Benghazi Memos – The Democrat’s Straw Man

Watching the recent Bill Maher “Real Time” episode (May 10th, 2013) where Maher complains, “Tell me what the scandal is? Nobody’s telling me.” He gets told by BOTH Glen Greenwald (from the left) and Charles Cooke (on the right) that the Benghazi issue IS serious. Below:

Then a third guest chimes in with “No, the scandal is about a memo and 12 points that it’s been reduced to.”

Um, no. Democrat supporters want to make this out to be a non-issue about some memo. That, to me, is a pathetic cop-out. Personally, I don’t think they should be allowed to trivialize this matter because an American Ambassador and three other American soldiers are dead, and on that basis alone this should be given the proper NONPARTISAN attention that it deserves. Both Greenwald and Cooke make that case well from their respective sides.

For me, here’s how I see the ISSUE:
1) An Embassy in a country where America had just helped overthrow a dictator, which happened to reside in a hotbed of radical anti-Americanism was left horribly undefended. Why?
2) More security was asked for on a number of occasions and was turned down. (refused?) Why?
3) During the attack, American solders off-duty chose to stay behind and defend the embassy, to their peril. The fact that 1) and 2) have yet to be clearly and honestly answered is a disgrace so far to their service and their memory. The soldiers had the guts put their ass on the line over this, so should our politicians.
4) Immediately, the White House called the attack one that was caused by an American-made anti-Muslim video, yet at the time it appears that both the CIA and the State Department knew this was – at the very least – not entirely the case, if even the case at all.Why push that story line so hard and deliberately exclude terrorism from the narrative?
5) The White House claimed that they called this an “act of terror” from the beginning. Not true. Neither Obama, Clinton, nor Rice ever clearly and directly stated that it was. The Washington Post effectively debunks Obama’s claim here, giving it ‘four Pinnochios’ on the liar’s scale. Every word is chosen very carefully in politics. To not call it a terrorist attack directly was calculated and deliberate.
6) Secretary of State Clinton appoints two people (a retired general and former ambassador) to investigate. Neither ask Clinton what she knew, or when she knew it. Stacking the deck of a committee is old news in politics. The Warren Commission and The 9/11 Commission quickly come to mind. With the 9/11 Commission, interviews of Bush were practically non-existent, too. If everyone’s so ‘innocent’, then why a political move like that regarding the Committee in this case?
7) Months later, whistleblowers come forward and claim that the White House gave “stand down” orders around the time of the attack.
8) Months later, ABC News discovers internal documents that show that the talking points had been altered and that the CIA without a doubt considered the attack to be a terrorist attack, although they were reluctant to specify yet by whom.So why not say it was, but we don’t know yet by whom or why?
9) Claims are being repeated by the left that Obama and Clinton did all they could during the attack, that they couldn’t get anybody there to help fast enough. Fine, but this cleverly and wholeheartedly dodges the question of why the Embassy was so inadequately protected to begin with. And how does a supposedly ‘lower-level staffer’ get to give stand-down orders?
10) The elephant in the room here that the Mahers and Maddows and and the left (or at least Democrats) don’t want to acknowledge is that the Obama campaign benefited from a “it was a video” story as opposed to an “it was a terrorist attack” story being right before an election when Romney was still viewed as a serious contender.

Remember that prior to the slapdown Romney got on Benghazi by a supposed-to-be-impartial-but-clearly pro-Obama moderator during the debate, he had been leading after walloping Obama in the first debate. Obama’s best card against Romney was thought to be on foreign policy, where the “Osama Bin Laden is dead” line would show that 1) the country was safer, 2) Al Qaeda had been wiped out, and 3) Obama could be, and is, tough on terror. Benghazi would have been VERY strong evidence against all three claims. Imagine it being found out right before an election that there was a stand-down order in Libya causing the deaths of four Americans?

*** Update:
11) Harry Reid gets on TV yesterday and says that the Republicans are concerned more about scoring political points against Obama and Hillary than they are about keeping our embassy’s safe and finding out what happened.

Really, Harry Reid? This, to me, is just more proof of 10) above. Thanks to the Democrats, we STILL don’t know who exactly said a) stand down, and b) go with these talking points. Thanks to the Democrats, we had Hillary saying “Who cares how it happened?” months ago and Jay Carney saying, “It’s old news” recently up until ABC News came out with the original memos.

What I don’t like is that everyone in the Democratic Party (not even everyone on the left) is saying, “Forget about it, it’s a non-issue. What happened, happened” and yet they’re all stonewalling us on what exactly happened. I’ll go one further and state for the record that I think the AP thing and the IRS thing are deliberately-timed diversions to keep Benghazi from being the main focus of the news cycles right now. I think this Administration is hoping that the people and the press quit asking, which for the longest time they’ve been able to count on. Not this time – American lives have been lost.

I don’t care if it’s Democrat or Republican, there is proof here that the government LIED, and not only lied but tried to cover it up in the beginning and is still trying to cover it up now. Governments lie – it’s part of their job – but for the press to be asleep on this for five months is inexcusable, as is Government dodging serious questions after-the-fact now.

A b.s. story about why four Americans died, and possibly a stand-down order from the Government that led to the cause of both that the Government keeps trying to wiggle out of in some fashion. That’s not the “transparent and accountable” government that anyone voted for, and in the case of American lives, that behavior to me is inexcusable and we need to get to the bottom of it no matter what the political cost. When even far-left writers like Greenwald seem to agree, that’s saying something.

Up until the memos were found, the press wanted to give Democrats yet again another free pass, but now in the guise of appearing impartial, they’re becoming journalists again and trying to get to the whole truth now that ABC has effectively ‘given them permission’. I’m glad they are, and hope they don’t stop until they get there because I’m sick of the response from the “Democrats can do no wrong”/MSNBC’s of the world that are acting like Maher did when being proved wrong – after being beaten on all fronts with the 10 points above, he simply redirects with an “I’m bored with this already,” and moves on, surely unmoved from his original partisan position.

I don’t consider this a “scandal”, and won’t until the questions I have in the list above are answered. For now, however, I think this is a serious issue that everyone (including ALL of the press) should recognize.

Ezra Levant Guilty of a Michael Moore-like Spin Job In Calling David Suzuki a Sexist

Watched a bit of Sun News channel the other day and caught Ezra Levant doing a piece on David Suzuki. Seeing as how Suzuki is a staunch liberal and environmentalist I could see Sun News being aligned against him, but what I saw from Levant was particularly interesting: there was a point where Levant highlighted a letter from one of Suzuki’s staff saying that he preferred women to accompany him at events rather than male security guards. Why according to the staffer? “Well he is a male”, says the staffer.

Check out the letter at about 2:00 in below:

This seems to be the basis for Levant ripping into Suzuki and Sun News commentators saying making sexist comments that he wants “what every man wants”, yet when you look at what the staffer wrote immediately after the highlight, to me it paints Suzuki in a completely different light.

First of all, right after the “Well he is a male” comment, the staffer says, “No, seriously, I believe it is his way of being discreet and less intimidating.” Fair point, in my opinion, and point to Suzuki.

Second, the staffer then asks for “2-3 female Police Tech students” with “maturity and professionalism”. Fair point again, and point to Suzuki.

Third, nowhere does Suzuki’s staffer ask for “beautiful” women. That part was added by Sun News commentators themselves. Point Suzuki.

I’m not a huge fan of Suzuki, but this was a false, classless, and undeserved smear job against him in my opinion by Levant and Sun News. I like what Levant did with the bogus hunger strike by Aboriginal Chief Spense, but this bogus smear job on Suzuki seriously undermines his credibility and that of the network.

ANY network should know better and do better.

Oh, btw – what do I mean by “Michael Moore spin job”? Moore disingenuously uses segments of peoples’ quotes to fit his editorial slant (yes, liberals, just like Fox News and Breitbart did with the Shirley Sherrod video! Not right from either side.)

The Occupiers Can Stop Crying About Their Media Coverage: Early Media Portrayal of the Tea Party

I posted this in a reply to a comment made over at Reflections of a Rational Republican.

One of the matters being discussed was the media coverage of the Tea Party vs. the media coverage of Occupy. I did a quick Google search and these are a few clips that I found:

1) CNN’s coverage of the Tax Protest: “Right wing, not kid friendly”

2) Cenk Ugyur criticizing the Tea Party for being “convinced that radicalism is the answer”. Same criticism of Occupy? Also, check out 4:14 where his guest offers something that no one in Occupy has been able to offer: an explanation of their raison d’etre and their goal.

3) Greg Gutfeld and crew on Fox News’ “Red Eye” criticizing the media’s (over)use of the phrase “Tea Bagging” and then, in a move that the left never seems to do, actually criticizing a movement that ideologically, Fox News would surely support. The panel starts to make fun of the Tea Partiers themselves, even questioning their validity as a movement. This never happens in the left’s “can do no wrong” bubble.

4) Probably the worst example of “race bait” reporting EVER, here’s the infamous clip from MSNBC where they deliberately cropped a shot of a black man with an AR-15 rifle at the President’s rally just so they could make it a piece on racism:

5) Finally, here’s a video of where Ed Schultz’s rants of his Tea Party perception are contradicted to much of the reality that had occurred within the Tea Party’s protests.

I have to say that I had forgotten how bad some of the coverage of the Tea Party was. The CNN piece was ridiculous, and MSNBC’s coverage from many of their commentators was, in my opinion, despicable.

The left has been crying over how poorly and unfairly the Occupiers have been covered by the media. Well they can cry me a river, and as they do, I’ll be even more reminded of how accurately the term “Occupussies” applies to them and their thin, “I live by a b.s. double-standard” skin. These videos show the fact that unless one considers being called a “flea bagging hippie” is worse than being called a racist or likened to a Timothy McVeigh, The Tea Party has had it worse by the media than any Occupiers have, so it’s time they just put their diapers back on.

CNBC: “150 Economists Back US Republicans in Debt Fight”

Read this this morning on CNBC’s website, and thinking that to the far left this just won’t matter. Why?

Because to them there’s only one economist in the world, and that’s Paul Krugman. Ask them to name one other, and they’ll say, “well… Paul Krugman.”

I have no personal beef against Paul Krugman. I’m only annoyed by those who think he is a God among men and can say no wrong; that anything anyone says to challenge him is automatically “spin”.

Yet his challenges are many, including here, here, and here, and are made by people with far more letters behind their names than any of us common folk have.

I don’t know who these 150 economists are or whether I even agree with them, but I do know one thing – the left will dismiss them automatically and that’s not doing this country any good.

Baby Joseph Story Exposes Fox’s Deliberate Spin

I just watched the “exclusive” Fox News had with Baby Joseph’s father, talking about his child’s case.

The Fox version:
Baby Joseph required a tracheotomy, a Canadian hospital (and system) refused because he was terminal, so a St. Louis charity “rescued” the child and got him the procedure he needs in the U.S.. Fox asked the Canadian hospital for comment, but they refused.

Here’s what Fox didn’t say:
1) The child didn’t need to be “rescued”. The hospital accepted all requests for the child to be released to the parents.
2) The reason the doctors refused the tracheotomy wasn’t because they wanted the child to die. The doctors had legitimate and serious concerns over whether the child could survive the surgery and survive the risk of pneumonia.
3) The child is breathing off a ventilator. Also, I haven’t seen one picture or clip since the surgery where his eyes are open or he’s responsive. According to his doctors, his brain function was diminishing which was another reason why they didn’t want to do the surgery.

There’s more here:

http://mediamatters.org/research/201103150011?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d82fe2e6eef8c12,0

Fox is against a Canadian-style health care system. Its system deserves its criticisms, but overall, the Canadian system works. I don’t believe people should be wiped out financially due to illness, or that primary care or preventative care should be denied. I have direct experience on both sides of the border and I can honestly say that the ignorance and misconception regarding one system vs. the other lies mostly with the U.S., and this story only feeds that misconception. It should not be used as an example of Canadian vs. U.S. care because it isn’t one. Rather, it is an example of what lobbyists and news agencies will do to spin news to fit their own agenda.

Now, let’s see how MSNBC and the others cover it.

****UPDATE****
His father is saying that the child is breathing on his own without a ventilator. However, you also see in the pictures that the child’s breathing looks terribly labored and again, he hasn’t opened his eyes once. The child’s father also said that the Canadian hospital accepted the child back for treatment (again, at no cost to the family). The father’s only issue seems to by why the Canadian doctors wouldn’t operate when the U.S. doctors were willing to.

Soros/Media Matters vs. Fox News – A War Will Be Good

Just reading how George Soros and Media Matters have declared “war” against Fox News. I say let them go at it. I’m not going to be like either side and whine about unfair this or unfair that, slanted this or slanted that. Both sides have their rich guys, and both organizations have their obviously biased perspective. Who cares. As long as they’re using fact to fight with, it should raise the bar on both organizations and we should (hopefully) get a better quality product out of either side as a result. I like the fact that we’re already seeing leaked emails out of Fox News – I just hope we can see leaked emails from the other side as well.

On a side note, although this is being declared a “war” by Media Matters, how can it be anything more than just a strategic stalemate where Fox is concerned as no one can be expecting a victory on either side? I mean really, what’s their expected outcome, to bring Fox’s viewership over to more left-leaning news organizations? It’ll never happen, like expecting Yankees fans to become Red Sox fans or Vikings fans to now cheer for Green Bay.

Therefore, I have a different theory about who this “war” is actually with. Considering the pre-election run timing of the announcement and the futility of trying to defeat Fox News from the left, I think that the “war” they’re declaring is actually between Media Matters and other left-leaning organizations and that Media Matters is just using Fox News as the justification for it in the same way we say we invade other countries for “humanitarian reasons”. What, people actually think that Media Matters is going after Fox News in the name of humanity, or “responsible journalism” as well? If so, keep dreaming. Media Matters wants visibility and ratings, and Soros wants to become richer and more powerful – just like Murdoch does. I think Media Matters simply wants to position itself as THE champion voice of the left (vs. MSNBC, HuffPo, etc.)

So I say let there be war. Let the sheep on both sides get all wrapped up in the Left vs. Right/Good vs. Evil debate as they continue to let their media outlet of choice be part of what they consider to be their identity. It will be fun to watch.

How Ideology Comes Before Truth in Media, And We Don’t Care

David Frum wrote an excellent article today on his blog regarding Huffington Post reporter Dan Froomkin and his piece on Paul Craig Roberts. Froomkin was very quick to point out that Roberts is “profoundly alienated from the modern GOP, particularly when it comes to civil liberties — and wars.”

What Froomkin neglects to say, however, and it turns out that he and his editor(s?) never bothered to check, was the fact that Roberts has been exposed as a bigot, a 9/11 Truther, and an anti-Semite. Was any of that important? Nah. All that was important was a headline that said “A Reagan Republican Makes a Case Against War – and His Party”

This situation is an example of yet another glaring and sad truth that Frum points out in his article: that a media organization can make a lot more money by putting ideology ahead of truth. Enter Fox, enter Breitbart, enter HuffPo, enter MSNBC, or, in my opinion, any so-called “news” organization that we have today.

Frum continues: “Everyone can see that a media enterprise gets more clicks and better ratings from confirming preconceived opinions than from challenging them. And the consequences of a horrible mistake? Very low. It didn’t hurt Andrew Breitbart to circulate a deceptively edited tape of Shirley Sherrod. And I doubt it will matter very much that Dan Froomkin celebrated a 9/11 denialist as a lonely heroic defender of civil liberties.”

Why won’t it matter? Because we, the people, simply don’t care. Let apathy rein.

Is the GOP’s Connection to Wall Street, or Just Business in General?

Paul Krugan writes about the housing crisis in his NY Times Op-Ed titled, “Wall Street Whitewash”:

It’s not as if the story of the crisis is particularly obscure… It’s a straightforward story, but a story that the Republican members of the commission don’t want told. Literally.

Last week, reports Shahien Nasiripour of The Huffington Post, all four Republicans on the commission voted to exclude the following terms from the report: “deregulation,” “shadow banking,” “interconnection,” and, yes, “Wall Street.”

Reading this gets me frustrated on two fronts. First, that we’re in this economic mess in the first place. Second, the misdirection the GOP is trying to create – but this is just as bad as the misdirection that Krugman and the Democrats are trying to create as well. I don’t agree with the Republicans trying to go so far as they are to paint Wall Street in a good light, but Krugman or anybody trying to tell me that the Democrats are truly against the “fat cats” is _____ing down my back and trying to tell me its raining.

I was going to just comment on the “Linking GOP with Wall Street” thing, but Krugman’s points can’t go uncontested. (Brace yourselves, this is a long one.) Krugman’s points:

“First, there was a widely spread housing bubble, not just in the United States, but in Ireland, Spain, and other countries as well. …The housing bubble was international — and Fannie and Freddie weren’t guaranteeing mortgages in Latvia.” True. They were, however, following the U.S.’s lead. Canada didn’t, and look at them.

“Nor were they guaranteeing loans in commercial real estate, which also experienced a huge bubble.” No, but easy money helped cause this bubble as well, and who exactly caused that, the private sector? No, government did. As individual disposable incomes drop, stores close, vacancies go up and rents go down. When that happens, the value of commercial property goes down, too. On the other side, small business credit to secure commercial real estate or refinance becomes harder to get (often times secured with the owners personal assets), and here we go again.

“This bubble was inflated by irresponsible lending, made possible both by bank deregulation and the failure to extend regulation to “shadow banks,” which weren’t covered by traditional regulation but nonetheless engaged in banking activities and created bank-type risks.” Yes, the bubble was INFLATED because of this, and Wall Street definitely deserves their full share of blame. However, Krugman ignores again one of the bubble’s main CAUSES which occurred before the irresponsible lending – the easy access to credit – which was what made the irresponsible lending possible.

“…the timing shows that private players weren’t suckered into a government-created bubble. It was the other way around. During the peak years of housing inflation, Fannie and Freddie were pushed to the sidelines; they only got into dubious lending late in the game, as they tried to regain market share.” Krugman tries to suggest that this is when the government got involved. How convenient for him.

In my opinion, I see the problem in three stages, each with their own assignment of blame:
Mid-Bubble:

Government – 100%. Fannie and Freddie stating that “nothing’s wrong”. The Bush Administration tried 17 times to reign in Fannie and Freddie (Note: I tried to quote the original White House posting, but it’s been (conveniently?) taken down. All it takes is someone with two eyes and a brain watching the YouTube clips of the Congressional hearings, or read an excellent collection of the whitewashing here to see that the public was totally being snowed over.

“Community Organizers” – 100%. Using their political pressure and threatening to publicly call banks “racist” if they didn’t give more unqualified lenders homes was sickening (and yes, it did happen).

I would normally assign some blame to the general public here, but then again they could have gotten out of the market while the market was high. I realize this is unlikely and almost irrational – who would sell their house in a rising market only to not be able to afford their new house and have to move to something smaller or less? It wasn’t wrong at the time to think your house would hold greater value than you owed.

Pre-Collapse:
50% Government, 50% Wall Street, 50% General Public
50% of the blame here falls on government. They were trying to put people who couldn’t afford homes into homes they couldn’t afford for nothing but political reasons, which was incredibly short-sighted on government’s behalf. The fact remains that had their ultimately not been the protection of government bailout, free market capitalism would have otherwise stopped the bad lending before it got really bad.

The second 50% falls upon Wall Street. Too much deregulation, too much shadow banking. All the things Krugman talks about are valid, yet it’s like giving candy to a kid and then blaming him for eating it because it’s unhealthy, or giving an inexperienced teenager the keys to a Ferrari and then blaming him for crashing it. The deal government handed Wall Street was too tempting, too sweet, and too much of a thrill for them to pass up. Same with the deal this gave otherwise unqualified borrowers.

The third 50% is a variable that falls upon the general public that reduces the %age of ownership that government and Wall Street takes. Many people let their greed overtake their rationality. I’m not saying everyone who got in over their head was greedy, though. You have a family that can only afford a 2 bedroom apartment, and now you can get a house for the same as your rent payment? Of course you’re going to be compelled to own instead of rent. And who actually reads what they sign? The thinking may have been, “This has to be OK, otherwise the government would be shutting it down.” Naive, but understandable. Those who were stupid and greedy take full 50%, those who weren’t take less, but to let the general public completely off the hook here is convenient naivety.

Post-Collapse:
Wall Street 90%, Government 10%.
Christopher Dodd removed the accountability in TARP, and we all stood by and let him do it. Wall Street was able to socialize its losses, and privatize its profits. Wonder how that’s able to happen when you’ve got all ex AIG and “Government Sachs” guys in the White House.

Now this brings me to the point of my post. Krugman and Liberals constantly whine about how tied to Wall Street the GOP is, and with Krugman’s comments re: Republicans trying to remove the “bad language” from the bill, I think he’s right. But why does Krugman, and other Liberal Democrats continue to dodge and hide the fact that this current Democrat Administration is FULL of former Wall Street, now Government, Wall Street cronies and their buddies? OK, we know why – but it’s ridiculous.

Further proof of the extent of Wall Street and Democrat cozying is below:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aWSz2kUxdTiU
“During the height of the financial crisis in late September, some of Barack Obama’s campaign advisers pushed him in a conference call to distance himself from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chief executive officer, they warned, was too close to President George W. Bush and Wall Street. Obama, 47, rejected the idea. At one point, he talked to Paulson every day for two weeks.”

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKNOA53525520080605
“Overall, Democrats garnered 57 percent of the contributions from the securities and investment industry. If that trend continued through November, it would mark the first time since 1994 that they have drawn more Wall Street cash than Republicans in a presidential election year, according to the data complied by the Center for Responsive Politics.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/government-sachs-strikes_b_232800.html
“Government Sachs Strikes Gold – Again – Connect the dots: Goldman Sachs made $3.44 billion in profit this past quarter, while the U.S deficit topped $1 trillion for the first time in the nation’s history and appeared to be headed toward doubling that figure before the budget year is out. Since most of the increase in the federal deficit is due to bailing out the banks and salvaging the greater economy they helped destroy, why is the top investment bank doing so well?”

“Democratic senators had wanted to impose even stricter conditions. The Senate bill would have required bonuses already handed out to executives at TARP firms to be paid back, cap all executive compensation at TARP firms at $400,000 and ban any bonus for the top 25 employees at all TARP firms. None of this language appeared in the final legislation.”

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/539038/201006301903/Covering-Their-Fannie.aspx
“We can’t think of two entities more deserving of overhaul. Yet the Dodd-Frank Act doesn’t even try to reform them. This means nothing will change except the size of government’s hand in the economy. By not addressing Fannie and Freddie, economist Brian Wesbury noted “the government is taking no blame for the subprime crisis and is demanding more power over the U.S. financial system.”

One thing is crystal clear – Politicians on both sides are bedfellows of Wall Street. It’s understandable – they need their money to get elected. Krugman’s Op-Ed also makes another thing clear: that once they do get elected, it seems like Republicans continue to back them while Democrats conveniently turn on them once in power to try and score political points with the public.

Face it people – no matter who Krugman tries to cozy up to, or how polarized the debate becomes between Republicans and Democrats regarding financial reform, the fact is that we got played through this financial crisis by both sides, and we’re still being played.

There’s a lot of talk by Krugman and others about who should be held accountable, but no one actually making anyone accountable, we can only brace ourselves for more financial woes to come.

The Right Can Be Just As Guilty of Media Bias

A great post by David Frum on his blog talks about the Shirley Sherrod alleged reverse-racism case regarding her position at the USDA.

In his post, Frum makes the point that a) the JournoList posts “protecting” Obama were overblown, and that the Sherrod video was a slanted hack job. Although there seems to be a lot of instances where the media shows a left-leaning bias, I was happy to see Frum showing a case of bias from the right as well.

One can attack either the right or the left for the bias, however I think the blame falls on the media once again. Yes, that’s the same drum I’ve been beating now for months, but have we honestly seen anything change? I’ll hail the day where the bulk of journalists out there will actually start fact-checking and investigate for their stories again.

Ratigan vs. Brady, Part II – “Connecting the Dots”

In this clip, Ratigan says that those people who watch his show have “already connected the dots”. I’m hoping he (or someone) can connect the dots for me.

He opens with the statement that America will be better if we “end the corruption in government” that appears to have allowed Wall Street to “steal” money from taxpayers and allows it to continue to be a “giant vacuum” sucking capital out of the economy. How he seems to propose to end the corruption, however, is to tax the $145B in bonuses Wall Street received and somehow turn it around “to create jobs in this country”. So, the enemy is government AND Wall Street, but use the government to TAX Wall Street and get our money back so it can be the one to create jobs? I’m confused.

How does this money actually come back to private industry? Government programs? Ratigan avoids having to answer this question. Even if Ratigan answered it, he still hasn’t addressed his topic of the government corruption that we apparently need to end.

Within his circular arguments, I’m wondering who Ratigan is actually blaming here? What solution is he actually proposing? I don’t know Congressman Brady, I don’t live in Texas, therefore I have no opinion or bias for or against him. Yet after watching the clip, it seemed very much to me like Ratigan baited Congressman Brady into being a guest through submitting his opening remarks to Brady in advance, just to make him (i.e. his party) a target a la typical NBC fashion.

It seems also that Ratigan had his closing remarks (i.e. “you’re a Republican coming on to repeat Republican talking points and slam this government”) well-prepared in advance and intended to use them no matter what Republican he had on as a guest, or what that guest might in fact have said. Maybe that’s why Ratigan was pushing so hard to stay on script, and maybe that’s why his ratings are so crap overall.