Tonight's Lehrer PBS Newshour shows Shields must be reading "Whiskey Bar!"

[KoKo]

because Shield's honed in on the failures of "Intelligence on Iraq's WMD" over and over and over. Everytime that ASSHOLE Brook's opened his PNAC Mouth to defend Rove...Shields hit him with what Billmon pointed out in a very "wise" article about how we can miss the forest for the trees if we focus on Rove and Plame...we miss the WMD LIES that allowed the Chimpster to lead us into Iraq and change the dialog from finding "Osama" to stopping Iraq from Nukeing, Gassing or otherwise attacking America. I haven't watched "Newshour" in years but I got caught up in the massive media onslaught against Rove...and tuned in... I stopped watching because of Brooks and Gigot and their RW ideology that was so much more blatent that when "Gergen and Shields" were the commentators.
Shields became to DLCish and so I left after 2000 Selection.

Tonight, I did see Shields try to "refocus the topic of Fitzgerald's Investigation to where it should be ...according to Billmon as he reports on his Blog. I agree with Billmon on this, btw...although I still want Joe Wilson and his wife to be restored their dignity after what they've suffered.

---------------

Sideshow
-SNIP-

The GOP noise machine appears to be having some success with its smear Joe Wilson campaign -- if only because so many lefties are now talking about that and not about how many White House officials are going to be indicted along with Karl Rove.

-snip-

But it's even worse than that. By defending the Wilsons, Left Blogostan simply helps Right Blogostan keep the focus off of Rove and his White House dirty tricks operation. It boggles the mind that more than a year after Fitzpatrick subpoened the records of the "White House Iraq Group," and nearly a week after the Newsweek story highlighted the obvious connection between Plame's outing and the administration's WMD disinformation campaign, virtually nothing about this shadowy committee has appeared in the mainstream press. If Left Blogostan can do anything useful here, it will be to urge (we're not strong enough to intimidate) the corporate media to keep the focus on Rove, and to point the direction we think they should be going to develop the larger story.

The Wilsons, to be perfectly blunt about it, are expendable -- or, more precisely, beyond our power to rescue. On the political battlefield, defending their credibility (particularly Ambassador Wilson's) is a sideshow at best, a distracting diversion at worse. The only thing that really matters about either of them is whether Valerie Plame was a covert CIA operative for the purposes of the Agee law, and/or whether the disclosure of her identity constituted a violation of the espionage statute. And those questions, thank God, will be settled in a court of law, not the media or the blogosphere.
http://www.billmon.org/

[Fridays Child]

1. Damn Liberal!

:woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

[Burried News]

8. We went to war on a lie and anyone who could provide

evidence for the truth was attacked and shouted down. The tactics continue unabated - they must - there is no truth for them to defend.
There is also no truth to defend them or moderate the wrath of the public.

So they must gamble all on bigger lies. If they fail now they take a whole party with them. Are they too big to fail? Hell no. We won't go.

[movonne]

2. I guess that treason is a tiny little miss speak..

[Cha]

3. Good for Mark Shields..

It's way Bigger than rove and "Wilson's Wife".

But, I so much want the Wilsons to have their "dignity restored", too, KoKo!

[Ilsa]

4. I think we may have screwed up with our enthusiasm

over seeing Rove doing the frog-march. The focus needs to remain on letting the investigation continue, keeping it in the public's mind, even if it is the third story so when they are indicted, it will hit like a ton of bricks, and not appear to be a partisan smear campaign as the Repugs are sure to claim. I think everyone other than Susan Collins looked petty after they aired what went on in the Senate last night.

Yes, Congresscritters need to make sure it doesn't die off. And I think a case can be made for Rove resigning given, at minimum, they haven't been forthcoming in their explanations. They wanted to see the Democratic Party get hung out to dry on this, publicity-wise.

You are so right: The lack of WMD and the peripheral lies is the backbone of the story, and it should continue to be. This cover-up and lies should come as well. And Valerie Plame should have justice, as should Amb. Wilson for all the abuse he's taken.

[Son of California]

5. YES YES YES

forget Wilson, the Repubs want us losing focus and griping about Wilson, lets talk about Rove! ROVE ROVE ROVE! not Wilson.

thats their whole strategy.

No more trying to contest their nasty statements about Wilson.
Keep it focused like a laser on Rove, on the leak, on the damage it did to our war on terror.

[Rob H.]

6. I saw part of it tonight, too

Every time Brooks opened his mouth I wanted to put my fist through the television. He actually said that he wasn't sure a crime had been committed seconds after saying that Novak called Rove and Rove confirmed that what Novak had heard was true with regard to Wilson's wife being a CIA operative! (Note to Brooks: confirming Plame's identity as a government operative is exactly as bad and illegal as revealing Plame's identity as a government operative--I could be wrong, but it seems to me that it's pretty much the same thing.) To top that off, Brooks also said he didn't think the leak was important enough for Rove to lose his job over it. Goddamned ass-kissing, RNC talking point-repeating, BushCo-defending prick. :grr:


Edited to add: Brooks also claimed that Wilson's report on Hussein's alleged attempts to buy yellowcake uranium actually did not say that Hussein had not attempted to purchase it from Niger. I think it was at that point that I started yelling and swearing and finally just turned the TV off in frustration.

[Jacobin]

7. I check the Whiskey Bar daily

Must read blog, love his style, his writing and the content is always interesting and well researched.

This investigations is going to go on for a while, then the charges, then the trial (if any) and I think we need to be patient.

[kodi]

9. what? shields did a piss poor job responding to brooks' lies

maybe we were watching different shows. but shields acted like a dottering old fool who allowed brooks to lie in statement after statement and the example in the original post is not even debated any more. people have moved on.

believe what you want, but brooks reinforced the right wing memes in every statement he made, while all shields did was state the obvious.

simply stating that bush lied about wmds and the reasons for attacking iraq should have been tied into the why the right wing continues to lie about virtually everything in the wilson affair, and shields did not point out a single lie brooks had made concerning this. shields had abundant opportunity to hang brooks on his lies, but he didn't. it was like shields was in an altzheimer moment.

there are 10,000 DUers who could have responded better than shields did in that program. i was so disgusted i started hollering at my tv set at shields

[KoKo]

10. Yes, but Kodi, we all know that getting in a "pissing match" with the RW

always leaves egg on our Dem faces. There is no way we can really score points against "OUTRAGEOUS LIES" by them and attacks that we can't defend because we don't have time to express the nuances of any argument for our side.

I said what I did about Shields because he managed to focus the conversation on the bigger picture while ignoring getting in the pissing match with Brooks that Brooks would have dominated.

Shields turned the conversation to "what was the importance of this leak to our National Security?" "Why is it important that Rove got involved in this." Whereas Brooks just kept repeating the RW Talking Points Shields managed to outflank him. At least as I saw it. But I wasn't counting on Shields to be an attack dog...we Dems don't have those kinds of people. Without vocal leaders those who want to help us Dems have to be more clever in redirecting converstations rather than going head on into the battle which is what the Repugs always try to bully us into..so that they win. :shrug:

[kodi]

11. brooks carpet bombed with lies and shields just ignored it. that's stupid

koko, I happen to like you a great deal, and have for years around here so please do not take personally that i disagree with you.

but, perhaps you haven't been keeping up on current events, the right wing has been kicking our asses by lying and distoring the facts for years and all the trembling knee liberals do is suck their teeth and preach comity.

has that way gotten them anywhere?

and i am serious here, has their weakneed willy attitude gotten them anywhere?

i don't know, perhaps we should ask john kerry about that.

a dozen years ago the democrats held the white house and both houses of congress, now they are on the outside looking in, precisely because they have been unwilling to call a spade a spade, and all because they think that people will just, oh naturally come to their senses.

democrats and liberals need to stop living in a fantasyland, where some sort of sky god will come down from heaven and save the day because they have "right" on their side. they are going to have to do it themselves and they had better get used to being bloodied regularly in the process.

being nice has taken the nation to near ruin and thousands of americans killed and wounded by the right wing's methods.

good does not always triumph over evil and in fact unless defended tooth and nail never does.

this is not bean ball or some sort of campfire game where we all sit holding hands around singing kumbayah.

maybe rove was right. if liberals are not willing to go toe to toe to defend their positions and the truth whenever it is maligned then they deserves scorn.

shields did not "outflank" anyone. the bigger picture you so admirably bespeak is meaningless because people don't care about it. the right wing "gets" that, the democrats don't.

instead of applauding shields for speaking to the choir, i am pissed as hell because he once again let brooks put up obscenely distorted remarks without a rebutting them one iota.

it may well be that democrats do not have what you call attack dogs, but they had better start breeding them, and in a hurry, because if they don't the right wing in this country will continue to roll over them like a bulldozer.

and yet, here the point is that shields did not have to be any kind of attack dog, but at least he ought to have the sense not to let brooks get away with such blatant lying on national television.

the only way to stop them from lying is not to ignore the lies, but to confront them head on in an aggressive manner. they won't stop doing it if they are not challenged on it.

and shields, being a tough old ex-marine ought to know that. it was a totally clueless performance. i happen to like mark shields a great deal, and have made a point of watching him (and gergen, then gigot, then brooks)on friday nights for over 15 years on McNeil-Lehrer. his argument had all the cluelessness of a man who preaches that exercise and diet are good for your health whilst the man he preaches to is laying there with a gaping head wound.

democrats and liberals in general have to draw a line in the sand and say "here, no more, beyond this point brings our swift and terrible wrath."

instead, what we have is elmer fudd backing up each time bugs bunny crosses the line.

[KoKo]

12. No problem....I agree with all of what you say btw about Dems not

standing up...have done my share of ranting about it. I guess because I had to tune out the media for so long to keep my sanity (what I have left :D) I didn't see Shields as bad as the Bidens and Crossfire's Begala and Tweety were back when I turned it all off. I wasn't expecting much from him, and he should have done better ...but I hoped that his turning the conversation back to what Wilson's report was about was a good sign that if he couldn't attack at least he deflected what that ass Brooks was spouting.

I wish Dem commentators would learn. It's not like they couldn't afford some coaching, but maybe the "will" just isn't there. :-(

Anyway, I enjoyed reading your comments. :hug: