by Joseph Kay
Next...BUSH: The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.
QUESTION: What did Iraq have to do with it?
BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?
QUESTION: The attack on the World Trade Center.
BUSH: Nothing. Except it’s part of — and nobody has suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a — Iraq — the lesson of September 11th is take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody’s ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.
From the August 21 Post article:
Asked if he wasn't frustrated by the seeming lack of progress there, Bush replied, "Sometimes I'm frustrated, rarely surprised. War is not a time of joy. These are challenging times."
But when asked by NBC News White House correspondent Kelly O'Donnell if he was indeed frustrated by the lack of progress in Iraq, Bush not only said that he is occasionally frustrated and "rarely surprised," he also claimed to "sometimes" be happy:
Well, now we have admittance...O'DONNELL: But are you frustrated, sir?
BUSH: Frustrated? Sometimes I'm frustrated. Rarely surprised. Sometimes I'm happy. You know, this is -- but war is not a time of joy. These aren't joyous times. These are challenging times, and they're difficult times, and they're straining the psyche of our country. I understand that. You know, nobody likes to see innocent people die. Nobody wants to turn on their TV on a daily basis and see havoc wrought by terrorists.
And third...COLMES: What do you though — let’s say Hezbollah keeps firing, though. What do you do then?
ROSENBLUM: Well, you have to fire back. And what this particular resolution allows is Israel is defined as the victim. Hezbollah is the perpetrator. Israel has the right to defend itself while it stays in southern Lebanon. There has never been a United Nations resolution so friendly to Israeli security interests and right — but it is a piece of paper, not implemented yet.
HANNITY: A lot of good 1559 did. I think anything short of the defeat of Hezbollah or crippling it to a larger extent is a waste of time.
ROSENBLUM: By dropping your nuclear bomb, is what you said.
HANNITY: No, no, I never said drop a nuclear bomb. You said that they weren’t winning, and I said they could have won it in a second if they wanted to. I’m saying Israeli forces, their generals are saying they didn’t fight it to the full extent.
ROSENBLUM: And again you’re monolithing Israel. There’s a dispute on this in Israel.
HANNITY: But don’t mischaracterize what I said. I never said drop a weapon. I said they could, they could obliterate them. And if they wanted to, they could have.
ROSENBLUM: And you said a nuclear weapon could be…
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: It could have. They could obliterate them.
ROSENBLUM: Again, why would Israel choose not to do that?
HANNITY: What part of that don’t you understand?
ROSENBLUM: Look at Israeli self-interest.
HANNITY: All right, you’re full of sh*t. We’ve got to break. Coming up next, “60 Minutes” chats with the president of Iran as a nuclear deadline looms. We’ll talk about that.
Check my column on Newsvine! Political Thunder on Newsvine
All across the country, candidates for Congress, Governorships, and other local positions are starting to put their campaigns into gear. Close races that are vital to each party are heating up almost everywhere. I can hardly make sense of it all. However, there are two that I have been following intently.
The first of which is the Lieberman vs. Lamont Democratic Primary in Connecticut. Ned Lamont is gaining very quickly in the polls, in fact, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll, he has taken the lead (54 - 41) over Lieberman. It's hard to believe that a 3-term, former vice-presidental candidate, former "Shoo-in" Senator is going to be beaten. Why would Lieberman lose, why is he even being challenged? “I think my opponent has tried and appears to be succeeding in making this a referendum on George Bush and the Iraq war," Lieberman said. And he's right. The answer to my question is simple. This is happening because it needs to. For too long Lieberman had held a post he doesn't deserve. He has supported George W. Bush and the Republicans since he was defeated in his vice-presidental bid (in 2003, he voted with the GOP 30% of the time). And he is an outspoken proponent of the Iraq War. These positions are very unpopular with his base. According to the same Quinnipiac poll, of the Lamont supporters, 65 percent say their vote is mainly against Lieberman.
Ouch.
Lieberman has tried to swing voters by having big name Democrats campaign for him. However, it is having little effect, and not many Democrats are helping him out. Bill and Hillary Clinton have each said they support him in the Primary, but they will support the Democrat in the general election. According to "The Hill" (a newspaper for and about the U.S. Congress), Minority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), Minority Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), Charles Schumer, Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Lieberman’s home-state colleague, Chris Dodd have all said they will support Lieberman in the primary, but have not answered who they will support if he loses. Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, New Jersey Senators Frank Lautenberg and Bob Menendez, Tom Harkin (Iowa), and Senator Barack Obama (Ill.) all have said they will support the Democrat in the general election, but will not comment on the primary. A grand total of three senators have said they will support Lieberman no matter what, even if he loses the primary and runs as an independent.
Lieberman is being pushed out by unhappy Democrats who are tired of having him vote with Bush, support Bush, and get kissed by Bush on national TV. Lieberman will most likely lose the primary and then run as an independent. Lamont should have no problem in the general election, unless Holy Joe takes votes away from him. And if Lieberman succeeds in bringing Lamont down with him, and allowing Republican candidate Alan Schlesinger to win, then there is proof that Lieberman needs to go. If Lieberman loses, he has a responsibility to step aside so that the Democratic Party can be victorious in the race. Unfortunately, it appears that Lieberman is only interested remaining in power and will stop at nothing to keep it.
Speaking of "nothing", let's look at the disaster that is the Katherine Harris Senate race. This is a dream come true for those Democrats who watched her help Bush to steal the 2000 Presidential Election. Her campaign couldn't be any worse. According to another Quinnipiac poll, she's trailing Bill Nelson by 59 percent to 26 percent and "only 35 percent of Republicans polled said they wanted her as the nominee."
Harris' campaign has been self-defeating from the start. Her initial campaign was lackluster and her very name will excite the Democratic base to get out and vote... against her. Her initial 2.5 million dollar campaign fund was nothing compared to Bill Nelson's $10 million. However, on Hannity and Colmes she announced her secret weapon, a multi-million dollar inheritance from her father who passed away a mere two months before. She continued to say, "I'm going to put everything on the line. Everything. Not just my future, and my reputation, my father's name, I'm going to take his legacy, that he gave to me, everything that I have, and I'm going to put it in this race." She then also stated that, "I'm going to win", after pausing for dramatic effect.
Wow, strong words for a near-dead campaign. However, there is more to be said about her "everything". Because one week earlier, according to the Orlando Sentinel, "Campaign spokeswoman Morgan Dobbs said that ... Harris will sell her existing assets rather than rely on money from her father, a bank executive who died in January".
Aside from this disturbing backpedaling, her campaign only seems to get worse. Campaign managers have been resigning left and right, all of them noting her odd behavior. One of them said, "It smacks of real paranoia." The state GOP does not want her as the nominee, and even Jeb Bush will not back her. Gov. Bush said this about her, "I am the party leader. I've got concerns. The campaign can't be about her. It has to be about Bill Nelson and the future of our state and so far, she asked my advice and I gave her that exact advice and it's gotten worse since." In addition to this, according to the Tampa Tribune, she:
• Had locks changed and posted a security guard at the door of her campaign headquarters in Tampa and had former staff members escorted in to retrieve their belongings. • Told a gathering of supporters in Cocoa Beach on Saturday that the Republican Party had "infiltrated" her campaign staff to put "knives in my back." • Told a reporter that a longtime, trusted political adviser had leaked a story about her staff members quitting, then called back to retract the comments. • Announced hiring her new staff without identifying them
Disaster is the only word I can think of to describe this. But after what she did in 2000, I can't say I feel bad for her.
On a side note of all of this, just recently Pat Robertson, of CBN's The 700 Club, declared that he was "a convert" on the issue of Global Warming. This has to be good news for the environmental crowd. A staunch conservative has proven to be a little more open minded than once believed.
Since I have not figured out how to use the HTML codes on this page, I will have to post the names of all my sources here. Thanks to Democratic Underground, Think Progress, Quinnipiac University, "The Hill" and the local news sources that I mentioned in this column.
Crooks and Liars did a great job documenting this.
"A remarkably dumb YouTube video is working its way through conservative circles, spoofing Al Gore, "An Inconvenient Truth," and global warming. It’s pretty weak — the video’s basic pitch is that Gore’s movie is boring and is intended to brainwash viewers. The Wall Street Journal noted that the video "has a home-made, humorous quality," though "humorous" is hardly the first word that comes to mind.
The video’s maker is listed as "Toutsmith," but there’s quite a bit more to it than that.
In an email exchange with The Wall Street Journal, Toutsmith didn’t answer when asked who he was or why he made the video, which has just over 59,000 views on YouTube. However, computer routing information contained in an email sent from Toutsmith’s Yahoo account indicate it didn’t come from an amateur working out of his basement.
Instead, the email originated from a computer registered to DCI Group, a Washington, D.C., public relations and lobbying firm whose clients include oil company Exxon Mobil Corp.
A DCI Group spokesman declines to say whether or not DCI made the anti-Gore penguin video, or to explain why Toutsmith appeared to be sending email from DCI’s computers.
Nancy Snow, a communications professor at California State University, Fullerton, called the video a lesson in "Propaganda 101."
One thing’s for sure: Al Gore has the oil industry in such a panic, it’s resorted to these rather pathetic stunts."
A historic document from On writ of certiorari to the Florida Supreme Court
Page 999
By a 5-4 vote divided along conservative-liberal lines, the Supreme Court on December 12, 2000, put an end to the five-week dispute over the presidential election results in Florida and effectively elected Republican George W. Bush as the nation's forty-third president. The decision stopped the manual count of several thousand contested ballots that had been ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, leaving Bush the certified winner by 537 votes of the state's twenty-five electoral votes, enough to give him the presidency. Although the U.S. Supreme Court sent the case back to the Florida court for further consideration, the decision left Vice President Al Gore's attorneys little maneuvering room to pursue his challenge, and the Democratic nominee conceded the election to Bush on December 13. It was a painful decision for Gore, who had won the nationwide popular vote by approximately 577,000 votes. (Bush, Gore speeches, p. 1025)
The Court's decision capped the most extraordinary period in U.S. presidential politics in more than a century. The November 7 election left Gore with 267 electoral votes—just 3 short of the 270 needed under the Constitution for election as president. Bush had 246 electoral votes coming out of the election. In doubt were Florida's 25 electoral votes, which would provide the margin of victory. There Bush had a slim advantage, and for five weeks lawyers and partisans for the two sides clashed in the courts, at local elections headquarters, and even in the streets. Bush sought to preserve his slim lead by erecting legal roadblocks to the recounting of thousands of ballots that were in dispute. Needing every vote he could get, Gore demanded that all disputed votes be counted.
Throughout the ordeal, the nation and the world watched as election workers peered at ballots looking for signs of voter intent, and as judges struggled with Florida's sometimes conflicting laws to determine the state legislature's intent. It was the closest the United States had come to a constitutional crisis over a presidential election since 1876, when an election dispute dragged on for months and was finally resolved by a contentious vote in the House of Representatives.
Page 1000
In the end Bush won because he had two important allies working in tandem: the calendar and the Supreme Court. Under a federal law enacted in 1887, a state's electors had to be selected by December 12 if they were to be free from challenge in the U.S. Congress. Although nothing in the law prevented electors from being selected after December 12—in 1960 Hawaii did not select its electors until January 4—the Bush team argued that the Florida legislature had intended December 12 to be the deadline for selecting electors. Bush's attorneys then used every legal maneuver they could muster to prevent or delay voter recounts until this deadline had passed and it was too late to overturn the Bush lead. As the December 12 date approached, the final arbiter of whether additional votes would be counted was the Supreme Court, which for the first time in U.S. history found itself in the position of being able to determine who would become president. On the key decision in the case of Bush v. Gore, the Court's five most conservative justices sided with Bush, the conservative candidate, and the four most liberal justices sided with Gore, the liberal candidate.
The coincidence of this split did not go unremarked. Editorial writers and legal experts said that the Court should have refused to review the dispute and left it for Congress to resolve. By injecting the Supreme Court into a political issue, the Court had weakened its own legitimacy as well as Bush's claim to the White House, those critics said. John Paul Stevens, one of the dissenting justices, said the Court's ruling “can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land.” Another dissenter, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, referred to the Court action as “this self-inflicted wound.” Nor did it escape public notice that the Republican nominee who had campaigned on states' rights had turned to the federal judiciary to overrule the Florida state courts or that his promises of inclusion did not extend to disputed ballots cast primarily by blacks, the urban poor, and the elderly.
Although most Americans accepted the Court's decision and Gore's concession calmly, it remained to be seen to what extent the controversy had damaged the public's trust in its governing institutions and in the electoral process. Some observers predicted that the incident would discourage voter turnout in the future, especially among African-Americans and other minorities who were already skeptical about the voting process. Several news organizations immediately announced plans to perform their own recounts of the Florida ballots, while politicians and election officials across the country promised to review election laws and procedures to prevent similar situations in the future.
On December 14 Florida governor Jeb Bush announced that he was creating a special task force to investigate the integrity of Florida's election process. He also said he would welcome an investigation by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights into allegations into voting irregularities, including incidents of intimidation directed at black voters. Bush, the younger brother of the president-elect, and Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris, an acknowledged Bush supporter, had been accused by Gore partisans of using their offices to help thwart the recount.
Link to Full Primary Source
Bush v. Gore http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/supremecourt/00-949_dec12.fdf
-Mr. JosephFrom the July 26 edition of MSNBC News Live:
LINK / VIDEO: Coulter attacks Clinton as a "latent homosexual"ROBACH: Well, no one has ever accused Ann Coulter of holding back on what she really thinks. Now, she's sharing her theory on Bill Clinton's sexuality. In a taped segment on tonight's edition of CNBC's The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, Coulter said she believes the former president's behavior shows, quote, "some level of latent homosexuality."
[begin video clip]
DEUTSCH: Off the air, you were talking about Bill Clinton. Is there anything you want to say about Clinton?
COULTER: No.
DEUTSCH: No? OK. All right. Did you find him attractive? Is that what it was?
COULTER: No!
DEUTSCH: You don't find him attractive?
COULTER: No. OK, fine, I'll say it on air.
DEUTSCH: Most women find him attractive.
COULTER: No.
DEUTSCH: OK, say it on air.
COULTER: I think that sort of rampant promiscuity does show some level of latent homosexuality.
DEUTSCH: OK, I think you need to say that again -- that Bill Clinton, you think, on some level has -- is a latent homosexual. Is that what you're saying?
COULTER: Yeah. I mean that sort of just completely anonymous -- I don't know if you read the Starr Report. The rest of us were glued to it. I have many passages memorized. No, there is more plot and dialogue in a porno movie.
[end video clip]
ROBACH: The Coulter interview can be seen in its entirety tonight on The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, that's at 10 p.m. Eastern on CNBC. Coulter will also be a guest on Hardball tonight at 7. That's right here on MSNBC. A night of must-see TV, featuring the one and only Ann Coulter.
