bustardblog

Perle Franken

In the last hour of his show today, Al Franken interviewed Richard Perle.  Al tried valiantly to gob-smack the guy, but Perle is a very bright, evasive, artful, dodger. A couple of interesting points which came into view however were:

• Perle characterized Cheney as being a really honest guy. (Except for instances of Political Rhetoric, of course) He explained Cheney's, and his own, totally false statements about WMD and conditions in Iraq, by blaming the faulty intelligence they had received. Even though there were disputes within the administration as to the accuracy of some of the "facts" that Cheney and Perle "knew," who could expect the Vice President to read little footnotes in the voluminous reports that he has to wade through? If evidence that contradicts reasons for going to war, such as the possible end use for the aluminum tubes, were only presented as "footnotes," the administration is even more deeply corrupted than I thought. If no one can be expected to read a footnote, why are they there? But it is Perle's arrogance that forces him to make statements that completely undermine his defense. Perle is so smart that he concluded that the intelligence agencies in our government were incompetent long before Iraq. To a man of Perle's brilliance, the failings of the intelligence community were glaring.  So what Perle is saying here is that they sent American soldiers to die in Iraq based on information that came from failed, incompetent sources.
• He said that we had sent just the right number of troops into Iraq to win the war there. He conceded that the number may have been too small to occupy Iraq, but that was not his decision.  Additionally, he bragged, the smaller number of troops gave us a tactical advantage - he refers here to speed, to surprise.  But there was no surprise in this war.  We announced the war in advance, with all the secrecy of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  What need for speed? Were we worried about the Iraqi army regrouping?  As I remember, they were running away and we stood there and wished them a safe trip home.

Perle has got be one of the trickiest, sleaziest operators still active today, and we should not forget his role in the collapse of Conrad Black's media empire.

Earlier in his show Franken had repeated one of his favorite descriptions of this administration's guiding  principles as corruption and cronyism.  Perle proved him right again. He doesn't even approach the Colbert "truthiness" standard.

Porter Goss and The CIA

Some months ago, when I first started blogging, it was a joyless enterprise. The Bush/Neo-Con juggernaut seemed unstoppable.

Today, with Bush's approval rating at 31%, and with Dusty Foggo, Porter Goss's right hand, resigning while under investigation by both the FBI and the CIA Inspector General for corruption and engaging prostitutes, it's a lot more fun.

I cannot wait until he fooolishly appears on the Colbert Repor, starring Stephen Colber.

P.S. Where do names like Dusty Foggo and Porter Goss come from?

Stephen Colbert

As usual, Stephen Colbert turned in a brilliant performance -  this one last week at the White House Correspondent's Dinner.

He has rapidly become the unerring metric for calculating a a person's courage, honesty, intelligence and humor.  I am not referring to Stephen himself here. He has an abundance of the four and he demonstrated it hilariously at the dinner.  What he is able to measure is the prevalence of the four qualities in a guest or viewer.

Those who don't have a sense of humor, aren't particularly bright,and are cowardly as well as intellectually dishonest, react just as Laura Bush, Michelle Malkin and Noblesse Oblige did. Pursed Lips. 'Colbert Bombed.'

Borderline personalities who are both pathologically dishonest and humorless exhibit their illness the same way Dr Sanity and RiehlWorld did. The former said that she "usually find[s] Colbert rather funny."  If in fact she watches and enjoys Colbert, there is no way she could have been surprised by his performance (Impressed? Yes - Surprised ? No) She went on to try sarcasm -"those on the "caring and compassionate" left - so sensitized to pther people's feelings  - are not exactly aware of how insensitive and loutish it was to attack someone who cannot repsond." The President of the United States could not respond? The microphone was a few feet away;it would never have been cut off if he had been using it. He certainly was able to respond; whether he is capable of a response is a different question.  Riehl broadcasts his dishonesty when he states "I would have been embarassed if someone did that to Clinton at one of his dinners." Sure. Yeah.

He goes on to argue that we would probably never have heard of Colbert "without a third tier network in need of content," and that "if any of the folks on cable outlets had real first-rate talent, they'd ... be with a larger network." I guess he means that Sean Hannity, Bill-O'Reilly, Tony Snow and Brit Hume are all without talent. (At least he got something right)

Borderline personalities are not necessarily morons however. But the scrutator and KLo are shockingly stupid. The scrutator shows his missing screws when he writes:

Well, it’s pretty clear Colbert has no talent. I would suggest he has no decency, no respect for the United  States, and no interest in the safety of our troops in Iraq. In case you’ve forgotten we are at war. To mock our commander-in-chief at a time such as this isn’t just juvenile (thought it is that as well), it is borderline treasonous.

Should we fire the military personnel and secret service people who were there that fateful night and neglected to arrest the traitor? Should Bush have been declared a traitor when he made fun of the missing weapons of mass destruction?

KLo agrees with Richard Cohen, who basically agrees with the borderline Dr Sanity that Bush was unable (not incapable, but unable) to reply. She moves it up a notch by writing about it, quoting Cohen, and then declaring that "Colbert and the WHCD news really should have been over by Monday night."

And who could not see the intellectual dishonesty manifest by Bill Kristol when he was completely unable to respond to Colbert while appearing onhis show last week?

You can learn a lot about people from their reactions to Stephen Colbert.