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Flush twice... it's a long way
to Sally Quinn's place! Pundit Pap for Sunday, February 13,
2005 Feb. 13, 2005 (apj.us) -- It comes as somewhat of a surprise that the two prime topics of this Sunday's excuses for public affairs television were the Iraqi elections and Social Security. The at-last-released results of the Iraqi election were the hottest topic of the weekend -- though the major broadcasters tried to downplay the fact that the win by a bloc of Shi'ite-aligned parties (including the United Iraqi Alliance, Shi'ite Islamic Party, Islamist Islamic Party, Even More Islamic Islamic Party, and of course the Party So Islamic You'll Plotz) win the election -- for Iran! Topic two was the Bush Boy's Social Security non-plan "plan." The jockeying for position by moderate Democrats and Republicans appears to be continuing as we go to press. Social Security junkies already know enough to have bookmarked Josh Marshall's "Talking Points Memo" blog (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com) for the latest on who's aligned with whom or what. We're predicting that fainthearted GOPers will in the end kill anything beyond token "reform," knowing full well that the so-called third rail of US national politics has the most amperage it's had in over a decade. Yes, we were surprised that the Howard-Dean-hating broadcast media let the former Vermont governor's ascent to chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee slide to third place. After all, they can't stand the guy -- a guy who calls 'em as he sees 'em, and such a a clear and present threat to the status quo enjoyed by every establishment politician and incestuous spinmeister in the Beltway that they had to depict him as nuts. And, in the brief time that each show did pay to Dean's victory, they had to play that "scream" -- which, it has been noted by more than one broadcast engineer to which Dave "Doctor" Gonzo has spoken, has been clearly "sound-enhanced" to make Dean sound unhinged. We think Dean should actually make an issue of that -- it is, after all, another sham story cut from the same Röveian cloth as the Armstrong Williams payola scandal, The Jim "Jeff Gannon" Guckert aliases-for-access scandal and the "Iraq has WMDs and you'd better report it as your lead story" scandal. Yes, we're saying it right here and now -- the "Dean scream" is yet another ersatz story, in this case designed to defuse a politician Karl Röve had at first written off as a darkest of dark horses, only to see him gain traction and credibility, and get Democrats to empower themselves with real grassroots progress. After all, let us not forget that even though 2004 did not turn out the way it should have -- because average Americans bought into the fear and paranoia being peddled by the Chimp and his handler Pudgy Karl -- the Democrats did in one year what it took the GOP a decade to do: build the foundation and a good part of the structure of a grassroots movement. And now, one of its architects is poised to lead the party. Topic four was the announcement that diminutive faux-Commie martinet and film critic "Li'l KIm" Jong-Il claims he has the bomb. His North Korean surrogates have also made it clear that they don;t like the way Generalissimo Short Stuff was depicted in Trey Parker and Matt Stone's over-the-top, marionette-sex-filled film-musical-satire "Team America: World Police." Rumors are abounding that Kim is scrambling for missile technology that will allow his delivery systems to reach Hollywood. Hoo-boy. Here's the rundown on America's Funniest Pundit Videos (this week, at least): Meet the Press The fictitious Iraqi election results were announced today. The big losers were Americans -- because our hand-selected Iraqi leader, Iyad Allawi, was dis-Allawied to keep his post in the postwar conflagration that marks the current situation in this desert nation. Mr. Allawi and his party got a whopping 14% -- yes, FOURTEEN percent -- while the Shi'ites gained 48% and the Kurds 26%. Where the other 12% went we don't know -- but it was surely split up among the 2 trillion other parties that have emerged since George W. Bush launched his offensive against fellow oil man Saddam Hussein years ago. Meet the Press "moderator" Tim Russert turned to the darling of the right, Richard Engel of NBC News, to tell us what's supposedly happening in Iraq. Engel's answer: Allawi is Outee; the Sunnis will be asked to help write the Iraqi constitution, and some of them may even become ministers to placate them for not voting. Engel also "surprised" us by telling Russert (and, more importantly, American viewers) that training of Iraqi police and national guardsmen was not going all that well. Really? What a shock! Election week witnesses an apex of terrorist -- or "insurgent," if you prefer -- operations with hundreds murdered and a loss of more American boys and girls, men and women. Thus far, Mr. Bush's interloping has caused nearly 1,500 Americans to die a tragic death, which impacts more than 50,000 American family members here at home. In addition, around 12,000 of America's bravest lie in hospitals or recovery from wounds so horrible as to not be described. Yes, they are heroes -- not for us, but for each other. War is about defending the man to your right and to your left -- not about pushing the almost-always-insane ideologies of the men and women who send you to war. And let's not forget the Iraqi dead -- perhaps more than 100,000 -- and the millions of family members that suffer as a result. They will not soon forget -- if ever. Tim Russert moved from his manic near-hysteria over the "success" of these elections to the current battle between the people of the Untied States and Mr. Bush over Social Security "reform." Remember, kiddies, when you hear the word "reform" coming out of the mouths of politicians it means "destruction." Just ask the poorest of the poor forced to work at Taco Bell for a few dollars an hour under Mr. Clinton's "reform" of the American well-being -- oops! I mean "welfare" -- system ,or "state" depending upon which side of the aisle you happen to sit in. So Russert began with the lightweight Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) --
who only last week criticized the Bush non-plan for Social Security "reform."
And what did Grassley do? He defended the Bush "plan"! Grassley
was talking about "Grassley Grandparents" without realizing
he was one of them, and seemed glued to Bush's plan to engage the American
people in focusing on the "problem" and -- get this -- do so
"as a professor." And who was appearing in Russert's pundit fiefdom this Sunday to fight for the working man -- against a "preznit" who has no idea how to invest in American business with the "privatized" percentage of the system that Bush wants to set aside for Sanford Weil and his buddy boys and Wall Street? Why -- Charlie Rangel, my favorite House Member for New York. Rangel pointed out that Bush had no plan -- which is still pretty much a secret. The rest of the discussion was a counterpoint of lies and overstatements from Grassley and pithy retorts from Rangel. Russert, who can't think of questions on his own, resorted to his usual Internet-and-RNC-gathered quotations from both men to embarrass them. To both of their credit, they ignored Russert -- sticking to their talking points. "President Bush is Professor Bush" -- aaugh! Next came a shoot out between former Soviet dissident turned Israeli elder statesman Natan (Anatoly) Sharansky and Pat Buchanan. They were arguing over Sharansky's well-known scholarship on the importance of Democracy -- so well-known, in fact, that Mr. Bush calls Sharansky's book, "The Case for Democracy," part of his "presidential DNA." (I felt a strong urge to vomit -- until we deduced that the rest of his "presidential DNA" must be traceable to "Zippy the Pinhead."). Here's the truth: what Bush actually did was bastardize ideas set forth in Sharansky's worthwhile book and make it an excuse for demanding -- through his puppet "Secretary of State" Condi Rice -- that all dictatorships now become democracy or face the wrath of the United States. And so I found myself in agreement with ol' Pitchfork Pat Buchanan, who thinks Mr. Bush is a moron -- and makes that crystal clear. Buchanan puts it blithely: "Intervention is a form of terror." Wow! Right on, Pat! Pat and Natan went back and forth arguing about whether or not it was a wise idea to make the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Kuwaitis and the "rest of them there potentatencies" democracies. Buchanan feels that this kind of gibberish is simply formed from naiveté. He is right, and we will soon see the results of this. But Buchanan did not stop there, bless his black little heart: he hit the mark, telling Russert that Osama bin Laden did not attack the World Trade Center because he was concerned about democracy, but because he was tired of having American troops in Middle East imposing "democracy," which in short means more money for American corporate interests. Now, whether one subscribes to the theory that what's best of Halliburton is best for the United States or not is another issue. The real point was that Bush lied about it. Anyway, aside from Russert embarrassing Sharansky with a twenty-year-old video clip of him and his knit-bereted wife on Meet the Press after his release from the Gulag, the show was over. Hail Buchanan! McLaughlin Romper Room: Condi's Selling Snake Oil (And No One's Buying)! Feb. 13, 2005 -- BALTIMORE (apj.us) -- It was another edition of Romper
Room, aka The McLaughlin Group. And
once again, Johnny Mac went back to his standard operating procedure of
letting one issue nearly take over the show, and use bizarre filler segments
at the very end. Fortunately, the beginning issues are well worth the
time (usually) that he spends on them! | |
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