Cheney Takes An Award, Fox Talks Dante & The Cable News Game.
There is a new line that I have heard every Republican use this week on the media. Americans are Center right. That is the new line they are repeating in every public forum that I have seen on CSPAN and CNN. To see if that is a reality and not just a coincidence I am going to watch Fox.
O’Reilly has Newt Gingrich on. He is promoting his new book about George Washington, and Gingrich was able to say “if you want to read about a real leader, Washington on the Delaware is a great example”, just after they tried to come up with a good thing to say about Obama. Gingrich said Obama is like-able and that counts for something, after trashing his policies on health care and Afghanistan. The old saw of calling the Democrats the party of tax and spend was brought up.
They are speaking as statesmen with measured tones and pontification that is a deliberate attempt to counter the Obama administration claims that Fox is merely a mouthpiece for the Republican Party. They just played a commercial for themselves where they show images of chaos out in the world and they claim that they are the unbiased source of information for a citizenry that wants to be informed.
O’Reilly has a body language expert on his show talking about how Hillary Clinton is covering up her disappointment for not being elected president. This is fair and unbiased? This is news? This is about as newsworthy as haveing an astrologer on to interpret the news.
Dennis Miller is on O’Reilly saying Palin going on Oprah is a good way to sell books but it is not going rouge. This is a concession that she is beaten. If she wants the White House she will play it close to the vest if she want to sell books she will tell all. Great he is even quoting Dante.
Miller is calling the Obama administration Axelrod and Immanuel aids to be like Nixon staffers not Kennedy. They are really taking the high road O’Reilly is taunting Miller to go have lunch with Obama to teach him about Dante. That is pretty blatant.
Gee America see how smart we are on Fox, we can talk about Dante and Washington and Lincoln and put down Obama as a lightweight loser who can’t take the pressure. Miller said he has rabbit ears. Whatever that means, but he was implying that Obama is thin skinned and can’t take a joke.
If they were really smart they would say Obama is going after the media the way Nixon did but they are not bright enough to make that connection.
Now they are going after the British government for scaring kids over the environment. They are saying that this is the first government ad saying that humans cause climate change. They are saying that environmentalism, scaring kids will cause her to grow up and work at a gentleman’s club, i.e. she will become a hooker if the environmentalists have their way. OK really sophisticated Fox.
Fox really does seem to be a rightwing mirror image of MSNBC. the parallels are more than just coincidental, they are deliberate. These two stations frame the debate. The scary left and the scary right battle it out. CNN then gets to play the sincere middle. Tonight they had James Carville actually say on Anderson Cooper that the Democrats will probably lose in the next election. The Republicans on Fox are gloating about how they are coming back big and the Democrats are seemingly floundering. I don’t know why Carville is helping with that portrayal unless he is trying to send a message to the White House.
MSNBC is still celebrating Obama’s victory. Fox is preparing the ground work for a Republican come back and CNN is trying to play it down the middle.
CNN is doing a series on Latinos in America. They say 12 million undocumented people in America and that Latinos are the largest minority in the country now. They have Sheriff Joe of Maricopa County in Arizona. He is the poster boy for racist anti-immigrant sentiment and he is under investigation for racial profiling.
Hispanics are the Democrats biggest opportunity to stay in power and they should do their best to work for immigrant rights. That is my take. But as a green I can only hope that the Green Party develops some policies to become a viable party.
Fox didn’t mention that line about America being center right. But then they don’t have to. On CNN they noted a poll that says 48% of Amercians agree with Obama on the issues and 51% are opposed and they had a Republican spokesperson spouting that line about America being to the right. Last night MSNBC was noting 57% of Americans are in favor of a public option in health care.
On CSPAN we have the Keeper of the Flame dinner and they were just cheering Cheney and now they are about to let Rumsfeld speak. This is at the Center Security Policy. Rumsfeld is using the old saw Americans support Senator John Kyl because he supports America around the world unapologetically. They really like Dick Cheney. They are cheering his positions. Rumsfeld is giving Cheney an award. He is a leader according to Rumsfeld. He is comparing the people who complain about Cheney as a pack of barking dogs. Rummy reminds me of Bob Hope warming up the troops in Vietnam. That kind of old establishment viewpoint.
Frank Gaffney is now saying there is nobody as great a leader as Sen. John Kyl Republican of Arizona. The example he brings up is his Op-ed Piece in the Times saying America must be able to test our nuclear arsenal. This is a sign of leadership? Wanting to see if we can still blow up the world? Are they insane? Cheney gets things done and is effective according to Kyl. He is a straightforward western style. He is a leader according to Kyl. He is joking about Cheney using scatological language when arguing with Senator Lehey.
His excellent speech about national security, has set the course for us and by us I am assuming Kyl is taking about the military industrial complex in America and the old line right wing establishment.
Now Cheney is speaking himself. He is getting the Keeper of the Flame Award. This is the old boys club in action. Skull and Bones, old right wing establishment types. Only Bush himself is not there. Interesting. Rumsfeld set Cheney on the path according to him. They are uncompromising defenders of the United States. Always keep commitments and keep word of the nation. Abandonment of missile defence is a blunder and a breach of good faith according to Cheney. It took a lot of political courage to get them to agree to the deal in Poland and Czechoslovakia according to Cheney. What did they get from Obama from Russia? Nothing according to Cheney. For 20 years they have striven to move closer to us, they have been forced to walk the plank he says. He says the Obama administration is holding out a hand to Iran and they are simply continuing to support terrorists. He says the administration missed an opportunity by not standing with the Iranian protestors. Unless the Iranians fear America they will not negotiate. Iraq must not be undermined. He says the surge set the stage for success in Iraq and Obama has an obligation to protect the administration in Iraq. He is concerned about the Afghanistan administration. He is concerned about the drumbeat of defeatism in Afghanistan. Obama now seems afraid to give the commander on the ground the troops he needs to succeed. He quotes Obama saying that we must never let the government in Afghanistan fall. He says it is time for Obama to make good on his promise to support the American forces according to Cheney. That got him a standing ovation.
Cheney is saying it is easier to blame the Bush administration’s policies in Afghanistan by Obama than to give the support to the troops. He claims that the policy of sending more troops was one that the Bush administration recommended to Obama last fall. Cheney says supporting the Mujahideen in the 1980’s was good, abandoning them in the 1990’s was bad and that we should not leave now.
He is saying organized terrorism is not a law enforcement issue but a strategic threat to the United States. We had a lot of blind spots he said and it did not make sense to let the terrorists answer questions in their own good time. He says Kali Sheikh Mohammed was turned by the enhanced interrogations and became a teacher on terrorism because he was tortured.
Cheney says they got it right after 9-11. This guy is not apologetic at all. He is a determined cold warrior. He says part of the responsibility was not to forget 9-11. He says the terrorists have failed every time after 9-11 and he says the administration should be asking the intelligence community how they did it instead of slandering the people who kept the country safe. The left will assert the tough techniques do not work. He is saying the harsh interrogation techniques were used because the other methods did not work and because the interrogators wanted to know what to do and Cheney said the enhanced interrogation methods worked. America is safer because of what they did.
“I am not encouraged when American intelligence officers are hounded with a zeal that should be used with our enemies and not our own guys, they are after all the true keepers of the flame.”
That got Cheney a prolonged standing ovation. Now they are giving him the award. Not one admission of a mistake. Not one admission that the FBI got their information from Kalil Mohammed before the private interrogators came in and blew it with their harsh interrogation methods. I remember a congressional hearing where the interrogator said that Cheney lied about what worked and what didn’t. Cheney and his defense of torture is despicable and it shows the right wing elite to be what they really are cold blooded killers who care only about winning. Is that better? I guess if you want to live in a totalitarian dictatorship.
He neglected to mention that it was not the surge that worked in Iraq but paying off the Sheiks in the Sunni areas and getting their militias on the US government payroll. That was what if they had done that from the start instead of disbanding the Iraqi army they could have avoided 6 years of horrible devastation. He neglects to mention that the economic melt down happened on the Bush watch, and that things got out of control in Afghanistan because it was ignored for 7 years by the Bush administration. He neglected to mention that the entire invasion of Iraq was a total waste of time.
He also didn’t mention that the vast majority of the Czech and Polish people were opposed to the Missile shield and the US had to pressure the governments there to support the missile program that everyone knew was aimed at Russia which he just about admitted when he claimed Obama didn’t get anything for trading it away. He also was critical of Obama for not supporting the rebels in Iran but what exactly did he expect Obama to do? That he didn’t say.
I have spent the evening watching and listening to the right and now I need to take a bath to wash this filth off me.
On Keith Olbermann there is a pole quoted saying that only 19% of the population trust the Republicans to do the right thing. He is now rooting for medicare for all. Reason, sweet reason again. Will we get it? Who knows at least today in the Senate they decided to strip the Health Insurance industry of its exemption from the anti-trust exemption, as a move to strike back at them for coming out against the public option last week. I am done for tonight.
Tags: Cheney Speaks at Awards Event. Fox Takes More Sophistic