Post by Crescentius VespasianusAlthough this should have been done in 2000, the Bush administration is
finally getting around to purging the Clinton appointed people in
government. This will be done, no matter how long it takes, and no matter
how many national presidential elections have to be canceled. If the
Democrats want another crack at winning a presidential election, they should
be encouraging the Clintonistas to resign their posts now, instead of
waiting for their turn at the polygraph test, and subsequent firing or
imprisonment. The Constitution is not a suicide pack. Whatever is
necessary to protect the security of the United States, will be done by our
President, George Bush.
Why did Clinton, plant people in key positions that wanted to destroy
this country. An internal Bush Administration study found out that most of
these moles were planted when Bill was being impeached. Just as Adolf
Hitler destroyed Germany before he himself was destroyed, Clinton may have
had 2000 people planted in key positions from the US Treasury to Generals in
the US Military with instructions to destroy this country if Clinton was
convicted by the Senate after his impeachment. These people were screened
to be as determined as the terrorists of 9/11 to carry out their mission, if
Clinton ordered. The doomsday trigger was never pulled, but remnants of
this doomsday force such as McCarthy, Plame, Wilson and many hundreds of
others are still in their positions just as ready today as then to destroy
the country.
How do you communicate, with your head so far up your ass?
Try, try, somehow to blame Clinton for the ignorance, incompetent, greed,
and corruption of your little banty rooster GW..
--
Al Franken lays a serious ass kicking on Ann Coulter
An Evening with Ann Coulter: Al's Opening Statement
COULTER DEBATE OPENING STATEMENT – UNIVERSITY OF
JUDAISM
Thank you. First of all, I know I join Ann in
thanking the University of Judaism for hosting
this event. We’ve had an opportunity to spend some
time with President Wexler and have dinner with
many folks from the University community.
And I’d like to answer the question that I
actually get asked the most when I do an event for
a Jewish organization. Yes, I had enough to eat.
You know, in these kinds of debate forums, someone
has to go first. It’s always preferable to go
second, because you can react to what’s been said,
giving you something of a tactical advantage. More
importantly, it pretty much spares you the chore
of writing out pre-prepared remarks.
Both Ann and I said we preferred going second, but
I didn’t insist on it, because I understood
somebody had to go first. And being a liberal, I
just wasn’t tough-minded enough to insist on a
coin toss.
So, I’ll try to use my time to define the terms of
the debate – if you will. “Whence Judaism?”
No. I think we should talk about the Bush
Administration and the Republican Congress and
what it has accomplished over the past five years.
I’m talking, of course, about well over two
trillion dollars added to the national debt, the
increase in poverty in our country and the added
millions of Americans, including children, without
health insurance. I’m talking about the sale of
our democracy to corporate interests that pollute
our water and our air. I’m talking about the
widening gap between the haves and the have nots
in this country. And I’m talking about the war in
Iraq.
I’m talking about an increasingly corrupt,
secretive, and incompetent federal government that
rewards cronies, a Republican majority in Congress
that’s acted as a rubber stamp, that has performed
virtually no oversight and which excludes the
minority party from the legislative process in a
way unprecedented in our recent history.
I also want to discuss with Ann the coarsening of
dialogue in this country. I want to discuss values
with Ann. Values like love, of family, of your
fellow man, of country. Ann has said repeatedly
that liberals hate America. I disagree.
Last year I had the honor of speaking at West
Point. It was an audience not so very different
from this one. Except that instead of you, the
audience was made up of about twelve hundred
cadets. Many of whom will be going to Iraq in the
next year or so.
The occasion was the Sol Feinstone Lecture on the
Meaning of Freedom endowed by philanthropist Sol
Feinstone. It’s an annual event and Sol
Feinstein’s granddaughter, who is about my age,
attended.
After telling a number jokes and getting the
cadets on my side. I told them that we had been
lied into the war in Iraq. I had just published a
book entitled The Truth (with jokes), and I told
the cadets that you can’t have freedom without the
truth. You can have freedom without jokes, as has
been proven by the Dutch and the Swiss.
I proceeded to prove that we had been lied into
war, citing example after example of President
Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary
Rumsfeld, and Condi Rice, who had been National
Security Advisor in the lead-up to the war,
telling the public information that they knew not
to be true.
At the end of the speech I received a standing
ovation from the cadets. Sol Feinstone’s
granddaughter told me she had gone to every
lecture for the last thirty or so years, and that
I received only the second standing ovation. The
other was for Max Cleland, who lost both legs and
an arm in Vietnam.
By the way, Ann has written that Max Cleland was
lucky to have lost his legs and his arm in
Vietnam. I disagree. More importantly, I know Max,
and he disagrees.
I believe I received the standing ovation because
the cadets knew that I was speaking from the
heart, and that the information I had given them
was all true. And as I said, you can’t have
freedom without the truth.
You can’t have good government without the truth.
During the crafting and passage of the Medicare
prescription drug bill, the chief actuary of
Medicare was told to withhold from Congress the
true cost of the bill. He’d be fired if he told
the truth.
The bill costs so much, in large part, because the
bill prohibits Medicare from negotiating with the
pharmaceutical companies on the price of drugs. As
a result, seniors now pay on average 44% more than
veterans getting the same drugs through the VA
which is allowed to use its size to negotiate with
the drug companies. To get the bill passed, the
vote was held open for three hours. Tom DeLay was
later admonished by Republicans on the ethics
committee for attempting to bribe, and then
extort, Republican Nick Smith of Michigan to get
him to change his vote. The chairman of the
Commerce Committee Billy Tauzin who ushered the
legislation through, soon left Congress for a two
million dollar a year job as the chief lobbyist
for the pharmaceutical industry. Obviously, a
complete coincidence.
During the 2000 campaign George Bush ran for
president by saying repeatedly, and I quote, “by
far the vast majority of my tax cut goes to those
at the bottom.” Of course, nothing could be
further from the truth.
In fact, the president continues to ask for and
sign tax cuts that go primarily to those at the
top. By the way, until George W. Bush, our country
had never cut taxes during a time of war.
As a result, our deficits grow and the cuts – in
Medicaid, Pell Grants, food stamps, low-income
housing subsidies, community block grants – are
targeted at the poorest in our society.
George W. Bush famously said that Jesus was his
favorite political philosopher. Frankly, I don’t
get it.
I’m Jewish. Thank you. I’m not an expert on the
New Testament. But I know that if you cut out all
the passages where Jesus talks about helping the
poor, helping the least among us, if you literally
took a pair of scissors and cut out all those
passages, you’d have the perfect box to smuggle
Rush Limbaugh’s drugs in.
I don’t understand when the Christian right says
that equal rights in marriage threatens marriage.
I’ve been married 30 years, many of them happy. I
don’t think that if my wife and I were walking
around in Boston, where we met, if we saw two men
holding hands with wedding bands… I don’t think
I’d say “Hey, that looks good. Y’know, honey, you
don’t like watching football on Sundays. Maybe I
could marry a guy, watch football with him, and
then if I wanted to have sex, I could come over
and have sex with you.”
I was just talking to Newt Gingrich the other day.
And I said to him, “Don’t you want for a gay
couple what you had with your first wife? Don’t
you want that bond that comes with the pledge of
fidelity that you had with your second wife? Don’t
you want what comes with that lifelong bond that
you may or may not have with your third wife – I
have no idea what’s going on there.”
You know, Bill O’Reilly always talks about his
“traditional values” – as opposed to “the far
left’s secular humanist values.” I didn’t realize
phone sex was a traditional value. I didn’t think
the phone had been around long enough. Maybe
telegraph sex.
In her book Slander, Ann referred to Democrats and
our “Marquis de Sade lifestyle.” I’ve been married
for thirty years. Ann, you’re an attractive woman.
And I know you support the president’s abstinence-
only sex education. I want to congratulate you for
saving yourself for your one true love.
When my daughter was six years old, her teacher
asked all her students to write about how their
parents had met. We told Thomasin that we met at a
mixer freshman year of college. I saw Franni
across the room, gathering up some friends to
leave. I liked the way she was taking control and
I thought she was beautiful. So I asked her to
dance, and then got her a ginger ale, then
escorted her to her dorm and asked for a date.
My daughter wrote, “My dad asked my mom to dance,
bought her a drink, and then took her home.” Now
all the facts were accurate, but what my daughter
wrote was extremely misleading. Now my daughter
wasn’t lying. She didn’t realize that what she
wrote made her mom seem like a slut.
Ann, however, is not six years old. And she has
developed her own techniques for misleading, by
leaving out important facts. Let me give you an
example of Ann lying by omission.
Also in her book Slander, Ann tells her readers
that Al Gore had a leg up on George W. Bush when
applying to their respective colleges. Harvard and
Yale. Ann writes:
“Oddly, it was Bush who was routinely accused of
having sailed through life on his father’s name.
But the truth was the reverse. The media was
manipulating the fact that – many years later –
Bush’s father became president. When Bush was
admitted to Yale, his father was a little-known
congressman on the verge of losing his first
Senate race. His father was a Yale alumnus, but so
were a lot of other boys’ parents. It was Gore,
not Bush, who had a famous father likely to
impress college admissions committees.”
What does Ann omit? Well, that Bush’s grandfather
Prescott Bush was also a Yale alum and had been
Senator from Connecticut, the home state of Yale
University. That Prescott Bush had been a trustee
of Yale. That Prescott Bush had been the first
chair of Yale’s Development Board – the folks who
raise the money. That Prescott Bush sat on the
Yale Corporation for twelve years. That Prescott
Bush, like George W. Bush’s father, George H. W,
Bush, had been a member of Skull and Bones. That
the first Bush to go to Yale was Bush’s great
great grandfather James Bush, who graduated in
1844. That in addition to his father, grandfather,
and greatgreatgrandfather, Bush was the legacy of
no less than twenty-seven other relatives who
preceded him at Yale, including five great great
uncles. Seven great uncles. Five uncles, and a
number of first cousins.
Now why did Ann leave out these somewhat relevant
facts? Ann grew up in Connecticut. Ann, did you
really not know that Prescott Bush had been your
senator when you were born?
Ann, is it possible that when Prescott’s son
George H. W. Bush became president, it totally
escaped your notice that his father had
represented your state in the United States
Senate? Did neither of your parents mention it in
passing at the dinner table? Did no one at home in
Darien make any comments about the new president’s
lineage?
Understand. This isn’t sloppiness. This is
deliberate. For Ann’s purposes – to claim that the
media that was manipulating facts here – Ann
herself had to manipulate facts – in such a
shameless way. This is what she does.
And she does it over and over and over again.
Let me give you another example.
On page 265 of her book Treason, Ann writes of Tom
Friedman, the New York Times columnist. “He blamed
twenty years of relentless attacks by Muslim
extremists on- I quote – ‘religious
fundamentalists of any stripe.’”
This didn’t sound like Tom Friedman to me, so I
found the one Friedman column that contained that
phrase – “religious fundamentalists of any
stripe.” It was from a December 26, 2001 column
called “Naked Air,” about an airline where
everyone would fly naked. “Think about it,”
Friedman writes, tongue firmly planted in cheek,
“If everybody flew naked, not only would you never
have to worry about the passenger next to you
carrying box cutters or exploding shoes, but no
religious fundamentalists of any stripe would ever
be caught dead flying nude.”
Let me repeat. Ann wrote of Tom Friedman, Jewish
by the way, that “he blamed twenty years of
relentless attacks by Muslim extremists on – I
quote – ‘religious fundamentalists of any
stripe.’” She bothered to put “I quote” in there
for emphasis.
Friedman actually wrote “no religious
fundamentalists of any stripe would ever be caught
dead flying nude” in service of a conceit that
illustrated our dilemma of either becoming less
open as a society or learning to live with much
higher risks than we’ve ever been used to before.
Friedman was not blaming 9/11 on the Lubavichers,
as Ann suggests.
Now this sort of deliberate misrepresentation
contributes to a coarsening of our nation’s
dialogue. Ann recently told an audience:
“We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice
Stevens’ creme brulee,” Coulter said. “That’s just
a joke, for you in the media.”
Here’s my question. What’s the joke? Maybe it’s a
prejudice from my days as a comedy writer, but I
always thought the joke had to have an operative
funny idea. I’ll give you an example of a joke.
Like they do every Saturday night, two elderly
Jewish couples are going out to dinner. The guys
are in front, the girls riding in back. Irv says
to Sid, “Where should we go tonight?”
Sid says, “How about that place we went about a
month ago. The Italian place with the great
lasagna.”
Irv says, “I don’t remember it.”
Sid says, “The place with the great lasagna.”
Irv says, “I don’t remember. What’s the name of
the place?”
Sid thinks. But can’t remember. “A flower. Gimme a
flower.”
“Tulip?” Irv says.
“No, no. A different flower.”
“Magnolia?”
“No, no. A basic flower.”
“Orchid?”
“No! Basic.”
“Rose?”
That’s it! Sid turns to the back seat. “Rose. What
was the name of that restaurant…?”
That’s a joke. What exactly is the joke in “We
need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice
Stevens’ creme brulee?” Is it the crème brulee? Is
that it? Because Stevens is some kind of
Francophile or elitist? Is it the rat poison? See,
I would have gone with Drano. I’m really trying
here, Ann. Please, when you come up, explain the
joke about murdering an associate justice of the
Supreme Court. One who by the way, was appointed
to the Supreme Court by Gerald Ford, and who,
also, by the way, won a Bronze Star serving in the
Navy in World War II. What is the joke? ‘Cause I
don’t get it.
Now in Ann’s defense, she doesn’t always make
horribly offensive remarks or knowingly craft
lies. Very often Ann is just wrong out of
ignorance or pure laziness. Take this from the
MSNBC Show – Saturday Final – on August 30, 2003 –
MSNBC. She is talking about how well the war in
Iraq is going.
COULTER: I think the rebuilding is going extremely
well. Douglas MacArthur was in Japan five years
after V.J. Day. There were enormous casualties in
Germany after World War II. The rebuilding is
actually going quite well compared to past
efforts. And really, all we’re getting from
Democrats is constant carping.
Ann, do you know how many combat fatalities the
American military had in Germany after V-E day?
Zero. You know how many in Japan after V-J day?
Zero.
Ann and I have debated once before. In May of
2004, and Ann still felt the war was going
amazingly well. Let me quote her from that debate:
“…. This war is going amazingly well… the casualty
rate is incredibly small for the rebuilding. It is
going better than can be expected. You cannot read
about how well things are going against Al Sadr,
where you have Iraqis protesting against Al Sadr;
all these stories about how Al Sadr had (this)
vast support among the Iraqis… oh no no no. They
recently held a protest march saying, ‘Al Sadr,
get out.’”
As you know, Ann, Moktadr al Sadr, recently picked
the Shiite choice for prime minister for the new
government, Mohamed al Jafaari. Sadr has thirty-
two seats in the Iraqi assembly compared to Ahmed
Chalabi’s zero. And remember, it was Chalabi to
whom we were going to turn over the Iraqi
government.
Things are not going amazingly well in Iraq. And
they haven’t been going amazingly well since we
allowed the looting of Baghdad. A week ago, former
prime minister Ayad Allawi said that Iraq was
already in a civil war. And as George Bush said in
September of 2004, we should listen to Allawi
because – and I quote – “he understands what’s
going on there – after all, he lives there.”
The first thing this Administration needs to do in
Iraq is to start acknowledging the truth and level
with the American people.
I think the one lesson we can all agree on from
Vietnam is that we cannot blame the troops. By and
large, the vast, vast majority of our troops have
performed heroically. And they deserve our
gratitude and support. And that means supporting
them after they’ve come home.
Two thirds of the wounded in Iraq now have brain
injuries. That’s because so many of the casualties
are from IED’s, and the injuries are concussive
and not ballistic. Each one of those brain
injuries is going to cost a million dollars over
the course of that veteran’s life. And we need to
fund programs for those who come back with post
traumatic stress disorder – a higher percentage
than in any previous war.
Now another value I believe in is love of country.
For some reason it rankles Ann that I’ve done six
USO tours and have had the nerve to talk about it.
I do so because I want people to be aware of the
work that the USO does. I want anyone here today
who is a Hollywood celebrity to think about giving
up a couple weeks of your life to entertain our
men and women in uniform. I think it rankles Ann
that I’ve talked about going on the USO tours
because she can’t conceive that anyone would
actually do something for anyone else. I didn’t go
to Iraq to prove that Democrats are patriotic,
Ann. I did my first USO tour in 1999, when Clinton
was president. We went to Kosovo, a war that was
vehemently and vocally opposed by many
Republicans. Even so, we didn’t call them
traitors. I was invited by the USO to go to Iraq
because they know I do a good job and that it
means a lot to the troops when anyone comes over
to show them we care.
My daughter is 25. She teaches inner city kids in
the Bronx. And that makes me proud. She hates when
I say it, and that makes me even more proud.
My son is an engineering student. He wants to
build fuel efficient cars. He’s a junior in
college and got a job at Ford this summer working
on a new manufacturing process for power trans. I
don’t know what that means either. But he got
there because he works his butt off.
But my son doesn’t feel that he got where he is
because he is some kind of rugged individual. That
he did it all himself. He knows that he stands on
the shoulders of those who stood on the shoulders
of those who stood on the shoulders of those who
stood on the shoulders of those who stood on the
necks of Indians.
My wife and I tried to instill certain values in
our kids. But we don’t love them because they’re
perfect. We love them because they’re decent,
loving kids. Kids who care about others and care,
by the way, about the truth.
One last thing. Speaking of the truth. A few
months after my last debate with Ann, the
following appeared in a New York Observer story
about Ann. From the September 13, 2004 issue..
The writer asks Ann in the article:
“She debated Al Franken recently?
“’Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s not an interesting debate,
because liberals can’t argue. So it’s never like
point-counterpoint; all we do is hear about his
fucking U.S.O. tours for three hours. Excuse my
French.’”
Ann, let’s see if we can have a point-
counterpoint, and an interesting debate. And by
the way, Ann, I have here a DVD of that entire
three hour debate – And I’ll bet you my speaking
fee tonight that I spoke about my USO tours for
less than a grand total of three minutes. How
about it Ann? My speaking fee against your
speaking fee?
I mean we care about the truth, don’t we?