Day: March 25, 2010

Verbatim

Buck Banks

Perhaps they felt like they had killed health care reform … They thought the fight was over. And that the president couldn’t now succeed. I do believe that. And it is almost as if they had made the statement that they thought they had stopped the thing. And so it created a breathing space for us to regroup.

— White House adviser David Axelrod, quoted by the Huffington Post, on Republicans letting down their guard after winning the Massachusetts Senate special election in January.

Fox News’ Only Legit Anchor Says Violent Threats against Congress Caused by ‘Over-Inflated Rhetoric’ – Meaning Glenn Beck, Tea Baggers

Jon Ponder

There’s only one legitimate journalist anchoring for Fox News, and yesterday he laid blame for a spate of violent threats against members of Congress in the wake of passage of the health-care reform law on “over-inflated rhetoric” on the right:

“I wonder when it is an isolated incident becomes a string of things,” he said Wednesday. “You wonder when some in there, on both sides of the aisle, are gonna look in the mirror and go, my over-inflated rhetoric is causing some people…[to] go out and react given the information that they’ve been given. I just wonder if anybody’s gonna settle down a minute and go, Wow, we better settle down here, relax.”

Shep continued on that subject with a hint that he was really talking about those on the far right, including possibly his Fox News colleague Glenn Beck.

“What we do know is that when leaders on either side of the aisle go with this over-inflated rhetoric and they tell us it’s the end of the world, it’s Armageddon, the Marxists have taken over Washington, it’s the end of the world as we know it, we’re moving into socialism,” he said, “when they say things like that, that maybe some of them don’t believe, and then the fringes believe it, and then they go out and do stupid things…Well, I mean, it’s all kind of tied together isn’t it?”

How long will Shepard Smith keep his job — and how long before he starts receiving threats from tea baggers? Stay tuned.

In Snit over New Health-Care Law, GOP N.C. Sen. Burr Stops Hearing on Defense Bill, Wasting Taxpayer Cost to Fly in Military Brass from Asia to Testify

Jon Ponder

Charlotte.com:

In retaliation against Dems over the new health-care law, Burr used a parliamentary trick to stop a hearing on the fiscal year 2011 Defense Authorization Bill.

The witnesses who were in the room included Navy Adm. Robert Willard, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, who’d flown in from Hawaii; Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command; and Army Gen. Walter Sharpe, commander of the U.S. forces in Korea, who’d flown in from Asia.

Watch George W. Bush Wipe Something Icky off His Hand onto Bill Clinton’s Shirt

Jon Ponder

Still not ready for prime time…

In the video, we have two former presidents in Haiti working what is essentially a rope line, shaking hands with local residents. Behind the presidents but out of view are Secret Service personnel and staffers, at least some of whom are equipped — as they are for every similar situation — with wipes, disinfectant soap and hand lotion.

In the video, we see George W. Bush, the blue-blood from the “let them eat cake” wing of the Republican aristocracy, shaking hands down the line until he apparently feels something gross on his hand. So he pauses, and instead of asking a staffer for a tissue, he reaches over and wipes his hand on the first available clean cloth he can find, which happens to be the shirt of Pres. Clinton.

Is this an expression of his disdain for Pres. Clinton because he’s a Democrat or a commoner, or both? Or is just a revealing look at how truly feral and uncultured Bush is?

And why send him to Haiti in the first place? As we saw during his criminally negligent response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, Bush has no empathy for under-privileged people, especially those of African descent.