Thursday, April 06, 2006

Been out of touch,

so where was coverage on the mainstream media of the following comment made by a man in a president Bush oddience today in North Carolina?

Q You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that. But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food. If I were a woman, you'd like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice and decision about whether I can abort a pregnancy on my own behalf. You are --

THE PRESIDENT: I'm not your favorite guy. Go ahead. (Laughter and applause.) Go on, what's your question?

Q Okay, I don't have a question. What I wanted to say to you is that I -- in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington, including the presidency, by the Senate, and --

0DDIENCE MEMBERS: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: No, wait a sec -- let him speak.

Q And I would hope -- I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration, and I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself inside yourself. And I also want to say I really appreciate the courtesy of allowing me to speak what I'm saying to you right now. That is part of what this country is about.

THE PRESIDENT: It is, yes. (Applause.)

Q And I know that this doesn't come welcome to most of the people in this room, but I do appreciate that.

THE PRESIDENT: Appreciate --

Q I don't have a question, but I just wanted to make that comment to you.

THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate it, thank you. Let me --

Q Can I ask a question?

THE PRESIDENT: I'm going to start off with what you first said, if you don't mind, you said that I tap your phones -- I think that's what you said. You tapped your phone -- I tapped your phones. Yes. No, that's right. Yes, no, let me finish.

I'd like to describe that decision I made about protecting this country. You can come to whatever conclusion you want. The conclusion is I'm not going to apologize for what I did on the terrorist surveillance program, and I'll tell you why. We were accused in Washington, D.C. of not connecting the dots, that we didn't do everything we could to protect you or others from the attack. And so I called in the people responsible for helping to protect the American people and the homeland. I said, is there anything more we could do.

And there -- out of this national -- NSA came the recommendation that it would make sense for us to listen to a call outside the country, inside the country from al Qaeda or suspected al Qaeda in order to have real-time information from which to possibly prevent an attack. I thought that made sense, so long as it was constitutional. Now, you may not agree with the constitutional assessment given to me by lawyers -- and we've got plenty of them in Washington -- but they made this assessment that it was constitutional for me to make that decision.

I then, sir, took that decision to members of the United States Congress from both political parties and briefed them on the decision that was made in order to protect the American people. And so members of both parties, both chambers, were fully aware of a program intended to know whether or not al Qaeda was calling in or calling out of the country. It seems like -- to make sense, if we're at war, we ought to be using tools necessary within the Constitution, on a very limited basis, a program that's reviewed constantly to protect us.

Now, you and I have a different -- of agreement on what is needed to be protected. But you said, would I apologize for that? The answer -- answer is, absolutely not. (Applause.)

I may have missed it. Or maybe it didn't make the news. We had been been called away for an unexpected emergency. From their reaction, it appears to have been another carefully pre-screened oddience of Bush supporters. Save for at least one who somehow got through security with a pair of real juevos.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, I wish I had seen this! Also wish the brave man had had an actual question ready from the start. "I have never felt more ashamed nor more frightened" ... BRAVO !!! And WHAT was so funny about "I'm not your favorite guy" ??? The proper audience reaction should have been shouts of "You're damn right, you lying idiot, tell us something we don't know." But I guess an ODDIENCE can only applaud & laugh along with their dear leader's jocularity. D.K.

Dada said...

D.K. Talk about hitting the nail on the head! (You could be the new "The Hammer"!) One of my pet peeves is the god damned state of mind of this god damned nation of sheeple who treat Bush with kid gloves, laugh at his stupid (not funny!) asides made to disarm everybody (the press REALLY irks me with this).

Someone this morning was saying on TV how the media will NOT challenge authority. So do we just let'em do whatever the fuck they want, even if that includes triggering a nuclear war? These are a bunch of sick pathological bastards and the treatment Bush and the rest of his evil assholes get and the reaction from the guardians of democracy, the Fourth Estate by laughing at this clown only validate his illegitimate "legitimacy"!

Anyway, CNN...not the Daryn Kagan CNN, but their CNN Headline version ran the guy and Bush this morning in this encounter (with a little editing in the middle, of course which was so they could get to the real news, that of the little white high school girls in New Orleans picking out what they're going to wear to their prom.)

But in the end of that encounter, the oddience applauded Bush when he said he wouldn't apologize for spying on 'em. Yeh, right, let's put microphones in their bedrooms and stick cameras up their asses.

Oh, forgive me, I think you may have just been privy to a blog that's brewing in my head. Or maybe not. What the hell should I care what this herd of sheep does? (That was just a hypothetical question, ok?)

Anonymous said...

Dada, my husband heard on one of the cable news shows (Chris Matthews?) this observation, "At this point, this president could even ship nukes to Iran and this congress would not impeach him" !!! So, how's that for oversight? And the fourth estate would probably be cheering him for taking the nukes to them, rather than vice-a-versa.

The only CNN I can stomach anymore is CNN International, an hour in which I can see more actual damage in Iraq than shown all day or ever on other news. And lately, if it wasn't for Keith Olbermann in the eve, I'd be skipping news then, too. Sticking to C-Span, Democracy Now & Daily Show. Very soon, I'll be tempted to disconnect the TV altogether & just go hiking, reveling in nature while it's still cloaked in springtime beauty. D.K.

Anonymous said...

Dada, I was able to catch it on MSNBC Countdown with Keith Olbermann tonight. I'm so excited! Harry Taylor for hero/patriot award! Some thoughts:

1. How did Mr. Taylor make it into the "free speech" zone?
2. Why did MSNBC feel compelled to put this description of him on the newsbar "real estate broker, member of move.on.org" ?
3. Who were the idiots around Mr. Taylor who couldn't stop talking & laughing & gesturing all through his question? Particularly the woman next to him who keeps mouthing "wacko" to the cameras.
4. Were these the only responses they could think of since they can no longer drown out unpleasant reality-barbs with chants of "4 more years"?
5. Didn't it look like Bush was itching for a fight, acting real cocky during the comment, but when he started "answering" it was obvious he was indeed rattled?

It was a great moment & I only hope to see many more of them. D.K.

PS ... another good segment was Bill Nye, my favorite science nerd, who is so nice he didn't even think he was being heckled during one of his school lecture/speeches by parents walking out, taking their children with them while announcing "we believe in god". This in response to his pointing out our sun is a star & that our moon does not emit any light on its own, it only reflects light of our sun. Apparently this conflicts with genesis somehow. And you know parents can't have their impressionable children hearing science trumping genesis! D.K.

Dada said...

D.K. I'm glad you posted that you'd seen Harry Taylor on Olbermann because it enabled me to catch the late rerun of "Countdown" and see it again.

I'm sure MSNBC chose to identify Taylor as a member of MoveOn.org to let viewers know he's a member of some radical fringe group and does NOT represent centrist America as symbolized by Sen. Joe Lieberman. Taylor is obviously a flaming wingnut who, before the whole nation, committed "hara-careeri," i.e., he'll probably have to fold up his real estate broker's tent and move it to Massachusetts.

Your husband is right. Bush is totally unchallenged by MSM, his congress, or his oddiences. That's why, seeing Taylor confront him and Bush's resulting response, gave us a hint of what lies just beneath his very thin veneer that shields him from reality. While entertaining to see because of its extreme rarity, it's a very dangerous game.

Thank god he was confronted by only one Harry Taylor and had the oddience of sniggering, slobbering, snickering shills behind him as he struggled to respond.

An entire audience, asking real questions and expressing extreme concern and disappointment at Bush's malevolent cynicisms as manifested in domestic and foreign policies could have broken through his pathologies to reveal the disturbingly mentally ill person leading the world into a very dangerous 21st Century.

I think far more know Bush is ill and many, many more suspect he is one sick puppy, hence, the kid gloves.

So "Thank you, Harry Taylor," for a glimpse at the fringes of lunatic leadership. Thankfully, however, he was the only one that night to challenge or the next morning we could have awoken in the depths of World War III. And there'll be no coming back from that to the world as we knew it beforehand.