Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

The Curse of the Mole People

Over on “This Week”

George Will was running the siren on the Waaaambulance again, complaining that President Obama is going to “design our light bulbs. Design our cars. Tell us where we can build our houses”.

That this is “nagging, supervisory Liberalism at its worst”.

Forty years ago, Will would have been the guy at the bar complaining: “Who is the Gummint to tell us we should go to the Moon? Or that we should build some kind of national ‘computer machine’ network? Why if every we needed such do-dads and gimcracks, then surely American Capitalism would provide them!


But the real scream-at-your-teevee fun was over on “Fox News Sunday” where the Rock-Em-Sock-Em Douchebot Senator from Missouri -- Kit Bond -- came out lies blazin' with:

The torture that took place at Abu Gharib was the result of “rogue, criminal acts”.

Of course that is a lie, just slapped right down on the barrel head. An absolute, categorical lie. What happened at Abu Gharib was the direct result of policies concocted and approved inside Oval Office. The evidence is damning and incontrovertible.

And of course, Kit Bond knows it’s a lie. Chris Wallace knows it too, and if Chris Wallace were a journalist he might have bothered to raise an eyebrow over such a ridiculously crude and bold-faced lie.

But of course Chris Wallace is not a real journalist, any more than this guy

is a real doctor,

this guy

is the real head of security for the Dharma Initiative,

or this guy

is a real comedian.

They are performers, acting out scripted parts for money, and Wallace's role as Rupert Murdoch's Sock Puppet is to hit Democrats with the snarkiest gotcha stuff Riger Ailes can think up in the shower the night before

and feed Republican potted plants like Kit Bond straight lines as if they were real questions.

And so he did.

Wallace (to Democratic Senator Levin): In the midst of a war on terror, two shooting wars, an economic collapse, that you should be going after these people?

Wallace (Replaying Kit Bond’s own statement about the prosecution or torturers as “a stab in the back” : Senator, is that how you would view any prosecutions? As a “stab in the back”?

Bond: Fuck yeah!

Bond: Obama has “demoralized the CIA”. And his actions have “absolutely destroyed our ability to get information from terrorists”.

No follow up. No challenge to Bond’s unhinged fiction. No asking whether or not the CIA might have been a little more demoralized by the Cheney Torture Administration outing an active agent during wartime than they were being told that no one will demand they torture people anymore?

Just as penetrating as a bunker buster, isn’t he?

No, if it’s a Republican, Wallace just repeats the Approved Talking Point of the day, and lets the crazy roll on unchallenged like a mighty river.

But when it comes to the Democrat?

Wallace: Senator Levin, let me present a hypothetical to you. What if the next President decides that Obama shooting drones into Pakistan is a war crime? Huh? What then, smartass!

Or what if Newt Gingrich invents a time machine and wants to go back and kill Hitler but President Obama throws him in jail because Obama’s a liberal who hates America? What about that!

Levin answers this sort of idiot gotcha nonsense far more civilly than it deserves, after which Wallace reaches deep into left field and comes back with…

Wallace (from the transcript):

OK. OK. Let me — let me bring in Senator Bond.

Is that where we're headed now, sort of what we've had in banana republics, where one administration sits there and says, "Well, I think these guys broke the law, and we're now going to take them and put them in the dock," and this will just go on from administration to administration?

Which certainly sounds like one hell of a bizarrely awkward non sequitur leading from thin air to nowhere until you do a little Googling and discover that, just like Wallace’s previous “question”, in classic, Fox News reacharound fashion, all he is doing is snowballing Bond’s own framing language from three days ago

Bond: This whole thing about punishing people in past administrations reminds me more of a Banana Republic than the United States of America.

back into Bond’s own mouth.


BOND: …There were a number of actions in the previous Democratic administration that could have been prosecuted, like Sandy Berger could have been prosecuted, could really have...

driftglass: You mean like Whitewater?

Bond: Shut up!

driftglass: You mean like giving Ken Starr a blank check to get Clinton by any means necessary?

Bond: Shut up! Shut up!

driftglass: You mean like impeaching Clinton for trivia?

Bond: Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!

driftglass: And how did you vote on the impeachment of William Clinton for trivia?

Bond: Lalala! I-am-not-listening-to-you.

driftglass: Guilty, right? Guilty across the board?

Bond: Fuck you! I don’t remember.

driftglass: In fact, you waxed quite eloquent on the subject before you stuck the knife in, didn’t you?

"It is precisely in good times, with the President high in the polls, that it is incumbent upon the Senate to exercise very thoroughly and carefully the responsibility under the Constitution to make the difficult decision on whether the President has committed high-crimes and misdemeanors warranting his removal from office.

"If we are to have a government of laws and not of men and not of public opinion polls, then we must judge the President on the evidence presented to us. I believe that the acts that he committed constitute high-crimes and misdemeanors warranting his conviction."

All of which might leave you wondering what sort of desperately malfunctioning waterhead could ever mistake this crudely animated partisan cartoon for "news".

Until you remember...