Sunday Morning Comin’ Down -- UPDATED

“Not Exactly the Ragnarok at 30 Rock!” edition.

In which the Very Conspicuous Giant Ugly Fuzzy Yellow Hats on everyone's heads



Were very conspicuously



Not discussed.


Sigh.

From the aggregated wisdom of the Mouse Circus (Rove dividing his lying time between Brokaw on MTP and Wallace on "Fox News Sunday") I learned that Karl Rove never, ever used the GWOT as a partisan, political weapon, which means we all just imagined this speech.


Karl Rove believes that negative campaigning -- "throwing mudballs" -- just never works and backfires on the candidate, which is why he has never done it. So I assume a letter of apology to Mr. Rove from John McCain's "black baby" will be dropped in the mail any time now.

As everyone in the world expected, Rove sat there and lied and lied and until he had run out the clock. Lied about the reasons for going to Iraq. Lied about his own, well-documented past. Told great whopping big lies about Bush administration policies that we’re fact-checkable within seconds.

And when not lying outright, he simply deflected every question with a smirk and another question.

If asked about “Cheney”, the answer was “Kerry.” If asked about “Fox News” the answer was “MSNBC.”

Because that’s what sociopaths do, and by Rovian standards it was a triumph.

And Wallace (Fox) has been a lost cause since forever.

But Tom Brokaw (who the good people at General Electric saw fit to disinter from the NBC Studio Tour Waxworks to conduct an interview what was eventually pared down to the length of a ShamWow commercial) had famously said in 2008 that he believed “Meet the Press” was:

"...a big heartland broadcast. It’s where the rest of the nation tunes in to find out what’s going on in the nation’s capital. And it’s not a salon. And Tim was successful at it because he was Everyman to everybody out there and they felt that he represented their sensibilities in a lot of ways. And that he would hold people accountable the way they seemed not to be held accountable by the rest of the Washington press corps, which I think in the eyes of so many people is just one cozy little high school cafeteria.”

By that standard, I would have expected Karl Rove to be brought on and sweated under the hot lights (waterboarded if necessary, seeing as how it’s not torture) until, presumably, he began to talk about his sleazy past as Chief Republican Ratfucker, how he and his bosses lied baldly and continuously to the American people about virtually every subject for eight years, about how he and his bosses very nearly wrecked the country, and how very, very sorry he was for being such and awful shit of a human being.

By that standard, I would have assumed this would be the general outline of things because, after all, why in the wide, wide world of sports would anyone ever again put this ambulatory sack of Rovine spongiform encephalopathy ™ on teevee if it were not to induce him to humbly beg the forgiveness of the civilized world?

By that standard, I set my popcorn maker to “Smackdown”, settled in for 30 solid minutes of motherfucking, smashmouth, steel-cage, non-high-school-cafeteria accountability-holding, bitches, and hoped against hope for something resembling an accountability session for all the sins Rove had accumulate in his filthy tenure as Lord Mayor of the Republican sewer.

And by that standard -- by his own standard -- Tom Brokaw could hardly have embarrassed himself more thoroughly if he’d crapped his pants and sat in his own poo for six minutes, gaping at the camera and muttering about dirty hippies.

Rove then toddled off to be "interviewed" at his home base on Fox News, where much peppermint foot cream was applied to his aching hooves, leaving David Brooks and Tom Friedman to occupy at the same table that Rove had just vacated.

It was like a thousand tiny neocon fingers urging you to let go.

Tom Brokaw then fawningly read aloud from Brooks' Friday column (about which I was somewhat less fawning here) and Brooks allowed as how he agreed with everything he himself had written.

Elsewhere, Lindsay Graham said that he thought that Reconciliation was some kind of evil trick.

I think maybe he's thinking of “Reconstruction”.

Which is different.

Also Graham is absolutely sure here are plenty of Republicans who want to work with Obama if he would just bend over a little further.

Although can't seem to remember any of their names.

UPDATE: I wanted to open this post back up for one more minute to underscore exactly why the interplay between Rove and Wallace on the specific subject of Karl Rove's partisan used of 9/11 and the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT )was so singularly reprehensible.

Here's the transcript:

WALLACE: This gets to one of the central complaints about you and your time in the White House, and that is that you helped — and you address this in the book — that you helped destroy the political unity in this country after 9/11.

In January of 2002, just two months after the attack, you were speaking to a big GOP conference of GOP leaders, and you said the following, "We can go to the American people on the issue of winning this war. They trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might."

At a time when the president was talking about how united the country was, was it a wise idea to turn the war on terror into a partisan issue?

ROVE: I wasn't suggesting a partisan issue. I was suggesting Republicans talk about what they were for. And that's what politics ought to be mostly about, is what are the two parties or what are two candidates in a race for? And I wanted...

WALLACE: But when you say we're going to go to the American people on the issue of winning the war...

ROVE: Talk about our support for the war, talk about...

WALLACE: But does it not sound as if — and we're talking about the war on terror now, not the Iraq war. The implication seems to be that the Democrats somehow weren't...

ROVE: Well, look. When Democrats say they're for health care, does by implication that mean Republicans aren't? No. It means Democrats are for health care, and it is up to the Republicans to go out there and say, "We're for health care reform and here's what we would do."

And I would say (inaudible) speech to the Republican National Committee in saying be focused on what we are for and go out and tell the American people what it is.

And look. There are a lot of things that Republicans did in the — in the — in those months that were absolutely vital to the security of our country. And we ought to be proud about our record and talk about it.

Notice what Wallace does here to help his Fox News Colleague Karl Rove weasel around the truth: he broaches the general subject of whether or not Rove deliberately turned the worst tragedy in modern America into a partisan issue for political gain -- a claim for which there is a mountain of damning proof -- but chose to present as evidence of Rove's behavior to only a snip from a despicable but relatively innocuous (by Rove's gutter standards) speech he made in 2002.

A speech that, in the hands of a genuine journalist and not one of Rupert Murdoch's bought-and-paid-for messenger boys, could still have been used to raise welts on Rove's oily hide. Instead, safe at home inside the Fox News mother-ship, Rove was lobbed a slow pitch softball, which he smirked into the outfield and then moved on to blaming Democrats and unions for making 9/11 into a partisan issue.

So millions of dumbass Fox Viewers could shamble back to their life-long political stupors, confirmed in their belief that that poor Fox News Contributor Karl Rove was just another victim of evil, liberal lies.

So sad.

Of course, if Wallace were a real journalist and not one of Rupert Murdoch's bought-and-paid-for messenger boys, the speech he would have referenced to make his point was this one from 2005

where, speaking as the chief adviser to the President of the United States during a time of war, he said this:

"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," Mr. Rove, the senior political adviser to President Bush, said at a fund-raiser in Midtown for the Conservative Party of New York State.

And this:

"Has there ever been a more revealing moment this year?" Mr. Rove asked. "Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals."

This was the speech that everyone on the Left remembers.

This was the speech that had normally flaccid Democratic governors and Senators finally saying Enough with this Douchbag already. That was printed in every newspaper and burned up every blog.

This was the speech that had the Pig People up on their hind legs squealing in bilious ecstasy as one more of their ugly little nightmares got pinned on the Dirty Fucking Hippies by the GOP's Ratfucker-in-Chief.

This was the absolutely consistent pattern of The Rove Presidency from its sleazy beginning to its cataclysmic end; to cover up one catastrophic failure after another by injecting as much raw poison into the body politic as the needle would hold...and calling it Governing.

And so naturally, this was the speech that Wallace never bothered to mention.

And how did Brokaw handle the same subject?

By not mentioning.

In any way.

At all.

And since as America's Leading Journalists take turns "interviewing" Karl Rove about his years in power it becomes stunningly obvious that as completely incapable of or unwilling to remember what America was really like just five short years ago during the peak of Don Karleone's thugocracy, I thought a timely reprint from the late Steve Gilliard reporting from the thick of it was most definitely in order.

From "The News Blog", September 3, 2005:

A note to our conservative friends:

WE TOLD YOU SO

Ever wonder why New Yorkers detest George Bush?

Because we experienced his incompetence up close and person. We knew this guy was full of shit, absolutely full of fucking shit, after they started to play games with the funding and gave Wyoming terrorism money. We knew he was an assclown then.

We thought DC 9/11 was a comedy, because the Bush we saw hid in AF One like the scared bitch that he is.

But did you listen?

Fuck no. Until last week, Ann Coulter was calling New Yorkers cowards for not endorsing Bush's folly in Iraq.

We have been screaming for two years that Bush and his team sucked. That they had no clue. They sent soldiers to be wounded in Iraq without armored anything. And you idiots cheered him on from the safety of your keyboards. We told you he was fucking up Iraq. But no, we supported Saddam, we were racist, we blamed America.

You say this isn't about politics? Fuck you, this IS politics, real time, real life politics, where the insanity of all your ideas are exposed to the world for the fraud that they are. Tax cuts kill. Ask the relatives of the dead of the Gulf Coast.

Well, motherfuckers, the alligators are feasting on dead nigger and there isn't an Iraqi in sight. And Bush is trying to gladhand his way through a mess which has stunned FOX reporters. I mean, Shepard Smith is calling Fox's talking heads liars ON THE AIR.

CNN rips Bush in print and online after nearly five years of sleep.

Instead of hearing what we had to say about Bush, you called John Kerry a coward, mocked Max Cleland, blamed everything but herpes on Bill Clinton. You enabled Bush into this mess and now you're shocked?

Now, Fox can be outraged, now, Wash Times and Union Leader call Bush weak? Well, his coward ass disappeared in 2001. But you rather blame Michael Moore for that.

He can't even explain the Iraq war to a grieving mother.

So what did you do?

Write the most vile things about her and her dead son. Attacked her patriotism and her honesty.

Well, motherfuckers, and that means you, fat ass Goldberg and your master, Rich Lowry, PNAC Bitch Beinart, the racist wannabe white Malkin and the little fucktards at LGF, Bareback Andy and "Diversity" Instacracker, all you backstabbing, fag hating uncle tom ministers, you can see Dear Leader in action. America's largest port is gone, maybe forever, gas is $5+ a gallon and FEMA is coming. Whores come faster with old men than FEMA is getting to NOLA.

How did your wartime President react? Like Chiang Kai-Shek when the Yellow River flooded in 1944, with corrupt indifference.

Bush, the man your fever dreams built into the next Winston Churchill when he is really the live action Chauncey Gardiner, has failed to everyone, in plain sight, without question. Rick Perry is trying to save his ass, but it ain't working. NOLA looks like ANGOLA and that ain't flying.

Say 9/11 changed everything now, motherfuckers. Ooops, 9/11, 9/11. 9/11. Doesn't work anymore? Gee, maybe the sea of alligator MRE's once known as the citizens of New Orleans has something to do with that. Now you can shut the fuck up about 9/11. Bush just proved what would happen with another 9/11. Dead Americans as far as the nose can smell.

Drunken Chris Hitchens muttered some nonsense about blacks having it so good here. The poor man needs to stay in his bottle or go to Betty Ford before someone beats his treasonous ass stupid. Islamofascism means what, now motherfucker? Shove Islamofascism up your well travelled ass. The most dangerous thing to average Americans is not some mullah in Iraq, not even Osama Bin Laden, but George Bush. If he doesn't get you killed in Iraq, he'll fuck up saving your city so it turns into Escape from New Orleans. Armed junkies roaming the streets, looking for a fix, robbing and looting like Serb paramilitaries and about as sober.

George Bush's ineptitude has killed far more Americans than Osama could have dreamed of.

Some of you still try to see the clothes on the Dauphin, but he's as naked as Peter North around Jenna Jameson. Bush fucked up so bad, FOX turned on him like a rabid dog.

You can't hide behind racism forever. Bush fucked up, Bush is a weak, callous leader and the world knows this like it knows few other things. And all the stolen TV's in the world cannot hide that.

To which I can only add, "Valerie Plame who?"