Go Harry Go!
Harry Reid is doing a terrific job as Senate Minority Leader, given the givens. While he wasn't able to herd enough cats to filibuster either Supreme Court nominee, his PR moves have been uniformly excellent. In the wake of Smirky's message of the week--"I declassified stuff because I want the public to know the truth" (a baldfaced lie seeing as how, by all accounts, this has been the most secretive Administration in the history of our country)--Reid issued a broadside blast designed to pin Smirky and Dick to the wall.
Some of the more potent parts:
In regards to the declassifying in particular, Reid said, " . . .when presented with opportunities to publicly explain your actions, you and other Administration officials have either issued more misleading statements or hidden behind legalistic defenses." And a little later, "For example, at a recent press briefing, your spokesperson relied on the defense of 'ongoing legal proceedings' sixteen times to avoid responding to reporters questions about this matter. Misleading statements and legalistic jargon are hardly appropriate responses for the Commander in Chief, especially when the questions involve whether the Administration manipulated intelligence information relied on by Congress and the American people to decide the proper course for Iraq."
After asking some pointed questions that are highly unlikely to ever be answered by this group of shifty snake-oil salesmen, Reid then proceeded to disarm the predictable refutation of his statement as representing simple partisan politics by quoting Arlen Specter. "These and other questions are best addressed by following the advice of the Republican Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who said that 'there has to be a detailed explanation precisely as to what Vice President Cheney did, what the President said to him, and an explanation from the President as to what he said so that it can be evaluated.'"
Reid's open letter makes it perfectly clear that at least some people, even in Congress, are fully aware of this massive dose of bullshit Smirky's trying to unload on us, and the time is right to call him on it. Pinning one of the leaders of the Republican Party in Congress to Bush's potential response was a brilliant stroke as well, because if Smirky refuses to call Harry's bet, Specter has to either join in the fray against him or be shown up for the tool he has been. Either way, Specter sacrifices much in the political sphere. Now if only all the other cats in this runaway herd would follow Reid's lead, we might finally get somewhere . . .
Some of the more potent parts:
In regards to the declassifying in particular, Reid said, " . . .when presented with opportunities to publicly explain your actions, you and other Administration officials have either issued more misleading statements or hidden behind legalistic defenses." And a little later, "For example, at a recent press briefing, your spokesperson relied on the defense of 'ongoing legal proceedings' sixteen times to avoid responding to reporters questions about this matter. Misleading statements and legalistic jargon are hardly appropriate responses for the Commander in Chief, especially when the questions involve whether the Administration manipulated intelligence information relied on by Congress and the American people to decide the proper course for Iraq."
After asking some pointed questions that are highly unlikely to ever be answered by this group of shifty snake-oil salesmen, Reid then proceeded to disarm the predictable refutation of his statement as representing simple partisan politics by quoting Arlen Specter. "These and other questions are best addressed by following the advice of the Republican Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who said that 'there has to be a detailed explanation precisely as to what Vice President Cheney did, what the President said to him, and an explanation from the President as to what he said so that it can be evaluated.'"
Reid's open letter makes it perfectly clear that at least some people, even in Congress, are fully aware of this massive dose of bullshit Smirky's trying to unload on us, and the time is right to call him on it. Pinning one of the leaders of the Republican Party in Congress to Bush's potential response was a brilliant stroke as well, because if Smirky refuses to call Harry's bet, Specter has to either join in the fray against him or be shown up for the tool he has been. Either way, Specter sacrifices much in the political sphere. Now if only all the other cats in this runaway herd would follow Reid's lead, we might finally get somewhere . . .
posted by bryduck at 8:06 AM
4 Comments:
From Cox News:
"Last year, federal officials classified 15.6 million new documents, about 81 percent more than they stamped secret in 2001, the first year of the Bush administration.
The cost of classifying those documents rose from $4.7 billion to $7.2 billion over the same period, not including what the CIA marked secret — since that figure is itself secret.
For every dollar spent declassifying documents, federal officials spent a record $148 last year creating and storing new secrets, according to the report. The amount spent on declassifying materials dropped to a new low of $48.3 million last year."
Yeah, Bush is all about opening up the information pipeline.
Yeah, I saw that too. And I'm sure no one is going to destroy or permanently redact any of those documents to protect any of the Reagan/Bush junta functionaries . . .
We're so far beyond doublespeak and political Soma of varying kinds...Orwell would be surprised at how far things have "progressed" beyond his vision of the future. It's enough to make me get out my Guy Fawkes mask and gather several hundred thousand of my closest friends outside the White House.
Clearly Smirky and the boys have used 1984 as their playbook, and it's easy to see why; it works. I'm sure Orwell didn't think it could ever really happen--at least not in the precise manner he described--but here we are. We clearly need governmental oversight for the media industry, and a return to the regulatory philosophy that ended with the accession of the Reagan/Bush hegemon, so we can regain some semblance of an objective (or at the very least, a balanced) information marketplace. Otherwise, anyone not willing to put forth the extreme efforts required currently to discern the truth will continue to be swayed by lies and distortions of the facts into voting ignorantly.
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