Flush twice... it's a long way to Sally Quinn's place!

apj.us / correntewire.com
Pundit Pap
for Sunday, April 2, 2006
Meet the Real Maverick: Tony Zinni!
by the Pundit Pap Crew
Hekebolos | Xan | Shystee | Gene G

April 2, 2006 /correntewire.com | apj.us/The gang at The Carpetbagger Report did a great job of summarizing the news of the week that would either not be discussed or be spun to conform to conventional beltway / corrupt media thinking. Their choice of top stories, in order:

• The BoGlo's report a week ago last Friday that Dear Leader W is taking the position that laws passed by Congress have no meaning, to wit (as the Carpetbaggers put it), "he is not obligated to follow the Patriot Act's provisions that require him inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers". Actually, he is—and the bigger story in fact is that the GOP-controlled Congress is letting BushCo get away with this anti-constitutional conduct. Like Lambert says, restoration of Constitutional rule is a key issue—and Democrats should be lighting a fire under their base and small-government independents about the issue.
• The New York Times was down with the Downing Street Memos redux: the Carpetbaggers' bullet being "that Bush not only decided in January [2002] to go to war, but also that he was prepared to provoke a war, through fraud if necessary. The memo was confirmed to be legitimate and ran on the Times' front page. The rest of the major news outlets ignored the stunning revelations." Well, maybe it's time for our readers to call the DC bureaus of CNN, NBC, CBS and ABC and tell them there's some news to cover. Not that it will do anything—but there's nothing that disturbs the corrupt media news tastemakers more than knowing that some people have better news judgment than them.
• Congressional Democrats unveiled the "big picture" of their vision of a major rethink of the nation's foreign policy/national security strategy. Preparation took months, and it was supposed to be a high-profile event—buuuuut NOOOOOO! The cable "news" outlets all carried another redundant speech by the former Texas governor and newspapers buried the story on page A16. You might think that there's some sort of unified effort by the corrupt media to ignore actual Democratic positions and issues soil that they can continue to caricature Democrats as divided, indecisive, infighting losers.
• National Journal's Murray Waas, who is proving to be one of the nation's most important investigative journalists, published what may be the best comprehensive article on why counterproliferation NOC Valerie Plame's CIA cover was blown by the White House: as the 'Baggers wrote, "Karl Rove knew Bush had repeated bogus claims about Iraq, despite having briefings on the subjects, and was very nervous in the summer of 2003 that 'Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration.'" Blogs covered it. Major news organizations ignored the story. Pathetic.
• And here's one the 'Baggers missed but which spells doom for a number of Congressional Republicans and their staffers: if you haven't heard of Tony Rudy, you will. According to AP, "Rudy, a former top aide to Rep. Tom DeLay, has agreed to plead guilty to charges in the widening federal investigation of lobbyist fraud, a law enforcement official said Friday." Rudy is a former aide to Tom DeLay who went to work for Jack Abramoff. This morning's TPMuckraker update lays out the back story and explains the stakes.
• On the sad side, Katherine Harris's campaign for US Senator from Florida is in full meltdown mode, months before Democrats had hoped it would happen. We just might not have her to kick around this fall!
• And the top story of the week, thanks to the shameless pandering of CNN, especially Lou Dobbs, is Illegal Aliens: Lingering Threat or Immediate Menace? Well, we will hand it to the GOP: there's more fear to be flogged from racist xenophobia that gay marriage.

Oh well... here's what we say this Pundit Sunday...

— Gene Gaudette

McCain on Meet the Press: Death of a Maverick

So there I was, about to blog on McCain's pathetic pandering to the Neocon and Theocon agenda on Tim Russert's Meet the Press this morning, when I saw that Georgia10 over at Daily Kos already beaten me to it.

I really don't have much to add to her review—on McCain, at any rate. The only commentary I really can make is that the Republican Party is in a huge amount of trouble if it uses the threat of withholding institutional support to force candidates to toe the wildly unpopular Bush/Falwell line.

There's no way in hell McCain actually believes what he said on Meet the Press. He doesn't even look comfortable saying it, but he believes he'll never win the Presidency if he doesn't. What he doesn't realize is—he won't win the Presidency anyway.ttr55

—Hekebolos

This Week
Sen. Barack Obama, George Allen (VA), Roundtable

A quick one this week because (a) ugly weather predicted here and (b) the show actually provided an interesting clarification of a single issue, which is rare indeed.

The issue of course is "immigration" which is The Big Hoo-Rah of late. Anybody notice that time spent talking about "immigration" is time not spent on illegal NSA and other wiretaps, IRAQ, casualties in, lack of government of, sectarian strife pervading, etc? Yeah, I thought you might have thought so too.

Anyway, the "immigration" issue, such as it is, is breaking down into a four-way (or more) split. One, obviously, is by party, but the other side of the split is making some very weird bedfellows indeed. Basically you have the legalize-in-place crowd vs. the sweep-'em-up-and-bus-them-back-to-the-border then let 'em back in one-by-one proponents. These were personified today by George Allen (Nutball-VA) and Barack Obama (Well-Meant-But-Liebermanesque-IL).

Allen is willing to alienate the whole Hispanic vote, it seems, in hopes of making it up with the nativist, USA-USA-USA chanting, job-threatened, terrorist-terrified, Daddy protect-me-from-evil-brown-people WATB vote. If he weren't an idiot this might have a very good chance of working (remember that even Bush played the compassionate conservative role originally) if he weren't an idiot. Then again, so is Bush, so this threat is not to be ignored. This quadrant's mantra is "Secure Our Borders And Sweep The Aliens Into Camps."

Obama was quizzed more on the are-Hispanics-a-threat-to-blacks issue, which he finessed quite nicely to make the point that people with no bargaining power whatever over wages are a threat to all low-skill, low-wage workers. He hit the Secure Borders button quite a bit too, but emphasized the other two legs of the tripod: a Path to Citizenship program, basically to prevent employer exploitation, and limited Guest Worker program tied to specific industries like agriculture.

George Allen wants the Rio Grande Wall (any similarities to a structure of that name in Berlin are entirely unmentioned) but on the cheap. More border patrols, sensors, drone aircraft. If we had secured the border 20 years ago (is this the It's All Jimmy Carter's Fault defense? Sounds like it) we could talk about a guest worker program now, but we didn't so we can't.

Oh yeah—Allen is also dying his hair. Or sure looks like it. It looked positively... Reaganesque. Hmmm.....?

By amazing coincidence he wound up his segment, after a question about both a presidential run in '08 and holding onto his Senate seat this fall, with a...dare we say Reaganesque?—paean to, get this, Reagan. Who he loved, who got him his start in politics. (Reagan has much to answer for. One hopes Satan watches the Sabbath Gasbag shows.) And Allen actually used the line "Sweet Nectar of Freedom" in relation to something or other. Sweet mother of horseshit....

The roundtable was Robert Reich, Martha Raditz, and George WillHeEverShutUpAndRetireAlready. Martha was trying to pitch the notion that all Bush needs is better communicators so we hard-of-hearing folks will learn about the wonderful things he's done here and in Iraq.

Robert Reich pointed out that he can communicate till his lips fall off and nothing will change until he gets better policies, which it is entirely too late to do anyway.

George Will looked dyspeptic, and babbled about how Bush needs to fight against Congress. And that he (Bush) has had a lifelong strength on the issue of immigration because he loves Mexicans. Very confusing.

Reich almost had time to make an important point about how the Federal Pension Guarantee Benefit (whatever the name is) is setting up to be the next Savings & Loan meltdown as companies keep making promises of pensions then freak out and dump them in bankruptcy court or default when comes time to actually pay the said pensions. But of course by then they were out of time. Maybe next week.

Speaking of next week...tune in again, same blog time, same blog channel.

-- Xan

Meet the Press
Tim "Timmeh" Russert, John McCain, Gen. (Ret.) Anthony Zinni

How to describe John McCain?

A passive-aggressive koala bear, perhaps? One with the magical ability to talk out of both sides of his mouth.

Timmeh poked and prodded at McCain, who occasionally uttered pained squeaks but remained cuddly, his mood rarely straying from a eucalyptus-induced narcotic tranquility.

On the other hand, General Zinni was lucid, practical and straightforward. Like Rep. John Murtha, I'm sure the Beltway crowd (yes, Democrats too) will be shunning him and his reality-based analysis.

McKoala Bear: Things are kind of bad in Iraq but we must win.

I wish Timmeh would use his aggressive questioning style to ask just exactly what the hell does "winning" in Iraq mean? Maybe, at some point, Moqtada al Sadr and his Mahdi Army will lift their arms in the air and proclaim: "touchdown!"

Timmeh: Bush looked into Putin's soul and found him "honest and trustworthy"

McKoala: People say a lot of stupid things, I'll probably say a couple this morning, eh?

Timmeh: Are you calling the president stupid?

McKoala: No, no, no... [apologizes and backpedals furiously]

Let the doublespeak begin! McCain flip flopped on every single issue that came up.

Timmeh: You have said military action against Iran isn't possible, that we can't fight two wars at once.

McKoala: We can't take the military option off the table.

Timmeh: So there might be two wars at once.

McKoala: There could be Armageddon, Tim, I don't know. Jeez.

He even flipped on whether the Bush campaign savaged him, his service and his "black" daughter.

McKoala: I didn't say Bush ran a dishonorable campaign, I said some things were done which were wrong.

Timmeh: In 2004 I asked you if Bush had run an honorable campaign, you replied "I can't say that he has".

McKoala: I don't look back in anger.

Painfully pathetic. How can you not stand up to someone who goes after your family?

McCain will even flip over and take it in the hind end from the Christianist wingnuts:

McKoala speech: Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell on the right.

McKoala: I met with Falwell after that, we talked.

Falwell quote about 9/11: I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen'.

Timmeh: Do you still think Falwell is an agent of intolerance?

McKoala: No

McKoala will be giving the commencement speech at Falwell's Liberty University.

McKoala ended with this passive-aggressive zinger:

I haven't had this much fun since my last interrogation.

General Anthony Zinni was in charge of Central Command (the Middle East and central Russia), or "Centcom" in military parlance, in the 1990s, and he has been right about Iraq even before it started. Zinni predicted a sectarian clusterf@#k all the way back in '98. Like John Murtha, Zinni gives you straight talk backed up with facts. Zinni's a practical military man, as opposed to PR flacks like Gen. George Casey and Gen. Peter Pace who are currently running Centcom.

Assorted quotes from my notes. Zinni had some great one-liners:

We're not fighting the Waffen SS here.

Is Iraq better without Saddam? That's like asking which is better: heart disease or cancer?

The Bushies threw away 10 years' worth of planning.

Condi said tactical mistakes were made, this was a strategic mistake, made here (in Washington).

People in the Administration are spending all their time defending the past, trying to re-write history, instead of dealing with the present.

With the UN program and no-fly zones Saddam was at our mercy.

An election doesn't mean democracy. Iraq has had 3 elections and still no government.

Incompetence has to outweigh loyalty in this business.

Like Lincoln and Roosevelt, Bush has to hold his military leaders accountable. Lincoln went through his generals until he found Grant.

Timmeh found an interesting tidbit: Zinni was in attendance when Dick "Shoot 'em Up" Cheney said, "There is no doubt Saddam has WMD" during a September 2002 speech. Zinni was interviewed for his reaction at the time. He said that on that day he realized the Bushies were determined to go to war. He had been on top of the intelligence on Iraq for 10 years, and even though he retired two years before the invasion, he was still being briefed in his role as a military consultant.

Zinni: I heard a depiction of the intelligence that didn't match the intelligence.

Bottom line:

• McCain will never win the GOP nomination. As he tries to play along with the NeoCons and the Fundies, these same groups will crucify him.

• Practical realist military types like Zinni and Murtha, who can offer real solutions for Iraq, will continue to be ostracized by both parties.

-- Shystee

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Gene Gaudette is a music and video producer, managing partner of a production company, and publisher/ringmaster/chief bottle washer of American Politics Journal.

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