The Funny Farm

The following is excerpts from a letter from Lying Republican't Weasel Counselor to the President Ed Gillespie to NBC News President Steve Capus:

Mr. Capus:

This e-mail is to formally request that NBC Nightly News and The Today Show air for their viewers President Bush's actual answer to correspondent Richard Engel's question about Iran policy and "appeasement," rather than the deceptively edited version of the President's answer that was aired last night on the Nightly News and this morning on The Today Show. Deceptively editing politician's answers instead of airing actual answers is only okay as long as Republican'ts are the ones doing it!

In the interview, Engel asked the President: "You said that negotiating with Iran is pointless, and then you went further. You said that it was appeasement. Were you referring to Senator Barack Obama?"

The President responded: "You know, my policies of hyper-partisanship, hypocrisy, and lying my a$$ off in public haven't changed, but evidently the political calendar has. People need to read the speech. You didn't get it exactly right, either. What I thought I said was is that we need to take the words of people seriously. Like, when I was making statements comparing Democratic politicians to traitors. Or when I lied about Iraqi WMD in the State of the Union address. Or when I said that a dictatorship would be a hell of a lot easier, as long as I was the dictator. And when, you know, a leader of Iran says that they want to destroy Israel, you've got to take those words seriously. Or when a leader of the most powerful nation in the world says, I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office.. And if you don't take them seriously, then it harkens back to a day when we didn't take other words seriously. It was fitting that I talked about not taking the words of Adolf Hitler seriously on the floor of the Knesset. But I also talked about the need to defend Israel, the need to not negotiate with the likes of al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas. And the need to make sure Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon."

This answer makes clear: (1). The President thinks his remarks before the Knesset were not different from past policy statements, but are now being looked at through a political prism, (2). Catapults the propaganda that Corrects the inaccurate premise of Engel's question by putting the "appeasement" line in the proper context of taking the words of leaders who are not Illegally Installed Drunken Cokeheaded Deserters seriously, not "negotiating with Iran," (3). Restates the U.S.'s long-standing policy positions against negotiating with al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas, and not allowing Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon while also taking a partisan shot at the leading Democratic frontrunner for president.

[Editors' Note: In fact, what Putsch said was: “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.” The pRetzelDunce forgot to mention that it was an isolationist Republican't senator who made this statement in the thirties, and, in his response, he also failed to note that CNN’s Ed Henry reported that, while “President Bush never uttered the words Barack Obama,” his White House sources tell Ed it was clearly intended to be a partisan shot: White House aides are acknowledging that this was a reference to the fact that Sen. Obama and other Democrats have publicly said that it would be ok for the U.S. President to meet with leaders like the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

Funny how Mr. Gillespie fails to note that in this letter, innit? ]

Engel's immediate follow-up question was, "Repeatedly you've talked about Iran and that you don't want to see Iran develop a nuclear weapon. How far away do you think Iran is from developing a nuclear capability?"

The President replied, "You know, Richard, I don't want to speculate – and there's a lot of speculation. As opposed to, you know, the fear mongering on Iraq and mushroom clouds appearing above american cities in forty-five minutes. But one thing is for certain – we need to prevent them from learning how to enrich uranium. And I have made it clear to the Iranians that there is a seat at the table for them if they would verifiably suspend their enrichment. And if not, we'll continue to rally the world to isolate them."

This response reiterates another long-standing policy, which is that if Iran doesn't jump when the Texas Souffle says to jump verifiably suspends its uranium enrichment program the U.S. government would nuke their A$$es back to the Stone Age engage in talks with the Iranian government.

NBC's selective editing of the President's response is clearly intended to give viewers the impression that he agreed with Engel's characterization of his remarks when he explicitly challenged it. Furthermore, he omitted the fear mongering references to al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas and ignored the weaselly lies clarifying point in the President's follow-up response that U.S. policy is to require Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment program before coming to the table, not that "negotiating with Iran is pointless" and amounts to "appeasement." That was said earlier, before we realized that american people aren't buying the Dunsel In Chief's bull$hit any more.

This deceitful editing to further a media-manufactured storyline is utterly misleading and irresponsible - that's our job! - and I hereby request in the interest of covering the Disaster Monkey's butt fairness and accuracy that the network air the President's responses to both initial questions in full on the two programs that used the excerpts.

As long as I am reaming you out for daring to make my boss look bad making this formal request, please allow me to take this opportunity to ask if your network has reconsidered its position that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war, especially in light of the fact that it makes Drinky McDumbA$$ look like the clueless moran he is the unity government in Baghdad recently rooted out illegal, extremist groups in Basra and reclaimed the port there for the people of Iraq, among other significant signs of progress. Never mind that my respose does not answer the question of whether Iraq is in a civil war or not. Do I have to bring out some retired generals on the administration's payroll to debunk and ridicule you again?

On November 27, 2006, NBC News made a decision to no longer just cover the news in Iraq, but to make an analytical and editorial judgment that Iraq was in a civil war without the specific approval and/or blessing of this adminsitration. As you know, both the lying weasels currently running United States government into the ground and the puppet Government of Iraq that was installed despite the wishes of the Iraqi people disputed your account at that time. As Matt Lauer said that morning on The Today Show: "We should mention, we didn't just wake up on a Monday morning and say, 'Let's call this a civil war.' This took careful deliberation.'"

I noticed that around September of 2007, your network quietly stopped referring to conditions in Iraq as a "civil war." Is it still NBC News's carefully deliberated opinion that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war? If not, will the network publicly declare that the civil war has ended, or that it was wrong to declare it in the first place? Never mind that this adminsitration has repeatedly lied about pretty much everything, and has failed to publicly apologize for lying to the american people, or that it has been wrong about pretty much everything.

[snip]

Furthermore, never in our nation's history have we characterized economic conditions as a "recession" with unemployment so low – in fact, when this rate of unemployment was eventually reached in the 1990s, it was hailed as the sign of a strong economy. This rate of unemployment is lower than the average of the past three decades. Never mind that the United states changed the way unemployment is calculated in order to give the impression that unemployment is low. And we changed the way inflation is calculated in order to cover up the fact that, if we were using the inflation calculations from the Carter adminsitration, the inflation rate would currently be above 10%.

Are there numbers besides the "government number" to go by? Is there reason to believe "the government number" is suspect? How does the release of positive economic growth for two consecutive quarters, albeit limited, stop "just short of the official declaration of a recession"? Never mind that we cherry picked the numbers to make it look this way. Just say what we tell you to say, report on what we want you to report on the way we want it reported, and stop saying mean things about us!