Flatline & Brooks on Spending - November 18, 2005

RAY SUAREZ: And again to David Brooks and Johnny Flatline.
Well, Johnny, you heard Norman Ornstein refer to the difficulties of a majority party. Now, I was always told that running everything is actually easier than being in the minority. What is going on?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Well, it shows you that politicians are more interested in saving their own skin than anything else. When Bush was popular, they didn’t dare challenge his authority. But like a cheap pack of dogs, they smell dead meat and now freely lash out. I guess they only thing most politicians respect is power, and when power depletes itself, they spread away from the vacuum like oil on water. I shed no tears for these guys. And the entire debate over money is so far from reality, we may as well have some accountants from the old Enron in there telling us what is what. But even though it's a tiny thing, the fact that anybody can hit on food stamps or school lunches, while spending ten times more on their rich buddies, should show people just how dark their hearts really are. I can only hope the people who voted in these nuts takes note of what they have elected.

RAY SUAREZ: David?

DAVID BROOKS: I don't totally disagree with that. Yeah, I think what strikes me is that the budget deficit has gone up. The big budget items are off limits. Some of them are the tax cuts. Some of them with the prescription drug plan, things like Medicare where the real money is. I mean, one of the things that struck me is, is watching the Congress, it is like watching two people in New Orleans debate about whether their fishbowl is overflowing when the Mississippi River is coming down on them.
And a lot of these cuts, these cuts are like a few billion here and a few billion there, while you have this massive tax cut, massive Medicare spending plan, and then the normal entitlement problems that have been our permanent problems all coming down.
So there is a great deal of angst about the deficit and the long-term entitlement problems. But because so many things in the budget are off limits that we with can't even talk about, there is really no addressing the real issue, and dysfunctional is not a bad word for that.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, how much of this is an appearance problem, not wanting to be seen continuing to cut the taxes on the profits on investments while you are cutting food stamp eligibility, not wanting to make tough choices about entitlement programs while you are giving a couple of 100 million bucks to build bridges to tiny islands in Alaska?

DAVID BROOKS: There's a lot of that. There's also -- to be fair, the Republicans believe that the tax cut for captain gains help economic growth and are good for the country.
But, you know, the fundamental thing driving this is the moderate Republicans who are flaking off, and who are just tired of towing the line.
Somebody said that when moderate Republicans revolt, it's like Indian summer, it's nice while it lasts but you no know it's not going to last forever. But I'm not sure about that. I have been spending a lot of time with moderate Republicans and when they talk about the president's reputation in their districts, they use words like poisonous, radioactive, hated, loathed. They're in districts often in the Midwest and the Northeast, these moderate Republicans where they have to be against the president. They just have to. And so you are beginning to see that on issue after issue.

RAY SUAREZ: So if you are running, Johnny, in the Chicago suburbs or upstate New York, the president's woes become your own?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Well, since big brother never tells the truth, it depends on which lies the voting public is willing to believe. What is off limit goes beyond even what the so called honest accountants talk about. One thing that is always off the table is defense spending. How about the 200 billion just spent on Iraq? They don’t even include that in the budget. It’s money that grows on trees, somewhere in China. How many Americans would have gladly taken that money to buy some health care, or food stamps, or day care, or even catching Bin Laden? Remember him? And how many politicians are willing to measure up a war in terms of asset investment? Did we get a good return on our 200 billion? I think not. But nobody dares to think of military strategy in the same context as economics. Yet, it’s exactly that – the relationship between money and war -- that brings empires to an end.

RAY SUAREZ: And some of the advocates of not cutting entitlement spending out point out the burden of those cuts land on many of the people that you are trying to help in the Gulf Coast so the money comes out of one pocket and into another.

DAVID BROOKS: And as more money gets sucked up by entitlement programs, which are untouchable, the rest of the money really tends to be the money that's focusing on helping the poor; and when you make these cuts on the year-to-year program, the non-entitlement programs, you're cutting the poor.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: I guess you know an empire is about to end when every single promise in the world is assumed to be attainable, from rebuilding New Orleans, to saving victims, to fighting bird flu, to reorganizing and controlling the Middle East. As time goes on, we are starting to see how much of these words are just hot air. But at least the rich are not getting over taxed. Talk about an untouchable item, that is one group that never suffers.

DAVID BROOKS: I do feel compelled to add that federal domestic spending has increased faster under Bush than under LBJ. I mean, we are coming off a bunch of years of incredibly high spending increases, the Department of Education is up, what, 50 percent, roughly in that, so if they don't get an increase, it is not like you are cutting into bone in a lot of these programs but, nonetheless, it is not a rational way to do budget.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Bush is the biggest spending President in history, period. And he will be the last President to ever spend this much money.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, can they solve what is bedeviling them this week and get this all done before the end of the year?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think the lesson of these appropriations is that they can win off enough folks to get two-vote majorities, maybe. But, you know, this is not a Congress where the Republican leadership can run rough shod any more, that's for sure.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: One can only hope. I have never seen a political body do more damage to this country in so short a time as this. The Republicans were supposed to be the dream government for America. Where's the dream? All I see is a group of theives and liars.

RAY SUAREZ: That’s all the time we have. Thanks fellas.

Flatline & Brooks on Iraq War - November 18, 2005

RAY SUAREZ: And to the analysis of Brooks and Flatline: New York Times columnist David Brooks and Fake Democracy founder Johnny Flatline. Mark Shields is off tonight.
Well, did the shape of the Iraq war debate change this week?

DAVID BROOKS: Yeah, it moved. There is no question that home front is George Bush's biggest problem right now. Things in Iraq are pretty much steady state. But things at home are moving -- moving away from the president.
And I would say the Murtha thing will move it significantly because he is a very pro-defense Democrat. And I would say his speech would have some merit if the main problem in Iraq, the main incitement to violence was the U.S. presence.
It is true the U.S. presence is an incitement to violence. A lot of people hate us so much they are committing violence but the main incitement to violence is the Sunni-Shia split. It's the incipient civil war.
Every single expert I have spoken to, Democrat or Republican says that if we get out of there, we will have a full bore civil war. We are a hated authority figure keeping that complete civil war from breaking out.
So as a policy statement, I think what Murtha did was shallow, incomprehensible. I understand his anguish. That is shared by everybody. And that's why the home front is moving so much away from the president. But as a policy, it just doesn't hold up.

RAY SUAREZ: Shallow and incomprehensible, Johnny?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: And the Bush agenda is what? Deep? Brilliant? Let’s go through piece by piece what David just said, because if there is anything shallow to be found, it can easily be found there. First of all, he makes the claim that the only problem Bush has is with Americans, that the Iraq war is in a steady state. Oh, yeah. The war is just dandy. After promising us a quick and cheap war, to be paid for by grateful Iraqi’s with Iraqi oil, now, 200 billion dollars later, 2000 American lives later, 2 years later, with untold numbers of dead Iraqis, things are steady state. I guess that means that we could not possibly spend more money than this, thus, the state is steadily losing it’s resources, respect and power at a very steady pace. Our failure is steady alright. What dreamland could be better for a defense contractor?

As for the promise of civil war, from the so called experts you have spoken to, I wish David had spoken to these experts before the war ever started, because there were plenty of them being ignored by Bush, who warned exactly of this civil war resulting. And the problem is, we can’t stop it. We don’t have the resources or will power to stop it. Perhaps if Bush had been more accurate and honest about the consequences of this war in the beginning, the public would have said no before things got going. But since we are there on a lie, and countless miscalculations, we are supposed to stay the course of failure, because any criticism must be shallow. I just don’t see how it is humanly possible to be more shallow than the Bush Administration.

As for Murtha, it’s funny how the only word any hard liner will respect is a Marine who was shot twice. Now that is shallow. Like it’s important how many times one gets shot. Perhaps we can find another Marine who was shot 10 times. Maybe he will be even smarter. I don’t get this bull hockey that gets played out in Washington, where we measure the size of ones brain based on the number of bullet holes he has received, and which war he fought in. This is yet more evidence of what a violent state America has become, when we are so desperate to get advice only from our warriors – our so called experts on the morality of war. Why must one suffer in a war to understand that war is a bad thing? Are there no lessons left to be learned simply from a good history book? Are we this shallow? Criticism from a warrior like Murtha is evidence of just how bad Bush is doing. To a neocon, no other person is worthy of an opinion. Now that is shallow.

RAY SUAREZ: Does Murtha's statement provide cover for other wavering members of the House and Senate to come out?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Since this war is entirely about getting money in the hands of arms manufacturers, I suppose it’s the only thing that can stop them. Our military was never gung ho about this war, but since it’s virtually illegal for any soldier to criticize their orders, why should we look to them to do any thinking for us? It’s a perfect trap that the corporate raiders love to use to help keep the citizens silent on the subject. Forcing us to wait on a complaining soldier is setting the bar beyond the reach of us ordinary citizens who are supposedly not qualified to criticize a war, yet they want our money to pay for it. The whole thing is a disgrace.

RAY SUAREZ: David, given what Johnny just said about Jack Murtha, does it make any sense for Republicans to say that he has waved the white flag of surrender to the terrorists, opened a policy of retreat and defeatism, or as Scott McClellan did, associate him with Michael Moore?

DAVID BROOKS: No, that is ridiculous. And everyone I spoke to today was infuriated by the White House response and can't understand, by the way, why the White House can't explain their policy.
You know, I had somebody who was on the ground there risking his life saying: Why are they AWOL on the home front; why can't they have a realistic explanation of what is going on here? Why instead are they attacking bitterly the people that are raising legitimate criticisms?
Nobody should be questioning Jack Murtha as a person, as a figure of integrity. The problem with Murtha's speech is that nowhere in the speech does he actually consider what the consequences of withdrawal would be. There is no discussion of what Iraq would look like. There is no discussion of what the Middle East would look like, or what Zarqawi would look like.
So as a policy matter, you can have disagreements. But the way the administration is trying to justify this policy is infuriating people who agree with it.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Johnny, our time is brief. On a separate but parallel track is the debate over prewar intelligence; is this a totally separate matter or did they move in each other's slip stream this week?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Well, first of all. Let’s not gloss over the Michael Moore comment, because this is just too hilarious. Even David Brooks gets the stern forehead when mentioning Michael Moore. I guess the ultimate insult a right wing neocon can throw out there is Michael Moore, while the liberal left prefers to compare Bush to Hitler. You can compare me to Michael Moore any day of the week, and I will take it as a huge complement. Certainly, Moore’s name will glow in the history books far more fondly than Bush will. As for the intelligence flaw, just look to Moore’s movie years back. The intelligence was clearly flawed back then at a shallow level to embarrassing for the real believers to even admit to. Why on earth is anybody surprised now?

RAY SUAREZ: Let's talk about the debate over prewar intelligence. It flared up in a big way again this week.

DAVID BROOKS: I think it's a way for the Democrats to try to undermine the president. Again, my problem with it is that you can fault the administration on many things in Iraq. But there is no evidence they consciously lied about intelligence. Maybe they didn't tell the whole story. But they have been cleared by commission after commission. The Democrats have produced no evidence of willful misrepresentation.
And so to charge this, which is a heinous charge, is to me just an absurdity, an insult. And on this, I think the administration is completely correct. The Democrats are often, you know, conspiracy.

RAY SUAREZ: So in the months before the invasion, when the president said it was still possible to stop the war and that war was a last resort, do you think that was true?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think what he said about the war was very consistent with what the Clinton administration said. They believe that Saddam was five years away from a nuclear weapon. The German intelligence thought three years.
That is more or less consistent with what the Bush administration said, what the national intelligence estimate said, which the Bush administration released. You looked at that. You thought Saddam was a real problem with WMD.
And so the idea that they made this up, the idea that they exaggerated, they were lying, no one has ever actually shown evidence that they were misrepresenting in any way.

RAY SUAREZ: Very quickly.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Well, since Brooks wants to bring in European intelligence to this, let’s look at the Downing Street Memos which clearly prove that Bush planned this war years ago, and was already willing to tell any lie necessary to sell it. How much more obvious can that be? Brooks is pulling the wool over our eyes again, trying to blur the past.

Flatline & Lowry - November 11, 2005

JIM LEHRER: And to the analysis of Flatline and Lowry, Fake Democracy founder Johnny Flatline and National Review editor Rich Lowry. David Brooks is off tonight.
Johnny, what's going on here? What is this debate over why we went to war all about right now?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Well, first of all, there is no serious member of the intellectual community who finds any of this information to be new. Anybody with an open mind has known this war was cooked up from day one. Even the story of shameful, secret CIA prisons is not new news, even though some are pretending they are hearing it for the first time now. There have been plenty of smoking guns, and most have been ignored. The Downing Street memos were startling, and simply more proof of what many of us have always suspected. Yet, nothing much became of that. So what’s the difference now? Apparently, the super low poll ratings of Bush is what’s the matter. That translates into future lost elections, and future loss of power. What caused that at this late hour? Well, maybe Katrina, maybe the rash of indictments against leading Republicans, maybe the very obvious evidence that this administration committed treason to turn one of our own spies, and maybe 2000 dead soldiers dying for an unknown cause. As you may recall, Vietnam was never going well, and yet it took a full decade of nonsense before power finally caved in, and public opinion turned against it. Believe me, if the polls still had Bush at 60% or more, none of this news would be news. The vultures can smell weakness, and maybe Bush’s rotting smell has finally started to reach some noses. But if more Americans had simply listened to Michael Moore a few years ago, they could have gotten the same story.

JIM LEHRER: Why is the reaction now, Rich? Where's the chicken and where's the egg in this? This happened a long time ago. We've had presidential elections since all of this happened. Why now?

RICHARD LOWRY: The charge has really begun to take and to really hurt Bush and Democrats and liberals have been making this case for going on two years and it's turned out to be extremely corrosive and to be undermining the president's reputation for integrity and honesty.
If he loses that, it's going to undermine, you know, everything else he tries to do as well. So the administration is finally more aggressively pushing back on this. And I think they have a pretty good case to make because I disagree with Johnny; the case may have been wrong but it wasn't baseless. And the consensus of the U.S. Intelligence and other intelligence agencies around the world was that Saddam had these programs still going and in defiance of U.N. resolutions.
And even some of the more controversial things, Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff has been going around lately complaining about Dick Cheney running the government with a cabal - you know -- points out the aluminum tubes. The State Department dissented on the notorious aluminum tubes and said they're probably not for a nuclear program, but then he explains the French came over and said, look, we've tested these things; we think they are for a nuclear program and the State Department dissented on a lot of the nuclear stuff but it was there on the chem and bio.
So there's a reason why the administration was saying all these things, and then many Democrats were saying the same thing because they were all looking at the same body of intelligence.

JIM LEHRER: So you agree what the President says and Dan Bartlett has supported him in saying that there's a dishonest debate going on right now?

RICHARD LOWRY: You can make many criticisms of the war, not enough troops -- all the rest of it. But the idea that the Bush officials deliberately lied about Saddam's WMD I think is totally off base.

JIM LEHRER: But you suggest, Johnny, whether or not it is off base or not, the American people now believe that.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Hell yes they lied. Of course they lied. Come on guys, read a book. Stop playing so dumb. They lied. Accept the fact that your king is a fallible, corruptible human being, like so many before. We are not a princess state. This is just another very human country, with all the faults of greed that have befallen every other civilization on the planet. Bush lied. Did he always know he was lying. Who knows, and who cares. What difference does that make? A lie is a lie, and the fact that he still can’t own up to it, convinces me he is a flat out liar, in the same denial as any typical drug addict. Are you expecting a public confession? He’s not man enough for that.

JIM LEHRER: Rich, back to the president's actions today, I mean, this was quite a departure for him. I mean he is really hot under the collar about this and as you say he is pushing back. Is that going to work?

RICHARD LOWRY: We'll see. What I liked about the speech is he has seemed so understandably, I think, beaten down and off key, recently. If nothing else this was feisty and showed some fight to him. You know, that doesn't obviously bring him all the way back, or even part of the way back, but it is a good sign, I think.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think of the speech itself, Johnny?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Well, let’s face it, conservatives just hate disorder. It’s scares the hell out of them. So when there is disagreement in their world, it’s taken as an insult, and as a danger. They are basically trying to shame the rest of us into respecting them, because they are all out of hype. It’s not dangerous to disrespect a king. In fact, it’s the healthiest thing that could possibly happen to this country. The danger is when people continue to believe in the lies of a naked king.

JIM LEHRER: I mean, when he said this gives comfort to the enemy?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: George W. Bush is comfort for the enemy. Not me. He has done more to weaken this country than any terrorist could possibly do. I’m quite sure his enemies will take great discomfort in the fact that Bush is losing power and credibility with his own country. They need him to help bring down this country. So far, he’s been doing a fabulous job for them.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think about that? Is that over the line when you say dissent and when you criticize me, you give comfort to the enemy?

RICHARD LOWRY: I think it is proper to try to put barriers around the debate and say if you are saying we went to war based on a lie, you are telling all our troops they are fighting and dying on a lie, that, I don't think, is -- that's not an above board argument, and I don't think the Democratic Party should be swinging behind that argument.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: These soldiers are dying in vain. That is not my fault. Bush failed, and he should own up to his failure. He won’t. He’s too arrogant, and too dim.

RICHARD LOWRY: It was defective.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: It was oil. It was planned long before 911. The real reasons were never exposed to the sleepy public. It was a cheap power play, the entire world knows it. The only people naïve enough to buy it now are those like Mr. Lowry here, who hold on to faith rather than reason. And that’s exactly why these people are a danger to this country, because they simply can’t be honest about something that is very seriously wrong with this government, just like the Germans couldn’t be honest about Hitler in his time. It’s not an unfair comparison. It is exactly the same thing. This is how otherwise educated people follow ignorance to its death.

RICHARD LOWRY: Every major Democrat in the Senate, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, they all voted to authorize the war. If the intelligence were entirely baseless, they would have noticed. It is not as though they take George Bush's word for everything.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: First of all, the intelligence was not wrong. The Cheney filter of that intelligence was wrong. Intentionally wrong. And Congress got the Cheney perspective of the intelligence. So that entire argument is nonsense. And let’s say it’s not nonsense. Let’s just pretend for a moment in this fantasy that Congress knew all that Bush knew, and wanted the same war he wanted. If that is true, fine, kick all the bastards out. Somehow, blaming Congress’s failure as a means to defend the President’s failure is extremely hollow. That’s sort of like Clinton explaining that a blow job isn’t really sex. Or that he smoked but didn’t inhale. Come on, conservatives. Are you really this lame, this weak , this desperate? Is this really the best you can do, is to keep repeating your lie, in hopes it will become true? Mass murderers are no different, when put on trial. They just can’t admit the guilt. You guys must be feeling the electric chair right now. And that really makes me all warm and comfy inside.

JIM LEHRER: Let me ask you, Johnny, you're very sensitive to this, this is Veteran's Day – your father is a veteran -- and the president is making the case not only giving comfort to the enemy but it's very difficult for a trooper on the ground, whether he be a U.S. Marine or member of the United States Army and being told by his or her politicians, hey, you are over there for reasons that were not legit. No matter whether they are right or wrong or whatever, what do you think about that?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: I think governments put too much time and energy investing in this worship of war, and worship of violence, and glory of risking one’s life for liberty, that we have lost track of what it means to actually be human. Would Jesus be cheering every bullet fired into another man? Would Jesus love to see kids playing on an army tank relic sitting in a school playground? Is this really the highest ideal of civilization – the sword and the spear? I think not.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that, Rich?

RICHARD LOWRY: No. I think if you have Democrats saying the war was based on a lie, that goes too far.
The president gets a briefing from the CIA director every day. What did the CIA director tell him - that the intelligence was a slam dunk. It wasn't baseless.
You are confusing, if we knew what we know now, that's one point to make. It is totally fair to say if we knew that he didn't have weapons of mass destruction and what we know now we wouldn't have gone in.
But we only know that because we went in. So it wasn't baseless. There's good reason to make the worst assumptions about Saddam Hussein.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: When this case was made, I said the very day I heard it – it doesn’t really matter if WMD’s exist. That is not the real reason they are going in. They are going in for reasons tied to oil. That is the reason. There is no other reason. Now how could I know that, the same day you say the CIA chief was calling this a "slam dunk?" Was I just lucky? You are desperately trying to reach for small sound byte phrases that were used to sell the public into complacency. Obviously, Richard Clarke’s book paints a much more accurate picture of the dog headed nonsense that was use to force this war down the public’s throat. Fear was the method, oil was the motive. Accept it and repent. You got it wrong. You’re worshipping a criminal.

JIM LEHRER: Let me move this on and ask you, Johnny, if the results of the election on Tuesday, are any way related to the debate the two of you are having and the president has pushed back on today?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: It was a desperate speech, and the more this goes on, the more arrogant he sounds to me. I think it just proves what a true liar he really is, because he so bold to keep repeating things that are so obviously false. I mean, how stupid does he think we are? Pretty stupid, apparently. I don’t really want the Republicans to lose elections yet, because I want the real scapegoat to be in power with the poop hits the fan. If the Democrats get in too soon, they will get blamed when the pain arrives. Let’s hope people don’t forget who the real dumb-ass is.

JIM LEHRER: So the Republicans should not be sad about this, or concerned –

RICHARD LOWRY: They should definitely be sad, but, look, it's not necessarily predictive but it's not a good sign. And if you put it together with a lot of other things that are going on, then it becomes very worrisome because if Republicans have another year like this one, they are truly in danger of losing Congress. And if they do lose Congress, this is what the prelude will feel like.
You have corruption scandals, you have an unpopular war. You have a weak president. You have what appears to be intellectual exhaustion; you put all those things together and there shouldn't be panic in the Republican ranks but there certainly should be a sense of urgency about trying to turn this around.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Wow. And this is the gift we get with a Republican controlled government. What a dream world. But I don’t get the part about intellectual exhaustion. What intellect?

JIM LEHRER: Do you want to edit anything to that?

RICHARD LOWRY: Revise it.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Well, I’m intellectually exhausted from repeating the same thing, every week, for years now, about a bunch of lies that are finally getting some proper air time. Why on earth does it take this long for the media to get the news out? Obviously, if PBS would invite real liberals like me on this show instead of fake ones, the truth could get out to the public a lot quicker. Can’t we all honestly say, now, that it was a mistake to ever elect Dubya Bush? Can’t we now admit this was the wrong move, a dangerous move, a move that was harmful to this country? Why on earth did it take this long for so many Americans to figure this out? Shame on every person who voted for this guy. I just hope we can survive his damage without too much long, term pain. Of course, he is still in office. So the pain is not over.

JIM LEHRER: We have to go. Thank you both very much.

Flatline & Brooks - November 4, 2005

JIM LEHRER: Now, the analysis of Flatline and Brooks, Fake Democracy founder Johnny Flatline; New York Times columnist David Brooks. David what do you think of this debate over the war, in light of the new developments, the Libby indictment, the drop in the polls of the president, Iraq, with the Iraq issue being one of them, is this something that's going to go on and on and even intensify?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, certainly the Iraq debate will. There are a whole bunch of issues in the Iraq debate. One is did the administration plan well after the war? And they're guilty of planning horribly.
I say now in the past three weeks, really, they really have begun to have a good anti-insurgency strategy. I think now in Zal Khalilzad we have a good ambassador; now we're beginning to get our act together.
But certainly there were two years wasted, and they're guilty there. Are they guilty of manipulating intelligence on WMD? That, I think, is the thing they are least guilty of. I think Randy Scheunemann mentioned the Robb report, which showed there was no political pressure

JIM LEHRER: This was a commission that looked at the specific issue --

DAVID BROOKS: And there was a Senate intelligence report; there was a Butler report. There were all of these reports. None of them found manipulation of intelligence.
If you go back and look at what Clinton administration was saying about WMD during those years and what the Bush administration was saying, it was very similar.
The Clinton administration thought that Saddam was about five years away from having nuclear weapons, the Germans thought three years. Everybody thought he had WMDs, like biological weapons. So on that charge, which insanely the Democrats are focusing on, I think that's where they're the least vulnerable. They're most vulnerable on the post-war planning where they are guilty of real malfeasance.

JIM LEHRER: Johnny, how do you see this debate?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: I suppose the Republicans are in pretty sad shape when they have to use a Democrat to defend their mistakes. The defense here is, ‘yes, I was wrong, but so were the Democrats, so I’m innocent.’ Now how pathetic is that? Look, the Republicans got everything they wanted. They got all three branches of government, and they used their macho image to sell themselves for protecting America against scary brown people with box cutters. So the world should be perfect under all of this brilliant leadership. There are no more scapegoats. Tom Delay gave them all the power they could ever ask for. So where are the results? I think the polls are telling the story, and now all of those fooled Americans who voted the GOP into power, are questioning their decision.

JIM LEHRER: New polls that came out.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: And despite what anybody thought of Saddam, there was only one person pushing really hard for all out war, and that was George Bush. And when Congress went along with it, Brooks and others praised Bush for his brilliant, strong leadership. They complimented Congress for bowing like a puppy dog. They blew off contrary world opinion and the UN as ignorant and out touch and insignificant. Now, the sea has changed, and it’s all about "well, Bush didn’t want this by himself. Everybody else went along. Everybody else was already thinking about what Bush crammed down their throat." Suddenly, nobody in this entire Republican dominated government is accountable for their mistakes. Reminds me of a certain FEMA guy we all used to know.

JIM LEHRER: David?

DAVID BROOKS: If you want to judge President Bush wrong for making a bad mistake about going to war that's fine. If you want to say he lied us into war, this really is Joe McCarthy territory. This really is accusing a man of lying and killing people. This is the most heinous charge that you can make. You had better have firm evidence about that. There is no evidence that he lied.
Larry Wilkerson himself said that everything that was in Colin Powell's speech, he believed, the French believed, the Germans believed, the British believed. These were things that were believed. Did they turn out to be true? No. But it was not a lie campaign to somehow get us into war. This is really Oliver Stone territory to say that he lied us into war; to say we conducted the war badly, that's true. But to invent a conspiracy is insane.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: I have been accusing Bush of war crimes, lying and killing for years. Did Joe McCarthy ever accuse the President of such a thing? I don’t see the comparison other than your typical effort to past insult on those who question power. Bush’s crimes are nothing new. What’s new, is the rest of the American public is starting to catch on, so now Brooks has to sort of wish it away, laughed off as crazy lunacy. The lunatic is sitting in the White House. I’m not the lunatic. If I’m so crazy, then why was I right about nearly every single thing that has happened in this war. I knew from day one, and said so publically, that WMD’s made no difference in this war. Whether they are there or not will not matter. Hell, I figured Bush would plant WMD’s if he didn’t find any, and frankly, I’m surprised he didn’t. David, when are you going to stop lying, and tell the truth here. Let’s say this word together. Can you say, "oil?" Oil, David. Bush worked in oil. Cheney worked in oil. Texas has oil. The White House has Texans in it. Oil, Oil, Oil, Oil. Iraq has oil, too. Did you know that?

DAVID BROOKS: Listen, Bill Clinton said Saddam has weapons. If we don't keep the pressure on him, he's going to use them. Secretary of defense, secretary of state, everybody in that administration said that he had weapons of mass destruction. We had a 98-0 vote in the Senate to get rid of Saddam because of the belief that he was a menace to the world. Now, what changed? Sept. 11 changed. Sept. 11 said, okay, now -- the change in attitude was we now can't sit back and wait for him to use it. The threshold of tolerance changed.
And so we had a big national debate. We were all here for it. A lot of Democrats supported it. Almost every single senior member of the Clinton administration supported the resolution to go to war. A lot of people like Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton voted. It was a big national debate. They all saw the same evidence.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: That’s a very good point. As far as I’m concerned, they too, should lose their jobs. They are all incompetent liars. But I can forgive them to the extent that Bush deliberately lied about the evidence. He cooked the books, you know it, I know it, stop blaming others. This whole Scooter Libby problem is just more evidence of trying to cover the big lie. But as Hitler’s people correctly pointed out: If you tell a big enough lie, everybody will believe it.

JIM LEHRER: Speaking of evidence, how do you interpret the still-falling polling numbers of the president? How much of that do you think is Iraq? How much of it do you think is the integrity issue and all these other things? Are they all woven together?

DAVID BROOKS: I think it's all woven together. You know, I think the falling credibility of the administration is just a big deal, and the White House has a mentality, we're in a valley, we'll get out of it. That's wrong. If they don't do anything to change, they're not going to get out of it.
And it's a reflection the war in Iraq has not gone the way the people thought it was. But I don't think it's the WMD; I think it's the fact that people were being killed that we have to go into Fallujah six times because we can't fight the war credibly.
I also think it's Katrina; it's oil prices; it's a whole series of failures of institutions, and really a sense that the country is not in control, that we have fiscal chaos; we have chaos in Iraq; we have chaos in the Gulf; we have chaos in energy. There's a sense that things are not in control.

JIM LEHRER: What would you add to that, Johnny?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: I’m no expert on fickle uninformed people. There’s a percentage of Americans that knew from day one that Bush would be the worst President in American history. We have all been proven right. To ask my about the others who are not bright enough to get this right the first time, what can I say? This is why I don’t vote anymore. What’s the point? Democracy doesn’t work very well in a brainwashed environment. Free thinking is not so free, and nobody cares. There you have it. All we can do at this point is say ‘I told you so.’

DAVID BROOKS: Yeah, but it's not irreversible. I mean, Clinton was much lower than Bush is now. Reagan was lower in Iran-Contra -- they were in the 20s. But the point is, you have got to make some changes. When you go back and read about the Reagan administration, you realize how fluid it was. They really did make big changes.

JIM LEHRER: They had people coming and going all the time. This guy made a mistake -- outta here.

DAVID BROOKS: There is a war over who was really responsible for saving the administration. But the point is you look at this administration; it's built in cement. And there's an attitude that if we just ride this thing out, it will be fine.

JIM LEHRER: Well, let's be specific, the president said today -- he was asked about Karl Rove, and he wouldn't even discuss it. How long can he continue to do that? What do you think, should Rove get out of there?

DAVID BROOKS: Frankly, it's hard for me to imagine because Rove is involved in everything. It's like tearing the guts out of things. I don't know.

JIM LEHRER: Does it matter that much?

DAVID BROOKS: You know, the essential problem is deeper than that. The core thing that people forget is the core Republican strategy in the second term was Social Security reform. That was built on the entire philosophy of how you should use government in the second term. When that failed --

JIM LEHRER: And to make the tax cuts permanent.

DAVID BROOKS: Right. Okay, when those things failed, they lost an agenda, and now it's a question of rediscovering an agenda. If Rove could come up with a new agenda, I'd be fine for keeping him. But the question is are they going to come up with a new agenda, a new approach -- something that --

JOHNNY FLATLINE: I’m just waiting for Cheney to go to jail for turning a spy. That’s the real story that nobody wants to report. They have a hard enough time implicating Rove. But to use Cheney’s name in this, which is painfully obvious, is still sacrosanct.

JIM LEHRER: Where does the Sam Alito Supreme Court nomination fit into all this right now, if at all?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think there are actually some bits of good news for the administration. The Bernanke appointment was a good one; Roberts -

JIM LEHRER: Bernanke is head of the Federal Reserve to replace Alan Greenspan.

DAVID BROOKS: So you know they're not totally collapsing. That's good news. And so I think this was a good appointment. And I think he's in --

JIM LEHRER: You're talking about Alito.

DAVID BROOKS: Yeah, Alito. He's a mainstream conservative. I've read a bunch of his opinions, they're kind of boring but they're responsible. And so I think he's in decent shape. Is this enough to reverse the decline of the administration? So far, from the Washington Post poll today, no.

JIM LEHRER: What about Alito, are the Democrats going to filibuster this? Are they going to make a big fight, or is it just the interest groups are going to have a fight?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Well, even if they did, can they really stop this? I don’t think so. For any nominee to fail, you’re going to need a number of Republicans to go along. And Republicans are march in unison. What concerns me most is how the Supreme Court didn’t defend the right of Florida voters to decide who should be President. With more convervatives in there, there’s going to be more opinions against the people, and for power. That’s probably not a good thing for this country. But much worse damage has already been done. What’s one more nutty judge?

JIM LEHRER: David, should too much be read -- should a lot be read into the fact that Leahy and Specter said the president wanted this thing resolved -- the Alito thing resolved before Christmas and they're not going to even have the hearings until January? What does that say?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, senators are not shrinking violets and they think they are an equal branch of government, which they are on this thing, and I think one of the things that was interesting when Miers resigned was Specter was really angry that it was his show; how come he wasn't running the show? He's going to run the show.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: I think there are two possibilities. One is, Bush is doing so bad, hurting the rest of the party, they are keeping their options open. Why not? More time gives them more time to make sure they are not missing something embarrassing. On the other hand, this can just be a show, to prove to the public that they were very careful, therefore, nobody should worry about this guy. And frankly, some Republicans also know that if abortion were overturned, for example, they would lose a lot of money and power from the radical anti-abortion people. So do they really want to lose that funding? I have no idea what these guys are thinking, but it sure isn’t about what judge will protect individual liberties the best.

JIM LEHRER: Okay, I think we'll leave it there. Thank you both very much.

Flatline & Brooks - October 28, 2005

JIM LEHRER: Now, how all of this looks to Flatline and Brooks, Fake Democracy Founder Johnny Flatline, New York Times columnist David Brooks. David, just in general what, do you think of this action today against with Lewis Libby?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, the crucial fact is that it's about Lewis Libby. This is not quite the lone leaker, but this is about really the actions of one individual. The danger for the White House was always going to be that there would be a perception there's a cancer on the White House -- that there would be a conspiracy involving Rove and maybe several other people. It's now clear there aren't going to be indictments of several other people, and as the prosecutor said, probably not about Rove. And so we've had a great prosecutor, Fitzgerald, look for 22 months into this administration with all sorts of access, and he's found there's no sort of broad conspiracy. So while this is certainly a bad day for the administration, it's a day that the administration will probably survive because there is no sort of cancer on the presidency.

JIM LEHRER: How do you see it, Johnny?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: I think I must be living on a different planet, because I did not see any source for the crap that David Brooks just fed you. The prosecutor did not say Rove was off the hook. He did not say anybody was off the hook. He did not say this was the actions of one individual. Nothing that David Brooks just told you is true, and nothing he said makes any sense. And the assumption that Fitzgerald has had the best access to the White House in 22 years is also a lie. There is no such data to support that claim, and clearly, with perjury in our way, access has been blocked. Sand has been thrown in the eyes of the umpire. A fall guy has been tossed forward to take the blow, to protect the boss. So what you are getting from David Brooks is a carefully crafted illusion that the GOP wants to feed into the American minds like a crack pusher. And I’m going to do my best to not let him get away with it. We are not going to rewrite history so casually. If you, Jim Lehrer, were doing your job, being a responsible reporter, you could be questioning David on all of this nonsense he is feeding you, instead of looking at him with a serious look, as if you just received some objective critique. Stop the circus and ask some tough questions. Democracy is at stake here. David is not your buddy. He’s not my buddy. He no buddy of the truth, nor of this country. He is Bush’s booty buddy, and you are letting him shank us all. I’m not nearly as ashamed of Brooks, who is just doing his job of being a paid off lap dog, as I am of you and other media leaders who let them use your show as mind screw for the American public. Thank God I’m here instead of that wimp Mark Shields, so I can make the score more even here.

JIM LEHRER: David, do you think the war, like it or not, is going to become part of this trial in a major way, beyond Lewis Libby as an individual?

DAVID BROOKS: No, I really don't. Fitzgerald said very clearly this is not about the war. This is about somebody who allegedly lied to some reporters and most importantly, lied to the grand jury. So this is not about the larger issue of going to war. Joe Wilson isn't really even about that.
It's about the trip to Niger, which is off to the side about whether Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
And, I'll be honest. When I look at Scooter, someone I know -- I've gone to lunch with him for a couple of times and he's always been a terrible source because he never told me anything -- but one of the things I will always wonder about him is why was he so obsessed with Joe Wilson.
There were many broad issues about WMD's. Everybody thought Saddam had 'em going in, Democrat or Republican. We now know that was untrue.
But Joe Wilson was sort of off to the side, so why was Scooter so obsessed talking to so many reporters over a long period of time about him? I still find that mystifying.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Again, more lies, beautifully crafted. I know PBS hates to hear such words, but I do mean lies. I’m not trying to be mean or aggressive. These are simply lies David Brooks is telling. Flat out lies. Fitzgerald did not say this ordeal was not about war. He simply said his own particular job was not about war. There is a huge distinction there that Brooks is trying to gloss over. You say you are mystified why Libby, who wouldn’t gossip with you, was so obsessed with Joe Wilson? You and my cocker spaniel may be mystified, but anybody with a brain can clearly see that Libby, Cheney, Rove and God knows who else was in bad need of this nuclear excuse as their most powerful lie for selling a desperate war. It is painfully clear they worried a great deal to have this extra news coming out in the middle of their big sell, that we all know they had been planning since long before 911. WIthout the little nuke story, their excuse for unprovoked war becomes severely weakened. Did we all forget about the Downing Street Memo? Come on guys, put it together. It’s all there in front of you.
Here is what I think. I think Plame and other responsible spies in the CIA could see our leaders taking their intelligence, twisting it, and lying about it, lying to Americans, lying to the UN, to sell us all on a big fat lie for a war. So Plame was able to use her non-spy husband to take this information directly to the public. And I have little doubt that Mr. Torture himself, Cheney, had zero qualms about destroying Wilson’s family for daring to challenge his powerplay. Jesus Christ guys, history is full of power abusers like this. Why do you treat them so innocently? We know Carl Rove has a long career of vengeance in politics. Their fingerprints are all over this thing. There may never be enough proof for a criminal conviction, but there is plenty of evidence, and there is plenty of motive, and there is plenty of precedent for this kind of behavior with these guys. So don’t sugar coat this treason in front of me.

JIM LEHRER: Sen. Reid, David, said this today, that this is "about how the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its cases for the war in Iraq and to discredit anyone who dared to challenge the president." You disagree with Sen. Reid.

DAVID BROOKS: No, I really think this is a case of overreaching, almost a case of paranoia and sort of conspiracy mongering.
We've had a prosecutor -- who is a very good prosecutor -- go for 22 months in this administration with more cooperation than any reporter has ever had, anybody has ever had before. If there was a big conspiracy here, surely he would have had, (a), some indictments about the underlying crime; and surely he would have had more people than Scooter Libby.
But when you listened to that press conference, it was about one person, and it was about somebody calling a series of reporters, not about a big conspiracy, not about broader issues. It was about obstructing justice at the grand jury.

JIM LEHRER: Johnny? You see it differently.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Duh! Do you think? Fitzgerald is doing his best to maintain his credibility as a prosecutor because he knows if one political bias ever slips for his lips, the GOP will hang him from the nearest tree. He is extremely limited in what he can say, and time and silence are always on the side of a prosecutor. Smart ones know this, and keep their mouth shut. Let the criminals talk more. Maybe Libby will cut a deal? You never know. It’s not easy convicting mob bosses, and that’s what this is. Mob bosses in the executive branch.

JIM LEHRER: In other words, if somebody is going to make the conspiracy charge, Patrick Fitzgerald is not going to make it, but you think it's still there to be made?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Those are hard cases to prove unless you get some cooperating witnesses. You always need some people like Libby to break their oath and spill the beans. I can’t say if that will happen. But I do think Cheney knew what was going on because Libby road to work with Cheney, nearly every day, in the limo. And somebody thinks Libby is going to act on his own to out a spy? I don’t think so. This was clearly treason of the highest order. Not since Benedict Arnold have I seen such disregard for American defense. Before I had reason for Cheney to be kicked out of office, maybe tried for war crimes. But now I have something much better. He should be hung for treason. And a few other nooses should be provided for some of the rest of the crew. Let’s go the Republican route and use the death penalty, in order to discourage other criminals from trying to do the same thing in the future. It’s the only way.

JIM LEHRER: What does this more generally -- also picking up on what David said, that he doesn't believe this really does that much damage to the White House itself, to the president, the vice president, it's strictly Scooter Libby? Do you –

JOHNNY FLATLINE: This has always been an incompetent regime. Then it became a dishonest one. Now it’s corrupt. From top to bottom. Anybody with a brain should resign because you don’t want to be near this kind of immorality. I can see the possibility that Bush was out of the loop for two reasons. One, Cheney is the real President. Two, Bush is not bright enough to need to know this kind of thing. The hatchet men around him take care of dissent. Bush just works on his belt buckle, his vacations, and his golf game.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think about that, David?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, clearly there were lies told about Rove's role, but to me the most damaging thing, the way I would look at the administration, the way I think a lot of Americans would look at the administration was if they had really a rogue operation, which you really did see in the Nixon administration, sort of this rogue conspiracy to intentionally expose a covert operative for political gain, and if there were a bunch of people sitting around a room talking about this, then you really get a sense of a malevolence.
And, frankly, when you looked at the run-up to these indictments, all the focus was on Rove; there was talk about five indictments. And if that had happened, this would have been a cataclysmic really credibility-ending day for the administration.
But as it is, as I say, it's a bad day. Scooter Libby was a very important person in that administration, but it is not a credibility ending because it is so much about one person's actions.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Oh yeah, the Nixon group used to just sit around and chat about their criminal behavior. That’s another rewrite of history. The evil deeds are always done with a wink and a nod. It’s always more of a sense of silent tolerance, rather than active verbal approval. Tacit understanding is behind almost all high level illegal behavior. The entire world sees the Bush’s regime as a corrupt, out of control group. The world Brooks lives in, where Bush is still on some podium of credibility, is a tiny world indeed, shrinking every day. You can say it all you want, I’m not buying it, and fewer Americans are buying every day that the failure worsens. I’m just wondering if these guys can make it until their term runs out. Indictments are so many these days, the newspapers are having trouble finding enough pages to fit it all in.

JIM LEHRER: David, what about the issue that was raised before today by some Republican senators, even, that if the indictments -- no matter who was indicted, if it was just for what they call technical things, like perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements, that that's not a big deal, compared to what it would be of leaking classified information, et cetera. Where do you come down on that today?

DAVID BROOKS: If anybody makes that argument after Fitzgerald's presentation at his press conference, the person is an idiot. I think Fitzgerald did a fantastic job of saying why this is an important thing, and the argument was, this is not something at the end of the judicial process.
Telling the truth to a grand jury is the basis of the judicial process. So I think that argument died today.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that, Johnny?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Oh, they tried that b.s. last week, and it didn’t take long for the rest of us to remind them of their position on Clinton’s little lie about a blow job, which apparently, is a more serious crime than turning a high level spy.

JIM LEHRER: David, is there less chance now that there will be this big change?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, yes, because if Rove had been indicted, he would be out and there would be forced change.

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

DAVID BROOKS: It does seem a lot less likely, though I do - you know, when I talk about them surviving this day. I don't mean to say they should be banging the bongo drums and lighting up the cigars. They merely survived. They have still got a long way to go to climb back to where they were.

JIM LEHRER: Do either of you have any inside word that you'd like to share -- and I won't if tell anybody if you do -- about whether the president's made a decision about who he is going to replace as the nominee for Harriet Miers?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: I have no clue, but I hope it’s a complete nut like Scalia so we can reap what we sowed with the election of Bush. Odds are it will be a Catholic. In case you haven’t noticed, the court is loading up big time with Catholics recently. That is no accident.

JIM LEHRER: You heard anything today, David?

DAVID BROOKS: No. I think one has heard the arguments, and the president said today he is very close. And so I suspect it will be somebody we've all heard of; he won't be taking any more big, risky chances. But I haven't heard - he hasn't whispered the name to me, though, if he wants to call, he's got my number.

JIM LEHRER: But, of course my follow-up to that is if he does something like that, like Monday, Tuesday, or whatever, is the dark cloud beginning to be removed from the top of the White House, do you think, taking this event today, Harriet Miers yesterday, and then stepping up to the plate and doing something Monday, Tuesday, on the Harriet Miers issue, what do you think?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I'd say look at two scenarios: One, Harriet Miers goes through, and had the hearings, and she performed poorly, and add to that, you get four or five indictments, that's the end of the administration. So that's one scenario. The other scenario is that she withdraws and the president gets a chance to name someone who will probably do a little better in the hearings, and you only get one indictment. That's the reality scenario, and that's just a much better scenario for the administration than one - what we were looking at about a week ago.

JIM LEHRER: How do you see the cloud issue?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Well, let’s see. We have torture, American soldiers dying, high energy prices, chances of losing the right to abortion, wars against evolution being taught, tax dollars being funneled to Pat Robertson, the highest debt in history, and loss of manufacturing capacity. Oh, there certainly no clouds. Just an empire about to collapse. No big deal. Happens all the time.

JIM LEHRER: What's your overview -- go ahead, David.

DAVID BROOKS: To mention one thing about the conservatives, to me my main worry is conservatives are over reading their victory when it comes to Harriet Miers. Listen, there was a Gallup Poll that came out today, the reason why she was not favored by the majority of the American people was competence. It was not ideology. But a lot of conservative groups are reading this as a lesson, now Bush really has to pick someone extremely conservative to please us because we really run this show. And to me, the president's bind now is that a lot of conservative groups, including responsible conservative groups, not just the wing nuts, have over read what just happened and so that to me is a potential pitfall for the Republicans.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Excellent point. Bush Sr’s ex-chief of staff recently said that you want to use the extreme groups to raise money, but never satisfy them, because the minute you do, you threaten the money they give. So ending abortion, for example, would hurt future fund raisers for Republicans. So many think the courts will never end abortion, because that would end the money for the GOP. But I think there is a momentum here, where too many nuts have been let into the farm, and like in Hitler’s time, you eventually get a Taliban like situation, where you have danced with too many devils, and these games turn into reality. It’s already happening in Kansas, where they are about to recede into the medieval ages on education. Whatever you do, don’t move to Kansas, unless you want to get dumber and behind the rest of the world’s education level.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. Well, we'll leave it there. Good to see you both, thank you both.