Mothers 2 -- O'Reilly 0
Over the last few days, FOX NEWS pablum puker Bill O'Rielly and the Republican Noise Machine has been attacking Cindy Sheehan - a mother who had lost her son in the War On Terror and has been camped outside President Bush's ranch ever since he went on vacation. Ms. Sheehan was scheduled to appear on The O'Reilly Factor but backed out because of a previous exchange between O'Reilly and Republican partisan hack Michelle Malkin:O'Reilly: I think Mrs. Sheehan bears some responsibility for this and also for the responsibility for the other American families who lost sons and daughters in Iraq who feel this kind of behavior borders on treasonous.Now, when I myself read this exchange (and saw the video courtesy of C&L), I immediately jumped from own chair in rage. How dare these two sanctimonious Republican twits spew such blatant horseshit?!? The actual GALL Malkin had to imply that she herself knew Casey Sheehan moreso then the woman responsible for bringing him into the world in the first place is idiotic, offensive, and downright unforgivable. I'm not of the women-hitting kind because, for one, it's not in my bloodline. Secondly, last time I checked, beating up on women isn't part of the Democratic political playbook. But Malkin's words were enough for me to entertain the thought of wanting to slap her face until her ears rang like chappel bells on a cold Christmas morning. That thought was dashed real quick by the realization that in order for that fantasy to become reality, I'd have to take a number or climb over millions of other mothers ahead of me -- regardless if they lost one of their own or not. Definately not going there.
Malkin: I can’t imagine that Casey Sheehan would approve of such behavior.
Where I will go is the same place O'Reilly went yet again -- this time, the mother was Dolores Kesterson. According to The Huffington Post's Thomas de Zengotita, Ms. Kesterson was previously hyped by The Factor as a guest that would dissent with Cindy Sheehan. However, that's not the way it happened. Once again, the lads at C&L have the video where Kesterson schooled O'Reilly whenever she wasn't being interrupted:
O'Reilly: I believe your son died in a noble cause. That your son died to give other people freedom. Alright? And if you're a Christian, you know, there is no greater sacrifice than to give your life for someone else, so I believe -- I believe -- your son died in a noble cause. Do you believe that?
Kesterson: He was willing to do that. I don't believe that, you know, we're freeing these people when we're building all these major military bases in Iraq.
O'Reilly: You don't believe we're freeing anybody in Iraq?
Kesterson: No I do not.
O'Reilly: You believe they were better under Saddam than they are now ...
Kesterson: No. But-
O'Reilly: (interupting) We're not freeing them ...
Kesterson: (continuing) There was a time for that after we took care of the real business of getting the real terrorists and the real killers from 9/11.
O'Reilly: Now, I respect your opinion. That's why you're on the program and why I wanted you to talk to millions of people all over the world about your experiances and why you feel the way you do. Obviously, we respect your son who I think is a great patriot. And I don't want you to be used. You know, I think Cindy Sheehan is being used by very far-
Kesterson: (interupting) I have a question about that ...
O'Reilly: (counter-interupting) Alright, I'll let you ask it. But let me make this statement. I think she's being used by very far left elements in this country -- elements that not only object to the Iraq war but basically object to our way of life here -- America as we know it. And if you look at it logically, everyone knows, Hilary Clinton knows, and on and on that if we cut and run from Iraq and we pull out of there, it would make the War on Terror twice as dangerous as it is now and that's just a fact. So, ask me your question and I'll be happy to answer it.
Kesterson: I don't believe, you know, what you're saying about they're forces behind here because I know there's nobody behind me. I've been relatively-
O'Reilly: (interupting) Well, you're a different story. But, if you don't believe me ...
Kesterson: (sighing twice in exasperation in response to being interupted)
O'Reilly: ... all you have to do is go to the Michael Moore website and all you have to do is call the Fenton Group which is a leftwing group in Washington which puts out her Press Releases, and here I have a (holding up a printout of NewsHounds) an internet thing where she told us ... and I mean, these people are off-the-chart left ... (quoting) 'Cindy Sheehan Says Bill O'Reilly Is An Obscenity To Humanity', okay? I mean ... uh ... ay ... Ms. Kesterson, if you don't want to beleive me, you don't have to believe me. All I can do is report what we know to be true and if you don't accept it, you don't accept it. We have Michael Moore involved. You know Micheal Moore. We have ...
Kesterson: (nodding) Uh-hum. Nice person. (hardly audible over Bill but it's there!)
O'Reilly: ... the most far left elements in the country involved in telling the woman what to say and how to say it and monitoring what she goes on and what she doesn't go on. You know, there's nothing else I can tell you.
Kesterson: Nobody tells her what to say.
O'Reilly: (interupting) But ... what?!? ... How? (sighing)
Kesterson: (counter-interupting) And nobody tells me what to say. You know-
O'Reilly: (interupting) How can you say that?
Kesterson: (counter-interupting) ... I mean, she speaks from the heart as I speak from the heart. I mean, she lost the most precious thing in the world to her.
O'Reilly: (interupting) Would you go on the Michael Moore website, madame?
Kesterson: (totally offended and no longer giving a shit) Probably ... I mean, I will NOW, you know? I don't go do that - go voluntarily - but uh-
O'Reilly: (interupting) But, I mean, do you respect Michael Moore? Do you believe in the things that Micheal Moore believes in - that we are a bad country; that we're an evil country ...
Kesterson: (interupting) See, you're putting words in his ... (sighing because O'Reilly kept talking)
O'Reilly: ... that we brought this war upon ourselves.
Kesterson: You're putting words in his mouth, the way I look at it. I mean he ...
O'Reilly: (interupting) But, wait a second ...
Kesterson: (continuing) ... he made a documentary ...
O'Reilly: (getting louder) ... let me ask you ... hold it. (frowning because Kesterson won't back down) Do you respect (slowly) Michael Moore's view of the United States?
Kesterson: I don't know his entire view of the United States. But, you know, there are a lot of things that Michael Moore has brought up that I think needed to be brought up and I do beleive them. But I can't say because I don't know what he has said ... you know ... across the board.
O'Reilly: If you had to throw in with one person -- President Bush or Michael Moore -- if you had to make a decision 'Who am I going to back here', who would it be?
Kesterson: (takes a deep breath) Micheal Moore, if he has lied or not, has not killed thousands of people, possibly hundreds of thousands ...
O'Reilly: (interupting) Okay ... so you believe that President Bush has killed hundreds of thousands of people?
Kesterson: Yes. (nodding).
O'Reilly: So you believe the President is an evil man?
Kesterson: I believe he is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, our soliders included.
O'Reilly: (interupting) So there's no justification ...
Kesterson: (counter-interupting) ... in an unneccessary war.
O'Reilly: (still yammering) self-defense was no justification ... war on terror ...
Kesterson: (snarking) It wasn't self-defense in my eyes.
O'Reilly: (interupting) So you would've been okay with letting Saddam ...
Kesterson: (counter-interupting) We were not attacked by Iraq!
O'Reilly: (raising his voice) Okay, we were not attacked by Iraq but Kuwait was and he signed a treaty ...
We'll stop the transcript there because TBT isn't in the business in publishing bullshit "redefinition" propaganda from Republican talking points from either their think tanks, their corporate owned and operated tax-break loving mainstream media outlets, and certainly not from their armada of partisan pundits who collect paychecks from those very well-off Republican CEOs that get to keep going to the fucking bank for every worthless shark attack they drop into our middle/lower class, time-clock punching laps. We've paid for that shit three times over already: once by watching our public property (i.e. the airwaves) go to rich multinational corporations so they can have "free speech" thanks to Clinton's ridiculous Deregulation act, second by watching them use their "free speech" powers to bombard us with Chandra Levy, Micheal Jackson, and American Idol results up until those 3000 people died on 9/11, and currently because they're still engaging in this mass distraction "infotainment" shit and getting away with it because there isn't a Democrat in the Beltway with the balls and the spine to point it out (lest it pisses off thy bribing lobbyists).
Of course, we all know what's happening here. The Bush brigade, the neocons, the Rethugs, and their Freeperville Republican guard simply can't argue with mothers that have lost a son or daughter in this pointless war and therefore must smear them in order to keep the Fundy Fristian base drinking the dogpiss they've been bullshitted into thinking is Kool-Aid. Mainly because that's all Bush and the GOP have -- the Fundy Fristians. They sure as hell lost nearly all the Democrats that supported Bush (with the exception of Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller, but they're not Democrats anyway) and the moderates started slowly waking up earlier this year due to Cheney's "last throes" and the Downing Street Minutes.
How did the Republicans manage to bullshit them for this long?
Dr. Gerry Lower explains:
Why is it that the American people are so willingly engaged in meticulous, critical thought when it comes down to who raped a fictional working woman in New York, and so willingly disengaged in thought when it comes down to who actually assaulted and raped and pillaged Iraq? How is it that the American people are infatuated with logical thought portrayed in television dramas and then reject the entire notion when dealing with the reality of the Bush administration, what it has done to divide and conquer the American people, what it has done to diminish America's once good name on a global basis?
...
In harshly oppressive societies, those so oppressive that even a free press is wishful thinking, this need to think intelligently on occasion is stifled beyond reasonable doubt. There were no WMDs in Iraq? Don't think about it, trust us. There were no affiliations between Hussein's Iraq and bin Laden's al Qaida? Don't think about it, trust us. You doubt that the insurgency in Iraq is in its "last throes?" Don't think about it, trust us. You suspect that Bush's nation-bombing war has made terrorism even worse? Don't think about it, trust us.
You doubt that giving money to the rich is the best way to achieve equality and fairness and a healthy nation? Don't think about it, trust us. You doubt that CEOs are really worth thousands of times more than working people? Don't think about it, trust us. You doubt that society really needs a greed and power-driven corporate aristocracy mucking around with democracy? Don't think about it, trust us.
Trust us, until you don't have any original thoughts of your own anymore, until you believe every word out the mainstream media. With this newfound freedom from thought (masquerading as freedom of thought, no less -- Sy.), you may even feel like you have transcended the real world and are on your way to heaven. If you need to convince yourself that you still have the capacity for intelligent cogitation, tune into "CSI-Miami" or "House."
Of course, the good doctor isn't going to brief us on the cause of the malady without providing the cure:
The single-most important criterion for believeability in a logical viewpoint is internal consistency. If Bush says that Hussein possesses WMDs, then Hussein must have WMDs in his possession, or someone is telling a lie. If Bush says that Hussein is intimately aligned with bin Laden's al Qaida, then Hussein must have defineable alignments with al Qaida, or someone is telling a lie. If it is all a lie, a concoction to drug the people, then it is the American people who have been screwed, right along with Iraq. Who is this all too tough for? Certainly not too tough for those who watch "Law & Order - SVU."
If the American people applied anything of what they can learn about critical thought (even from television dramas) to the brave new world brought to them by religious capitalism, the Bush administration wouldn't last another month. That is how patently straight-forward this all is, if one is unafraid to call a lie a lie and treason treason. Admitting incompetent national leadership is far more sane than referring to the Bush administration's lies and coercion as part and parcel of doing the work of God.
Bush's entire program is predicated on keeping the people from thinking for themselves. That is certainly not the kind of democracy that Jefferson and Franklin had in mind, but it does prevent the people from dealing with the "Crime of the Century," the unprovoked assault, rape and pillage of Iraq. Bush's concept of "democracy" is a total denigration of the core message taught by both Jesus and Jefferson, that most of all the people have a right to simple, honest human truth.
Ooooh, there's that damndable T-word again: TRUTH! That's something that the Republicans and their pontificating, sanctimonious pundits claim to have a vast monopoly on only to turn around and fall over themselves trying to keep that very same truth from mercilessly picking aparts the lies and deceptions their myopic world-view is tempered with. This is exactly the real reason why O'Rielly and the rest of them keeping parroting that whole "if we pull out of Iraq, the War on Terror will be worse" meme. They don't really believe that at all. They could care less about the War on Terror and the Iraqi citizens. Bush's let's-fight-them-over-there-instead-of-over-here "Flypaper" strategy is proof of that and it also tosses Bill O'Reilly's appeal to the Christian notion of sacrificing ones life to save others right out the window because -- together -- they imply that American lives are somehow more valuable than Non-American lives. What in the hell kind of "pro-life" argument is that from these so-called "Compassionate Christian Conservatives"?!?
I'd really like to know where in The Bible would Oliver North dig for that kind of notion, especially in light of the fact that the God he and his Republican party claim to worship so much said quite clearly that He doesn't play favorites; that He is not a respector of persons (Romans 2:11, Ephesians 6:9, and Colossians 3:25) This is a God whom, in the Old Testament, wouldn't bat an eye wiping out an entire nation. Clearly, the God of The Bible is neither "pro-life" nor "pro-choice; He is PRO-ME! Always has been. His plan, His Will, His Grace, His Planet -- according to Him, it all belongs to Him. He's the Alpha and the Omega and if that IS true, then we might as well pack up both our "pro-life" and "pro-choice" horseshit along with any notions of American lives somehow being worth more than Non-American lives and ball it up, and bag it because it our own self-indulgence and self-importance that creates that garbage completely out of a false perception of God not from the actual Scriptures but out pure, unenlightened self-interest. Seriously, if the God of the Bible has the destruction of America anywhere in His plan ........... what the fuck are we going to do -- filibuster it?!? Impeach Him?!?
Such uncertainity of the unknown scares Bush & the Republicans shitless; be it from God or not. Such uncertainty can only be magnified by the uncertainty that if we do indeed pull our troops out of Iraq and bring 'em back home, then they could very well excercise those Contitutional Freedoms they have by claiming Bush and the Republicans have taken them for granted in this bullshit war every single step of the way. That uncertainly is enough to force our troops to remain over there where if any of them falls "out of line" by slamming the Republicans and their "commander-in-chief", they could easily be dealt with or derided if they air their grievances to our conspicuously embedded media over there. The proof of this is in how quick they moved to slime Paul Hackett and his run in Ohio but you can go back farther than that by pointing out that when one of our brave troops dared to embarrass Donald Rumsfeld on globally broadcasted LIVE television by hammering him about the lack of armor, the first thing that floated across the minds of the Bush Administration and the GOP wasn't, "Sure, we'll address that right away and get you that armor!" Instead, it was, "Fuck armor -- GIVE 'EM MUZZLES!! Shut them the hell up before too many liberals hear him!!"
Seriously, bringing the troops home now runs the risk of uncertainty or possibly more public embarrassment -- embarrassment that our sensationalized media would climb over paparazzis to cover. Therefore, the Republicans ultimate goal with our troops is to keep them there until long after they've spent whatever political and monetary capital (in the form of no-bid government contracts) can be gleaned from them. Then and only then will they bring the troops home because, by then, they hope that any large-scale Bush bashing on their part can be derided off as "old news" or re-defined as the fault of the likes of Michael Moore, Dolores Kesterson, Cindy Sheehan, and their friends within the nasty "liberal media" that conspired with their respective agendas to undermind the war effort. The actions of O'Rielly and Malkin are only the small pre-labor contractions of what's to come once the water breaks.
posted by Sizemore at
9:23 PM
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Best regards from NY!
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