Friday, July 27, 2007
Last Nights Viewing In A Nutshell
Last night I watched two television programs that I feel the need to bloviate about.
Part one: Whither The Controversy?
First off is my take on last evenings Hardball with Chris Matthews. That program opened with two segments dealing with the walking talking disaster that is Alberto Gonzales. Tony Snow filled the first segment with Matthews positively glowing over Snow's performance as professional liar in chief for the White House. The next segment was filled with two legal experts who normally would find themselves in disagreement, but spent their time agreeing that Gonzales was an inveterate liar.
The entire rest of the program after these two initial segments focused on the absolutely silly and contrived controversy between the Clinton and Obama campaigns over their outlook on dealing with foreign leaders.
In two months 95% of the American electorate will not be able to accurately recount the details of the Clinton Obama spat. The significance of this tempest is actually that it is drawing heat and attention even as the administration melts down before us. What is more important here? Gonzales can be proven to have perjured himself, meaning that the Justice Department is being run by a FELON... or Clinton and Obama peeing all over each other as alpha dogs marking their territories in a meaningless spat 6 months from the first vote being cast in the primary.
If you take your cues from Hardball, the most important story by far is the pissing contest between Obama and Clinton.
If I were Howard Dean I would call my candidates together and tell them to go on hiatus until December. The meaningless spat which is sucking up so much media attention is distracting from the real news of the day... and that real news is very favorable to the Democratic side of the political divide. In fact the entire Presidential campaign kicking off immediately after the mid terms is positively asinine, and if the Democrats agreed to a campaign cease fire I'm certain the public at large would feel extremely grateful. I know I would!
After Hardball, I flipped over to C-Span and watched a Congressional hearing on the proposal to grant accused terrorist detainees the habeas corpus rights which last years MCA law stripped from them. Watching these proceedings inspired me to write...
Part two: Just Trust Us, They Are Ebil Killers!!
What struck me about this hearing was the absolute bull headed tenacity of the Republican side of the debate in referring to the detainees in the worst terms imaginable. Listening to Republican after Republican refer to the killers and terrorists we hold in Guantanamo was part of a very strange debate. The entire purpose of the debate is to find a way to determine IF these detainees are indeed so very horrible and thus truly qualified for continued captivity as terrorists and killers. By insisting on pre-determining the guilt of the accused the Republicans demonstrate the problem for which there must be a solution in order to restore the minimum sense of America as a just nation. They have already determined the guilt of the detainees, and that is all we need to know at this point.
Time and again this administration has been proven wrong in determining who is or isn't a terrorist. Just consider the hundreds of thousands of names on the no fly list, and ask yourself if Teddy Kennedy or the myriad other children and old folk hassled when they try to fly are actually terrorist threats. Consider the proven innocent victims of this nations rendition program, sent from our control to other nations for the purpose of being tortured, and later released because they were not who we thought they were. Just how is it that Osama Bin Laden is living in some cave in Pakistan, scurrying about with a dialysis machine in tow, but Saddam Hussein swung at the end of a rope in large part because of being tied in with Al Qaeda?! For heavens sake, this nation was led to war because of this administration wrongly tying an entire freaking nation to the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11! And somehow we are supposed to just trust that they have it right about the detainees in Guantanamo? Please!
I've already read enough reports from those who are intimately involved with the proceedings at GITMO to lose all sense of confidence in the ability of this administration to find justice for those detainees. In fact I'm certain that many of them are innocent, and we have tortured them, in many cases forcing them to confess to crimes they did not commit. This entire affair has stained our honor and we should be about setting it right, not perpetuating the wrongs we've done.
And Republican Congress critters parroting the administration by asserting the detainees are vicious terrorists doesn't mean it's true.
Part one: Whither The Controversy?
First off is my take on last evenings Hardball with Chris Matthews. That program opened with two segments dealing with the walking talking disaster that is Alberto Gonzales. Tony Snow filled the first segment with Matthews positively glowing over Snow's performance as professional liar in chief for the White House. The next segment was filled with two legal experts who normally would find themselves in disagreement, but spent their time agreeing that Gonzales was an inveterate liar.
The entire rest of the program after these two initial segments focused on the absolutely silly and contrived controversy between the Clinton and Obama campaigns over their outlook on dealing with foreign leaders.
In two months 95% of the American electorate will not be able to accurately recount the details of the Clinton Obama spat. The significance of this tempest is actually that it is drawing heat and attention even as the administration melts down before us. What is more important here? Gonzales can be proven to have perjured himself, meaning that the Justice Department is being run by a FELON... or Clinton and Obama peeing all over each other as alpha dogs marking their territories in a meaningless spat 6 months from the first vote being cast in the primary.
If you take your cues from Hardball, the most important story by far is the pissing contest between Obama and Clinton.
If I were Howard Dean I would call my candidates together and tell them to go on hiatus until December. The meaningless spat which is sucking up so much media attention is distracting from the real news of the day... and that real news is very favorable to the Democratic side of the political divide. In fact the entire Presidential campaign kicking off immediately after the mid terms is positively asinine, and if the Democrats agreed to a campaign cease fire I'm certain the public at large would feel extremely grateful. I know I would!
After Hardball, I flipped over to C-Span and watched a Congressional hearing on the proposal to grant accused terrorist detainees the habeas corpus rights which last years MCA law stripped from them. Watching these proceedings inspired me to write...
Part two: Just Trust Us, They Are Ebil Killers!!
What struck me about this hearing was the absolute bull headed tenacity of the Republican side of the debate in referring to the detainees in the worst terms imaginable. Listening to Republican after Republican refer to the killers and terrorists we hold in Guantanamo was part of a very strange debate. The entire purpose of the debate is to find a way to determine IF these detainees are indeed so very horrible and thus truly qualified for continued captivity as terrorists and killers. By insisting on pre-determining the guilt of the accused the Republicans demonstrate the problem for which there must be a solution in order to restore the minimum sense of America as a just nation. They have already determined the guilt of the detainees, and that is all we need to know at this point.
Time and again this administration has been proven wrong in determining who is or isn't a terrorist. Just consider the hundreds of thousands of names on the no fly list, and ask yourself if Teddy Kennedy or the myriad other children and old folk hassled when they try to fly are actually terrorist threats. Consider the proven innocent victims of this nations rendition program, sent from our control to other nations for the purpose of being tortured, and later released because they were not who we thought they were. Just how is it that Osama Bin Laden is living in some cave in Pakistan, scurrying about with a dialysis machine in tow, but Saddam Hussein swung at the end of a rope in large part because of being tied in with Al Qaeda?! For heavens sake, this nation was led to war because of this administration wrongly tying an entire freaking nation to the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11! And somehow we are supposed to just trust that they have it right about the detainees in Guantanamo? Please!
I've already read enough reports from those who are intimately involved with the proceedings at GITMO to lose all sense of confidence in the ability of this administration to find justice for those detainees. In fact I'm certain that many of them are innocent, and we have tortured them, in many cases forcing them to confess to crimes they did not commit. This entire affair has stained our honor and we should be about setting it right, not perpetuating the wrongs we've done.
And Republican Congress critters parroting the administration by asserting the detainees are vicious terrorists doesn't mean it's true.
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