Calling All Wingnuts

Not much more to say than that… This insane clown of a man can’t wait to get more war on…

This will be the first of a series…  Joe went on Hannity’s radio show again yesterday and made several things clear.  One of those things is that these guys need to get a room.

Query for physicists: Would concentrating so much wankery in such small confines trigger some kind of critical mass event that would collapse on itself, creating a singularity of wankerdom?

Yesterday I listened to his show. A caller took issue with him casting “all the blame” on the Democrats for the messinpotamia… Boortz did his typical talk show routine - he asked the caller if Borotz had ever said he blamed the Democrats for “everything”. Didn’t he say that Bush and the military commanders made mistakes?

Meanwhile, he had muted the caller’s microphone. After he was done shouting down the caller, he raised the caller’s mic level again and the caller asked Boortz to assign percentages to the blame-worthy actors… Boortz muted him again and shouted that yes, Boortz had indeed blamed Bush for some mistakes, so he didn’t, in fact, lay all the blame at the Democrats feet… Then he hung up on the caller and pounded a little more on how the caller had his facts wrong…

But then he went on to answer the caller’s question… He said that he did, indeed, lay the “lion’s share” of the blame on the Democrats and the media.

I tried to call yesterday, but couldn’t get through…

So I tried again today…

Sometimes, the arguments these people make are so unserious that it just doesn’t make sense to give them anymore than a modicum of respect… State the obvious refutation of their argument, and then just ridicule the foolish host.

That’s the approach I took here… And if you listen, you can hear that Boortz was thrown off-balance. First, the best he can muster is “Thank you and be good.” Then he paused (you could hear the wheels turning in his head as he went through the mental checklist of possible counter-attacks). Then he gave the phone number to his show (a classic delaying tactic that gives the host time to work out his thoughts). Then he responds…

The funny thing is, he was on stage with Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity yesterday. Yeah, those paragons of civility…

He had a caller suggest:

If our laws were severe enough so that the punishment were such that being here in this country illegally was bad enough, people would just voluntarily go back to their own country. I don’t understand… [Hannity interrupts with a non sequitor] I grew up in the Middle East, and we had a situation over there where they tried to keep my father in the country long enough for his work permit to expire so that they could throw him in prison and then hang him within 10 days.  So they don’t have a problem with illegals in their country because the people want to make sure that they’re not going to be caught there illegally.  We wouldn’t have a problem here; we wouldn’t have to pay the money to kick the illegals out if we just make the rules, enforce it so that they don’t want to be caught here…

Hannity cut in and said:

I agree with you.  And I gotta tell ya something…  the idea people say, “Well, what are ya gonna do?  You can’t keep everybody out?” and I’m like, “Oh yes we can…”

For the longest time, I decided to keep my own counsel and learn what I could without actually posting any audio from these calls. Two things changed my mind.

The first reason, that I’m taking on a new role as front pager over at Brave New Films, is relevant because they have been so integral to the IMPEACH Gonzalez movement.

The second reason is a bit more soul-felt. I’m just sick and tired of waiting for somebody to represent me, and I believe that the only way to get the representation I want is to inspire others to demand the same level of accountability and honor that I want to see in my leaders.

What follows is a pretty tight transcript of a conference call I was on today with Speaker Pelosi (the audio is in its usual spot). I’m not going to comment any more about it here, because this is to be my “splash” post over at BNF. If you want to know more of my thoughts, follow me over there…

PS: one part that I did not include in the audio is the bit in which the Speaker promises that Pence’s bill that would give the FCC’s administrative rule that gutted the “Fairness Doctrine” the effect of law - well, his bill will never see the floor. Kudos to the Speaker for that!

Here’s the transcript:

Mike Stark: Speaker, I wanted to ask you about this immigration thing as it relates to the Iraq war. I think what a lot of our readers have noticed is that a bunch of mouth-breathing, nose–picking idiots that listen to talk radio were able to browbeat their Republican Senators into defying their own president, their own Republican President. But we’ve got 70% public opinion against this war and we can’t get the Democrats to do what we want - to end the war. How can we explain to our readers why that disparity is there?

Speaker Pelosi: Well, let me say on immigration first, as I said last night on TV, talk radio – hate radio – has beaten this thing to a froth. But they have also hijacked the legitimate questions that some Americans have about the subject; some people in our country have questions about job security, border security in the West… So I wouldn’t characterize everyone who opposes it as that way. But I do think we have to try to fight for a strong immigration bill with border security, workplace enforcement, enforcing our laws, reuiniting our families/ family unification and a path to legalization. But having said that, I don’t want to paint everyone with the same disgusting brush you painted with (laughter), but that would be an accurate depiction of those who have beaten it to a froth. And that’s an anti… it has a market… I don’t think it has a market as big as the Republicans are claiming, but it has a market.

But having said what you said, I’m as disappointed as you are that we can’t get past the sixty votes in the Senate. But it’s no use to complain about that. We have to take… the court of public opinion is where the sixty vote barrier will come down. We can’t kick it down internally. But we can try to point out what is at stake, the ground truth in Iraq, so that in the districts… You know, I’m responsible for the House. We passed – we can pass a bill any day in the House, but if it can’t get through the sixty votes in the Senate to be heard… to go to the President’s desk… then we have to use our energy in another way and I think that is to focus in a public way, as you all have done.

I’m determined to end this war. It is my top priority. And some of that… there are good days. Nobody thought we would ever have a vote, or a timeline in Iraq coming out of the Democratic Congress in a unified way. Now the Senate turned it into a goal, we had it as a definite date of departure; we sent it to the President’s desk; he vetoed it. They only gave us one shot at it. The Republicans in the Senate said you get one shot – we’re not giving you a… you need sixty votes after that.

So I also, in order to end this war, have to take the heat when it doesn’t go well, because this is a strategy that is more than one event, that’s for sure. We are preparing legislation and we’ll announce it either today or tomorrow depending on the House schedule, that has our original language about the timelines – the timetable; that is to say no goal, but a definite date of departure: within 120 days the Secretary of Defense must begin the redeployment of the troops out of Iraq to be completed no later than April 1^st of 2008. Not a goal, a timeline. Tougher than what we sent to the President. We think we can get the support of the Senate; we can have unity with the Senate on that – to have a stronger bill to go to the President. And if he vetoes it, it is still the case that the American people will see… it makes it harder every time for the Republicans to vote in favor of this war. You see the cracking of their unity – with Senator Lugar, with Senator Warner, with Senator Voinovich.

And I can tell you without any hesitation, in modesty that absent our changing of the debate on the War in Iraq, that would not be happening. So we had two-fold: we had to change the debate on Iraq, internally, in Congress and we had, we have to end the war.

September is fraught with meaning for us – it’s everything.

We have to make sure the President doesn’t think he can kick the can down the road again.

Again, we have our ups and downs and we have to take the downs in the strategy. But I think overall, I’m very proud of what the Democrats did in the spring. I don’t think anybody ever suspected that we would have the unity that we had to put a bill on the President’s desk. I would like it to be the House language with a definite date rather than a goal, and that’s what we are proposing now – a stronger bill.

Dave Johnson (of Seeing the Forest): We seem to be at a historic time right now with an administration that is starting to frankly assert that they are above the rule of law, and I’m wondering if you as Speaker can give us a short statement on this issue and what Congress is prepared to do to re-assert the rule of law of the people of the country.

Speaker Pelosi: Thank you David. The American people really don’t even know the half of it, but we are trying to build the record, and that’s what we have to do. You know, they’ve been going for six – almost seven – six and a half years, with no oversight. Just absolutely zero accountability, no oversight. And when people talk about this Congress, they have to recognize the big distinction between this Congress and previous Congress’ in terms of shining the light of oversight and accountability on this administration. So when people see what is happening in terms of… What we said last year during the campaign – for the whole of 2006 what we said “Corruption, Cronyism and Incompetence”. And that’s some of this unint… Corruption. It’s not just the corruption; this personal aggrandizement that were guilty of, it was the corruption in terms of the governmental process. And they… it’s stunning. It really is stunning. And on many of these things, you have to build a record so that the public sees what it is. And I think that some of our people, Mr. Waxman in particular because he has the committee – The Government Reform and Oversight Committee – has done a spectacular job and I think you might share that assessment of what he has done.

Now you see the administration asserting executive privilege. So the press asked me this morning, “Does this mean you’re going to hold them in contempt next?” I said “No, we’re gonna let the process work out” because you have to build the record. You have to build the record.

On some of these issues the courts are not friendly to us because they are all in the family. You know, the Courts, especially in the District of Columbia if we wanted to challenge them in Court on anything, the decision would not be in our favor. They know that, and we can see what the Supreme Court did today if you need any evidence of the, shall we say, immodesty of the court.

So it is something though that we owe the American people. And our conduct of the business of Congress as a check on the executive branch… that we return to the rule of law. David, you and I could have a very long conversation on this.

They have tried to eliminate judicial review from law. In other words, in order to amend the Constitution, you know the process. But what they want to do is to say, by simple majority, you can amend the Constitution and at the same time, eliminate the Court’s ability to have judicial review of that law as to whether it’s Constitutional. That’s who they are.

I think that if you ever listen to the speeches of Sandra Day O’Connor, you will find that even she was appalled by the treatment that the courts received from the Republicans. They didn’t even know it – this is an inside thing – we went to lunch one day – the leadership, with the judges – right before Rehnquist died… so what would that be? Two years ago? Around this time… And she sat with Tom Delay at the table – there were three tables with three justices at each table, so she was at the table with Tom Delay. And he just blasted – he said, “you know if we don’t like your decisions, we’re not gonna fund or we’re gonna withhold funding for implementation of those decisions… you know… she was stunned that he would talk that way about the separation of powers and the rest…

So she (unint) when she got off the Court, she spoke out against this. So it’s about the rule of law about how corrupt they have been; the rule of law on how they refuse to be accountable; but also the rule of law on how they don’t respect… you know, the executive branch doesn’t respect the oversight that Congress has, but they don’t want judicial review – when they were in power, they don’t want judicial review over their laws even though many of these Courts were appointed by the Republicans…

Even Barry Goldwater spoke out against it. Did you know that they have said in the debate on the subject that Marbury v. Madison, which established Judicial Review, was wrongly decided. A 200 year old decision was wrongly decided.

So as I said, in every aspect of the rule of law and respect for the Constitution and checks and balances and just the rule of law and how they conduct themselves, it’s almost impossible to exaggerate how bad they have been. And again, even Justice O’Connor was stunned, herself philosophically aligned with them, but was stunned to see how far they were willing to go.

Dave: Just a quick follow-up. What are you going to do about it?

Speaker Pelosi: Well, as I say, we’re exercising our oversight on it and pursuing these things with subpoena… first to just invite them to testify, then to issue the subpoena, then to build the record – in terms of the executive branch now – to build the record so that we can be effective in how we deal with it, but the most effective thing of course is for us to win the White House and just say “this isn’t what our country is about, and we will restore the rule of law” and this should be a campaign issue. This should be a campaign issue. It is absolutely stunning.

But I’ll tell you some of the things we would have liked to have done with for example, Cheney… Cheney and the secrecy of his energy policy development. That went to court – we lost in court and everybody said we should take it to the next level – to the three judge court. Well, so did I. But the fact is that the judge at the first court level – they didn’t do precedent. They established that but it wasn’t precedent. If we went to the next court, which was very unfriendly to us in terms of its membership – the three judge court – and they won, it would have established precedent. So we had to carefully consider whether we wanted to establish that decision as precedent and we did not.

So you know, some of these things are not as cut and dry as you might think, but very, very involved in it… and I proudly say that our oversight, if anything, has been so intense that some people think it’s political, but it really isn’t. It’s patriotic and it’s about our Constitution. So again, build the record, make it known to the public, understand that this flies in the face of everything our country stands for, and use it in the campaign and then do it right when we are in power, which I am absolutely certain we will be – I’m certain we will win the White House.

But we need your help on these things. You know, everybody says “What are you doing about it?” What we need to do is make sure that the public is aware of these issues, what we are doing about it… and I thank you for the question so that perhaps we can communicate on how we can communicate with you better so that you can help us with this, but this is as fundamental as our country. I mean, and then you go to habeas corpus and things like that, it’s embarrassing!!

Mike Stark: Speaker, when we do tell the public about it, they say one word. The say “IMPEACH”. And I respectfully suggest that if you let this administration out of office without impeaching even Abu Gonzalez, er… Alberto Gonzalez, you will have set a precedent. The next republican administration that takes office will know that they can get away with anything they want because Democrats won’t stand up for the Constitution. That’s what millions of people are saying.

Speaker Pelosi: I appreciate your point. I think that the Gonzalez vote of confidence, as you saw, did not carry. But uhm… yeah, I understand your point, but it’s a choice that has to be made, that is to say “what is the price they are paying for the exposure?”… Look, nobody knew any of these things about Gonzalez. Let’s remember how we got to where we are – and that was by the oversight activities of the Congress of the United States. I made a decision a few years ago, or at least one year ago, that impeachment was something that we could not be successful with and that would take up the time we needed to do some positive things to establish a record of our priorities and their short-comings, and the President is… ya know what I say? The President isn’t worth it… he’s not worth impeaching. We’ve got important work to do… If he were at the beginning of his term, people may think of it differently, but he’s at the end of his terms. The first two years of his term, if we came in as the majority, there might be time to do it all…

Mike Stark: Respectfully, that’s not the question. Respectfully, the question is whether or not the Constitution is worth it.

Speaker Pelosi: Well, yeah, the Constitution is worth it if you can succeed. But I think that we are, in asserting the checks and balances that were missing, are honoring the Constitution. I take very seriously the pledge, the oath of office that we make to the Constitution – as does every person in our Congress. (unint) Our Democratic Congress is their worst nightmare because of the power of subpoena. I think that the President’s credibility now, whether its immigration – whatever it is – is so low because of a great deal of the oversight that we have done. But we are in disagreement – I’m not going to try to budge you on that – on whether the President should have been impeached. That’s a different question from “Are there grounds for impeachment?” But should he have been impeached? Should we have gone down that road? I don’t think it would have resulted in a Democratic victory that would have – in a campaign that would have resulted in a Democratic victory that would (unint) the oversight that we have now that will build the record that will allow us to get rid of them in a major way. So I believe that we are on the verge of an election that will be a decision for greatness…

From here, the speaker went on to speak about energy, health care and other issues…

Scammity had a Republican Senator on today - George Groinaitch of Ohio.  They went after each other like school children.  Fifteen minutes total, and it takes two or three minutes to get underway, but there were some [retty hurt feelings by the time it was all done.

It’ll be interesting to see if Scammity is this aggressive and defensive next time he interview his BFF, “Civil Joe” Lieberman…

For the last year, right wing radio, when they weren’t defending Tom Delay and Mark Foley, spent much of their time decrying illegal immigration. To hear them tell it, Al Qaeda has been invading us via Mexico (which is really laughable because Canada has a much larger and more radical Muslim population than Mexico does, and their border is every bit as porous. but we never hear calls for a 3500 mile northern border fence… funny, that…)

Anyway, you really need to read the first two parts of the incredibly disquieting series profiling Dick Cheney.

An aside: can Dick, please, please, please, be a disqualifying first name for any future executive office applicants?

Dammit, I didn’t want to go there…

Uhm, White House applicants?

The series, so far, really does lay out the case that Cheney believes he’s untouchable. I’m fairly certain he’s made the calculation that after the impeachment of Clinton, he can get away with just about anything because the Democrats aren’t about to take us down that “very, very damaging path” again. My money’s on him - every day that passes without an impeachment inquiry further proves the point…

So he’s taking advantage of this moment in history to consolidate maximum power in the office of the President. From authorizing torture, to creating a novel detainee status that provides cover for the circumvention of the Geneva Conventions, to refusing oversight, to reserving the prerogative to decide for himself which laws of the land apply to him…

Cheney’s clearly established himself as a man above the law.

So… Who better to solve the immigration problem? As I said to Lars, he can go down to the border, shoot a few Mex’cans in the face (and waterboard them afterward) and, in general, announce that he was gonna be in charge of dealing with the filthy fucking immigrant problem… With Dick snarling across the Southern border, I’m quite sure the immigration problem would solve itself pretty quickly…

Lars didn’t want to talk too much about that, so the conversation morphed to whether or not torture is OK. Sometimes, speaking slowly doesn’t help. Lars, and I suspect the vast majority of his mouth-breathing listeners, is either playing obtuse or he’s dumb as a developmentally disabled dung beetle.

The truth is that torture is always counter-productive.

He threw up the ticking time-bomb scenario (this one came with a mushroom cloud at no extra charge!) Of course, it doesn’t matter how immediate the threat is… it doesn’t matter what brand of torture you choose… the plain and simple fact is that if a craven and self-centered lying scumbag like John McCain can withstand torture, a terrorist willing to wear a suicide belt or plant a nuke is going to be equally able to gut it out. All it takes is a commitment to your cause; in McCain, he (at that time) did it (presumably) to preserve his honor, his family’s honor, his father’s pride and his nation’s gratitude. To think that a religious fanatic has any less strength is just stooopid. I mean, seriously… How many people have you heard tell you that they draw inspiration and strength from their God?

But that’s not really the point either. Suppose pulling fingernails could get your average terrorist to crack… What makes you think you’re gonna get the truth from them? Hell, if somebody invaded and destroyed my country, tried to impose an absolute failure of an economic regime and allowed the equivalent of a 9/11 to happen almost every day… well, they could torture me all they wanted; if I had info they needed, I’d simply lie. I’d send them on a wild goose chase… And there’s nothing anyone could do about it…

I didn’t get the chance to say it but the cost here is enormous. Every story of torture that gets out is repeated across the world. The world has seen an obstinate child of a man (our PResident) start a war unilaterally, crawl into a spider-hole of denial for 4 years, alienate his closest allies, tacitly condone torture and maintain an unlawful torture camp/prison that he refuses to close. It’s no wonder at all that by the end of the Bush administration we will see many thousands more terrorists than we had at its inception.

One last thing. After this call, I emailed Lars to tell him I’d be posting this and to thank him for making his endorsement of Abu Grahb perfectly clear. He emailed back saying that Abu Grahb wasn’t “official torture”; that it was a low-level crew run amok.

We do not know that to be true.

General Taguba, the flag officer assigned to the investigation, was expressly denied authority to investigate beyond the reserve MP unit at the bottom of the chain. He wasn’t allowed, for example, to ask what the military intelligence unit’s directions to the MP’s were. He wasn’t able to inquire as to what instructions General Miller - the General that Rumsfield transferred to Iraq from Guantameno - brought with him (though it did come out that the use of dogs was one of his fortes).

And, oh yeah, back to the beginning… He wasn’t able to ask if Cheney authorized torture.

Now, as a result of the Washington Post reporting, we know he did.

For him, that’s OK though… Impeachment is out of the question.

This interview took place two Friday’s ago.

Things we learn:

• Lieberman is “better looking” than Paris Hilton.
• Hannity got in trouble with his friends for supporting Lieberman in his re-election (oh really?  I don’t remember Hannity saying much about Lieberman last fall…)
• Lieberman likes being an independent
• Lieberman says “playing to the public” “doesn’t get anything done”.  (I guess our politicians are supposed to serve…  uhm…  well, what?)
• Since December, when Lieberman was last in Iraq, he’s seen a “dramatic difference”.  Now he could “move about Baghdad and Ramadi and Anbar province,” whereas in December, he had to stay in the Green Zone.
• As we make progress through the surge, the bad guys are getting desperate.  That’s why we see the increased violence.
• We’re “turning a corner”.  Things are even better now than when he wrote that famous editorial about the newly constructed satellite dishes.
• Democratic rhetoric breaks Lieberman’s heart.  Reid’s “war is lost”, Hillary Clinton’s voting to take the bullets and armor away from the troops, Murtha and Kerry’s statements…  Outrageous!
• Lieberman cannot guarantee that he will support the Democratic nominee for President.  He may very well be the Zell Miller of 2008.

Enjoy.

but Hannity is a tough nut to crack. He’s just unflappable.

I’ve had success in breaking down O’Reilly… and Limbaugh…

but Hannity… well, somehow, he just keeps playing the game.

Even when I held the “HANNITY SUCKS ASS” sign behind Alan Colmes on the tv show, Hannity laughed it off… so I dunno if I’ll ever be able to rattle this guy’s cage. But I’ll keep trying…

In the last month I’ve, through back channels, sent a suggestion to all of the top-tier 2008 Democratic candidates for President.

The thought occurred to me that, within the DOJ, you’ll find a bunch of alphabet agencies tasked with this and that, but mostly the prosecution of brown people. For instance, there’s the INS. I’ve heard that they’ve prosecuted, detained and/or deported over 250,000 people last year. Needless to say, they were almost all brown.

The DEA is another one. Of the 2 million or so drug prosecutions in 2006, the DEA took the lead in 30,000 of them. I don’t have the stat sheet in front of me, and I’m not going to go get it simply because this is such a no-brainer. If you don’t think the majority of the prosecutions were of brown people, you’re nuts.

(Parenthetical: by far, the largest amount of drugs are sold on college campuses. If law enforcement targeted the white kids buying, selling and using drugs at their schools with the same vigor they’ve targeted the hip-hop community… well, we might have 25% of white males between the ages of 18 and 25 in prison, on parole or on probation. I’m pretty damned certain the War on Drugs would all of a sudden take on the fresh air of sanity that has been so absent for the last 20 years or so. And let me quiet the naysayers - those of you that are saying if college campuses were as violent as hip-hop communities, they would be equally targeted. My answer to you is that as you pour enforcement into the equation, prices go up. As prices (incentives) go up, more people enter the field. As competition heats up in any illegal activity, violence is a by-product. It happened with whites and Prohibition. So the very reason there is a shortage of violence on college campuses is that there is a shortage of enforcement efforts.)

Then there’s the IRS. I think they are probably part of the Treasury, but none-the-less, they’ve decided to focus recovery efforts on those that mistakenly or criminally file for the Earned Income Tax Credit. The maximum credit available is $4,536 - if you have two kids and are married filing jointly. For, oh, I dunno, your average corrupt corporate executive… well, I’m betting that’s not much more than a rounding error. So here, again, who’s going to jail? It ain’t rich white people…

So…

I’m pondering. And all the while I’m thinking this and thinking that, rich white people are being prosecuted!! First, it was Jack’s boys… Scanlon and Co. Then the Dukester… Then poor Bobby Ney… Then The Jack-man himself… And Safavian… and Scooter… And Ken Lay and his boy-wonder… and Bernie Ebbers and the Tyco guy and even the grand ol’ pill-popper himself, Rush Limbaugh…

But there were so many others that seemed to be wriggling free. Even these guys, thieves and liars all, seemed to drag justice out forever, and then get not much more than a slap on the wrist when compared to their less fortunate brown brethren…

So…

A light bulb went off. How ’bout this? Let’s create another alphabet department within the DOJ for corporate crooks and bureaucratic bamboozlers? A special division of the DOJ tasked with going after greedy white men that just can’t get enough without resorting to ripping the rest of us off? Oh, yeah, there’ll be the occasional William Jefferson, just like there’s the occasional Irish fellow swept up in INS raids… But for the most part, I’m thinking that cleaning up corporate and political crime will reach rough parity with regards to economic benefits as compared to the INS, Drug War and IRS put together… Many of these corporate and political crimes cost us billions.

So yeah, I’m quite certain that the establishment of this new department would pay for itself in its first year. Beyond that, it’d be a public-relations coup for the Feds. We all hate murderers, gangsters and thieves, but there is nothing like the feeling one gets when a g-man takes down a powerfully corrupt icon of avarice.

So I reached out to all the candidates. I explained that this idea had the added benefit of being a dog-whistle for the base - essentially what we would hear is that the passing of the Bush administration would not mean the end of criminal liability for Rove, Cheney and Gonzalez. I explained that with all of the public corruption and corporate fraud cases playing out across our news-screens, this would be a sure-fire way to get some good press. I explained that for similar reasons, this was safe as vanilla - there’s no way anyone from the dark side could credibly launch an attack. The simple, delicious response would be, “What are you afraid of, Mr. Guliani?”

But none of the candidates took me up on the offer. Nobody made any effort that I know of to flesh out my advice.

Until today.

I spoke with Governor Bill Richardson on BlogTalk radio’s HeadingLeft. I made the suggestion. His response?

“So I endorse what you say… So I like this idea and within Justice I believe that’s something that I would envision, and I’ll maybe start talking about.”

Listen in below, or hear the entire interview over at HeadingLeft.