October 30, 2005 -- Beginning with a panel of key staffers from the Carter (Hamilton Jordan), Reagan (Ken Duberstein) and Clinton (Leon Panetta) administrations, this edition of Meet the Press muffed it at every point.  History for the past two and a half decades, current events -- all were presented and interpreted incorrectly, as far as I could see.  Every observation they made was junk, every analysis they offered was incorrect, every suggestion they offered was wrong.  This describes everybody in the first half of the program, even (sad to say) Duberstein on a key point or two. The Beltway disease is a plague in a bubble.  Only those with the strength of a Reagan or Bush II have the anti-bodies for it. 

The truth about the former presidential staffers on the show, and their respective chief executive, is as follows. 

Nobel Peace Prize Carter gave America stagflation (a recession with price inflation, as contradictory as that may sound), mile long gasoline station lines and a milquetost, appeasement-style foreign policy that began the West's journey toward the horrors of Islamic terrorism.  He was one of the most incompetant presidents in the nation's history.  His chief of staff, short of apologizing to the nation for his part in the Carter disaster, has nothing to say that could be of interest to anyone who can think.

Reagan, on the other hand, rebuilt the military and kicked some tyrant butt with it, proved tax cuts increase revenues to the treasury and sparked a rebirth of patriotism in America.  All these liberal press morons can recall about him is Iran-Contra. If he hadn't tried to help the anti-communist fighters, but rather had tried to run arms to the communist guerillas, the press would have loved him.  His man, Duberstein, was at a disadvantage at the White House.  It was like working for Lincoln.  The boss was bigger than life. I cannot say that his part in the Iran-Contra affair was professionally handled, because I can't recall a single thing he said or did back then.

Then, there was Bubba.  Good old Bubba.  He began by renting bedroom visits to the White House.  Trading them for campaign donations.  Then he  stained the rug in the Oval Office, damn near destroyed our military, gave MIRV technology to China, a nuclear program to North Korea and joining the Democrats who controlled congress at the time, actually did manage to blunt the Reagan economic boom with his early first term tax increases.  After that, he turned a part of Utah that contained low sulphur (clean burning) coal into a national park so that the Riadys, who were very, very enthusiastic  foreign political friends of his, could sell their Indonesian coal to the Chinese for use in their big new power plant in southern China. 

Taxpayer paid safaries for hundreds of sycophants to Africa, campaign donation morning coffees in the White House, bags of sequentially-numbered money orders delivered to the back porch of the national residence, sexcapades ranging from cigars as sensual implements to believeable charges or outright rape, cattle futures windfall profits, legal papers found in the trunks of cars in southern wrecking yards, hundreds of purloined FBI files, thousands of dead Christians from Zimbabwe to the Sudan to China to Waco, Texas, Elian Gonzales, impeachment in the U.S. House of Representatives, conviction of the president for perjuy by a federal judge -- the list is endless. 

Lots of people from his administration were tried and convicted for a laundry list of crimes and went to jail, except for the ones like Brown and Foster who ended up suffering early deaths.  And the shameful retreat from the Blackhawk Down town in Africa.  Mogadiciu.  A hard town to spell.  Osama bin Laden wrote that this was when he knew he could go ahead and attack America because Americans were afraid of their own shadow and would do nothing to defend themselves. 

Ah, yes, Bubba.  He was a piece of work, alright. The most corrupt president in living memory.  His chief of staff, if he wasn't one before he took the job, developed into one of the most gifted debacle apologists and spinners of all time.  In fact, the first job of anybody who worked anywhere in that administration was covering the chief's ample butt.  Those who didn't were soon out of a job, blackballed, under investigation, being followed by people who had what looked like government license plates, in jail or worse.

Clinton's chief of staff should be played by a  real mob consiglieri in the movie.. 

(An aside. The Bush I presidency wasn't represented, or even mentioned, on Meet the Press this morning. You have to wonder about that. This fracas is about the CIA.  Guess whose father is both a former U.S. President and the former head of the CIA?  Hint -- it wasn't Clinton or Carter.)

Strike Two

Today's Meet the Press, unfortunately, also met with the press.

National or local, print or broadcast, Tim Russert or John Becker, it's the same.  Mainstream American journalism.  All your life, either by way of incompetance or the intent to mislead, these people have fed you a daily load of crap about your world.  We have proven it hundreds of  times here at the magazine.  Public broadcasting, the networks, local reporters, national reporters, the papers, even the people who do the radio news breaks of the big conservative talk shows -- it's the same.  Everywhere you turn.  A load of crap.

Today's reporters, and alleged historian, Michael Beschloss, decided that an apology to America was all that Bush had left in his bag.  Without that, his legacy would be disaster, bad judgement and staff coverup.

What utter hogwash!

Here, look at this. This is the nuclear stupid exchange, the standout dumb question and answer from that show.

"Can you imagine a Bush comback?" asked Russert.
"Absolutely," replied Beschloss.

Come back from what?  Bush can't run for re-election and has lost none of his Constitutional presidential powers.  The loss of the approval of the Liberal Press Bigshots of America?  Anybody with a working brain would be very pleased not to come back from that. What, then, of value to Bush is gone?  They're voting for a parliament in Iraq next month.  The violence during the recent vote on the new constitution was a tenth of that during the previous parade of purple fingers.  Roberts is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The tax cuts are about to be made permanent.  Real discussion in congress about border security and pork in the highway bill is happening.  Most of America's public educators hate his guts, which means No Child Left Behind is making them work for a living.  Hell, the four R's of the Republican Apocalypse, Rumsfeld, Rice, Rove and Richard (Cheney) are still all at his side. 

No losses there. 

These press people like Mara Liar'son and Juan "Lefty" Williams think Bush was damaged by the rejection of his most recent supreme court nomination.  Even some Republicans say that.  I think I heard a conservative named Billy say that on FOX, this morning, in fact.  It's the Beltway Bubble bug, folks.  Billy should get a new crystal ball, or at least stop inhaling the D.C. air before trying to read the future in it..

Bush can't lose any liberal support.  He never had any to lose.  And as for conservatives, well ... nothing, repeat nothing, has changed.  Where it matters, deep in the heart of middle America, Bush is today what he long has been, both a subject of occasional irritation and a man deeply respected.   Irritating for his lapses like not closing our borders to the legions of illegal aliens, and his failure to use the veto to put the brakes on runaway government spending. But, there in flyover country, Bush is first and foremost admired for something he has which no poltically significant Democrat for decades has had.  It's called "character," and goes by the campaign exit polling designation of "values."

Just exactly what is the truth?

William Safire, at least a semi-retired columnist from the New York Times, was one of those on the show, and has this one nailed.  He said the key item in the current fracas is that with the indictment of Libby, the whole basic reason for the investigation has been ignored, here.  What we have is charges of the coverup of a crime which has not been proven to have happened.  Gnaw on that one, for a while.  We predicted this outcome, in this magazine, just the other day.

Special Genius Prosecutor Fitzgerald from Chicago where dead union members are so civic minded that they still vote, using millions of taxpayer dollars in a multi-year investigation, cannot even prove the crime he was sent to explore happened!

It all depends on what you mean by "center."

Getting back to the staffers, Russert and Beschloss agreed with these former White House bigshots when they said that (for example with respect to supreme court nominations) Bush must head for the middle, and not let the "extremists" (like me) on the right muscle him into picking a lunatic rightwing fascist judge who doesn't agree with everything Charlie Schumer, Henry Waxman, Fidel Castro, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and Karl Marx have said.  That advice is perfect if the Republican Party wants to lose both houses of congress and the White House in the next two elections. 

Former chiefs of staff, journalists, academics, big Democrat politicians -- they all have deep affection for Bush, and all are hoping he will take their group suggestion and "bring the nation together" by nominating a "moderate" for the Sandra Day O'Connor spot on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Allow me to repeat and emphasize an earlier sentence.  That advice is perfect if the Republican Party wants to lose both houses of congress and the White House in the next two elections.

"It is the collapse of confidence in this president," Judy Woodruff (fomerly of the Communist News Network) said this morning on the second half of Meet the Press. 

Really?  Bush's party won seats, and the congress back for the Republicans, in the last mid-term elections.  Can the idiot Woodruff tell us the last time that happened in the United States of America?  Bush won his second term with a three million vote majority.  Can the idiot Woodruff tell us the last time that happened in the United States of America?  And, what will Miss Woodruff say if it happens, again, in 2006?  The past is prologue. What goes around comes around.  History repeats itself.  Her media pals predicted a loss for Bush in every election since the Nineties.  They say he is dragging his party down for 2006 because he won't nominate a moderate and get rid of his closest advisors.  And support all the demands of the Left.  And turn Iraq over to the terrorists. And demand government-funded abortions, and triple welfare payments, and disband the military, and stop criticizing the U.N.

Yatta, yatta, yatta.

Bush should reach out to the middle?  Since the actual center of American political thought is what the big American media "journalists," academics and loudmouths like Schumer and Kennedy call the "far right," I agree!!!

It ain't true here in Oregon's major metropolitan area, folks, but it is true almost everywhere else in America. Want to see the proof?

That's a map of how the counties, not the states, in America voted in the last election.  The liberal press artist who drew that map didn't have the guts to apply the correct color to his side, the Democrats, which these days is red -- meaning socialist.  Even containing that attempt at symbolic deception, the truth cannot be hidden. The man says red means Bush voters, and almost all of that map is red.  So much for the Big Press's evenly divided America. 

Bush has survived nearly five years of lefwing media propaganda.  In fact, they've been shelling him since before his first term, and did their best to take him out during last year's election.  Never in my more than sixty years on this planet have I seen incoming fire like that in a national election.  In my opinion, the bias of these people was so blatent that it reinforced and reinvigorated a swing to conservatism in middle America that is going to become visible next fall, even to the morons on Meet the Press and at the New York Times. 

Assuming Republicans reject this "move to the middle" advice -- which translated from Demo-speak means move to the Left -- they will hold their present level of power or increase it.

The press can't hide purple fingers

The record is clear, even if it has been submerged beneath years of liberal media spin.

Bush's military took out Saddam Hussein in record time with record low casualties for a ground operation.  Purple fingers have refuted the years of press lies about progress in Iraq. The shame of the fomerly mainstream American media is a cloud of stench which will long hang over two lands.  The pain of people from both Iraq and America who have lost family members because of the constant encouragment of the terrorist factions by the American liberal media establishment will, I hope, come to haunt these journalistic frauds.  If the declining audience and circulation statistics of liberal networks and newspapers from coast to coast are the result of an American public awakening to the long takeover of information by leftists in this nation, then I am content, for my trust that the people would one day come awake, will not have been misplaced.

Bush's refusal to sign the Kyoto Accords has been vindicated by England's decision to pull their support back from that anti-capitalist scam.  The dirty skirts of the U.N. are stained with oil for food graft these days, confirming the Bush choice of a hard case for ambassador to that den of liars, thieves and dictators. 

The national economy is doing beautifully -- which is miraculous considering 911, a series of major hurricanes, a lying mainstream press, graft-ridden Russian, German and French U.N. suckups who refused to help him dump Saddam and the pack of lying morons like Schumer (D-NY), Kennedy (D-Mass) and Feinstein (D-CA) who have tried to block every move by Bush to protect America from terrorists, build a solid economy, end the ridiculous regulations which have made this nation dependant on foreign oil (and have jacked gas to three bucks a gallon) and to force our public schools to stop being the educationally useless, leftwing propaganda mills they are, today.

A lot of people who read this magazine watch the big Sunday press programs.  What they saw on Meet the Press today was fantasy.  A world that exists only in the minds of liberals. My hunch is that almost exactly one year from today, the real world is going to stick its head inside that Beltway bubble, and burst it.

(Written the next day, October 31 -- Re: the Supreme Court.  Harriet Mier's replacement.  Bush nominated a real conservative, this time. Sam Alito. There will be both weeping and exclamations of joy.)

(LL)

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