Somebody snuck past the Bush minders this morning at the President’s faux town hall meeting in Charlotte, NC and laid into Our Leader for his lies, hypocrisy and general lack of anything resembling human feeling. His name is Harry Taylor and this is what he had to say (courtesy Think Progress):
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. [Ed. Note: No shit Sherlock.] 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 –
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Booo! [Ed. Note: Pricks!]
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.
Go here to watch the video of a true patriot speaking truth to power. And Mr. Taylor, good luck with your IRS audit.
Bush’s response: No apology for his illegal spying program, of course. A President can do no wrong as long as he’s a Republican, doncha know.
Wow – my hero too!
Super courage…talk about being behind enemy lines!
I was watching CNN this afternoon, and they played the whole clip. I was amazed Steven.
Good for them. Maybe they’re starting to learn that Fox Lite makes no sense as a business plan when Bush’s approval ratings are mired in the 30’s.
hero/ Man, where do I sign up for the fan club. I was just saying at our little meetup what I would give to have a face to face with George.
Even though one got past the bubble, they were still able to make him look bad because of the makeup of the Bush worshippers and the booing. One day at a time. Each person standing up and being counted is another burst in the Bubble Boy’s world.
Here’s another one that makes gwb look bad:
Sound card not working, damnit!
That was beautiful – it truly brought tears to my eyes.
Speaking truth to power. An American patriot.
Clone12 from Daily Kos has a photo of Harry Taylor.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/4/6/16637/18929
He compares it to the famous Norman Rockwell painting
“Freedom of Speech” which was based on Franklin D Roosevelt’s famous “Four Freedoms” speech in 1941.
Bravo, Mr. Taylor! You’ve expressed the thoughts of millions of citizens worldwide.
And the subject of your questions couldn’t care less.
It’s a shame — this could’ve been a memorable exchange, given more than one reasonable intellect. However, there’s clearly no ‘there’ there.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/04/06.html#a7814
Horray for Harry Taylor!!!
Thank you for saying what so many of us feel.
No.
I am sorry, but…no.
That clip is a LOSS for us.
Yes, Mr. Taylor is a brave man…and correct as well.
But this is the way the media works.
It’s like a comedian dealing with a heckler.
The comedian has stage.
He has a mike.
If he is a SKILLED comedian, he has the audience. And Bush IS a skilled comedian. He’s been practicing for 20 years, and he has GREAT producers.
So what if his act is lame.
Most of the audience is there because they are too stupid to know bad comedy when they hear it.
So this heckler gets up…and the comedian WASTES him.
Condescends to him, plays the audience.
Sure, it’s on CNN. It’s a win for the Rovers.
Who listens to this?
The choir…us…and everybody else.
The choir already gets it.
But to everybody else…here’s the lame, wimpy guy getting WASTED by Butch and his claque.
Listen…this is EXACTLY the ploy used to such great success during the runup to the Iraq invasion.
Remember?
There was a survey done of the major news media by the media watchdog group “Fairness In Broadcasting” for 1 week in late February 2003. The networks, PBS., etc. The purpose was to see who the news programs brought on as “experts” regarding the Iraq situation… 24 hours/day for 7 days, all news programs.
The results, which were shocking even to me, a long time media skeptic, were as follows.
168 to 1 in favor of the government. “Ex”-government officials. purveyors of right wing academic studies, etc.
That’s 168 to 1!!!
It went like this. 168 men and women in Washington drag…suits, uniforms, “nice” haircuts, etc, then one nun from Topeka, 168 more media clones, 1 student from Bennington, 168 more government spokespeople, another harmless and vaguely foolish left-winger…
No Noam Chomsky, no Jimmy Breslin, very little serious examination of the real opposition. (Not that there was all that much to be examined, sadly…)
It’s a stacked deck, a thoroughly hypnotizing pinwheel, the inevitable March of Progress.
So do not get all congratulatory when the reality of the situation is that one lone man was made to look the fool on national TV.
WE know what’s up…but preaching to the choir is ALWAYS easy.
They are still in power…and they are still boldly mocking us.
Because as far as they are concerned…we are helpless.
Look at that shit-eating smile on Butch’s face.
HE knows…or at least he thinks he does…where the balance of power still lies.
It lies with the trillions and trillions of dollars for which he is the chosen representative…has been for 6 years and WILL be, more than likely, for the next two. And his family has been at the center of that representaion for going on 100 years. In his mind…he is invincible. In the catbird seat. No competition. Just the occasional weak little man impotently comlpaining about the policies of his handlers.
And y’know what?
Without an effective national opposition party…he is absolutely correct.
No WONDER he goes out of his way to give Lieberman big hugs.
How rotten this all really is.
Shame on America.
I can barely look.
AG
yeah, but still…it was amazing to watch. What an adrenaline rush that guy must have had. He is a hero. He did it…he got his moment and he delivered. He’s Rudy.
I am sorry, BooMan.
I have seen this too many times.
The self-congratulatory left.
“WOW!!! He (We, I, They…) really told them off THIS time, huh???”
It’s like talking to a rhinoceros.
Go ahead.
Tell him off.
THEN run like hell.
I am tired of running.
And I am tired of the left wing act.
I really am.
Marx was right.
There are always inevitable forces at work bringing up one class and bringing down another.They are international in scope, and the social tectonics at work right now are driving the liberal middle class right into the ground. It is being attacked from one side by the corporate state that finds them an unnecessarily expensive bother (and a potential threat as well), and from the other side by the billions of desperate cheap-wage laborers that the so-called liberal democracies (read “economic imperialists”) have created by their ongoing theft of labor and product from the third world and the permanent domestic underclasses over the past 100 years or so.
And this flaccid bourgeoisie dosen’t have a CLUE that it is doomed. It frets and fumes about how the third world could POSSIBLY hate the US while simultaneously counting on its already bought-and-sold “representatives” to save them from the depredations of the corporate right and the unwashed, undereducated and angry working masses who have been created by that corporate right within this country as well as in the third world.
And then when one of its middle class drag-wearing members querulously gets up in public and scolds the POTUS (I’d be querulous too…these BushCo creatures are FRIGHTENINGLY vicious animals.) for his ethical lapses, it gets all giddy about its “success”.
AIN’T no success here…just business as usual.
That tape lost more votes for the Dems in the upcoming election than John Edwards’ bad haircut.
Bet on it.
Just another new reality.
Sorry, BooMan.
If it’s on TV…it’s wrong.
And that’s a guarantee!!!
AG
you are an incurable crank. But it’s enndearing.
Statler and Waldorf on the Muppet Show…
More like Woody Allen and Caligula, actually.
In a grudge match…which one do YOU think would win?
AG
There you go again.
Now I’m the cranky, lovable old uncle.
Once again effectively diminishing the import of what I am trying to say.
Sorry, BooMan…I won’t be typed.
You can run…but you can’t hide.
Not from the onrushing tide of history.
Not from THIS truth.
The tsunami next time is coming, and as long as you and your allies stay on low ground with the bottom feeders who now run the DemocRatic Party…you gonna get WALLOPED.
Times might be tougher up here in the hills with all them bearded revolutionaries, but…
So it goes.
SOMEONE has to be around to pick up the pieces.
Good luck…
You’re gonna NEED it if you think the mainstream dems are ANY diffferent from the mainstream Ratpubs.
Oh…they say different things and support different programs, but that’s just tactics, BooMan.
Tactics.
Tactics. The art of how you get to a strategic goal.
And the goal is the same.
More world-wide hegemony for the economic imperialist, corporate, multi-national (as in the US, Europe and Japan…as long as it stays relatively unarmed) interests that run BOTH parties.
And it will not wash anymore.
The ripped-off are gathering weapons, and yhey WILL fight back.
Are THEY “right”?
Dunno.
Doubt it.
But they ARE:
Hungry
Angry
Numerous
And armed.
I’m not cranky by nature, BooMan.
Just…
Observant.
And this is what I have observed.
You can take 10,000 people like Mr. Tyler and march ’em all on Washington, and the Rats won’t even take a deep breath.
Why?
Because the Tylers are weak, unarmed, and scared.
Scared of losing their pensions, their homes, their lives. RIGHTFULLY scared. On the evidence.
But take 10,000 people with NOTHING to lose?
Hungry
Angry
Numerous
And armed?
THAT”S a problem!!!
Thus…the US invades Iraq, not Chevy Chase.
I am not angry at Mr. Tyler., he did a brave thing, given his position.
I am just telling y’all…again…that complaint won’t work in a fixed system.
And this one IS fixed.
Big time.
They say don’t fix it it if it ain’t broke?
Well…here the fix is what BROKE it.
The two-party system is now officially broken.
Who ya gonna call?
Mary Matador?
Donna Brazile?
Please.
AG
Once again…hit the wrong button.
It’s TAYLOR.
You really ought to get an edit option for comments.
And I really ought not to be in such a rush.
But…I’ve got lots of things to do.
So it goes here in hottest-thing-ever America.
As the Rats whittle us down to minimum wage for maximum effort.
So it goes.
Gotta go to work now.
Been fun…
AG
So what your solution AG? Just wait another 3 years?
No wonder the Democrats keep losing with people like you. Oh, don’t upset him, please.
My solution?
NEWPARTY ’08!!!
When you finally realize that your batting average is damned near zero…take a good look at your equipment. Maybe it’s because there’s a hole in your goddamned bat.
Listen, snarkbreath…
The Democrats lost when I was PART of the party, too.
REAL Democrats have been losing since the bullets took out JFK, MLK + RFK.
And why?
Because the segment of society that controls the Democratic Party is made up of lamebrains like yourself.
I would suggest that you wake the fuck up before it is too late, only…it appears to me that it IS too late for people like you.
Go work for the “Democratic Party”.
Feel free.
You lose, whether you win and get a kinder, gentler BushCo or you lose and get BushCo III. You and your entire class is headed for Dinosaurville, baby.
BET on it.
The imperatives of history done passed you by.
Your children have been by and large totally misedumacated. I lived in Middleclassville and watched the schools try to fuck up MY kids. They failed to do so, but only because I hipped my chhildren to what was up in time for them to survive. Yours? I doubt it. They will be even stupider than you are.
You and everyone you know is are debt up to your assholes…as is the country you so naively think will be “saved” by people like Reid, Schumer, Lieberman, et al.
Dig it, bro’.
You SURROUNDED.
You’ve got the neo-fascist right on one side and a RAPIDLY awakening world-wide black, brown and beige population on the other side, a population that is SLAVERING at the thought of getting some back after 400+ years of being ripped of by “good people” like you and the rest of the self-righteous Christian DemocRatpublican parties that have been in power in Europe and the United States for most of those 400 years.
AND YOU WANT TO GO CANVAS FOR PEOPLE WHO WON’T STAND UP WITH RUSS FEINGOLD WHEN HE FINALLY STATES THE OBVIOUS ON THE FLOOR OF THE UNITED STATES SENATE?
Give me a break!!!
TWO sets of burglars in the house, and there you are, asleep and dreaming all comfy in your credit card-bought bed of illusions.
So be it.
Good luck to you, and to all the rest of your compatriots as well.
You’re going to need it.
Your class…the class that supports the DemocRatic Party as it now stands…is finished.
Over.
You’re the walking dead, and you don’t even know it yet.
You will, though.
Come the crash…and it is on the way, no matter WHAT form it takes…you will.
And soon, I fear.
Have fun…
AG
AG, your tone is out of line.
The leaden middle class brings this country to the brink of total failure by its short-term self-interest and long-term cowardice and inaction.
And you do not like my TONE!!!???
You are a self-fulfilling prophecy.
AG
P.S. Well…I’ll look on the bright side for you.
At least I’m not ‘endearing” anymore.
no. You can’t be insulting and attack other members in a personal way. Your arguments are fine.
Which one?
Snarkbreath? (A small Johnny Carsonism actually intended to lighten things up a little.)
Or lamebrain?
OK…lamebrain may be over the top.
I will rephrase.
I wrote:
My DEEPEST apologies.
Here is another version.
Howzzat?
Better?
Because…it IS a lame comment.
Now…what kind of brain it takes to WRITE such a comment…
Why, I’ll leave that up to our dear readers.
The ones who do not move their lips when they read will come to right right conclusion, I trust.
Later…
AG
Y’know…I’ve got some more to say on this.
This idea of “polite”.
Of “polite” language.
This is how the left loses.
ONE of the ways, anyway.
By BEING “polite”.
Listen up.
The first major opposition candidate with enough understanding and courage to stand up in the face of BushCo and speak plainly about what is going on using good old American street English will win going away.
The Rats will try to spin it, but here’s where they will lose.
The already convinced on BOTH sides will not be moved away from their stances. Republicans will hate it, and liberals will at the very LEAST forgive it if it is said in the right spirit. Now…Butch’s approval polls NEVER dip down below 30%, right? That’s the 30% that will not budge. Too stupid to move even if he was caught with his pants down at a girl’s school picnic.
“Mah BELT broke!!!”
“Oh, why Mabel !!! That POOR man!!!”
Let us assume that there is about 30% of the voting public on the left that also will not budge no matter what. That may be an overgenerous assessment, but what the hell…my argument just gets better if there is a smaller percentage, given the habitiual 52%/48% split at the national polls.
So that leaves a 40% undecided group. Or larger, considering the majority of Americans who do not vote at all. Many of moderate intelligence, simply media-ized into a voting stupor.
They need a shock.
The shock of the new.
And no elaborate arguments, no Seymour Hersh articles or Abu Ghraib/Katrina/Guantanamo pictures are going to make it through the media filter. Not enough to provide THAT kind of shock.
But ONE MAN (OR woman) standing in front of a large national audience at say a presidential debate…turning to the chosen representative(s) of this PermaGov and without any fanfare or warning saying something like “You lamebrained sons of bitches have needlessly sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives in your endless quest for wealth and power. And you are not even good at THAT!!! Have you no SHAME!!!???” would change things forever.
THE SHOCK OF THE NEW!!!
The shock of the REAL!!!
Landslide time.
All those non-voters and undecideds?
Landslide time.
But no one is going to do that.
You cannot even do it usefully on a left-wing BLOG, fer Chrissake!!! Not without being reprimanded by the usual societal censors. The same ones who stop the plain truth from being spoken plainly on higher levels.
As above, so below, BooMan.
Do you really WANT to be that censor? Or are you just so “well-bred” (A synonym for weakness in THIS society, I am afraid. So well “societized”…) that you cannot stand to hear the ugly truth of the matter?
I hear better political discussions at laundromats.
Remember when the New Orleans disaster filpped off the screen of racial “equality” that America uses to cover up its tactic of maintaining a permanent underclass by racial segregation?
Overheard in a laundromat. Working class black matriarch grandmother to her husband, her kids and some grandchildren who were all helping her do the laundry.
“Them motherfuckers got no heart whatsoEVER!!! An’ they lie through their teeth, too. Jus’ LOOK at the screen, you wanna see who’s in and who’s out here. Plain as the nose on your FACE!!! Lyin’ motherfuckers!!!”
All said as she calmly trundled load after load of laundry from the dryers to the folding tables, where she…for the 80,000th time, you betcha…proceeded to put her life back into as good an order as she possibly could.
Fold and pile, fold and pile….
AND…she was laughing as she said it.
The laugh that does not mean “ha-ha”, to some degree, but still…
Put THAT on prime time national TV. Split screen with the sea of abandoned black faces in the Superdome. This big, strong old woman with an ass like a bookshelf talking the unvarnished truth. Big and strong as life. And see what happens.
But it ain’t GONNA happen.
Who’s she?
Just ignorant member of the underclass.
“NEXT!!!”
Well…a few OVEREDUCATED MEMBERS OF THE RULING CLASS oughta give real language a whirl.
They might end up being president when they grow up.
Can’t lose any worse than they’ve been losing.
C’mon, Russ.
Be the man!!!
I DARE ya!!!
AG
P.S. And BooMan…I dare you, too.
Loosen up a little.
This guy designated me a third class citizen the same way you have with your condescending little tinfoil hat comments. I told you I wouldn’t be typed like that, and I meant it.
You want to say I’m a fucking nut, come on out with it.
THEN we can TALK.
But this pitty-pat stuff?
That’s how you manage to lose no matter HOW right you may be.
Get real.
Try it.
You be bettah off.
Not to sound tinfoil hat but it seems from the video and transcript that Bush is arguing with his earpiece again, when he gives the longer “response” to Taylor’s comment.
It’s eerie how often Bush seems to be “arguing” with someone in these live events, despite the fact that nobody else is speaking. In this case, Taylor had already sat down and was not even looking like he would interrupt.
Pax
Not tinfoil in the least. Of course he had help.
Do NOT apologize.
The system is so fucked now that the term “tinfoil hat” is simply not applicable anymore.
What was nuts 10 years ago is now fact.
You are right on it, soj.
But…do not APOLOGIZE for being on it.
That’s how we lose.
AG
I’m sorry to disagree with you Steven D.
Right, he said what almost everyone must feel these days but for saying it out loud he got booed. Bush already knows that what Taylor said is ‘old news’ by now so he let him say it, showing he was ‘a man’ able to take critisisms. Although the clown Bush is/plays shows what a shallow man he is he got to say his “I wont apologize for fighting terrorists” thereby dismissing Taylor’s critisism as something out of the fringe.
What really for me shows this was pure theater is Taylor’s parting words: “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.”
Game, Set and Match for Bush, not withstanding the game being setup in advance.
You are right on the money, high 5.
Right on the money.
AG
Thanks, Mr. Taylor, for acting with courage. The laughing and booing from the clown’s chosen audience was so telling.
Yeah?
WHO was it telling? That booing and laughter.
And what was it saying?
To you? It was false and stupid.
To the majority of Americans…??? It was some real, righteous folks laughing down a liberal clown.
The already preached-to choir does not win elections.
The Rovers know this.
At least…understand what you are seeing if you cannot DO anything about it.
The media fix is in, in, in.
AG
It was so telling that the audience acted like sheep, not thinking for themselves, rather reacting as they thought was expected of them, laughing when the President clowned and booing at criticism of him. They didn’t need cue cards because they were pre-selected to provide an unquestioning, approving backdrop.