Distractions.

As much as the right likes to complain about the liberal media, I’ve found it amazing that they never seem to call the right on the mounds of bullshit they fling around. If the media were that liberal, you’d think they’d be constantly criticizing the right, these scandals would be on all the time. But naw, we get missing girls and other stories. Meanwhile Clinton was plastered on every station 24/7, even kids too young to understand what was going on saw it all the time.

…but I’m on a tangent, my point here is that it truly does fascinate me how often the right gets out of things by dodging.

Now, so far we’ve had Al Gore smacking down attempts by Attorney General Gonzales and other mouthpieces to point the finger back at Clinton and his own spying and searching. Howard Dean slapped down Blitzer and others who tried to claim that there were democrats taking money from Jack Abramoff. Most recently our good friend Karl Rove tried to redirect the debate again concerning the legality of spying:

Mr. Rove’s speech on Friday to the Republican National Committee was a classic example. “Let me be as clear as I can be: President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they’re calling and why,” Mr. Rove said. “Some important Democrats clearly disagree.”

I don’t know what democrats Rove is talking about. John Kerry certainly isn’t one of those Dems, as he said on This Week:

You know, Osama bin Laden is going to die of kidney failure before he’s killed by Karl Rove and his crowd. And all he does is divide America over this issue and exploit it. And what he’s trying to pretend is somehow Democrats don’t want to eavesdrop appropriately to protect the country. That’s a lie.

We’re prepared to eavesdrop wherever and whenever necessary in order to make America safer. But we put a procedure in place to protect the constitutional rights of Americans. And what I believe, George, and I believe it deeply, is you can protect the United States of America without devoiding, without ignoring the Constitution of the country.

If there are any democrats out there that anyone can find who thinks we shouldn’t be spying on terrorists, I’d like to meet them. Apparently they’re everywhere and poor Karl needs to defend himself. The debate clearly isn’t about the fact that there is an incredibly easy way to eavesdrop legally on those affiliated with terrorists, it has nothing to do with the fact that a warrant can be gotten 72 hours after the tap has been in place, no. Apparently these democrats have been all over the place saying we shouldn’t protect the nation.

The right has no qualms with derailing intelligent debate by offering an entirely unrelated counterpoint and then they cry about the mean liberals hating America. The really sad part is that they manage to force the debate in that direction because not enough people call them on it.

George Bush is not our president.

I think I’m officially convinced of this. Oh he’s who people voted for, and he’s the guy who sits at the desk that says “prezadent” (he made that himself), but I do not believe George W Bush is not actually doing anything when it comes to running the country.

I first started to get inklings of this when Bush was out there talking about how he knows that our soldiers are getting the best armor and best equipment. Clearly he was off playing with his Legos or something when report after report came out telling otherwise. Recently he’s cropped up telling the talking points of his underlings verbatim (today’s flavor would be “terrorist surveillance program”).

What really nailed it for me was his famous recent quote about spying:

“It’s amazing that people say to me, ‘Well, he’s just breaking the law.’ If I wanted to break the law, why was I briefing Congress?” asked Bush.

It’s a fair question, and one that will rally a lot of support for him. But the funny thing is, he didn’t brief Congress. Well, he did technically, but Senator Rockefeller sent a handwritten letter back to our friend Dick Cheney saying the briefing didn’t make sense, it was confusing, and asked why he was specifically prohibited from telling anyone in his staff about it. This part is particularly neat.

“The record needs to be set clear that the Administration never afforded members briefed on the program an opportunity to either approve or disapprove the NSA program. The limited members who were told of the program were prohibited by the Administration from sharing any information about it with our colleagues, including other members of the Intelligence
Committees.”

Of course, the memo wasn’t sent to Bush himself, it was sent to Cheney, and I suppose if Bush knew what was going on he wouldn’t be able to say what he did with any conviction, so ol’ Dickie decided to just sweep that one under the rug (Rockefeller was never given a response to his letter). He just sits in Washington and the people around him tell him what to say, and he does it because he knows Uncle Dick and Uncle Karl wouldn’t lie.