Liberal panelist Ellen Ratner on FOXNews’ “The Long & the Short of It,” discussing the Democrats’ position on withdrawing troops from Iraq:
“If you got [Dem leaders] in a room off camera everyone agrees, but people are trying to look tough on security so the Democrats can win the House back in 2006.”
Shot back Newsday‘s resident libertarian, Jim Pinkerton, “viewers should note that Ellen basically said that Democrats will think one thing and say another.”
Which, while true, is hardly a surprise—though Ratner’s candor suggests either 1) a minor rhetorical misstep; or 2) that the Dems are so convinced that they’ve successfully written the narrative on Iraq that they can finally relax a little bit and wink at their own Machiavellian successes at elevating partisan politics above national security.
Pick ‘em.
(h/t Slayerdaddy)
I vote for “Ellen Ratner’s too dumb to watch what comes out of her mouth.”
Well, it’s not like she’s the sharpest tack in the bulletin board.
Wha? Look tough on security by pulling out?
I can think of a whole lot better things associated with that term… and security aint one of them.
I’d rather shoot ‘em.
Progressively, of course.
“Newsday‘s resident libertarian, Jim Pinkerton”
..and to think, I once worked with him when he was a humble book shelver at the Wyoming Institute of Stalinist/Lesbian Middle Eastern Studies for Marxist Dwarves….
I think your political pundits should all just back off and leave your poor beleagured President to sort this whole dang Iraq mess by himself.
You have no idea how much amusement that is
providing the rest of us…I mean, the man has trouble opening doors without assistance….
xxx
Roberta
p.s. Everyone seems to have forgotten that A$$hole Hussein in the midst of all the partisanship – why??
Wrod vcerifictation: feeling
So smiple!!
I am truly puzzled by this. How could Ellen ratner get on national TV when she is as dumb as a sack of hammers? This woman probably couldn’t even pass the test to get on community TV. She is the embodiment of the Cretinism that has become the stock and trade of the left (is “Cretinism” capitalized? Anybody know?).
I was watching a bunch of different shows this morning, and have come to the conclusion that the Dem’s and the MSM HAVE hijacked the whole debate. Who is the asshole (NBC I think) with the blonde hair and the attitude that he is THE smartest man on the planet? What a jerk. He talks as though it is HIM (with a little help from the Dems) who has forced the Bush administration into backing down. What a maroon.
Bush made a HUGE mistake by letting out that there are plans to start drawing down the troop levels in Iraq, because now the Dems and the MSM are taking the credit.
I just don’t understand what Bush is thinking. He refusews to defend himself for what seems like eons, and then defends himself by handing the Dems the EXACT thing they need to make him look even worse than they have made him out to be.
I hate to say it, but I am girding for a female president who will have a clear road to drive the country to Marxism (or, dare I say it? Stalinism). In my mind, there is no question that this is what the MSM and Dems (and even some moron Repugs) are pushing for.
What’s the deal? Did Rove get a lobotomy, or is he a victim of Alzheimer’s disease? I just can’t believe how incredibly stupidly the administration is dealing with this onslaught. WIN THE FUCKING WAR and everything else will fall into place. After all the bullshit and outright lying by the left, the administration cannot afford to let the Dems take even ONE iota of credit – and yet, that is exactly where we are headed. Oh, my aching head…
Happy F’ing Sunday.
Excellent invective, Lost Dog. I also like the expression “s/he had a face like a bag of spanners” too – used to describe someone of quite unparalled ugliness. Perhaps we could do a swap?
Re Cretinism: my guess (and that, I’m afraid is all it is) is that in the sense you are striving to convey (namely, a person of dim, if not non-existent intelligence) it is not capitalised as the term cretin derives from a rather retarded and inbred colony of Swiss mountain-dwellers who came from the Cretin region in the European Alps. My logic (such as it is) is simple – the capitalised noun: Cretin would signify an inhabitant of the region Cretin. Someone who is stunted, inbred and retarded to the point of quite alarming face droopingness, would necessarily be (in order to distinguish between the two concepts) a(n) (uncapitalised) cretin – although, obviously, there is a huge grey area surrounding inhabitants of the Cretin region who also embody the aforementioned disfigurements/mental retardation etc.
Hope that clears it up for you, Lost Dog!
xxx
Roberta
p.s. For those who still haven’t voted for me, it’s still not too late!!
Swipe
Beleagured? Amused? Iraq’s and Afghani’s are so amused that this “beleagured” Pres has given them freedom and so many mentally beleagured Americans don’t get it.
Hope this clears it up for you.
Sanctimonious? Nah, not at all.
Well, as Ronald Reagan used to say, “There you go again…” What we have here is the Mediacrats once again reifying their fantasies:
– They have dutifully manufactured serial “scandals” in our military’s conduct and tied these to the Administration;
– They leaked classified information and attempted to re-write the narrative of the pre-war debate;
– They created a made-for-television move about Hurricane Katrina with all the accuracy and realism of the Poseidon Adventure with the sole objective of assigning blame for a natural disaster to the president;
– With all this fabricated “bad news” accepted as conventional wisdom, they manufactured ever-dropping poll numbers for the president using skewed sampling and leading questions;
– They then seized on several prognosticators who said the Democrats could re-take the House, just as the Republicans did in 1994, ignoring all the underlying differences in the two election years;
– They then told each other this would probably happenâ€â€and it then became received wisdom among Washington pundits right and left, that it would almost certainly happen;
– Now they have become so confident of the Democrats’ unstoppable “momentum” that they are jumping the shark on national television, and soon will be producing thumbsucking articles about Nancy Pelosi’s governing style.
What we are witnessing is the tortured feedback loop known as GIGO. Just as happened every two years since 1994, pathetic, twittering little media windsocks who, upon detecting the slightest breeze to the left, flap their little tails and write 5,000-word, front-page stories in the Washington Post that project their fondest hopes becoming reality: a liberal majority in Congress. Democrats catch the fever and start picking out their new offices. Ex-Clinton Administration satraps and hangers-on get fitted for new suits and jobs as lucrative lobbyists. Then…
We should all take note that our president isn’t playing politics. He’s doing what he thinks right without worrying about his poll numbers and without caring who gets credit. This hasn’t happened before and may never happen again.
I think it’s vital that the Bush Doctrine succeed because it’s really the only way to defeat militant Islam and bring about world peace and prosperity.
At first I was confused, but once I Googled I decided it really didn’t matter after all.
Ellen Ratner…Eleanor Clift; same damn thing.
A US-MADE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC, COMING FULLY EQUIPPED WITH SHARIAA LAW & WMD’s
BY DR VICTORINO DE LA VEGA
In an interview published in London on Sunday, former interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi told The Observer newspaper that abuse of human rights in Iraq is as bad now as it was under Saddam Hussein, if not worse: Allawi accused pro-Iranian Shiite fundamentalists in the government of being responsible for death squads and secret torture centers- see link
In an ironic twist, yesterday, following US ambassador John Bolton’s forceful steering of the UN towards a public condemnation of Lebanon’s Hizbullah and other pro-Iranian terrorist organizations, there was an avalanche of articles in Washington and Tel-Aviv celebrating the great moustached macho man’s diplomatic prowess…
One should recall that John Bolton has been the administration’s point man on weapons of mass destruction: in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he was particularly aggressive in denouncing Saddam’s allegedly un-satiable appetite for “yellow cakeâ€Â, “bacteriological chowderâ€Â, “nuclear soufflé†and other deadly delicacies supposedly “supplied to Iraq by greedy French arms makersâ€Â!
Too bad Bolton supported the illegal invasion of Iraq, for that country was the sole counterweight to Iranian Islamic fundamentalism, and the only (relatively) secular country in the whole Middle-East: many members of Saddam’s government such as Tariq Hanna Aziz and 30%+ of high-ranking civil servants were actually European-educated Catholics whereas Christians made up less than 4% of Iraq’s total population…
But Bolton, Bush and their Neocon cum Israeli partners in crime favored of a “free and democratic†Iraq ruled by “progressive†Shiite fundamentalists such as Prime-Minister Al-Ja’afari, a bearded Islamist thug of Iranian descent who claims to be an admirer of both Donald Rumsfeld and Grand Ayatollah Khomeini…Go figure.
Anyway, apart from the renegade “Sunni triangle†and the Kurdish Northeast, most of the country in now “fully liberatedâ€Â, firmly under Persian terrorist influence: in many neighborhoods, from Baghdad’s eastern suburbs to downtown Basra, bearded Iranian agents roam freely in broad daylight while US and British soldiers don’t dare enter.
Ambassador Bolton, thank you so much for fighting for America’s freedom by “sending a strong message to Iran†during that fateful UN security council meeting yesterday!
Actually, it could be:
(3). Democrats are constantly balancing between saying what their base wants to hear (on the left) and saying what the public wants them to say (on the right). Thus, one week Democratic talking points move to the left and the next week they move to the right.
This time, Ellen Ratner tried to have it both ways. After all, if it works to say different things on alternate weeks, why not go all the way and cover all the bases in the same conversation?
Of course, in all fairness, my (3) could be the same as your (2).
Ha ha ha, look at those dumbass civilians all blown up by that car bomb!
Hee hee hee, check out the dead children!
Ho ho ho, get a load of those retarded teens used as suicide bombers!
Hyuck, hyuck, hyuck, looka the disembowled women killed because they wore the wrong clothes!
Heh heh heh, beheadings, assassinations, roadside bombs, whoopee!
I’m so amused I’m about to bust a gut. ‘Cause I’m enlightened, compassionate, smarter than everybody, caring, brilliant, really funny, educated, tolerant, and very bright.
Tom W  And 70% of us are giggling like hyenae. Enjoy.
Unfortunately I think this is the same kind of political calculus that led to Dems-who-otherwise-wouldn’t voting for the Iraq war resolution. What is worse: advocating a position you believe in but find out later to be quite different than you anticipated, or advocating a position you never really believed in but decided was the prudent side to take in order to advance your political aims–only to quickly shift to discredit those who honestly believed the policy in the first place when you decide that’s the more prudent political position?
APF  I can’t even follow that when you wrote it, so I can only imagine the confusion it causes Democrats trying to live it.
I’d love to be on the email loop that must surely connect every elected Dem in congress.
They get up in the morning, walk past the bathroom, and sit down in the kitchen and go through the two or three page long list of talking points for the day – the one that the staffer printed off when the alarm clock was supposed to go off. So hard to feign that outrage without good prep, for sure.
Then they immediately check the other list – overnight headlines from scores of media outlets – for breaking news. On the sideboard CNN is already coming out of the TV and NPR out of the radio, as a check to see if any good news from Iraq, favorable economic news, or positive poll numbers for the administration have made it through the filter.
Then it’s a head call, coffee (w a kicker, if the member is from Mass) and the Times for a little self-gratification, and off to the People’s House in order to take care of the Democrat Party’s business.
The PDF makes interesting reading. Any pollsters want to comment on a what an aggregate of negatives above even forty percent means to a professional politician?
And this is life or death for thousands, and freedom for millions – not merely who gets a new post office. Or bridge. Or a building named after them.
We live in interesting times.
Put me down in the hammer camp – we haven’t hit nearly hard enough, and that’s the worst I can say about our war so far. I know I’m not alone. Can’t wait for 2006 to get here so I can vote for the side that’s at least interested in facing the threat.
Mred:
….err, ironic, actually. But you were close….
Tom:
We have obviously met before, haven’t we Tom?
Just for the record, as your former president Coolidge would no doubt have said, regarding the war in Iraq – “I’m agin it”
Is that OK?
BTW: Morton Shadows is back, – Attila Girl…
p.s. thank Richie – I knew you’d protect my honour!
Reminds me of Al Franken on SNL: “because I’m good enough and smart enough and doggone it, people like me!”
“Tom W  And 70% of us are giggling like hyenae. Enjoy.”
Your lucid comparison of liberals to filthy, corpse-eating scavengers is well-noted.
“Just for the record, as your former president Coolidge would no doubt have said, regarding the war in Iraq – “I’m agin it—
You know, ever since Lincoln, Republican presidents have been portrayed as apes and buffoons by their opponents, yet to their consternation, the American people keep rejecting this interpretation. Thank you for demonstrating the emotional and intellectual infantilism of the left.
“I knew you’d protect my honour”
Talk about your quagmires.