Bill O'Reilly devoted his leadoff Talking Points Memo segment and the following conversation with Dick "The Troll Who Lives Under the Bridge" Morris to the notion that, if another terrorist attack occurs on President Obama's watch, he's gonna be all washed up.
Nevermind that, of course, no one has yet died from a terrorist attack on Obama's watch. (O'Reilly's counting the Fort Hood shootings as a "terrorist attack," though of course there isn't much evidence that it actually was.)
Still, you have to wonder where O'Reilly and Morris and all these other right-wing blame-meisters were back in 2001 and 2002, in the wake of an actual terrorist event that actually killed 3,000 people.
Oh, that's right -- they were busy proclaiming that any blame-laying against Bush was beyond the realm of acceptable discourse. If you suggested back then that Bush had been asleep at the wheel on terrorism on 9/11, you were accused of being a traitor who hated America.
Afterward, of course, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told the press: "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." (As a matter of fact, just such a scenario had been foreseen by intelligence officials in 1998, as Rice later admitted.)
"You have to take out the Medicare buy-in. You have to forget about the public option. You probably have to take out the class act which was a whole new entitlement program that will in future years put us further into the deficit," Lieberman told CBS' Bob Schieffer Sunday.
"I want to tell you, we could pass a health care reform bill this week with more than 60 votes and it would be bipartisan if we just took a few things out of the bill as it is today," said Lieberman.
Lieberman wants to pass a Republican health care package, which is no plan at all. This bitter man is hijacking the entire health care reform effort for no other reasons than his petty, narcissistic agenda. He is a traitor to the liberal policies that once, as a vice-presidential nominee in 2000, he would have never signed onto.
Greg Sargent comes up with video proof which exposes Lieberman of being a bad-faith participant in health care negotiations. Holy Joe just three months ago was saying that he supports a Medicare buy-in plan. Oh, my!
In the vid, Lieberman appeared to go further than the current Senate deal, which would expand Medicare to those aged 55-64, saying he supported the idea of expanding it to people aged 50 and over. Lieberman referenced his proposal along these lines during the 2006 campaign, and added:
“My proposals were to basically expand the existing successful public health insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid…
“When it came to Medicare I was very focused on a group — post 50, maybe more like post 55. People who have retired early, or unfortunately have been laid off early, who lose their health insurance and they’re too young to qualify for Medicare.
“What I was proposing was that they have an option to buy into Medicare early and again on the premise that that would be less expensive than the enormous cost. If you’re 55 or 60 and you’re without health insurance and you go in to try to buy it, because you’re older … you’re rated as a risk so you pay a lot of money.”
It’s not entirely clear that Lieberman was offering a full-throated current endorsement of the proposal, but his tone is clearly positive and approving. It’s yet another sign, as if you needed one, that Lieberman’s current opposition to the Senate proposal doesn’t appear to have any roots in a genuine policy disagreement.
It appears that Holy Joe wants to destroy health-care reform because his feelings have been hurt by liberals who disagreed with his warmongering behavior. The pettiness he holds dear to his heart is being used to destroy any chance that working-class Americans will be getting meaningful health care reform. You can't go lower than that.
Again it boils down to leadership, and President Obama and Harry Reid have not led this fight well from the beginning. They knew they had to deal with Joe, so he was bowed down to. The problem is that he felt no repercussions after he threw his full support to John McCain in the 2008 election. "He's with us on everything except the war," was what Harry Reid said. How did that work out for ya, Harry? Joe is destined to destroy health-care reform altogether.
People need to send the link to this to all the press and the villagers they can think of to show just how perfidious their favorite "man of integrity" is being on this. Thy won't care about the substance, but this helps expose Lieberman's pettiness which villagers always find uncomfortable. (The exposure, not the pettiness.)
Please sign this petition to progressive Senators Russ Feingold, Bernie Sanders, Roland Burris, and Sherrod Brown:
PETITION: "Don't let Joe Lieberman win! Americans need you to stand strong and block any 'compromise' without a strong public option. If necessary, demand that Sen. Harry Reid and President Obama support budget reconciliation and pass a bill with just 51 votes -- at which point, Joe Lieberman will be irrelevant and the public option can be made even stronger."
Key Democrats have said they won't support a bill without a strong public option:
Please sign on to it. The more we expose him as a fraud the better.
That said, I agree with Chris Bowers that in a lot of ways the real story here is that the Senate leadership has, at every step of this process, underscored that a “reconciliation” path to a health care bill is off the table. That means Lieberman has unlimited control over what happens, and no incentive to compromise, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he’s being uncompromising. Can’t liberals be just as stiff-necked as Lieberman? Sure, they could. But liberals members do have an incentive to compromise—the tens of thousands of people who die every year for lack of health insurance. The leverage that Lieberman and other “centrists” have obtained on this issue (and on climate change) stems from a demonstrated willingness to embrace sociopathic indifference to the human cost of their actions.
I used to love these Saturday cartoons, but I gotta admit, Droopy Dog is forever ruined for me because of that traitor Joe Lieberman. And guess what, boys and girls? The most craven politico of them all, Joe "Screw my constituency, it's all about me" Lieberman will be on Face the Nation this week, disgustingly unrepentant about his complete 180 on health care reform. But perhaps in response, the White House is sending out a bunch of spokespeople to make sure that that needy, attention-whore sell-out isn't the only one setting the dialog, with Valerie Jarrett on This Week, David Axelrod on Face the Nation and David Plouffe on Meet the Press. But the ultimate cartoon, the completely shameless fact-free zone has to be awarded to Fox News Sunday, because their sole guest this week is none other than Rush Limbaugh. Excuse me while I lose my breakfast.
ABC's "This Week" - White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.
CBS' "Face the Nation" - White House senior adviser David Axelrod; Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.
NBC's "Meet the Press" - Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner; David Plouffe, former Obama presidential campaign manager; author Jon Krakauer.
NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Katty Kay, Howard Fineman, Mark Whitaker, Mary Jordan. Topics: Afghanistan and Health Care and How They Will Determine Obama's Legacy. One Year Later: Why Isn't Obama's White House as Brilliant as His Campaign? Meter Questions: Will Afghanistan define President Obama's legacy more than health care? YES: 6 NO: 6; Is the Far Right more likely than the White House to have its hardball tactics backfire? YES: 7 No: 5.
CNN's "State of the Union" - House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio; Gov. Haley Barbour, R-Miss.
CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Matthew Hoh, the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, gives Fareed one of his first interviews since resigning. Plus, we have a superb discussion on the economy with two great minds -- Martin Wolf of the Financial Times and Robert Schiller, the economist who accurately predicted the financial crisis and the stock market collapse of 2000.
CNN's "Amanpour" - Zalmay Khalilzad, former US Ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan & UN; Tom Ricks, author of Fiasco, and Tahera Shairzay of Women for Afghan Women.
"Fox News Sunday" - Rush Limbaugh, conservative radio talk show host.
Yesterday on his Fox News show, Glenn Beck was conversing with Sen. Jim DeMint, and I guess he decided to get all respectable or something, because he uttered the following:
Beck: I will tell you that I -- we discussed this on the radio program earlier today, that, um, a lot of people are calling this, where was it? In the Washington Examiner today. That they -- that people are saying that "Cap and Trade" is "Cap and Traitor". They're actually -- people are starting to view people -- both Republicans and Democrat -- as traitors to the country. Which I think is over the top. That's a very specific definition.
Funny thing, because just 24 hours before, on the same program, Beck was running a reward poster on his show naming the eight Republicans who voted for the bill "Cap and Traitors." His guest, Kevin Mooney of the (you guessed it!) Washington Examiner, called them "traitors" too. Guess that wasn't "over the top" then.
Because Glenn Beck went through a time warp or was abducted by aliens or something and everything he said the day before was now actually said by a whole other, different Glenn Beck. Something like that.
You can't make this stuff up. It's like watching a bad old science fiction movie, I tell ya.
We are respectable negroes: These bloggers have written an ingenious series of posts based on an alternate reality in which 'O'Bama' is a white, Reagan Republican, while Democrat McCain is a womanizing, foul mouthed traitor of low moral character. Sarah Palin is a black welfare queen. Scroll down and read 'em all.
unbossed: "Stop blogging! Stop blogging right now!"
The Opinion Mill's Weekend Bookchat: Robert Stone sees greatness in a book about the war on terror, William Gibson sees an embarrassment of riches and the Great Orange Satan sees ways for activists to use the Internets. And dare you take the Junot Diaz geek test?
WTF is going on?: If elected, Obama's first act as president should be to end the Pentagon's ban on pictures of the coffins of fallen soldiers.
Dear me. A bridge player had the audacity to hold up a sign that said "We did not vote for Bush." Instantly, she's a traitor! And I thought playing the traitor card was only a God-given right to the wingnuts in radio and blogoland. I guess not! Beware all ye merry Americans in all professions throughout the land. The 24%ers are everywhere!
In the genteel world of bridge, disputes are usually handled quietly and rarely involve issues of national policy. But in a fight reminiscent of the brouhaha over an anti-Bush statement by Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks in 2003, a team of women who represented the United States at the world bridge championships in Shanghai last month is facing sanctions, including a yearlong ban from competition, for a spur-of-the-moment protest.
At issue is a crudely lettered sign, scribbled on the back of a menu, that was held up at an awards dinner and read, “We did not vote for Bush.” By e-mail, angry bridge players have accused the women of “treason” and “sedition.”
The Carpetbagger Report: When Speaker Pelosi leads a bipartisan delegation to Syria, she’s a traitor to her country. When conservative GOP lawmakers visit Syria, well, the right doesn’t want to talk about it.
Norbizness: Update on the virulent machinations of The Left
Mary McCarthy "categorically denies" being the source of the leak on agency renditions "A former CIA officer who was sacked last week after allegedly confessing to leaking secrets has denied she was the source of a controversial Washington Post story about alleged CIA secret detention operations in Eastern Europe, a friend of the operative told NEWSWEEK...read on"
The story goes on to say:
"One of the sources, a law enforcement official close to the investigation, noted that polygraph evidence is normally inadmissible in criminal court cases because of judicial doubts about the reliability and credibility of lie-detector machines...
A lot is being said about Mary at this point without enough information available on the subject at this time. Apparently, donating to Kerry's campaign is enough of a reason to convict her. I thought Howard Kurtz was out of line on his show "Reliable Sources," when he ended a segment without giving any of his guests a chance to respond to this statement:
KURTZ: Some people noted that Mary McCarthy contributed to John Kerry's campaign. David Gergen, before we go, we're going to talk in the next half hour about the Duke rape case. You are on the board of trustees of Duke University. How do you feel the university's handling this and have you provided any advice?
Not only was Mary McCarthy branded a traitor all weekend -- completey with angry protests that she was not yet imprisoned -- but anyone associated with her was all but branded a traitor as well. They don't need to wait for evidence or know any facts. The administration has branded her An Enemy, so now it's time for the punishment. That is just a microcosm of the same distorted, indescribably undemocratic and plainly un-American dynamic that has guided most of the radical policies of this administration for the last five years.
I seem to remember that any mention of a civil war in Iraq by a Democrat was grounds for being declared a traitor and giving comfort to our enemy just a little while back.
Ebay has a new listing. What makes this an amazing bargain is that it comes with Don King hair! A murderer and a traitor melded into one. The perfect combination.
You gotta love those screen grabs. Hat tip to Adam-who emailed me this morning on this. 
