Unhinged Bernstein
Keith Olbermann, resident senior leftist propagandist on MSNBC, had the distinct honor of interviewing one of the legends in the journalism community, Carl Bernstein. Bernstein doesn’t come off sounding quite as “objective” as he used to during the Watergate years, which is saying something. Newsbusters covered the interview in detail.
What I thought worth writing about was Bernstein’s ability to crystallize every phobia, urban legend, and talking point of the political Left into one distilled rant of attempted credibility. You see, if one takes all these disparate topics and molds them together with the assumption that they are fact and proven beyond doubt, one can draw all sorts of interesting, if ludicrous conclusions. Many of these topics I’ve not blogged on because I felt they were adequately covered elsewhere or not as relevant to what I prefer to write about. When a true master of propaganda like Bernstein comes along with one of these rants, though, it’s hard to resist commenting on it. Let’s examine some of the thoughts expressed in that interview.
In a recent article by Bernstein, he has stated there is a need for hearings to "determine the next step that is taken to deal with Iraq, to deal with Iran, to deal with George W. Bush."
Bernstein already operates from a position that any conflict begun by this presidency is suspect, operating in the unique vacuum environment of the Left with no regard for history or the motivations of other nations. His basic premise is that Bush is already a criminal and must be dealt with by Congress, and why is he so obviously a criminal? Well, just look at the illegal war in Iraq!
Again, if you assume that your premise is already and irrevocably true, then building on that premise becomes much easier, no matter how weird a territory you cross into. The assumption that Iraq is just some cowboy shoot’em up Bush wanted to go on since before he became President (or Karl Rove or whatever secret cabal the Left has dug up on any given week) operates in such a vacuum. It ignores the ’91 Gulf War, unless it uses it to justify why Bush wants revenge for his “daddy” and acts as if the war was resolved then. There is no need to mention that the war was only suspended with a cease fire contingent upon the fascist Hussein complying with several U.N. demands designed to ensure that he couldn’t wage such an easy war of aggression on a neighbor again, culminating possibly in his removal from power as the ultimate smackdown. You’d also have to discount the low-level war that we and our Coalition partners had been waging with Saddam since that war. Planes that flew in the No-Fly zone were constantly fired upon, an obvious Act of War and Saddam continued to act in defiance of the treaty he himself signed.
All such facts are dust in the wind, because they are inconvenient to the “Cowboy Bush” hypothesis of the Left so casually thrown around by Bernstein. He also looks at Iran as a problem caused by Bush, when it was more realistically caused by Carter. Carter failed to nip the Islamist theocracy in the bud when there was an easier chance of doing so and allowed the Persian nation to gain power and prestige in the eyes of other Muslims, something they have craved since the decline of Persian power in the rise of Arabic princes during early Islam.
Iran is a burgeoning nuclear power as well as an avowed enemy of the United States and Israel. They want no peace or normalized relations. The government of Iran wants the destruction of said nations and it wants it as soon as possible. That is why we hear their president promise “50,000 suicide bombers” to destroy the United States if we act against Iran in any fashion. That’s saber rattling by any definition and provocative fighting words at the very least. Iran wants a fight and if the United States backs down they win at least greater prestige and influence. But, why consider such trivial things as history or Iranian motivation when it’s easier to just say it’s Bush’s fault and that it’s something else the Left can use to impeach him?
On the NSA program: "totally illegal, it would seem, usurpation of power by the President under the guise of national security, the kind of thing Nixon, there was an article of impeachment against Nixon for wiretapping."
I’ve remained perplexed at this non-issue, partly because it’s managed to keep legs in the papers for as long as it has and partly because I can’t see how it’s not seen through as the horribly partisan and pathetic issue that it is. Again, though, Bernstein operates from the assumption that it must be illegal and therefore he can build his further assumption that the hearing should focus on this as its prime impeachment point.
He tries to establish further credibility for his hypothesis by bringing the Nixon factor in, which any good Leftist knows is the sign of true criminal behavior. Nixon is the Left’s arch-criminal, an admittedly moderate, almost liberal Republican (he initiated affirmative action for the Feds and began the process of normal relations with Communist China) who is often viewed by those of the Marxian persuasion as the ultimate evil conservative. Imagine if they’d picked a real conservative to hate with such a reverence. Nixon is almost a Faustian Satan figure for them, and so why Bernstein so easily can inject his ghostly memory into the debate to assist his point (also because Nixon is how he made his bones).
When looking at the signal gathering activity of the NSA, though, the program that is being called the smoking gun, it is a counter-espionage operation begun by intelligence agencies which have never operated within the domestic law framework to ferret out enemy spies. If the FBI were involved, I could see the point, but when even several previous FISA judges (an Act I still have trouble accepting as fully Constitutional in a separation of powers role) state that they can find no illegality in the President’s authorization of counter-espionage activity of listening in on suspected Al-Qaeda sympathizers or agents, the argument of any illegality is shattered beyond repair.
The NSA has, to my knowledge, never acquired warrants to tap anyone. They just sort of do it, much as the CIA does for foreign operatives and much as the OSS did before them. Presidents from our earliest history have led and authorized such programs as is part of their executive power and have not had to tread on the 4th Amendment to do it. This sort of work falls outside the 4th Amendment by any arguable historical measure and thus as I previously stated comes out as an overblown non-issue. This discard’s Bernstein’s primary evidence when calling for his beloved Congressional hearings.
Then there is Olbermann himself asking “All parts of an equation that has another eminent voice raising the question of whether the Bush presidency is, in fact, worse than Watergate."
See the preceding paragraphs. First, Bernstein is an eminent voice only in terms of the enshrined status he’s culled from the Left. No one else really considers a journalist who arguably has not done much to standout since getting lucky riding Woodward’s coattails with Watergate as “eminent”. Watergate itself, albeit an event that has become the standard for measuring political corruption and synonymous with any and all government scandals, was pretty light in the grand scheme of government scandals. It was a simple attempt to gain campaign information on a Party that, although the Republicans didn’t know it at the time, was in horribly disarray and preparing to go down in flames in the ’72 elections. If anything, the engineers of the burglary, Dean the broken record included, were more bunglers of policy than sinister criminals. If they’d had a better feel for the population or the political climate, such criminal activity would not have even been considered.
And if I could sidebar for a moment, John Dean is a pitiful excuse for a man. History has shown that it was on his order that Liddy’s picked crew went in that second time that got them caught. It appears through some minor examination of Liddy’s statements and what we know of Dean’s wife, a former “alleged” callgirl who serviced high-power Washington clients that the burglary was more about ensuring her name wasn’t in any compromising phone directories in the Watergate offices than about collecting political intelligence. That Dean rolled over to say his own hide and used his snitch status to remain in some way relevant by being a basher of every Republican since Nixon for whatever political show will give him five minutes makes much of what he said at the time and everything he’s said since suspect and in my opinion useless as anything else than the leftist propaganda it is.
With that aside, though, Watergate, the Holy Grail, the Gold Standard of all scandals in the modern political era is being thrown about so casually in the above quote by Olbermann as his little way of trying to imply that we should take for granted that the alleged scandal we now face in the President’s doings is more dire than anything we’ve faced in recent history. More dire indeed than Clinton’s office of political amateurs requesting and holding hundreds of secret FBI files on the backgrounds and sensitive details of the lives of their political enemies. More dire than the alleged suicide of a man close to the President and First Lady in a case that is still not clearly understood. More dire than a President who bombed an aspirin factory and Iraq not so clearly out of following those same resolutions as protecting himself in his own domestic scandal ridden Presidency. That should give you a feel for where those who so easily throw around these accusations, but who remained quiet on all these issues from ’92 to 2000, stand and just how credible they are.
I hope also it has provided a little insight into how easily it is to craft a charge out of whole cloth by ignoring all things except the ideas that Republicans and America as a whole are the sole evil in the world and must be stopped at all costs. If you understand that, you pretty much understand the whole of the Left.
Keith Olbermann, resident senior leftist propagandist on MSNBC, had the distinct honor of interviewing one of the legends in the journalism community, Carl Bernstein. Bernstein doesn’t come off sounding quite as “objective” as he used to during the Watergate years, which is saying something. Newsbusters covered the interview in detail.
What I thought worth writing about was Bernstein’s ability to crystallize every phobia, urban legend, and talking point of the political Left into one distilled rant of attempted credibility. You see, if one takes all these disparate topics and molds them together with the assumption that they are fact and proven beyond doubt, one can draw all sorts of interesting, if ludicrous conclusions. Many of these topics I’ve not blogged on because I felt they were adequately covered elsewhere or not as relevant to what I prefer to write about. When a true master of propaganda like Bernstein comes along with one of these rants, though, it’s hard to resist commenting on it. Let’s examine some of the thoughts expressed in that interview.
In a recent article by Bernstein, he has stated there is a need for hearings to "determine the next step that is taken to deal with Iraq, to deal with Iran, to deal with George W. Bush."
Bernstein already operates from a position that any conflict begun by this presidency is suspect, operating in the unique vacuum environment of the Left with no regard for history or the motivations of other nations. His basic premise is that Bush is already a criminal and must be dealt with by Congress, and why is he so obviously a criminal? Well, just look at the illegal war in Iraq!
Again, if you assume that your premise is already and irrevocably true, then building on that premise becomes much easier, no matter how weird a territory you cross into. The assumption that Iraq is just some cowboy shoot’em up Bush wanted to go on since before he became President (or Karl Rove or whatever secret cabal the Left has dug up on any given week) operates in such a vacuum. It ignores the ’91 Gulf War, unless it uses it to justify why Bush wants revenge for his “daddy” and acts as if the war was resolved then. There is no need to mention that the war was only suspended with a cease fire contingent upon the fascist Hussein complying with several U.N. demands designed to ensure that he couldn’t wage such an easy war of aggression on a neighbor again, culminating possibly in his removal from power as the ultimate smackdown. You’d also have to discount the low-level war that we and our Coalition partners had been waging with Saddam since that war. Planes that flew in the No-Fly zone were constantly fired upon, an obvious Act of War and Saddam continued to act in defiance of the treaty he himself signed.
All such facts are dust in the wind, because they are inconvenient to the “Cowboy Bush” hypothesis of the Left so casually thrown around by Bernstein. He also looks at Iran as a problem caused by Bush, when it was more realistically caused by Carter. Carter failed to nip the Islamist theocracy in the bud when there was an easier chance of doing so and allowed the Persian nation to gain power and prestige in the eyes of other Muslims, something they have craved since the decline of Persian power in the rise of Arabic princes during early Islam.
Iran is a burgeoning nuclear power as well as an avowed enemy of the United States and Israel. They want no peace or normalized relations. The government of Iran wants the destruction of said nations and it wants it as soon as possible. That is why we hear their president promise “50,000 suicide bombers” to destroy the United States if we act against Iran in any fashion. That’s saber rattling by any definition and provocative fighting words at the very least. Iran wants a fight and if the United States backs down they win at least greater prestige and influence. But, why consider such trivial things as history or Iranian motivation when it’s easier to just say it’s Bush’s fault and that it’s something else the Left can use to impeach him?
On the NSA program: "totally illegal, it would seem, usurpation of power by the President under the guise of national security, the kind of thing Nixon, there was an article of impeachment against Nixon for wiretapping."
I’ve remained perplexed at this non-issue, partly because it’s managed to keep legs in the papers for as long as it has and partly because I can’t see how it’s not seen through as the horribly partisan and pathetic issue that it is. Again, though, Bernstein operates from the assumption that it must be illegal and therefore he can build his further assumption that the hearing should focus on this as its prime impeachment point.
He tries to establish further credibility for his hypothesis by bringing the Nixon factor in, which any good Leftist knows is the sign of true criminal behavior. Nixon is the Left’s arch-criminal, an admittedly moderate, almost liberal Republican (he initiated affirmative action for the Feds and began the process of normal relations with Communist China) who is often viewed by those of the Marxian persuasion as the ultimate evil conservative. Imagine if they’d picked a real conservative to hate with such a reverence. Nixon is almost a Faustian Satan figure for them, and so why Bernstein so easily can inject his ghostly memory into the debate to assist his point (also because Nixon is how he made his bones).
When looking at the signal gathering activity of the NSA, though, the program that is being called the smoking gun, it is a counter-espionage operation begun by intelligence agencies which have never operated within the domestic law framework to ferret out enemy spies. If the FBI were involved, I could see the point, but when even several previous FISA judges (an Act I still have trouble accepting as fully Constitutional in a separation of powers role) state that they can find no illegality in the President’s authorization of counter-espionage activity of listening in on suspected Al-Qaeda sympathizers or agents, the argument of any illegality is shattered beyond repair.
The NSA has, to my knowledge, never acquired warrants to tap anyone. They just sort of do it, much as the CIA does for foreign operatives and much as the OSS did before them. Presidents from our earliest history have led and authorized such programs as is part of their executive power and have not had to tread on the 4th Amendment to do it. This sort of work falls outside the 4th Amendment by any arguable historical measure and thus as I previously stated comes out as an overblown non-issue. This discard’s Bernstein’s primary evidence when calling for his beloved Congressional hearings.
Then there is Olbermann himself asking “All parts of an equation that has another eminent voice raising the question of whether the Bush presidency is, in fact, worse than Watergate."
See the preceding paragraphs. First, Bernstein is an eminent voice only in terms of the enshrined status he’s culled from the Left. No one else really considers a journalist who arguably has not done much to standout since getting lucky riding Woodward’s coattails with Watergate as “eminent”. Watergate itself, albeit an event that has become the standard for measuring political corruption and synonymous with any and all government scandals, was pretty light in the grand scheme of government scandals. It was a simple attempt to gain campaign information on a Party that, although the Republicans didn’t know it at the time, was in horribly disarray and preparing to go down in flames in the ’72 elections. If anything, the engineers of the burglary, Dean the broken record included, were more bunglers of policy than sinister criminals. If they’d had a better feel for the population or the political climate, such criminal activity would not have even been considered.
And if I could sidebar for a moment, John Dean is a pitiful excuse for a man. History has shown that it was on his order that Liddy’s picked crew went in that second time that got them caught. It appears through some minor examination of Liddy’s statements and what we know of Dean’s wife, a former “alleged” callgirl who serviced high-power Washington clients that the burglary was more about ensuring her name wasn’t in any compromising phone directories in the Watergate offices than about collecting political intelligence. That Dean rolled over to say his own hide and used his snitch status to remain in some way relevant by being a basher of every Republican since Nixon for whatever political show will give him five minutes makes much of what he said at the time and everything he’s said since suspect and in my opinion useless as anything else than the leftist propaganda it is.
With that aside, though, Watergate, the Holy Grail, the Gold Standard of all scandals in the modern political era is being thrown about so casually in the above quote by Olbermann as his little way of trying to imply that we should take for granted that the alleged scandal we now face in the President’s doings is more dire than anything we’ve faced in recent history. More dire indeed than Clinton’s office of political amateurs requesting and holding hundreds of secret FBI files on the backgrounds and sensitive details of the lives of their political enemies. More dire than the alleged suicide of a man close to the President and First Lady in a case that is still not clearly understood. More dire than a President who bombed an aspirin factory and Iraq not so clearly out of following those same resolutions as protecting himself in his own domestic scandal ridden Presidency. That should give you a feel for where those who so easily throw around these accusations, but who remained quiet on all these issues from ’92 to 2000, stand and just how credible they are.
I hope also it has provided a little insight into how easily it is to craft a charge out of whole cloth by ignoring all things except the ideas that Republicans and America as a whole are the sole evil in the world and must be stopped at all costs. If you understand that, you pretty much understand the whole of the Left.
posted by Rob Beck | 6:39 AM
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