BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE
DIRTY RICE IS BACK!
AND DIRTY RICE HAS YET AGAIN SPOKEN WRONGLY.
POOR DIRTY RICE, A HORSE FACE AND A MOUTH THAT CAN'T STOP LYING.
REACHED FOR COMMENT BY THESE REPORTERS TODAY, DIRTY RICE SWORE SHE WOULD REFRAIN FROM FUTURE MISTAKES BUT THAT SHE WAS LATE FOR A CEREMONY WHERE SHE WOULD BE PRAISING LT. GEN. THOMAS GAGE.
"HE WAS THE BRITISH COMMANDER IN THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR!" RICE EXCLAIMED WITH A BIG SMILE. "I CAN'T WAIT TO PRAISE HIS SERVICE TO THIS COUNTRY!"
Moving over to conspiracy theories, nut job MJ Rosenberg (MWD) froths:
The Bergdahl frenzy is the phoniest pretense for Obama bashing since Benghazi. But that does not mean it won't succeed.
In fact, I think it is possible that a Republican Congress will impeach Obama over one or both of those issues (ike President Clinton, he would not be convicted because even a GOP Senate could not muster 67 votes for conviction.)
Is that what you think, you raving nut job conspiracy theorist?
MJ Rosenberg is a graduate of Media Matters which means he majored in sexism and minored in delusion. He lets the crazy run free because that's what Professor David Brock taught -- carrier monkey that he is. Excuse me, diseased carrier monkey that he is bringing all of his unethical methods over to the left from the right after he'd burned his bridges there.
Taught by the master teacher in deception and lies, David Brock, a student can learn to make up any lie in the world and pimp it. That's what the disgraced David Brock did to Anita Hill, after all. A cheap little liar who has never made amends.
MJ Rosenberg studied under a quack and a liar so he is what he was taught.
But in the real world, there are many reasons to be upset with Barack surrendering 5 prisoners from Guantanamo for one US soldier.
1) The Congress wasn't informed. First and foremost -- though a 'graduate' from Media Matters would never understand this, those who train under David Brock don't learn the Constitution -- this is a democracy, this is not a monarchy. Senator Dianne Feinstein is offended by the lack of notification to Congress. I've known Dianne for years. I'll say about 20% of her being offended is personal as a member of Congress who should have been notified. But the other 80%? That's Dianne being offended -- rightly -- because of her role. It's not about her. It's about America's representatives. That's what Dianne is, she's in the Senate to represent the people of California -- so is Senator Barbara Boxer. And whatever other faults I have with them, both women do grasp the importance of their roles. I would argue that's true of other senators as well. Senator Al Franken takes it so seriously it's almost an obsession. (And that's a great obsession to have, trying to represent the people of your state.) Those are just Democrats but there are Republicans -- many -- in the Senate who take this role and this obligation seriously. We have a system of checks and balances. We do not have a king in the US.
But as even stalwart Obama defenders such as Jeffery Toobin admit, Obama “clearly broke the law” by releasing those detainees without providing Congress the 30-day notice required by the 2014 defense authorization statute (law professor Jonathan Turley similarly observed that Obama’s lawbreaking here was clear and virtually undebatable).
2) Glenn Greenwald has made this very clear: By ignoring Congress to release the 5 from Guantanamo, Barack has made it clear that he thinks he could have released everyone there and closed it. So why hasn't he? He swore he'd do it if elected. Then he got sworn in (January 2009) and broke his promise. As Glenn has noted, this is a rather big point of the story. Mike weighed in on that point earlier this week.
3) Any soldier rescued would raise questions. Jessica Lynch never lied about what happened to her. I'm really tired of the dicks -- including Rachel Maddow and her phantom penis -- who try to lie about Jessica Lynch or use her name as a punchline. When she spoke, she spoke the truth. She was not responsible for the lies and the spin created by an administration trying to rally support for their illegal war. My point here is that even when the spin was that she was being tortured or harmed, there were still some who wondered why a rescue mission was being carried out for her? (There was no rescue mission. She was being cared for -- as she herself notes -- in an Iraqi hospital. She was not a prisoner.) Even at the height of the administration propaganda, there were people who questioned whether Jessica was 'worth' a rescue. And, guess what, in a democracy that's allowed. In a democracy, people discuss issues and find the point where everyone can agree. That's what self-rule is. So the US soldier who was released in exchange for the five prisoners Barack surrendered, he was always going to be a question mark.
4) Find a better family spokesperson. I saw that crap this morning. Good talking points. Some of them cribbed from here. But he should have stuck to what the White House told him. I picked up the phone while that nonsense was airing and asked, "You didn't tell him to talk about the mom did you?" Don't talk about the mom. She may be wonderful, she may be awful. But she's married to the father and the father has been a bad image on this story since Saturday. He needs to shave his beard immediately and appear in public and if anyone doesn't like that, my response is, "Grow up, this isn't about him. This is about his son." You better believe if one of my children were in trouble, I would change anything -- hair, clothes, whatever -- to lessen any hostility towards one of my children. This isn't about your right to grow a beard. No one questions that right. This is about you getting off your ass and helping your son. Shave the damn beard.
(FYI, when I saw the photos Saturday, I called an administration friend to ask why the hell the father didn't shave before appearing with Barack. That bushy crap -- not shaped, not styled -- was disrespectful to the office of the president. Worse than that, it fed into the image of 'these are strange people.' Shave the damn beard.)
5) The White House has offered an ever changing storyline. That doesn't help. Each day is a new day for the novelist. At this point, this late in the game, stop changing the story. It makes the White House look dishonest. Bite the bullet and own the decision or continue to have this dominate the news cycle. See Frank James' "Explaining The Bergdahl Swap Hasn't Been Obama's Finest Hour" (NPR).
6) The terms of the deal have been criticized. The US got one person, the Taliban got five. Elise Labott (CNN) noted earlier this week:
While secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was skeptical of early plans to trade Taliban prisoners for American captive Bowe Bergdahl, former officials involved in the process told CNN on Tuesday.
Clinton pushed for a much tougher deal than the one with Qatar that secured the Army sergeant's release in exchange for five terror detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, they said.
Despite that the White House’s claim this week that the United States did not negotiate “directly” with the Taliban to secure the Bergdahl swap, the State Department, Defense Department, and White House officials did meet several times with Taliban leaders in 2011 and 2012 to discuss the deal. The negotiations, held in in Munich and Doha, fell apart in early 2012. But before they did, Clinton had a framework deal drawn up that was much tougher on the Taliban than what ultimately got done two years later.
Three former administration officials who were involved in the process told The Daily Beast that Clinton was worried about the ability to enforce the deal and disinclined to trust the Taliban or the Haqqani network in Pakistan, which held Bergdahl until this weekend. Clinton was so concerned, the former officials added, that she may not have even signed off if the negotiations had succeeded.
In Barack's administration, Leon Panetta headed the CIA and later was Secretary of Defense. David Conti (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) reported Wednesday:
“I don't fault the administration for wanting to get him back. I do question whether the conditions are in place to make sure these terrorists don't go back into battle,” former CIA director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a gas industry gathering in Pittsburgh.
Panetta, who was in the Cabinet for four of the five years Bergdahl spent in Taliban custody, said he opposed a swap for the terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when he was Defense secretary.
“I said, ‘Wait, I have an obligation under the law,'” Panetta said during a lunchtime address at the Hart Energy Developing Unconventionals DUG East conference at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown. “If I send prisoners from Guantanamo, they have to guarantee they don't go back to the battlefield. I had serious concerns.”
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
"Blended"
