Liberal Street Fighter

I was going to leave this alone … just another instance of flash and noise, with no real meaning. All over the lefty Blahgs, huzzahs ring out across the land. President Clinton sure told off that wingnut talking head Chris Wallace:

WJC:   What did I do?  I worked hard to try and kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since. And if I were still President, we’d have more than 20,000 troops there trying to kill him. Now I never criticized President Bush, and I don’t think this is useful. But you know we do have a government that thinks Afghanistan is 1/7 as important as Iraq. And you ask me about terror and Al Qaeda with that sort of dismissive theme when all you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s book to look at what we did in a comprehensive, systematic way to try to protect the country against terror. And you’ve got that little smirk on your face. It looks like you’re so clever…

CW:    [Laughs]

WJC:   I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get Bin Laden. I regret it, but I did try. And I did everything I thought I responsibly could. The entire military was against sending Special Forces into Afghanistan and refueling by helicopter and no one thought we could do it otherwise.  We could not get the CIA and the FBI to certify that al Qaeda was responsible while I was President. [Not] until I left office.  And yet I get asked about this all the time and they had three times as much time to get him as I did and no one ever asks them about this. I think that’s strange.

SIX YEARS into the Bush/Cheney Kleptocracy, SIX YEARS of the theft of blood and treasure, of the national soul, of the last glimmers of decency, dignity and any version of the commonweal, AND IT TAKES A PERSONAL CONFRONTATION TO GET CLINTON MAD. He got mad because it was about HIM.
Yes, it was nice to see that oligeanous weasel Wallace slapped down. Why is it that Fox only gets this kind of response from a Donk to yet another attack from the right WHEN THE QUESTIONING GETS PERSONAL? Even then, it seldom happens, but you can bet that when you see Bill or Hillary or Harry or Joe (Biden or Lieberman) or Chuck or Rahm or Steny get angry enough to make at least the appearance of fighting back it’s almost ALWAYS about their “legacy”, or their perogatives as a seat-warmer of whatever place at the corporate table they hold.

Heard anything from the “leading” Donks on the recent “debate” between the right and the far-right over torture?

So far, we have heard nothing – nothing – from Congressional Democrats about the torture deal between the White House and the McCain Patsy Crew on torture. If you want to read up on just why this “deal” is nothing more than an utter and complete cave to the White House, here are the details. While there are lots of details, the basic idea is that we will continue to use torture, and we will continue to deny anything resembling due process to those that George W. Bush has decided are terr’rists.

And where are the Democrats? Hiding. No statements, no press releases, nothing. My guess is they’re desperately trying to figure out what to do. Gee, if we come out against this, people will say we’re weak! How many times have we heard that before?

Paul Waldman has got it exactly right. As Wilfred quoted Feingold saying:

“There is too much timidity encouraged by these consultants.”

I don’t know if it’s just timidity. I think the Clintons, Biden, Reid and the rest are fine with 90% of the rightwing’s corporate agenda. Reagan might have made the poor women of this country targets by calling them “welfare queens”, but it was Clinton who kicked women and children out into the street. As Robert Reich says on the anniversary of Bubba’s “reforms”:

I’m baffled by the way the press has covered the tenth anniversary (this week) of Bill Clinton’s welfare reform — full of praise for a policy that has led to more poverty in America among single mothers and their children than before. I keep reading that welfare reform succeeded because welfare rolls were reduced. Of course they were reduced. People were kicked off welfare. How could they not be reduced?

The Dems are seemingly fine with the shrinking of the middle class, as they’ve done little or nothing to fight back. Dems helped to pass the Bankruptcy Elimination and Credit Card Company Corporate Welfare Act.

They’ve rolled over on extremist judges obtaining seats of the federal bench for DECADES now (thanks Joe Biden for your fine work when Clarence Thomas came before your committee), including to the Supreme Court. They couldn’t rush to support Bush quickly enough when he launched his illegal and immoral unprovoked attack on Iraq. They back the continued corrupt spending on unneeded and wasteful defense projects, on American bullying and belligerent behavior toward Central and South America and the Caribbean. In the main, the foreign policy beliefs and policies of the Leading Burros is all-but indistinguishable from the Republicans. They are nicer Republicans, but Republicans nonetheless.

So yes, it’s good to hear one of Roger Ailes’ propagandists get some pushback for a change, but until I start to hear not just anger and pique over PERSONAL slights but some RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION over the real crimes and outrages taking place daily in this country, until I hear them raise their voices to fight for the people, and not just for their hobby horses and personal reputations, THEN I will be impressed. Until more of them start to sound like genuine fighters for the people, like Russ Feingold, John Conyers and Tim Ryan, I refuse to get too excited over these brief flickers of fight that crop up from time to time. As Keith Olbermann put it (once you get past the celebration of Clinton’s brief display of spine):

The Bush Administration did not try to get Osama bin Laden before 9/11.

The Bush Administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors.

The Bush Administration did not understand the Daily Briefing entitled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S.”

The Bush Administration did not try.

Moreover, for the last five years one month and two weeks, the current administration, and in particular the President, has been given the greatest “pass” for incompetence and malfeasance in American history!

President Roosevelt was rightly blamed for ignoring the warning signs—some of them, 17 years old—before Pearl Harbor.

President Hoover was correctly blamed for—if not the Great Depression itself—then the disastrous economic steps he took in the immediate aftermath of the Stock Market Crash.

Even President Lincoln assumed some measure of responsibility for the Civil War—though talk of Southern secession had begun as early as 1832.

But not this president.

To hear him bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been president on September 11th, 2001 — or the nearly eight months that preceded it.

When I hear Hillary or Reid or one of them bluntly put forth such a recitation of the crimes of the Bush Administration, THEN I will rejoice. THEN I will actually believe that they FINALLY GET IT, that they get that we are slowly succumbing to an anti-American, inhuman regime that seeks to establish autocracy and hegemony over the globe. When Bill and Hillary stop hanging out with Rupert Murdoch and taking his conscience money, THEN I will stop criticizing these betrayers leading the so-called “opposition” party.

When Bill quits running around with George Sr., giving his criminal son political cover on his horrible foreign policy and his abandonment of AMERICAN CITIZENS when their city was destroyed by corrupt government indifference, THEN I’ll be impressed. When Bubba and his pals in the DLC quit holding their hands out in bipartisan friendship to a corrupt and reactionary party that is seeking to destroy the Writ of Habeas Corpus, to a party that is shitting all over the Geneva Conventions, THEN maybe I’ll admit that they deserve our support. When the Donks quit acting like good Germans, looking the other way as this country becomes more and more of a danger to the world and to the citizens of this country, THEN I will join in the cheering. When they quit marching to AIPAC’s tune and campaign contributions and quit uncritically supporting every fascist thing that the Israeli government does, then perhaps some excitement for the Democratic Party will pour forth from my keyboard. When they stop stop pandering to religious women-hating extremists, then I’ll actually believe that we have a functioning two-party system again.

So President Clinton, WHY NOW? They have been attacking you, lying about you, distorting your record, distorting the beliefs of the left, lying in general about everything, attacking the fundamental values of this country for seemingly ever … why were you suddenly raising your voice NOW? Is it just about your personal feelings? Was it a cynical attempt to get publicity for your meeting of self-righteous rich people last week? Was it an attempt to try to fool Americans begging for a real opposition party that you and the rest of the Donks are going to do your jobs? Hell, did you really MEAN any of it? An American city has been destroyed and, except for a football stadium, goes without any real signs of reconstruction. The next couple of generations will be paying the growing national debt for decades. The army and marines are broken, the country’s infrastructure is crumbling, the media is no longer either independent of the government or corporate leadership (thanks for the consolidation you pushed through, by the way). We have the worst healthcare system in the industrialized world, yet proudly host one of the most expensive and brutal prison systems on the globe. People’s votes are suppressed or stolen. Corporations OWN our government, and the people have less and less influence on its policies. Women are losing their rights at a frightening pace, and children go uneducated, unfed, unclothed, untreated and unsheltered.  We have one of the highest infant mortality rates in the developed world. Why the anger now?

Maybe this incident will produce some willingness for people to talk back to the right, finally. I hope so. I don’t believe that it was about anything more than YOU, to you, but maybe something good will grow from it. Maybe as more people raise their voices, leaders will appear who will fight back out of PRINCIPLE, not out of personal pique.

Maybe, but I’m not counting on it.