As John Kerry elucidated on Administration error after Administration error on the war in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, George W. Bush repeated meaningless mantras wholly composed of his own rectitude, not so much in debate, nor even in defense, but as a refrain a child hums when scared of thunder.
Kerry’s demeanor was the demeanor of someone the public can trust, and he scarcely seemed the flipflopper the Bush campaign presents him as; the President’s demeanor, conversely, could only be termed as trustworthy by the most partisan Republicans. Kerry delivered with honesty, smoothness and strength; the President, conversely, stumbled many times–once, amazingly, saying that our troops were fighting “vociferously”, another time calling the Senator “Bush” (?), was full of blinks and stammers, and began, probably to the horror of Karl Rove, explaining himself. Three times he asked for more time from the moderator to clarify not a Kerry charge but his own position.
We just saw the next president of the United States and his name isn’t George W. Bush.
George W. Bush behaved like a petulant child. He smirked, he rolled his eyes and he behaved very immaturely. His bearing was not presidential. Kerry didn’t lose his cool. He stayed on message. He looked like a president.
John Kerry won this debate folks, because he was right on substance and he was right in attitude. Even the mediawhores are taking Bush to task.
Scarborough on MSNBC said it was Kerry’s best showing in a debate ever.
Andrea Mitchell said that Bush misbehaved with his smirking and annoyance.
I’m going back to the spin room. I’ll be back in a minute.
Prior to 9/11, the Bush administration sought to slash funding for the Nunn-Lugar initiative, calling it a waste of money. Since 9/11, the administration has prudently reversed that posture, but despite his claim of a close personal relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin, it’s hard to find any evidence that Bush has made nuclear threat reduction a particularly high priority in U.S.-Russia relations. After the last Bush-Putin summit, the subject wasn’t even mentioned in the two leaders’ public declarations. Meanwhile, the administration’s vaunted homeland security effort has placed an equally low priority on ensuring systematic inspection of cargos entering our country via sea, land, or air for nuclear materials.
As it happens, Bush’s rival, Sen. John Kerry, who has a strong record on proliferation issues, has made aggressive international action on nuclear nonproliferation the centerpiece of his plan for a new collective security system to meet 21st century threats to America and world peace and order. Aside from promising to make the “loose nuke” threat in the former Soviet Union the top item on the agenda in every discussion with Russia, Kerry has called for repealing the loophole in international nonproliferation treaties that allows countries to obtain and process nuclear materials for “peaceful energy uses.” That’s the guise under which North Korea has created its nuclear weapons program, and the excuse Iran is using to explain its equally aggressive drive to obtain nuclear materials and build enrichment and reprocessing plants. Kerry wants to offer such states and others a simple deal: We will give you the nuclear fuel you need for energy use so long as you agree to let us recapture the spent fuel so it cannot be redirected to a secret weapons program. He has also called for steps to make prevention of nuclear terrorism a central preoccupation of every federal agency involved in national security or international diplomacy.
…and any sentient person knows it. He took the pressure off of al Queda and let bin Laden escape in Tora Bora.
This is indisputable. Iraq was not an imminent danger, but al Qaeda was. Bush took his eye off the ball because a bunch of starry eyed neocons were looking for an excuse to take out their old, dotty nemesis Saddam Hussein.
It is indisputable that the post war planning for Iraq was left in the hand of a group of nepostic know-bothings like Ari Fleisher’s brother and people are now dying. On average, U.S. forces are now being attacked well over 60 times per day. This is a 20% increase from the three months before the transfer of sovereignty.
Bush keeps saying that changing position on Iraq is a sign of weakness. But, anyone can understand that when things are hurtling out of control you should change direction. Bush is incapable of doing this because he has staked his presidency on a war he wanted to fight instead of the war we needed to fight.
If the post debate spin tonight is as unfair and absurd as it has been in the past, it would be helpful if people would call the networks in large numbers and complain. It usually takes a few days to gel and it might be possible to turn an incorrect spin if we make an issue of it. If they don’t hear from us, they don’t realize that they are living in their own little media echo chamber.
Don’t jump to conclusions. Wait and watch for a while to see how it plays out. The press corpse might just see the obvious, for once, and realize that Bush’s canned, robotic responses are not persuasive and that the public really needs to hear something more than bumper sticker slogans. Bush’s cockiness and arrogance may just go too far this time and even the media may be put off by it. We know that Kerry is by far more intellectually prepared to answer questions and win in a fair debate. Perhaps the media will finally wipe the stardust from their eyes and recognise that outtakes from “Bonanza” are simply not adequate answers to serious questions.
But, if they immediately say that Kerry lost then call and complain. Tell them that you thought Kerry did great and that what you saw was the next president of the United States. Don’t accuse them of bias. Tell them you wonder if they watched the same debate you did.
If Bush spin grows tomorrow, call again. (Use those free nightime minutes. They aren’t good for anything else.) Let the media know that we are watching and listening and that they will hear from us.
My reader jake in the comment below says:
This tactic was at the backbone of the right’s onslaught on the media for the last 20 years. This phenomenon didn’t happen overnight. Straightening it out won’t happen quickly either. But it’s gotta start NOW.
And don’t email. That gets no attention. You have to call. You have to express yourself verbally and forcefully. You have to be clear, strong and organized. Don’t engage in twit-speak about your “feelings.” You also have to write letters…Paper ones, delivered in the mail (gasp! horrors!). As I said, I know because I’ve been in the belly of the beast forever.
ABC News
www.abcnews.com
47 W. 66th St
New York, NY 10023
Phone: (212) 456-7477, 456-3796
Fax: (212) 456-4866, 456-2795
World News Tonight with Peter Jennings
Phone: (212) 456-4040
peterjennings@worldnewstonight.abcnews.com
Fax: (212) 456-2771
CBS News
www.cbsnews.com
542 W. 57th St.
New York, NY 10019
News Desk:
Phone: (212) 975-4321, 975-3691
Fax: (212) 975-1893
CNN
www.cnn.com
1 CNN Center
POB 105366
Atlanta, GA 30348
Phone: (404) 827-1500
Fax: (404) 827-1593, (404) 827-1784
Fox News
www.foxnews.com
Speakout@foxnews.com
Viewerservices@foxnews.com
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036
Phone: (212) 301-3000
Fax: (212) 301-4224
MSNBC
www.msnbc.com
world@msnbc.com
One MSNBC Plaza
Secaucus, NJ 07094
Phone: (201) 583-5000
Fax: (201) 583-5453
NBC News
www.nbc.com
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10112
Phone: (212) 664-5900
Fax: (212) 664-2914
NPR
www.npr.org
635 Mass Ave
Washington, DC 20001
Phone: (202) 414-2323
Fax: (202) 414-3324
PBS
www.pbs.org
PO BOX 50880
Washington, DC 20091
Phone: (800) 356-2626
Get your phone in hand. Listen to the democratic voices in the spin room and make note of their key words and phrases. Read your regular blogs after the debate.
Then get on the phone and make some calls. Tonight. If they fuck this up, the media need to hear from us.
Everyone needs to read this. George W. Bush is living in a fantasyland of spin, pretending that things are getting better. George W. Bush has turned a potential threat into an active threat.
Here is an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal Reporter’s E-mail:
It’s hard to pinpoint when the ‘turning point’ exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq’s population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush’s rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a ‘potential’ threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to ‘imminent and active threat,’ a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.
Iraqis like to call this mess ‘the situation.’ When asked ‘how are thing?’ they reply: ‘the situation is very bad.”
What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn’t control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country’s roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war. In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health — which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers — has now stopped disclosing them.
Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.
We did not need to fight this particular war. We had a real war to fight and we did a half assed job of it in Afghanistan because certain members of the Bush administration used 9/11 as an excuse to go after an old enemy who was not an imminent threat. Invading Iraq played into our real enemy’s hands and gave their cause new life and many, many recruits. It lost us friends and allies throughout the world. We are less safe than we would have been if George W. Bush had fought the war we needed to fight instead of the war he wanted to fight.
The American people do not want to believe that our government could make a mistake of such epic proportions. But it did and the man at the top needs to be fired. He is not willing to change course and fix his mistakes, so the American people are going to have to do it for him.
Read the entire piece. Send it to the media and ask them why they are covering this election as if it were a sporting event when it is a matter of life and death. “The situation” is lethal and Americans may have to pay a very heavy price if we don’t take this war out of Bush’s hands while we have the chance. He and his comrades have shown that they cannot be trusted to wage the war correctly.
I wrote yesterday that Fox would be in control of the feed of the debate tonight and therefore could not be trusted to show Kerry in a fair light. As it turns out, each network will have a choice of various shots.
Fox News is running the “pool” coverage, feeding multiple streams of video to the other networks — and also feeding suspicion in the liberal blogosphere that somehow the choice of images shown would be biased toward Bush — but it’s up to each control room what shots to show.
In the past, the feed that went out was the feed that everybody saw. I guess that’s changed. So, if they play games with the reaction shots, it’s the fault of the particular network, not necessarily FOX.
That’s something we should complain about as well. Keep those phone numbers handy. Work those refs.
Apparently, the Dan Rather debacle has the quaking mediaswhores completely cowed. None of them are going to talk about anything “controversial” going forward.
So far in this campaign, the surest way for political advocacy groups to grab some TV exposure is to create commercials (the more emotional the better), buy airtime in a handful of swing states and then hold a press conference to announce the spots. The first Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad that argued Sen. John Kerry lied about his war medals won free airtime for weeks on cable television. More recently, an anti-Kerry ad mixing a grainy picture of Kerry in among notorious Islamic terrorists was dutifully noted by most major news organizations.
The latest ad buy entry came yesterday when families of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq held a press conference in Washington, D.C., to announce two new emotional anti-Bush ads that are set to run in the crucial swing states of Florida, New Mexico and Nevada. Calling themselves RealVoices.org, the mothers of slain soldiers appear in the two ads, often in tears as they describe their loss and their anger over the war in Iraq.
Sounds like some pretty gripping stuff, right? Apparently not to TV news outlets. So far they’ve been overwhelmingly MIA on the story. Here’s an up-to-the-minute tally of the mentions that RealVoices.org has received so far:
CNBC: 0
CNN: 0
CNN Headline News: 0
Fox News: 0
MSNBC: 1
ABC: 0
CBS: 0
NBC: 0
*Sigh*
Write some e-mails folks. Work those cowardly refs. This is a powerful ad campaign and the goddamned gasbags ought to give it just as much coverage as they gave those swift boat bozos.
