Category Archives: 2008 Election

2008 Election, Media, Politics, War On Terror

Dems Briefed On Waterboarding in 2002

More specifically, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was briefed on the extreme interrogation technique. Back then, it was fine. In fact, they wanted to know if there was anything more they could do to break the terrorists to give up information. Today it’s a different story. Today it is torture. Today the disposing of two tapes that supposedly show the technique in practice is called obstruction. Something we need to investigate, according to Joe Biden.

Which is exactly what they are doing today. Both Nancy Pelosi and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va) had been fully briefed on what the CIA was doing in Guantanamo Bay and neither of them objected, much to the dismay of the far left. Then, doing what they felt was the proper thing to do, the CIA notified Jay Rockefeller a few years ago that there were tapes of interrogations and that they intended to destroy them. The CIA was doing a CYA in letting those in oversight responsibilities, like Jay Rockefeller, know of the steps they were taking. After all, keeping secrets secret is what they do. What did Rockefeller do with that news? Nothing. He let it happen, as would anyone else on the side of America.

Enter politics and an election, and now it’s a whole different story. In the absence of core beliefs, it makes politicizing the war and the war effort easy.

Thank goodness that videotapes of interrogations that happened to a couple key al Qaeda bad guys were destroyed. You know that the identities of the real covert operatives would have been splashed all over the New York Times if they still existed and if Jay Rockefeller’s staff ever got their hands on them. For purely political purposes, there seems to be no current of opinion in the media and key democrats to keep the actions secret, including the identities of the covert agents involved. Contrast that to all the fake outrage of exposing the identity of Valerie Plame, a desk clerk analyst, who, at the time, was not a covert CIA agent. Protecting the identities of CIA operatives seem to be a selective, political concept.

2008 Election, Immigration, Media, MRIOTD, Politics, Russia, Uncategorized, Venezuela

Today’s Special

News of Venezuela’s referendum which would crown the hemisphere’s idiot, Hugo Chavez, as dictator for life, and usurp the democracy movement is sounding all too familiar. Too close to call. Opponents are acting confident that they won by an 8 percent margin. The government has not released the results yet. Will be interesting to see what Chavez does if he loses.

UPDATE: 1-hour later: Chavez loses referendum 51% to 49%. OK, now stand back and watch how well Chavez takes this news.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin did what Chavez hoped to do. His political party won by a landslide. Of course, it helps when you only allow the opposition (pro-Western) party on the tightly controlled state airwaves and characterize them as provocateurs in the pay of foreign overlords. Scaring voters of a ‘western plot’ also helps.

A small victory for democracy in Hong Kong. But we’ll take it.

Things aren’t going well in Iowa for Sen. Hillary Clinton. Aside from polling second to Sen. Barack Obama in Iowa, she was booed by a group of 3000 fellow democrats in Des Moines when she spoke in favor of comprehensive immigration reform. Iowans correctly read that as nothing more than lipstick on a pig named ‘ amnesty.’ I read that as Iowa democrats are not liberal like she is. It highlights her arrogance, not leadership, to even go there after seeing how badly and how broadly the country rejected Bush’s comprehensive plan.

And qualifying for the Most Ridiculous Item Of The Day, the media comes to her aide in the aftermath of the hostage ‘crisis’ in one of her campaign offices like this.

When the hostages had been released and their alleged captor arrested, a regal-looking Hillary Rodham Clinton strolled out of her Washington home, the picture of calm in the face of crisis.

and this explains why.

It was a vintage example of a candidate taking a negative and turning it into a positive. And coming just six weeks before the presidential voting begins, the timing could hardly have been more beneficial to someone hoping to stave off a loss in the Iowa caucuses and secure a win in the New Hampshire primary.

 

2008 Election, Media, Politics, Uncategorized

LA Times On The ‘Corrupt News Network’

I don’t remember when I’ve quoted anything from the LA Times that I agreed with. That’s how often it happens. Their take on last week’s CNN/youTube debate however is both unique and right on. In defense of CNN’s use of democrat operatives and members of the Clinton campaign, CNN put out this statement the next day . . .

“The whole point of these ground-breaking CNN/YouTube debates is to focus on substantive questions of concern to real people and to throw open the process to a wider range of Americans all around the country. CNN cared about what you asked, not who you were.”

CNN did not do either. The first and most obvious bit of journalistic malpractice is the selection of Democrat campaign operatives like Keith Kerr to hold the microphone in a Republican debate. The next thing, and maybe less obvious is they didn’t focus on the most important issues on the minds of Americans. They focused instead on what was important to CNN. Tim Rutten of the LAT begins . . .

THE United States is at war in the Middle East and Central Asia, the economy is writhing like a snake with a broken back, oil prices are relentlessly climbing toward $100 a barrel and an increasing number of Americans just can’t afford to be sick with anything that won’t be treated with aspirin and bed rest.

So, when CNN brought the Republican presidential candidates together this week for what is loosely termed a “debate,” what did the country get but a discussion of immigration, Biblical inerrancy and the propriety of flying the Confederate flag?

In fact, this most recent debacle masquerading as a presidential debate raises serious questions about whether CNN is ethically or professionally suitable to play the political role the Democratic and Republican parties recently have conceded it.

After citing examples of CNN’s “intellectual venality” in the questions it picked, Rutten continues. . .

[I]t pales beside the wickedness of using some crackpot’s query about the candidates’ stand on Biblical inerrancy to do something that’s anathema in our system — to probe people’s individual religious consciences. American journalists quite legitimately ask candidates about policy issues — say, abortion — that might be influenced by their religious or philosophical convictions. We do not and should not ask them about those convictions themselves. It’s nobody’s business whether a candidate believes in the virgin birth, whether God gave an oral Torah to Moses at Sinai, whether the Buddha escaped the round of birth and rebirth or whether an angel appeared to Joseph Smith.

It certainly makes a case for the uselessness of this kind of debate format, and the irrelevance of CNN, the most trusted name in news, when it comes to politics. It also makes the case for journalists to go back to asking, and taking responsibility for, their own questions. I couldn’t agree more with Rutten’s conclusion.

In any event, CNN has failed in its responsibilities to the political process and it’s time for the leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties to take the network out of our electoral affairs.

related links:

LA Times, CNN: Corrupt News Network| The Lunch Counter: Joe Scarborough and Me | Not Just A Plant, But A Whole Nursery

2008 Election, Media, Pensacola, Politics, Uncategorized

Joe Scarborogh, And Me, On CNN’s Plant At Republican Debate

On the ‘Morning Joe‘ show this morning, Pensacola’s own Joe Scarborough gave his take on what the mainstream media has been playing really low key, if mentioning IT at all. The IT is the planting by CNN of questioners at last nights CNN/YouTube sponsored Republican debate.

He didn’t go into all the other phony questioners mentioned here, but he really didn’t need to to make his point. The retired ‘openly gay’ general not only had his video question aired, but CNN flew him from California, all expenses paid, so he could be in the audience and actually participate in the debate with the candidates. THAT was no coincidence. Nor is it a coincidence that he is on the “LGBT Americans for Hillary”1 committee. A national steering committee of over 65 leaders in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community.

The video from Morning Joe is HERE.

I saw the ‘debate.’ And from the opening bell with the folk singer, (folk singers are a staple for liberals (Baez, Mitchell, Young, Taylor)), it quickly became apparent from that tune, and from the way the questions that followed were framed, hitting all the stereotypes the left ascribes to republicans and conservatives, that CNN’s intent was to demean the candidates by casting them all as racists, homophobes, hypocrites and bigots. To their credit though, I thought all of the candidates handled the idiotic questions just fine. Unfortunately, for the few Americans who actually watched the debate, there was little to be learned from the candidates that everybody didn’t already know.

Chalk it up to a waste of time and a failed attempt to disparage the republican field of candidates. CNN did however manage to show themselves to be, to borrow a Chris Wallace phrase, ‘hyper-partisan’ in the staged event, to the point of making them look like total fools in the political arena.

1I have a screen capture of Hillary Clinton’s Campaign website in the event someone edits or removes the web page showing the general’s affiliation with her campaign.

2008 Election, Media, Politics, Uncategorized

CNN Republican Debate: Not Just A Plant, But A Whole Nursery

While the news that CNN redacted the transcript of a democratic plant, among 6 democratic ‘undecided’ plants, in the Nov 15 Democrat debate they sponsored is still coming out, there is news today that a Hillary campaign operative was a plant in last night’s CNN sponsored Republican debate. The retired general, Keith Kerr, is actually a member of Hillary Clinton’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual Americans For Hillary Steering Committee. Anderson Cooper’s mea culpa below.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28CCf4cEDpI[/youtube]

Was CNN a victim, an accomplice of Clinton Inc., or just incompetent? A cursory search on the net reveals that this questioner was also on the Steering Committee of “Veterans for Kerry” AND was interviewed twice by CNN in 2003. But it doesn’t stop there. Michelle Malkin’s blog discovers many more.

It certainly makes a case for the uselessness of this kind of ‘debate’ format, and the irrelevance of CNN, ‘the most trusted name in news,’ when it comes to politics. It also makes the case for ‘journalists’ to go back to asking, and taking responsibility for, their own questions.

related links:

Free Republic- Transcript of CNN Interview with Gen. Keith Kerr 12/11/2003
Digging out more CNN/YouTube plants
Hillary plants question in Republican debate
CNN Hides Its Tracks, Edits Debate Transcript
More Planted Questions At CNN Democrat Debate

2008 Election, Media, Politics

CNN Hides Its Tracks, Edits Debate Transcript

1 Comment

I’ve heard it all now. CNN, “the most trusted name in news” redacting the transcript of theLaShannon Spencer, Arkansas Democrat Operative November 15th Democrat Debate. This doesn’t even come close to the fake news conference that FEMA held a few weeks ago.

It’s about LaShannon Spencer, who was identified as a member of the First African Methodist Church, but she is also an Arkansas Democratic Party operative. Hardly the ‘undecided’ she was purported to be.

Here is CNN’s version of their transcript. Try to findCNN, the most trusted to lie. the exchange. Maybe CNN is the most trusted name in news to lie for an agenda? Yeah, that’s it.

h/t Reality Hammer | Newsbusters | Doug Ross @ Journal | Rush Limbaugh

2008 Election, Judiciary, Politics

Mocking McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform

Here’s a story in today’s Washington Post that actually represents a fine tutorial on how illegal campaign contributions get to the Clinton campaign. But it could be to any-one’s campaign. The only thing missing in this article is how these ‘contributors’ who don’t have two nickels to rub together get their money back from Alonzo Cantu, a self-made multi-millionaire who literally owns McAllen, Texas, a small border town near the Rio Grande.

Well, it’s not exactly missing. Instead of checks to replace their contribution, those people do business with and get business from Cantu. There’s the quid pro quo. But try to prove that in court.

Campaign finance reform is the one thing that politicians really don’t want, but say they do. Bottom line, it doesn’t matter that congress, Bush, and the SCOTUS all had their hands in it. It needs to go.

The premise that special interests, aka money, are corrupting the politicians and that laws need to be made to limit the money, totally misses the point. If anyone is corrupt, it is the politician that does a quid pro quo or who otherwise breaks the law in money laundering and/or takes bribes like William Jefferson (D-La) did. It’s not the donor, it’s what the recipient does. Don’t re-elect a crook.

related links:
How Big Man In McAllen Bundles Big For Clinton | Way More Than The Lincoln Bedroom | Questions For John McCain and Russ Feingold