Monday, April 24, 2006
After the show, 4/23/06
Wasn’t it great to have Walter Jacobsen on the show yesterday? He is a genuine broadcasting legend, and there is no one more knowledgeable about Illinois politics. Who better to talk about the Ryan trial and the upcoming trial of some of the mayor’s insiders? Thanks again, Walter. You are the greatest, and I am proud to be your friend.
Unfortunately, time constraints being what they are, we didn’t have a chance to talk about Ted Kennedy’s appearance on Russert’s show. For the most part, it was unremarkable. The usual socialist drivel and Bush bashing from Ted the Head, including the predictable blah blah (the administration is the one cutting and running from the truth about Iraq, trumped up intelligence, more taxes are the answer to everything and if you disagree you’re “greedy,” the president needs to stand up to the “right wing”—stop me if you’ve heard any of this before). He did say one thing worthy of comment, something downright contemptible, IMO. Right up there with naming his dog “Splash,” in terms of his lack of sensitivity and ability to deny his own complicity the evil and morally bankrupt.
For the second time this week, he said that his vote against the Iraq war was the best vote he’s ever cast in the U.S. Senate. (The first time he said it was during last Thursday’s cringe-inducing interview on Larry King, in which the senator reflected nostalgically about his Nazi-sympathizing old man’s hopes that Ted could one day grow up and help stop war. I’m puking!) Better than your votes to cut off aid to the South Vietnamese and the Cambodians, Sen. Kennedy? I wondered that right after hearing the following exchange after Ted suggested a complete withdrawal from Iraq:
“MR. RUSSERT: If we got out and there was a civil war, chaos, and you saw al-Qaida moving in record numbers and Zarqawi exerting great control over the country, would you go back in?
SEN. KENNEDY: Well, first of all, I heard the same kinds of suggestions at the time of the end of the Vietnam War, the great blood bath, we’re going to have over 100,000 people that were going to be murdered and killed at that time. And for those of us that were strongly opposed to the war, heard those same kinds of arguments at the time. The fact is that the Iraqis have to win their own country, they have to be willing to sacrifice for their own country as Americans have been prepared to sacrifice, they have to stand up for their own country. And they have to be convinced that we’re not going to just have a permanent presence in Iraq. That’s what I think they believe today, and we have to disabuse them of it. The time has come, we have seen Americans do what they could do militarily, and the time has come for them to come home.”
Yes, Senator, the American Left was warned that their giving aid and comfort to the communists in Southeast Asia and their incessant, and eventually successful, demands that we abandon the region would lead to a bloodbath. They sniffed at the suggestion. Think the haughty expression that is typical of one of the main proponents of the belief that only a couple thousand people—max—would be murdered after we withdrew, John Kerry. The warnings proved to be correct. In truth, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were placed in “re-education” camps after the communists took over, and an estimated 30% died of starvation. Hundreds of thousands tried to escape. Remember the boat people? The aftermath in Cambodia was even worse, where approximately 2 million were murdered. This in a country with a pre-purge population of 7 million. It’s hard to be precise about the exact numbers, since these repressive commie regimes aren’t the most transparent in the world, but it wasn’t the happy little reunification that Jane Fonda and her friends pictured while they were enabling our enemies.
Ted Kennedy clearly feels no remorse over his role in these deaths, choosing to forget that it was the Democrat-controlled Congress that cut off the funding to our South Vietnamese allies and sealed the fate of so many innocents. He has blood on his hands, and is blithely prepared to see it happen again, this time in Iraq. There is one difference between withdrawing prematurely from Iraq and our ignominious exit from Vietnam. This time the bloodbath might not be confined to a distant land overseas, but instead could return to New York, Washington, and other locales much closer to home.
Wasn’t it great to have Walter Jacobsen on the show yesterday? He is a genuine broadcasting legend, and there is no one more knowledgeable about Illinois politics. Who better to talk about the Ryan trial and the upcoming trial of some of the mayor’s insiders? Thanks again, Walter. You are the greatest, and I am proud to be your friend.
Unfortunately, time constraints being what they are, we didn’t have a chance to talk about Ted Kennedy’s appearance on Russert’s show. For the most part, it was unremarkable. The usual socialist drivel and Bush bashing from Ted the Head, including the predictable blah blah (the administration is the one cutting and running from the truth about Iraq, trumped up intelligence, more taxes are the answer to everything and if you disagree you’re “greedy,” the president needs to stand up to the “right wing”—stop me if you’ve heard any of this before). He did say one thing worthy of comment, something downright contemptible, IMO. Right up there with naming his dog “Splash,” in terms of his lack of sensitivity and ability to deny his own complicity the evil and morally bankrupt.
For the second time this week, he said that his vote against the Iraq war was the best vote he’s ever cast in the U.S. Senate. (The first time he said it was during last Thursday’s cringe-inducing interview on Larry King, in which the senator reflected nostalgically about his Nazi-sympathizing old man’s hopes that Ted could one day grow up and help stop war. I’m puking!) Better than your votes to cut off aid to the South Vietnamese and the Cambodians, Sen. Kennedy? I wondered that right after hearing the following exchange after Ted suggested a complete withdrawal from Iraq:
“MR. RUSSERT: If we got out and there was a civil war, chaos, and you saw al-Qaida moving in record numbers and Zarqawi exerting great control over the country, would you go back in?
SEN. KENNEDY: Well, first of all, I heard the same kinds of suggestions at the time of the end of the Vietnam War, the great blood bath, we’re going to have over 100,000 people that were going to be murdered and killed at that time. And for those of us that were strongly opposed to the war, heard those same kinds of arguments at the time. The fact is that the Iraqis have to win their own country, they have to be willing to sacrifice for their own country as Americans have been prepared to sacrifice, they have to stand up for their own country. And they have to be convinced that we’re not going to just have a permanent presence in Iraq. That’s what I think they believe today, and we have to disabuse them of it. The time has come, we have seen Americans do what they could do militarily, and the time has come for them to come home.”
Yes, Senator, the American Left was warned that their giving aid and comfort to the communists in Southeast Asia and their incessant, and eventually successful, demands that we abandon the region would lead to a bloodbath. They sniffed at the suggestion. Think the haughty expression that is typical of one of the main proponents of the belief that only a couple thousand people—max—would be murdered after we withdrew, John Kerry. The warnings proved to be correct. In truth, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were placed in “re-education” camps after the communists took over, and an estimated 30% died of starvation. Hundreds of thousands tried to escape. Remember the boat people? The aftermath in Cambodia was even worse, where approximately 2 million were murdered. This in a country with a pre-purge population of 7 million. It’s hard to be precise about the exact numbers, since these repressive commie regimes aren’t the most transparent in the world, but it wasn’t the happy little reunification that Jane Fonda and her friends pictured while they were enabling our enemies.
Ted Kennedy clearly feels no remorse over his role in these deaths, choosing to forget that it was the Democrat-controlled Congress that cut off the funding to our South Vietnamese allies and sealed the fate of so many innocents. He has blood on his hands, and is blithely prepared to see it happen again, this time in Iraq. There is one difference between withdrawing prematurely from Iraq and our ignominious exit from Vietnam. This time the bloodbath might not be confined to a distant land overseas, but instead could return to New York, Washington, and other locales much closer to home.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Another Stellar Performance by the Guy with the Melting Face
If you didn’t get the chance to see John Kerry on “Meet The Press” yesterday, you missed another Tom Cruise like performance by the Guy with The Melting Face aka Lurch. Let’s start before he spins into complete dementia and is still just at his usual setting, dishonest blathering.
“RUSSERT: Joe Klein has a new book out, and he writes in Time magazine today that when you heard about the prison torture at Abu Ghraib, your instinct was to say something, but your political consultants urged you to take a focus group. And the focus group came back with a mixed message, and therefore you remained silent, never raised the issue in your acceptance speech or any of the three presidential debates. Is that true?
KERRY: I know nothing about a focus group being ordered, I had no knowledge of it, didn’t order a focus group to be ordered, and I did speak out on Abu Ghraib. I asked for Donald Rumsfeld to resign. I called for his resignation, I talked about not having accountability up and down the line. I talked about the fact that in Abu Ghraib, the, the, the soldiers at the lower end were paying the price, not the people at the higher end. And I talked about its immorality in any number of locations.”
When I heard this exchange, I was reminded of another recent Kerry appearance in which he denied knowing about his tour rider, released by thesmokinggun.com (best part of that-absolutely no tomato products. What would a headshrinker do with that?). Now he’s never heard of this focus group. This guy is as phony as a Chappaquiddick neckbrace, to use a familiar phrase! Remember how Evan Thomas told us after right after the election that Lurch was so indecisive that the his staff took away his cell phone so he wouldn’t call twelve people before deciding what to order for lunch? (No tomato products or celery!)
Second, and more substantive, is the claim he uses to try to deflect Russert’s question, asserting that he did too speak out about Abu Ghraib. Nice tapdance, Lurch. Cue the “Putting on the Ritz.” (Think Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein.”) Tim Russert didn’t ask you about mentioning it in a fundraising letter, which you did, but in your acceptance speech or in the debates. The appearances on CNN don’t count either. We are sick of you anti-American types putting on a patriotic mask for public consumption, while showing your true colors to the cryto-commies who share your point of view.
A particularly bizarre exchange occurred when Tim asked John Francois about the latest media hobbyhorse, the supposed “leak” of declassified information by the Bush administration in 2003. First, he tried to run the same disingenuous shell game that Joe Biden tried on Bill Mahre’s show; that is, to conflate the release of material to correct Joe Wilson’s lies with the supposed damaging “outing” of a CIA operative, something that apparently never happened. If it did, why hasn’t media darling Patrick Fitzgerald indicted anyone for it? It’s certainly not for lack of trying, is it? Here’s the exchange:
“KERRY: Well, the president has the right, obviously, to declassify. Whether he has the right to declassify for these kinds of political purposes, I don’t know. Let me read you what his father said. Do you know what his father said? George Herbert Walker Bush said in 1991 at the dedication of the George Bush CIA headquarters, he said, “Even though I’m a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.”
MR. RUSSERT: But there’s no one suggesting...
SEN. KERRY: George Herbert Walker—no.
MR. RUSSERT: ...there’s no one suggesting that President Bush revealed the name...
SEN. KERRY: No, absolutely nothing. But one thing led to another, Tim.”
And then we entered real moonbat territory. Kerry continued:
“This administration did reveal the name. We know repeatedly now from the Fitzpatrick documents that not only Scooter Libby but Karl Rove and others told the name to people. They were using the name, and, and I’m—I just think all Americans are tired of this. We now have evidence in a court in San Francisco that documents show that they were eavesdropping through I think it was AOL, that they were getting into American accounts. So there’s now evidence, not just of foreign eavesdropping surveillance, but of domestic eavesdropping surveillance on a blanket basis.”
Evidence in court? Not exactly. Does John Kerry, who touts his credentials as a former prosecutor, really think filing a lawsuit constitutes “evidence in court?” I don’t think so. We have the ACLU, joined by Moveon.org, Code Pink, and Raging Grannies (there’s a real intellectual hat trick, huh?) filing a lawsuit in San Francisco demanding the end of the NSA terrorist surveillance program, something Kerry would never call for himself. Here we go again with the mask thing. We have a plaintiff in this moonbat lawsuit who was a witness at John Conyers’ pretend hearing that he held in the basement of some House office building in January. During his testimony he talked about our evil country’s long history of domestic surveillance, harkening back to—natch—the 1970’s and even quoting Frank Church, whose committee it can be argued led to 9/11 by its determined work at emasculating our intelligence services.
The more people see of this guy, the more they dislike him, so much so that if he’s not careful, the ones who haven’t read that rider might even treat him to some unwelcome tomato products at his next public appearance.
If you didn’t get the chance to see John Kerry on “Meet The Press” yesterday, you missed another Tom Cruise like performance by the Guy with The Melting Face aka Lurch. Let’s start before he spins into complete dementia and is still just at his usual setting, dishonest blathering.
“RUSSERT: Joe Klein has a new book out, and he writes in Time magazine today that when you heard about the prison torture at Abu Ghraib, your instinct was to say something, but your political consultants urged you to take a focus group. And the focus group came back with a mixed message, and therefore you remained silent, never raised the issue in your acceptance speech or any of the three presidential debates. Is that true?
KERRY: I know nothing about a focus group being ordered, I had no knowledge of it, didn’t order a focus group to be ordered, and I did speak out on Abu Ghraib. I asked for Donald Rumsfeld to resign. I called for his resignation, I talked about not having accountability up and down the line. I talked about the fact that in Abu Ghraib, the, the, the soldiers at the lower end were paying the price, not the people at the higher end. And I talked about its immorality in any number of locations.”
When I heard this exchange, I was reminded of another recent Kerry appearance in which he denied knowing about his tour rider, released by thesmokinggun.com (best part of that-absolutely no tomato products. What would a headshrinker do with that?). Now he’s never heard of this focus group. This guy is as phony as a Chappaquiddick neckbrace, to use a familiar phrase! Remember how Evan Thomas told us after right after the election that Lurch was so indecisive that the his staff took away his cell phone so he wouldn’t call twelve people before deciding what to order for lunch? (No tomato products or celery!)
Second, and more substantive, is the claim he uses to try to deflect Russert’s question, asserting that he did too speak out about Abu Ghraib. Nice tapdance, Lurch. Cue the “Putting on the Ritz.” (Think Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein.”) Tim Russert didn’t ask you about mentioning it in a fundraising letter, which you did, but in your acceptance speech or in the debates. The appearances on CNN don’t count either. We are sick of you anti-American types putting on a patriotic mask for public consumption, while showing your true colors to the cryto-commies who share your point of view.
A particularly bizarre exchange occurred when Tim asked John Francois about the latest media hobbyhorse, the supposed “leak” of declassified information by the Bush administration in 2003. First, he tried to run the same disingenuous shell game that Joe Biden tried on Bill Mahre’s show; that is, to conflate the release of material to correct Joe Wilson’s lies with the supposed damaging “outing” of a CIA operative, something that apparently never happened. If it did, why hasn’t media darling Patrick Fitzgerald indicted anyone for it? It’s certainly not for lack of trying, is it? Here’s the exchange:
“KERRY: Well, the president has the right, obviously, to declassify. Whether he has the right to declassify for these kinds of political purposes, I don’t know. Let me read you what his father said. Do you know what his father said? George Herbert Walker Bush said in 1991 at the dedication of the George Bush CIA headquarters, he said, “Even though I’m a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.”
MR. RUSSERT: But there’s no one suggesting...
SEN. KERRY: George Herbert Walker—no.
MR. RUSSERT: ...there’s no one suggesting that President Bush revealed the name...
SEN. KERRY: No, absolutely nothing. But one thing led to another, Tim.”
And then we entered real moonbat territory. Kerry continued:
“This administration did reveal the name. We know repeatedly now from the Fitzpatrick documents that not only Scooter Libby but Karl Rove and others told the name to people. They were using the name, and, and I’m—I just think all Americans are tired of this. We now have evidence in a court in San Francisco that documents show that they were eavesdropping through I think it was AOL, that they were getting into American accounts. So there’s now evidence, not just of foreign eavesdropping surveillance, but of domestic eavesdropping surveillance on a blanket basis.”
Evidence in court? Not exactly. Does John Kerry, who touts his credentials as a former prosecutor, really think filing a lawsuit constitutes “evidence in court?” I don’t think so. We have the ACLU, joined by Moveon.org, Code Pink, and Raging Grannies (there’s a real intellectual hat trick, huh?) filing a lawsuit in San Francisco demanding the end of the NSA terrorist surveillance program, something Kerry would never call for himself. Here we go again with the mask thing. We have a plaintiff in this moonbat lawsuit who was a witness at John Conyers’ pretend hearing that he held in the basement of some House office building in January. During his testimony he talked about our evil country’s long history of domestic surveillance, harkening back to—natch—the 1970’s and even quoting Frank Church, whose committee it can be argued led to 9/11 by its determined work at emasculating our intelligence services.
The more people see of this guy, the more they dislike him, so much so that if he’s not careful, the ones who haven’t read that rider might even treat him to some unwelcome tomato products at his next public appearance.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Great Minds Think Alike
As many of you know, last Sunday (April 2, 2006) I had a piece in one of my favorite (and one of Rush Limbaugh’s, as it turns out) blogs, the American Thinker about the passing of Caspar Weinberger. After I talked about it on the show, SL (Smart Listener) Arnold informed me that the link at teriobrien.com was broken. Sorry about that. While I was confirming that it was fixed, I discovered a fascinating piece by Herb Meyer, who served during the Reagan Administration as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council, entitled “Why Americans Hate this “Immigration” Debate.” (It’s linked at teriobrien.com under “Recent Show Topics.”) He nails the real problem with the current debate about some of the illegals in our country only to work: the lack of desire to follow the tradition route that immigrants to the United States have followed since the country was founded. It’s a great piece, and you should definitely check it out. I liked it so much that I was inspired to check out his website and read about his fascinating DVD entitled “The Siege of Western Civilization.” I contacted Herb and he told me he is a fan of my show (he listens online) and of my writing. I couldn’t have been more delighted. I hope to have Herb as a guest on the show very soon to talk about immigration and the war with Islamofascism.
Here’s the great minds part: on Tuesday, April 4, 2006, I was listening to Rush, and what do you know, he loved Herb’s piece, too. He read nearly the whole thing on the air!
It’s not the first time that Rush and I have been on the same page (I play a sound bite on Sunday, he plays it Monday), but I have to admit I was taken by surprise.
Please stay tuned for more on upcoming guests and features. Thanks for listening!
As many of you know, last Sunday (April 2, 2006) I had a piece in one of my favorite (and one of Rush Limbaugh’s, as it turns out) blogs, the American Thinker about the passing of Caspar Weinberger. After I talked about it on the show, SL (Smart Listener) Arnold informed me that the link at teriobrien.com was broken. Sorry about that. While I was confirming that it was fixed, I discovered a fascinating piece by Herb Meyer, who served during the Reagan Administration as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council, entitled “Why Americans Hate this “Immigration” Debate.” (It’s linked at teriobrien.com under “Recent Show Topics.”) He nails the real problem with the current debate about some of the illegals in our country only to work: the lack of desire to follow the tradition route that immigrants to the United States have followed since the country was founded. It’s a great piece, and you should definitely check it out. I liked it so much that I was inspired to check out his website and read about his fascinating DVD entitled “The Siege of Western Civilization.” I contacted Herb and he told me he is a fan of my show (he listens online) and of my writing. I couldn’t have been more delighted. I hope to have Herb as a guest on the show very soon to talk about immigration and the war with Islamofascism.
Here’s the great minds part: on Tuesday, April 4, 2006, I was listening to Rush, and what do you know, he loved Herb’s piece, too. He read nearly the whole thing on the air!
It’s not the first time that Rush and I have been on the same page (I play a sound bite on Sunday, he plays it Monday), but I have to admit I was taken by surprise.
Please stay tuned for more on upcoming guests and features. Thanks for listening!