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Someone left some dead fish on Tom’s doorstep.
MADDOW: And I’d like to read you the lead of a story run by the AP a couple of days ago: Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge says pressure from fellow Cabinet members to raise the nation’s terror alert level just before the 2004 presidential election helped convince him it was time to quit working for President George W. Bush. Is that accurate?
Mr. RIDGE: That just proves you shouldn’t believe everything you read. It’s not. One, my decision to leave was pretty much known by the president when he asked me to take the job on in the first place. I told him, fairly confident, I would leave after the end of his first term. And secondly, at no time was anybody able – because of the system we designed and approved by President Bush, the system we created in order to raise the threat level meant one, that no one individual could raise it, and two, that the security would be always at the center. And politics couldn’t be used to raise it, either.
Shorter Ridge: you shouldn’t believe everything you read, including my book.
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Another lying liar. Who knew?
Is there a reason that these people think we want to hear from them? We have all their work product that speaks for itself, thank you very much.
Christ on a cracker, he was a lousy, lousy governor in Pennsylvania. This is like watching Dick Thornburgh – fascist to the bone – offering head to Trent Lott and the Raygun republikkkans, trying to prove that he wasn’t a “liberal.” On top of that, Ridge is a profoundly stupid man. Brains that he has are parked somewhere in his thick neck. Butthead turdbite. Isn’t much in Erie, but there’s lots better than that jumped up jackass liar punk.
I liked the earnestness of the exchange, but when RM put out that part about how not improving the decision process will limit the GOP’s credibility in the future, it was set, game, match, Grand Slam.
Ridge:
Just throw Dickless and Twitchy in the clink at The Hague and guaranteed it won’t happen again.
Dickless Cheney and Twitchy Bush, The Hague ‘10
It’s a common human failing to judge others by ourselves, which is why Ridge and his fella wingers think Rachel and audience are fools.
It is far better that Dickless and Twitchy were not impeached, leaving open the possibility that a succeeding President would PARDON them. The first crack at them must be made at The Hague, where domestic political intrigue has no reach, and where the victims of their international terror can have at them without interference.
Dickless Cheney and Twitchy Bush, The Hague ‘10
ridge flat out lies, we knew with no doubt saddam had no weapons of mass destruction long before we went to war and every inspection told us the same
every agency told him there were no weapons, the cia told him there were no weapons and his anti terror league told him there was no threat comming from Iraq and bush must keep his eye on the ball in afghanistan
none of that is questionable it’s all a matter of public record
when bush realized he wasn’t going to get anyone of the inspectors to say there were weapons that’s exactly when he ratcheted up his rhetoric to attack
ridge loses every shred of credibility he might have enjoyed and I sure hope he or someone he knows reads this blog
Someone owes me cash for copyright infringement:
Brought up from Eli’s thread last night –
Rachel kicked his butt in a nice way.
Logical, proffessional, and persistant without being overbearing.
And Ridge did not cower, granted he had to talk in circles faster and faster.
The only problem is nobody believes anything, and pols and other are allowed to talk in a way that is circular and off topic (unless its a rare political assasination – then magically people are called to account and trurh).
Ridge is gonna be here for book salon Saturday 5pET.
Mornin’, BT, pups
I emailed the News Director at WMNF Tampa to alert him that Ridge would be here Sat. I have some questions he forwarded me for Ridge. Turns out Rob went to the same high school as Ridge, later class, and Ridge returned to the school after being injured or wounded in VN, touting our involvement there. I guess Ridge hasn’t changed much in 40 years.
My, my, my but Mr. Ridge appeared to be having digestive difficulties at the beginning of this clip. Rachel gave him several openings to step in and defend himself and he just sat there, so she kept piling it on him deeper and deeper. Then, when he finally came in, he parroted a line she had just eviscerated. Sad.
It would be nice if Cheney is desparate enough to sell his book that he would have to try and peddle it on Rachel’s show.
At least he didn’t pull the shoutover gambit so loved by the right.
I’m sure the Lake would invite him for a Book Salon. *g*
Dragon, look what I stumbled across
http://aircofat.homestead.com/CallSigns.html
Morning All, That Rachel interview last night was great. I think that Ridge is a long way from the brightest bulb on the X’mas tree. Additionally, as I understand it, he was not a member of the NSC; why was that? I am looking forward to his being here on Saturday.
I don’t think the reichwingers are ever desperate to sell a book. There are enough reichwing groups buying their screeds in bulk that they shoot to the top of the NYT bestseller list. Case in point, Malkin’s latest screed is #1 according to an email I got from NYT.
Heh. I love you no shit you buy me drink? Some good pics, though. I can’t figure out what kinda boat those guys are on. And in dungarees instead of greens.
Bull. The “people” who made the decision are the same people who continue to lie about that decision and continue to lie today about the use and “effectiveness” of torture. The “people” who made the decision are Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney is a liar and and a psychopath.
So, it’s radical even to suggest that Dick Cheney, Doug Feith, George Bush, Condi Rice are liars? So, even though there is ample proof of those people and others engaged with that group lying repeatedly for years right on through to the present it’s “radical” even to “suggest” that those SOB’s always ‘predicated their decisions upon the “threat” that they “knew more about”. That kind of poppycock has got to be strangled.
Also, before Ridge said all of that crap, Rachel had just called him out on the fallacy that it was supposedly all the intelligence agency that got it wrong and not the liars of the administration who got it wrong or more accurately lied to us. But he ignored that and pretended to be defending the ‘faceless, innocent hard working’ “men and women” who work in the shadows. What a disgusting tool of phony is Tom Ridge.
OT Al Jazeera reports on the Iranian nuclear confrontation. A must read if wishing to avoid teh propaganda. In short: NO UNWARENTED NUCLEAR ACTIVITY BY IRAN. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, imperial hegemon.
Can do
Unfortunately, they can ignore comments/questions they don’t like. Having once been summoned to appear before a junior high counsellor, who was much like Rachel, I can attest that it’s a much tougher venue. My inteview started with her asking, very politely with the same eye contact as Rachel’s, “Are you stupid?”
Does Malkin’s book come with a free box of crayolas?
Sorry, link http://english.aljazeera.net/n…..94871.html
Cheney still wants to bomb them!
OT for Raven
Yo, troop — ‘unit-wise’, all is copasetic?
Dunno, CT scan yesterday, scope next Tuesday. . .the waiting is the hardest part!
Well, Ridge will likely have to ignore all the Qs here on Saturday.
It’s in a report just released by the IAEA. Heard about it on NPR headlines this morning.
I thought I saw a mention of a free video of jumping lessons.
Well, hope all goes well for you. No pun intended — hang in there.
Have to give the dude credit for showin’ up, if he does. This is a tough crowd.
The right with it’s multiple agendas came to power in 2000 (by stealing an election) and embarked on pursuing these agendas which benefit many special interests. The administration was one where loyalty to the mission and the admin trumped everything else. They had power and they were going to weird it.
Every decision that took was to further their multiple agendas. Some wanted to see Iraq and Iran taken down because Israel didn’t want them as a threat. Some wanted a shot at all the oil in Iraq. Some wanted to avenge the Iranian hostage humiliation. Some wanted to project strong US power around the world in some paranoid vision that the world was out to get us. Some wanted to secure access to markets any and everywhere. Some wanted to see more money go to the MIC and to do that a threat was needed. Some wanted less taxes so they could be more obscenely rich and not have the government take what they saw as theirs and they hated the idea that they would pay for “welfare queens, wetbacks and layabouts who did nothing”, Some wanted to further their insane religious dreams of christian hegemony in America and the world. They wanted to grab the SS trust fund.
The powers behind W marshalled all these special interest groups and set about the manufacture the conditions which would allow them to pursue each of these agendas. They already owned the message machine, they had a dumbed down easily manipulated population and off the went. They even stole the 04 election to continue this agenda.
In 08 they left the country in shambles having largely succeeded in giving all the interests groups what they wanted or close to it.
He’s of the prior generation of Rs, who just smile and spin. Expect that’s what he’ll do here. But quite a coup to get him, if, indeed, he shows up.
Thanks, it is difficult to know what information and slant that it is given is getting through. Al Jazeera is my trusted source and if the information is substantually equal, I rest easier. Back to the regular programming…
Shorter Ridge: you shouldn’t believe everything you read, including my book.
well that’s a ‘novel’ way of trying to sell his book of “non-fiction”….
Rob sent me 4 tough questions, one of which Ridge has half-ass answered about waterboarding being torture.
Go for it.
I’m off to make some tomato sauce. Despite the blight, there seem to be enough around.
Well, Ridge will likely have to ignore all the Qs here on Saturday.
One does have to wonder who the PR person is behind this tour. First Rachel, then us?
“Don’t worry Tom – it’ll be a piece of cake.”
right.
Off to swim in the great capitalist cesspool.
US KIA Irak: 4336
US KIA Afghanistan: 813
Be good to yourselves, and all other living things.
Namaste
I know. Maybe we could use the Rachel approach: “If you are not yet contemplating hira-kiri, perhaps you would tell us if you think the public would have supported the invasion for the sole purpose of establishing a happy little democracy in Iraq.”
Scarecrow is upstairs…
Does anyone remember Ridge being interviewed by someone (Jon Stewart?) after he (Ridge) left office and smiling and laughing about the color-coding – pretty much admitting that it was all bs.
Note the way H.S. has seemingly abandoned the alert system and dispelled the climate of anxiety about terrorism under Obama. And yet they seem to be killing a fair number of AQ in Pakistan.
I just searched the Stewart interview and then watched it. Ridge denied any politics in ‘Terror Alert’. But, yes, he was smugly and vapidly yucking it up.
Cheney on RM? Hmmm ….wouldn’t he have to face IMD, Information of Mass Destruction. He’s a coward and RM would destroy him.
He seems not to have lived through the same past 9 years that I did.
“That’s pretty radical” to believe the W admin. knew there weren’t WMD and went ahead and drummed up a war on lies?
Yeah, it shocks the conscience. That just isn’t done! This is America! We never do anything wrong.
Therefore it wasn’t done, and didn’t happen, and he can sit back and call us radicals and look complacent.
Perception is reality.
Go over to msnbc.com and play the video. Multiple times. Drive Rachel’s numbers through the roof and make her impossible to ignore.
Here’s the link.
She makes me wish I were a woman so I would have a chance with her.
Ridge:
Except that these bogus “orange alerts” [remember the airplane bomb attack on the Los angeles airport, the plots to destroy the Statue of Liberty, Disneyland, and the series of French flights that had terrorists that turned out to be a 7 year old kid, a grandma, and a bunch of well-respected French businessmen] continued well into 2006.
Ridge is right in one respect, it wasn’t that the procedures used in the alerts before the 2004 election were an anomaly. There wasn’t anything unusual about what Rummy, Cheney and others did in 2004. It was Standard Operating Procedure. ALL the alerts were politically based…both in timing, and in the evidence used to trigger them.
Proof perfect: Did one single “orange alert” lead to finding a bomb, or terrorist cell, or thwarting an imminent attack?
Yeah, and chickens can fly. Let’s start wondering if any of former Bush aids, office holders, cabinet members, just anyone is going to come out with a positive take on what this bafoon did for 8 years. So far there have been none. And Ridge is another example of writing one thing and then himhawing around it when questioned. All Ridges book does is lend credibility with what many suspected, that politics lead the way by faking, in this case, the threat level. I shake my head in amazement when I hear conservatives talk with pride about Bush’s remarkable military prowess in ordering the surge. All the surge did was put more military in harms way in a war that should have never happened. Its like Bush found a better, stronger stink spray to try and cover the awful odor this whole thing has caused.
Ridge appears to disply a liars tell. For each lie he ’sniffs’ on the rigght side of his face.
I can’t believe he will show up here. Do you think his schedulers just tell him “here’s whree you’ll be today,” and he doesn’t bother to find out anything about the audience?
I wonder if we can all be as polite as Rachel…
Why was Conan (O’Brien?) questioning Tom Ridge on Rachel Maddow’s show?
“Don’t worry Tom – it’ll be a piece of cake.”
As Rachel demonstrated, it’s Tom who’s the piece of cake, and Rachel very neatly sliced him up. Expect similar dismemberment at Ridge’s Book Salon appearance.
Good post Kitt..
However I’d like to add more hopefully to open your eyes to what is beneath this mess. Please read my post #25 located on another aticle here.
http://emptywheel.firedoglake……the-right/
This new White House Coup is like a Movement involving almost too many people to count. We’ve been dealing with lies enough to fill libraries since Bush was in office. 911 was the kick off for efforts in the Coup. As per the family I was in, the ongoing lies are by design meant to keep us runningin circles. Hopefully now we are calling a spade a spade and will get past the lies into what lays beneath and that is the Coup attempt.
I was told back in the 90’s that following 911 (then it was called something else) we would see our economy collapse. Watching the news, there is ongoing efforts to make us all feel safe and good that things are changing for the good but there are reports they aren’t. Because “Mind Control” schemes are used to try to manipulate our perceptions we have to be aware that things may not be as what they say. Reading the many posts, it’s clear many people are distrusting rather than trusting anything reported and this is for good reason.
If you read my post, please accept that good things are happening. AT least there is some good news to report….
There is a lot to talk about regarding this for another time….
Marty Didier
Northbrook, IL
Tom Ridge gets to have his cake and eat it, too. He can write in plain english that he worried whether the alert system was being politicized, then go and say it wasn’t politicized, because in that one instance he’s talking about, the alert wasn’t raised. Then he can go on a ‘liberal’ talk show and do everything in his power to further muddy the water he (and his publisher) have already muddied, by dissembling and being unclear.
What to look for in the near future: Ridge on right-wing talk shows claiming he was misquoted and taken out of context by the Librul Meedja. Then his wingnut welfare credentials will be complete, and he’ll be able to get any book published he so desires.