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Looks like Mr. Glazed-Chicken Duncan Hunter is at it again with defending our torture of prisoners. I don't know what else Chris Matthews thought he was going to get from the likes of Hunter given his past appearance on his show where he called detainee abuse "left wing rubbish". Now he's claiming that waterboarding isn't torture, and it makes our Marines tough! I think Jesse Ventura would disagree with him.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz did a pretty good job later in the segment when she was allowed to get a word in edge-wise and took Hunter to task for his claim that the government got any information from KSM after he was waterboarded.

Media Matters has a good run down of where that latest talking point came from and debunks it here-- Following Wash. Post article, conservative media advance falsehood that CIA documents prove interrogation techniques worked. Unfortunately since so much of the segment turned into a pissing contest between Hunter and Matthews over whether waterboarding is torture or not, those points were barely discussed.

Of course the fact that they have to make things up to justify the use of torture is no surprise since it doesn't work. It's meant to extract confessions and to get the prisoner to tell the torturer what they want to hear, not to get at the truth. But that's not going to stop the likes of Dick Cheney and Duncan Hunter from lying about it or the media from giving them a format to do it.

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The straight talking Jesse Ventura hits the nail directly on the head with the problem Sarah Palin's going to have if she aspires to run for higher office.

KING: All right. Let's move to Governor Palin, the former governor, soon to be former Governor Palin. What do you make of her resigning?

VENTURA: She's a quitter. Let me put it to you this way, Larry; by not being sexist, She could never make it as a Frog Man or Navy SEAL. Because if you utter the words in BUDS training, Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL Training, I quit, you're gone.

I don't remember one person in my class that quit. I remember every person I graduated with. It offends me over the fact that she told the people of Alaska she wanted to be their governor. And she wanted -- and that's a four-year commitment. And now, right in the middle, she quits?

Well, if she's got plans of running for higher office, I would never vote for her, because if it gets too hot in the kitchen, she is liable to quit.

KING: Do you think there's an underlying reason maybe we don't know?

VENTURA: Well, I don't think she was put under anymore scrutiny with the media than I was as an independent. My children were attacked in Minnesota. Everything I did was put under the microscope.

But the point is, Larry, you don't quit. When you make an obligation and you take an oath, doesn't it mean anything anymore?

Apparently not Jesse. CNN left off King's grunt he got in response in their transcript...lol.

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Jesse Ventura on Countdown weighs in on why he thinks we haven't had any prosecutions for torture in the United States, "Mancow" Muller's waterboarding and Sean Hannity never agreeing to go through it himself.

h/t Jed Lewison at Daily KOS TV.

If Dick Cheney were one-tenth the man that Jesse Ventura is, he’d be at least twice as big a man as he really is.

Fine job with the mash up sir. Can we get Jesse a job on any of the cable news networks and let him interview Cheney face to face? I don't think Cheney would show up if invited.

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Jesse Ventura wrapped up part of his book tour with an appearance on The Ed Show. Not as much fun as his body slamming of the right wingers who decided to try to take him on over whether waterboarding is torture or not, but a good interview none the less. He put the outrage over Pelosi into perspective and said that the Franken/Coleman debacle needs to come to an end and for Minnesota to finally have its second Senator after their Supreme Court rules in a couple of days.

Schultz: Governor, I've got to ask you, do you think that Nancy Pelosi has played this correctly, and has she really beaten back a real push by the conservatives to make her look terrible on all of this?

Ventura: Well to me, to me it's very much a smoke screen. Going after the Speaker doesn't get to the heart of the problem. The truth of the matter is if the Bush administration hadn't done torture this would all be irrelevant, so let's go to the, let's go to who started it all and that is the fact that, you know, Vice President Dick Cheney and his lawyers changed the name of torture and they called it enhanced interrogation, and they think that by just changing the name of something, that makes it acceptable.

Schultz: Well you have been very critical of the former Vice President. In your opinion as an American, do you think he's gone too far to stir this up, to pit one administration against another in saying the President is weak right now?

Ventura: Well yeah. Well he's going to say that. After all he's the opposition and he's defending the position they take of taking us to these two wars and everything that went on for the last eight years. I personally am offended greatly by the fact that my country now tortures people. I don't like that a bit. It's very much like an old friend of mine used to say, once the nose of the camel gets under the tent, there's no stopping the camel from being in the tent. And when you start to waterboard, where will it end?

Schultz: Okay, and from your experience as a Navy Seal, how do you think the Seals feel about all of this?

Ventura: Well, certainly I would hope they don't condone torture because it's against the law. It's already been proven that you don't get information from torturing someone because when you do torture them they will say whatever it is to stop the torture, so it's not reliable information and again, should we be stooping to the level of our opponents? I don't think so. You know, our country should be above that and waterboarding is torture because I've had it done to me at SERE school. And so I know what it's like to be waterboarded and I find it very interesting that all the people that say "oh it's just waterboarding" have never had it done to them.

Schultz: Gov. Ventura, respectfully, I've always called you that, Jesse, what do you think of this political side show for a very serious situation in Minnesota with Norm Coleman and Al Franken? As former governor, what do you think Gov. Pawlenty should do after the Minnesota State Supreme Court rules coming up in the next few days? What do you think?

Ventura: Well I think that whatever way the Supreme Court goes he should follow suit and declare the winner because Minnesota needs its second Senator. They've gone through the process and the initial election was so close that by law I believe it required a recount. Well when they did the recount, Franken apparently won and it's time to move on and it's time to get going and let him become the Senator if indeed the Supreme Court rules that way and end this matter. And besides, I find it very interesting that Norm Coleman the Republican in thirty five years he has never had a private sector job. I think it's about time as a Republican, he finds out what it's like to work in the private sector.

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Jesse Ventura's been making the rounds lately by taking on all comers on the issue of torture, which has left little quivering wingnuts like Joe Scarborough having to resort to attacking him out of his immediate presence.

Because as Brian Kilmeade of Fox and Friends found out this morning, doing so in person can be extremely unpleasant. Especially if you try pulling the lamestain right-wing crap we've gotten accustomed to, namely, accusing their interlocutors of not wanting to keep us safe, you're not patriotic enough, blah blah blah.

That's what Kilmeade tries pulling right off the bat, and it makes for possibly the best of the Ventura smackdowns yet:

Ventura: I have been waterboarded. It is torture. I can speak from experience. It was part of SERE training that I went through as a Navy SEAL.

Kilmeade: And are you OK now?

Ventura: I'm fine.

Kilmeade: So is Khalid Sheik Mohammed. He's about 60 pounds overweight, having a great time --

Ventura: It doesn't matter. If it was OK, then why don't we do it to criminals? Like, if we've got gang members in L.A., OK? We know that their gangs are gonna do bad things. When we arrest them, why don't we waterboard them so we can get information out of them? Because it's against the law.

Kilmeade: Do you want us not to be safe from attack?

Ventura: Don't come after me with that nonsense.

[Debate over its efficacy -- "ticking time bomb"]

Ventura: OK, why didn't we waterboard McVeigh and Nichols, then? There were more people that they thought involved at Oklahoma City. Why weren't they waterboarded to get more information? Because it's against the law.

Wait -- and if we're not going to be a country that goes by the rule of law when it's convenient or not convenient, then what do we stand for?

...

But what about the difference -- you bring up Timothy McVeigh and maybe gang members, and maybe those threats weren't as imminent as the threats --

Ventura: I don't think these threats are imminent.

You didn't think after 9/11, that America felt threats were imminent, that more could be coming?

Ventura: Maybe. But I think our behavior has caused us to be in more trouble. Now they won't release these photos. Why? Because they know the Muslim world will go irate. They're all after Nancy Pelosi -- when did she know? When dah dah dah -- Well, if we hadn't of tortured, it would be a dead issue, wouldn't it?

Let's go to the real issue: It's called torture.

Indeed: As we pointed out the other day, the fact that we find it necessary not to release these photos is proof that not only did torture not keep us safe, it made us manifestly less safe.

At this point, however, Kilmeade goes all-out Smug Right-Wing Punk on Ventura and finds himself confronting the reality that he's all for having someone else do his dirty work but Kilmeade himself -- of prime fighting age -- is too big of a spoiled, snotty rich kid to ever have to put himself on the line in a serious way. The resulting piledriver through the canvas is a sight to behold.

After all, it's easy to root for torture when you're not going to be one of the soldiers in the field who has to deal with the consequences. Right, Brian Kilmeade?

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I think Joe Scarborough is attempting to make his show almost as unwatchable as Fox News. First he decides to attack Jesse Ventura for his comments on The View:

SCARBOROUGH: Perhaps Jesse should stop smoking whatever Jesse's been smoking and keep his mouth shut about things he knows absolutely nothing about. This is a guy who, by the way -- I must continue to say this -- that got paid two million dollars by this network, did one show and sucked so bad that they sent him back to Minnesota and said "we never want to see you again."

I wish I was that bad. Perhaps I am. Maybe they'll fire me and I'll take my money and go to Florida. [...] Seriously, that's the sort of stupidity -- it's just -- it should seriously be a crime to be that dumb and on TV. [mocking Jesse's voice] We only waterboard Muslims. Oh God.

Let's bring in Rudy Giuliani. Former Republican mayor of New York City, former presidential candidate, Rudy Giuliani. This seems like a great place to start. [begin douchey sarcastic voice] Why is it that people like Jesse Ventura are so concerned about how we treat people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? Why is that?

h/t to Bob Cesca for the transcript and apparently he was as disgusted after watching this as I was. I'll let him take it from here.

Jesse Ventura was a Navy Seal who survived the SERE program and served in Vietnam. He "knows nothing" about torture and war, Joe? And you do? That's rich.

As for your question to Giuliani, Jesse is worried about torturing people like KSM because it endangers our soldiers.

Scarborough then goes into an angry tirade when Carlos Watson dares to suggest that waterboarding doesn't work.

SCARBOROUGH: I’ve got to stop you right there. How do you dare come on this set and say that’s [waterboarding] not effective? That’s just not the truth! And if you have any evidence that it is not effective, let me know right now!

We're not the only ones who noticed Scarborough's angry defense of torture this morning.

Think Progress has taken up Scarborough’s challenge, with this comprehensive document explaining why Bush’s enhanced interrogation tactics were a failure.

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Jesse Ventura has been going on TV a lot lately because he's promoting his new book, but he's been littering the airwaves with the carcasses of dead conservative talking points when it comes to the topic of torture and George Bush.

Elisabeth Hasslebeck had had the misfortune of trying to tackle Ventura earlier on The View, and had been exposed for the moron she is, especially on torture. So Ventura was on "Hannity" last night and much the same kind of complete and utter smackdown proceeded.

Best of all, get this: Sean Hannity thinks America is better off after George Bush instead of before. I'm serious. I'll do a Conservative/Pelosi impression on him and say that he's either a very sick man mentally a complete liar, a hairpiece hag or all three.

Hannity also did his teleprompter bit on Obama. Here's just a few of Hannity's insane ramblings (buckle up, it's a rough ride). Sean tried his best to get Jesse to bite on the "Bush inherited a rescession" bit -- which, um, didn't go very well...

Ventura: You're telling me that the United States was better off after George Bush or before him?

Hannity: After.

Ventura: Oh, my God. How can you make that statement?

Hannity: I just did..and I'll tell you why...

Ventura: It's ridiculous...This country was far better off (No.) before George Bush then it is after George Bush.

Hannity then read off his usual list of Islamofascist horrors confronting America and he asks Ventura what he would do.

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h/t The Political Carnival

Jesse Ventura puts Sean Hannity's little buddy Elisabeth Hasselbeck in her place on the issue of waterboarding on The View. Gotta' love it. She tries pulling out all of the usual right wing boogie men to no avail.

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On Larry King Live Jesse Ventura takes on the Bush administration chickenhawks and Rush Limbaugh, and defends Colin Powell. After being waterboarded himself in the SERE program, Ventura makes no bones about it. Waterboarding is torture. I'd like to see Hannity have Ventura on his show to debate the issue.

King's reaction to Ventura's straight talk on how terrible of a President W was is amusing. He's shocked...just shocked I tell you, that anyone would talk so badly about our former President.

KING: Joining us now, Jesse Ventura, former wrestler, former governor of Minnesota, former Navy SEAL, the author of "Don't Start The Revolution Without Me." That book is now out in paper back. Welcome to have you back, Jesse. There you see the cover of the book. How's Obama doing?

JESSE VENTURA, FMR. GOV. OF MINNESOTA: Too early to tell, Larry, really. In my opinion, George Bush is the worst president in my lifetime.

KING: Have an opinion, will you?

VENTURA: I will. I will. And he's the worst president in my lifetime. So Barack Obama, President Obama inherited something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. You know? Two wars, an economy that's borderline depression. So it's far too early to judge him 100 days in. I think if you have me back about two years from now, I can give you a much better of how he's doing.

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Jesse Ventura announced to the world last night that he will not challenge Norm Coleman and Al Franken in the Minnesota Senate race, and managed to get a funny jab in at President Bush's "personal" relationship with God.

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CNN.com:

And so I will tell you now, I am not going to run at this moment. But if between now and 5:00 maybe God comes and speaks to me like he did the president, and tells me I should run, like he apparently told the president to invade Iraq, well, then maybe at 5:00 tomorrow, Larry, don't call me a liar, just understand God sent me to file.

On "Verdict" last night, former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura made the perfect case as to why same-sex marriage is a civil rights issue and that the federal government has no right to tell you "who you can fall in love with." I was just waiting for Buchanan's head to explode.

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VENTURA: "Well, first of all, I made a statement when I was governor and stand by it today. Love is bigger than government. Who the hell are we as a government to tell people who you can fall in love with? I think it‘s absurd that fact it‘s even being debated. "

I couldn't have put it better myself, Governor.

Full transcript below the fold:

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