoted by the Torrance, California Daily Breezes John Bogert in a January 19 story. [80 points] |
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A friend of mine here at CNN has a theory about the Bush administration. Theyre convinced that everything Bill Clinton ever did was wicked, bad and awful, and so they want to do the opposite....Clinton wanted to save all that wilderness area in Alaska; and Mr. Bush wants to drill for oil there. Clinton fussed about clean air; this President wants to ease new restrictions on coal-burning power plants.... Clinton, my friend noted, had surpluses. Obviously, the Bush administration thinks those are evil, because what they want is deficits big ones, maybe the biggest ever. CNNs Bruce Morton on Late Edition, February 9. [51] Is it fair to say that the White House...at the end of the day thought that to make progress, the benefit for these 11.9 million children should go in order to, in part, save the dividend benefit for investors?...I just want to make sure that you are saying that the White House agreed to make the choice to leave these children behind. Bush promised a foreign policy of humility and a domestic policy of compassion. He has given us a foreign policy of arrogance and a domestic policy that is cynical, myopic and cruel. |
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We are about to show you bread lines in America that you may find hard to believe. With the recession there has been a sudden leap in the number of people on emergency food assistance. The lines we found looked like theyd been taken from the pages of the Great Depression. Its not just the unemployed. We found plenty of people working full-time, but still not able to earn enough to keep hunger out of the house. If you think you have a good idea of whos hungry in America today, come join the line. Youd never guess who youd meet there....Almost half the people fed by these lines are kids. The Agriculture Department figures one out of six children in America faces hunger; thats more than 12 million kids. Nationwide, children have the highest poverty rate. Preschoolers come here with their parents and play in boxes as empty as the days want ads. CBSs Scott Pelleys report from a food line in Marietta, Ohio, on the January 8 60 Minutes II. [74 points] |
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Carole Simpson: Even though the U.S. spends twice as much per person as any other developed country on health care, the U.S. is the only developed country that fails to provide universal coverage for all its citizens.... Medical Editor Tim Johnson: We have a country that wants to believe it is the best in everything, but until all of us embrace the idea that health care should be a right, not a privilege, our system cannot be glibly described as, quote, the best in the world. ABCs World News Tonight/Sunday, October 19. [58] Today in San Diego, the supercarrier USS Abraham Lincoln finally docked after nearly 10 months at sea. Well have more on the reunion with eager loved ones in just a moment, but these soldiers, of course, are coming home to a sober reality as well: an economy that, if anything, is struggling more than it was when they set sail. The government said today the unemployment rate is up to six percent. More than half a million jobs were lost in the last three months. Tonight, were going to show you a new true face of homelessness in America. Todays homeless are families, and the families you will meet have done everything right and yet theres no place for them. Still, they struggle to find a home....There are more families homeless in New York City now than at any in the last 20 years....in numbers, its estimated, not seen since the Great Depression. |
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I decided to put on my flag pin tonight first time. Until now I havent thought it necessary to display a little metallic icon of patriotism for everyone to see....I put it on to take it back. The flags been hijacked and turned into a logo the trademark of a monopoly on patriotism.... |
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The failure of Democratic politicians and public thinkers to respond to popular discontents...allowed a resurgent conservatism to convert public concern and hostility into a crusade to resurrect social Darwinism as a moral philosophy, multinational corporations as a governing class, and the theology of markets as a transcendental belief system....Their stated and open aim is to change how America is governed to strip from government all its functions except those that reward the rich and privileged benefactors....It is the most radical assault on the notion of one nation, indivisible, that has occurred in our lifetime. Ill be frank with you: I simply dont understand it or the malice in which it is steeped....And I dont know how to reconfigure democratic politics to fit into an age of sound bites and polling dominated by a media oligarchy whose corporate journalists are neutered and whose right-wing publicists have no shame. Moyers in a June 4 speech at a conference sponsored by the Campaign for Americas Future, according to a text version posted on commondreams.org. [58] Its the richest Americans the top one percent who get the lions share of the tax cuts, people like Secretary of the Treasury John Snow, [and] Vice President Dick Cheney....Eleven million children in families with incomes roughly between $10,000 and $26,000 a year will not be getting the check that was supposed to be in the mail this summer. Eleven million children punished for being poor, even as the rich are rewarded for being rich. |
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While these arguments were having here in Washington over tax cuts may look sort of abstract to most people in America, it is not abstract when your kids teacher gets laid off....Libraries are closing, teachers are getting laid off. Gray Davis is in the position of having to decide whether he should deny prosthetic limbs to poor people. Times Karen Tumulty on CBSs Face the Nation, May 11. The Cato Institute found Californias state spending grew from $39.5 billion in fiscal year 1994 to $78.1 billion in fiscal year 2001, a 98 percent increase. [50 points] |
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Something got screwed up in terms of your priorities if you think its more important to get rid of the dividend tax than it is to take care of 11 million kids. It seems to me that instead of cutting taxes, we ought to be increasing the taxes to pay off the deficit, rather than let that thing build up to the point where our grandchildrens grandchildren are going to be paying for our period of time and our years at the helm. He [Treasury Secretary-designate John Snow] is said to be in favor of further tax cuts but against deficits. Doesnt one lead to the other? |
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To many New Yorkers, the scenes of a city under siege were achingly familiar. New Yorkers watching the televised bombing of Baghdad yesterday said they were riveted by the raw and uninterrupted display of American military might. But for some, the bombing brought back particularly visceral and chilling memories. They could not help thinking about Sept. 11, and how New York, too, was once under assault from the skies. New York Times reporter David Chen in a March 22 news story headlined Baghdad Bombing Brings Back Memories of 9/11. [58 points] |
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Id say the chances are about 50-50 that humanity will be extinct or nearly extinct within 50 years. Weapons of mass destruction, disease, I mean this global warming is scaring the living daylights out of me. CNN founder Ted Turner at an Associated Press Managing Editors seminar Sept. 27, according to an AP story in the September 29 Atlanta Journal-Constitution. [49] Once upon a time, a scientist named Galileo said the Earth was round, and the political leaders of the time said, No, no, Galileo its flat, and Galileo got life under house arrest for his little theory. Today, the vast majority of scientists will tell you the Earth is getting warmer and most would agree that industry is at least in part to blame. So far nobodys gone to jail for saying that, which doesnt mean the idea isnt squarely at the center of a political dust up and not an insignificant one at that because, if the charges leveled against the White House are true, an important environmental question is being twisted or ignored for the sake of politics. If you see a whole monkfish at the market, youll find its massive mouth scarier than a sharks. Apparently it sits on the bottom of the ocean, opens its Godzilla jaws and waits for poor unsuspecting fishies to swim right into it, not unlike the latest recipients of Ws capital-gains cuts. |
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Theres an article in the Style section of the Washington Post this morning. It says youve logged 26 years of personal minutiae, filling 4,400 two-by-three inch notebooks, color-coded by season. An example: 12:17' this is when you made the announcement Ascend stage, stumble, regain balance; 12:18: Applause, Where the Streets Have No Name, plays (U2); 12:19: Clap, wave; 12:20: Adjust tie (red, white stripes); 12:21: Double thumbs up; 12:22: Sing along with National Anthem, right hand on heart. What, what do you do this for?! |
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Bob Schieffer: Ive seen some estimates that it may cost up to $50 billion to fix this. Whos going to pay that? Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham: ....ratepayers, obviously, will pay the bill because theyre the ones who benefit.... Schieffer: Wait, wait, wait. Lets back up. Ratepayers that means people who pay in their electric bills. So youre saying the customers are going to have to pay for this?...Excuse me for asking, but, I mean, arent the companies going to have to bear some of this cost? Exchange on CBSs Face the Nation, August 17. [44] Is your SUV a weapon of terrorism? Some people think so. Theyre taking out ads to tell you why. What would you advise the United States to do today to fight al-Qaeda?...What would be the wise course for the United States to follow now in Iraq? |
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What must it be like to live in Rush Limbaughs world? A world where when anyone other than conservative, white men attempts to do anything or enter any profession, be it business, politics, art or sports, the only reason theyre allowed entry or, incredibly, attain excellence is because the standard was lowered. Be they liberals, people of color, women, the poor or anyone with an accent.... Edgy, controversial, brilliant. What a way to shake up intelligent sports commentary. Hitler would have killed in talk radio. He was edgy, too. CBS Sunday Morning contributor Nancy Giles on October 5. [82 points] |
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The man behind the curtain is not the God of Family Values but a childless, twice-divorced, thrice-married schlub whose idea of a good time is to lie on his couch and watch football endlessly. When Rush Limbaugh declared to his radio audience that he was your epitome of morality of virtue, a man you could totally trust with your wife, your daughter, and even your son in a Motel 6 overnight, he was acting....Granted, Limbaughs act has won over, or fooled, a lot of people. With his heartland pieties and scorn for feminazis and commie-symps like West Wing President Martin Sheen (Martin Sheenski to Limbaugh), he is the darling of Red State, Fly-Over America. Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas in the October 20 cover story, The Real Rush. [56] Rush Limbaugh has been more than a bit unkind to me more than once. Hes also been unkind to Al Franken, who in turn has been unkind to him. Hes taken shots at Michael Wolff, New York magazines media critic and Michael is hardly the retiring sort. So, here we all are, Al, Michael, and me, and the subject is Rush made worse, no doubt, by the permanent smirk that seems to be attached to my face. Derrick Jackson, whos a columnist for the Boston Globe, Tim, back in July when ESPN hired Rush Limbaugh, he wrote a column about some of the comments that Mr. Limbaugh has made in the past. In the 1970s, according to this column, Limbaugh told an African-American caller, take that bone out of your nose and call me back. He goes on to say Limbaugh has always had crime and black people on the brain. He once said, have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?...Given the fact that Rush Limbaugh has made these kind of inflammatory comments in the past, was it appropriate for ESPN to hire him in this capacity? |
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CBSs Lesley Stahl: Today you have broadcast journalists who are avowedly conservative....The voices that are being heard in broadcast media today, are far more the ones who are being heard are far more likely to be on the right and avowedly so, and therefore, more almost stridently so, than what youre talking about. Host Cal Thomas: Can you name a conservative journalist at CBS News? Stahl: I dont know of anybodys political bias at CBS News....We try very hard to get any opinion that we have out of our stories, and most of our stories are balanced. Exchange on Fox News Channels After Hours with Cal Thomas, January 18. [51 points] |
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I dont think anybody who looks carefully at us thinks that we are a left-wing or a right-wing organization. Peter Jennings, as quoted by USA Todays Peter Johnson in a September 9 article on Jennings 20 years as sole anchor of ABCs World News Tonight. [42] I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled. Im sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did....The entire body politic...did not ask enough questions, for instance, about weapons of mass destruction. I mean, it looks like this was disinformation at the highest levels. It took conservatives a lot of hard and steady work to push the media rightward. It dishonors that work to continue to presume that except for a few liberal columnists there is any such thing as the big liberal media. The media world now includes (1) talk radio, (2) cable television and (3) the traditional news sources (newspapers, newsmagazines and the old broadcast networks). Two of these three major institutions tilt well to the right, and the third is under constant pressure to avoid even the pale hint of liberalism....What it adds up to is a media heavily biased toward conservative politics and conservative politicians. |
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If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age. |
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Within the United States, there is growing challenge to President Bush about the conduct of the war and also opposition to the war. So our reports about civilian casualties here....help those who oppose the war. Clearly, the American war planners misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces....And I personally do not understand how that happened, because Ive been here many times and in my commentaries on television I would tell the Americans about the determination of the Iraqi forces, the determination of the government, and the willingness to fight for their country. But me, and others who felt the same way, were not listened to by the Bush administration. Now America is re-appraising the battlefield, delaying the war, maybe a week, and re-writing the war plan. The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance; now they are trying to write another war plan. Then-NBC/MSNBC/National Geographic Explorer correspondent Peter Arnetts comments on Iraqs state-controlled television network, March 30, shown by C-SPAN. Our greatest accomplishment as a profession is the development since World War II of a news reporting craft that is truly non-partisan, and non-ideological, and that strives to be independent of undue commercial or governmental influence.... |
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Lee Anderson, Editorial Page Editor, Chattanooga Free Press |
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Dan Rather [trolling again on the frequency of murder, mayhem and terror]: "Mr. President, if only you knew how
much I and others at CBS support you and Castro rather than our unelected (sic) Bush."
Terrorist-Murderer Saddam: "Mr, Rather, it is absolutely remarkable that you media girly men
will repeatedly betray the USA, your President, and even the free American people during war
and for so very little. You and Mr. Cronkite are truly amazing.
Do you realize, Mr. Rather, that for millions and millions of Iraqis and my captives
I had to gang rape each man's children and his wife,
and then burn them in nitric acid, and mutilate them by cutting off at least an ear,
and then force them to watch me push their children through a paper shredder.
Mr. Rather, I used to have to remove testicles and arms before we have every seen such betrayal.
But you and CBS, NBC, ABC, NPR, and CNN grovel to me ......for nothing.
Thank you, Mr. Rather.
Thank you. We, terrorists worldwide,
are very very lucky to have you, Mr. Cronkite and the others, Mr. Rather."
Thank G-d for our shrewd Generals and Staff who took the murderer and tyrant down with unimaginable efficiency and very low bloodshed. Miracously low bloodshed, but a miracle that was worked very hard for by our fellows in the Army, Marines and the other Services.
and the person, the persons, who should be thanking our Military the most are CBS and Rather, for that poorly timed media grandstanding and mollycoddling of a bloody, foul tyrant could have cost tens of thousands of lives had our Military Commanders and Planners not been so ace at their tasks.
Soooo, Scott Pelley. How's the stock market been doing? What is the unemployment rate? Find out these answers and you will be VERY DISAPPOINTED.
One thing most of these quotes have in common---The melodrama. These reporters and commentators love acting like drama queens. The Scott Pelley quote I just cited is but one example. He sees FOOD LINES with HUNGRY PEOPLE just like in the GREAT DEPRESSION.
Incidentally my fiancee did a tour by car of many states last Summer from Wisconsin to Arizona and back. If there are millions of unseen starving people out there, it must because they can't be seen through the hordes of overweight Americans we saw.
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