TV and Radio: the Pungent Pundits

Have you all read about the 'Banana Republic'–type sound-bites, that the remnants of the rabid–Right were shrieking about that all weekend?

Don't believe me? Go read the Top 10 Conservative Idiots (April 27) at Democraticunderground. (Under Point #2)

It's funny to watch how the Right treats a singular sound–bite like a caterwauling ping–pong ball, bouncing it back and forth between each other just as fast as the average brainwashing victim can absorb it... (Some ZEN questions follow the quotes...); enjoy a recent four–day spew–spree:

Starting with:

Radio host Bill Cunningham (April 21):

(NB: while producing this post, the links to Media Matters would not work; maintenance? Hacking?):

“Well, we shouldn't criminalize legal advice ... It makes us look ... like a banana republic, where each succeeding administration looks backwards.”

and same day service:

Karl Rove (naturally: also on April 21):

“... what we're going to do is we're going to turn ourselves into the moral equivalent of a Latin American country run by colonels in mirrored sunglasses, and what we're gonna do is prosecute systematically the previous administration or threaten prosecutions against the previous administration based on policy differences.”

and overnight:

Sean Hannity (April 22):

“All I hear is a bunch of mealy-mouthed complaining about how this prosecution threat is unprecedented and we don't need to investigate past administrations like they do in, you know, these Third World, you know, dictatorships...”

same–day service:

Sen. Arlen Specter (again: April 22):

“If there is evidence of criminality, then the Attorney General has the full authority and should prosecute it. But going after the prior administration sounds like something they do in Latin America in banana republics.”

by the way(side)? Or by the wave:

Radio host Mark Steyn (April 23):

“In banana republics, this week's president for life takes over, and he decides that all the fellows that supported last week's president for life are now criminals, and he prosecutes them. And that's what -- that's what the Obama administration has done.”

of course, not to forget:

TV pungent pundit Glenn Beck (April 23):

“Your principles as the president of the United States needs to be, we don't make ourselves into a banana republic.”

could you believe we're not finished (?):

Sen. Kit Bond (same day! April 23):

“This whole thing about punishing people in past administrations reminds me more of a banana republic than the United States of America.”

and of course, the Man himself:

Sen. John McCain (April 24):

“It adds fuel to the fire for demands for criminalizing the legal advice that the president was given. We set that kind of precedent, we're no better than a banana republic.”

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

Now the questions ZEN would ask, may be quite complicated...

Here we go: Cunningham appears to be the first to mention these two 'bites' that recur throughout these quotes, whether in 'the sense of' or 'literally'...

Those bites are 'criminalize(-d, -ing) legal advice' and 'Banana Republic'... and we realize that they refer to the Obama Administration discussing the results of the disclosed 'torture memos', and their authors.

Reference is certainly towards the Obama Administration taking a look at whether these are indictable offences, against Yoo, Bybee, Feith and others (without mentioning the just provocation brought about by the Spanish Judge's discussions of whether to bring cases against the above–named personnel).

So are the Right's pungent pundits *coincidentally* following Rove, and simply 'regurgitating' the sound–bite du jour? OR are they doing their active duty to share in the brainwashing of their followers, that rabid but vocal minority of non–realist Rightwingers, whose basis for tainted thought are that the country is going downhill 'today' because of a President in office for less than four months? (100 days on Wednesday!)

So, would readers agree (?): we're looking at a 24/4 news–cycle (four days) in which the American people heard the Rabid Right railing against Obama, and denoting a comparison to a 'Banana Republic'.

Does anyone else see signs of latent racism in the word chosen, itself?

'Banana'... jungle? Monkeys?... (prepare yourself for the logical endpoint) ...'jungle bunnies'? ju–ju–just wonderin'...

Now moving into even more obvious things: if all the information being released now, was 'classified' during the Bush misAdministration, and it equates with illegal activities, is there some sacrosanct reason that it shouldn't be investigated? Like 'we're Republicans so we're above the law?'

Why did Rove (above) use the 'future tense', that is: a compound verb combining whatever with 'going to'?

When we began to torture in 2001 and 2002 (concurrent with the memoranda in discussion, and before), based on those memos (reportedly even prior), Bush even went on the record to say:

“The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy.”

Now don't get riled up when seeing the word 'hypocritical' again, in one of my diatribes against America's 'Worst President Ever'.

Because, given any knowledge of International Public Law, once we descend to the level of a torturing–country, we enter the realms of the Banana Republics: of Latin America, Africa or Asia (Central Europe to a much lesser degree), not to mention the Middle East. So with Rove putting this comparison into a future tense, it smacks of the US Media putting out its own 'influence' to 'shape' affairs (read: American opinions) to come. Or do the millions of ZEN readers (cough...) have another idea?

Continuing:

Go back up and look at Steyn's comment... We'll wait. Here's the ZEN thought: a 'benefactor' may take over in a Developing Country, just as easily as could a 'despot'. Sometimes, as Steyn said, it's just a junta, like when Saddam Hussein took over Iraq as a Colonel in the Iraqi Army... sometimes it's a better regime coming in, whether we 'sponsored' that takeover or otherwise. So if they find evidence of criminal acts, should they not prosecute? (meaning in those DevCountries, or there in the USA?)

And on purely intellectual terms: if 'criminalizing legal advice' is different from 'providing criminal legal advice' what would one think makes it different?

IOW: If ZEN give someone 'legal advice' (which itself would be illegal per se, as I am not a Member of the Bar...) in how to rip off the State of Colorado in some land transaction, and that person acted through the 'justification' ZEN offered, do readers think the State has no right to prosecute the actor, because in fact what they did, based on our 'advice', was in fact illegal?

(Hint: that person would probably call in 'their advisor' (Zm) on a counter–claim)

Realizing that America is now over 70pc in favor of the Obama tide, the number or percentage of Americans who still place their 'faith' (certainly not their LOGIC) in any of the above Pungent Pundit losers, is perpetually shrinking. (NB: will Phil Gramm ever 'rise again'...?)

If readers still need yet another analogy, maybe we can agree on this one: the President of the USA, and his Vice President, get 'legal advice' that it's really no problem if the President takes an American Flag and drops it into a mud puddle.

The entire country is divided on the issue of whether 'flag-mudding' is illegal or not. Turns out that it is illegal. Totally illegal. Boy Scouts know this; Brownies know it; the Marines know it. But the President has 'legal advice' that the act is legal. 49pc of the Congress calls for an investigation. The Majority Party refuses (as they are the same party as the President).

Is it 'wrong' for the newly Elected President to prosecute any known crime that is not outside the 'Statute of Limitations'???

Thus: is America to be a State governed under the Rule of Law, or do minority Pungent Pundits have a supernatural force that dictates that they alone know how the country should be reacting to the evil stench of evidence regarding Torture promulgated by the RepubliCANT Party?

___çç*******/ ZENmud \*******çç___

© 2009

MOUNTING PYTHONS...

How can one possibly be assured that Global Warming is not a myth?

It's really more simple than one could imagine: visit any 'chat room' that pits an American RepublicanT against, dare we say it: those of us living in the rational, real world, and 'watch' the insults fly out of the mouths of these RepublicanT demagogues...

“Dumb–ass libs”

“Knee–jerk libs”

“Stupid libs”

What one can note from such displays of personal insecurity, of entranced and entrenched adhesion to the failures of a Bush era gone to hell, in the complicity of the worse–than–ever American Media (MSM: mainstream media), is their swift ability to attack the very people that, assuredly, will extend to them a hand in the coming turbulent times.

It will be liberals, in the American sense, that restore some dignity to the national palate, after again an eight year period that perpetuated the Republican's third WAR FOREVER opus (After the War on Communism, and the War on Drugs, we 'won' the right to endure the Republicans' War on Terrorism).

And if by some miracle, the Democratic Party does not win seventy per cent of the House and Senate, Americans will continue to wonder how illegal voting machines are used in every State, how illegal disenfranchisement 'computer screens' are implemented in States like Florida, and how the MSM works night and day, to twist every covered story (remember the ZENmud Law on Journalism: often what IS NOT covered, is more important than what IS...) to give it the lustre of 'Reps GOOOOOD, Dems BAAAAD'.

So, in the European press this weekend, it was announced that the rising global temperature ranges, have rendered the south–eastern band of the United States into the proper climate for expansion of the Giant Python's territory.

Read an article on the Florida Python craze, here.

And as the existence of blind Republican trolls isn't a stranger to the ZEN family (biological or social), those who live in the Rockies are amazed that 'global warming means more snow! Bring it on!', while those closer to ZEN Central (throughout the Swiss–French–Netherlands–Italian ranges), often in the high echelons of banking management, are content to bitch about high oil prices, while fueling up their SUVs or Maseratis or whatever.

Do pythons, capable of attaining five meters' length, suddenly infesting the Everglades and other Floridian swamps, bode well for your little FIDO in the Louisiana bayous? Put it this way... Fido has already survived smaller snakes, alligators and who knows what... but will curiosity better then native defenses of your small furry ball of happiness? The slithering snaky sounds amplified into an Indiana–Jonesian mythic dimension, could find Toto tampering with destiny.

And, in the spirit of ZENmud, since this photo in the EVERGLADES is from 2005, are we sure that these beasts, capable of swimming over sixty kilometers in several hours, are not here to stay? Or that this old-news is surfacing without other mitigating motivations?

So when evidence of 'side benefits', such as Colorado (or Alpine) snows in May make one laugh, while cities swelter already and the typhoon season has destroyed Myanmar's coastal territories and, in the Alpen valleys of the Swiss Ticino (Italian linguistic and border region of CH), one town registered 137 liters of water per square meter, during twelve hours, last Saturday: remember your math?

One square meter = 10.76391 sq. ft.

One liter = 61.023744 cubic inches

So 137 L / 12 hours = 11.42 L/hr = (+/-) four inches per hour?

Of such numbers (and here at ZENmud, we certainly enjoy being corrected mathematically: a discipline that was given up between High School and University, for several reasons...), 'Biblical Proportions' becomes an understatement. No news of flooding, such as we remember from the Big Thompson Flood, that hit Colorado in the late 1970s...

What ends this piece is the observation that, to avoid communal catastrophes, one has to have a heart and ability to: a) want to hand a better planet to those who follow us; b) have the mental moral strength to self–impose the limitations of lifestyle that allow for –a– to happen; c) not get lost in the greed of 'keeping up with the Jones', that permits the free–rider mentality to impose egotism as if it was not one factor of the biggest (if not in nearly every) crime(s) against humanity...

Just as the grandmothers of today's Conservatives, were given (in the USA) the right to vote by the Liberal voters of that era, so to are the Conservatives of today (and many gas-guzzling liberal automobile owners) going to be, of necessity, brought along, screaming and whining and bitching about 'Damn Liberals' messing with the Universe 'as they wanted and knew it'...

But the sound bite and slander cannot stand in the way of the Truth OR the Reality... very much longer.

___ç-ç*******/ ZENmud \*******ç-ç___
© 2008