Flatline & Brooks - March 16, 2007
JIM LEHRER: And to the analysis of Flatline and Brooks, Fake Democracy Founder Johnny Flatline, New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Johnny, what did you think of Valerie Plame before Congress today, what she said?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: I‘m in love.
JIM LEHRER: Did she persuade you?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: In ways that I can‘t reveal on public television. But if I were stuck on an island . . . with just one wish . . . . Joe Wilson, first of all, is a most impressive man. And his wife is every bit as impressive. What a couple. They can be my friends any time. And she was smart to keep her mouth shut while the Republican lie machine worked so hard to smear her. They only look more foolish, now that she is able to set the record straight about how she was destroyed for despicable reasons.
JIM LEHRER: That she was a victim.
JOHNNY FLATLINE: She was destroyed as a national security asset, no telling at what further cost to this country, to protect a lie to go to war. I just wonder how many other covert operatives were also put out of business or endangered from this that we don’t know about.
JIM LEHRER: What was your reaction to her story?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, just on that subject, there are laws about who is covert and who is not. And once you're covert, you're not always covert, as she claimed. You have to be in the field and such things. I'm not an expert on the law, but that is a matter of dispute.
And then as we saw, as the Republicans said, did the Republicans intentionally out her? I personally think this story is over and done with, to be honest with you.
I thought that the story was hot as long as people thought Rove and Cheney might be at the end of the line from the investigation. Once it became clear it was Richard Armitage, interest in the story died down. The prosecution went on. The only trial that is going to be has concluded, so I basically think the story is over.
JIM LEHRER: You don't think she's a victim?
DAVID BROOKS: No, no, she certainly was a victim. No, she certainly was a victim of a campaign to out her. And I thought -- you know, I've said on this program before, I thought the whole process was terrible.
I thought it started with the misleading things her husband said. I think it continued with the vicious campaign by the White House to destroy her and to overreact to the op-ed piece. And then it continued, I thought, with a prosecution that went off in the direction it was not supposed to go on.
It was supposed to be about outing a CIA officer, not about going after the vice president. And so I thought it was a travesty from beginning to end with no real influence on policy.
JIM LEHRER: Do you agree, no real influence on policy?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: This makes me want to just bitch slap David Brooks until his nose bleeds. This is probably the single worst case of treason I have ever witnessed in my lifetime. This is like shooting one of your own soldiers in the back. A covert spy was destroyed for political gain. It's not so hard to see the truth here. And Plame was explicity that she was definitely covert. There was no gray line. You don't get to bounce in and out of being covert. That's nonsense that Brooks is babbling on like a rag doll as if there was something to it. This was treason. I don't need a lawyer to explain it.
DAVID BROOKS: I feel like I'm getting involved in a dispute about the Dead Sea scrolls. I mean, this is ancient history, but Wilson's report, as a bipartisan commission found, was not disputing what the president said in those 16 words. It was mildly supportive.
He was dishonest about what it said. I mean, there's a whole series, as I said, of dishonesties building upon dishonesties, which is not to exculpate, whatever that word is.
JIM LEHRER: That's a great word, whatever it is.
DAVID BROOKS: The vice president -- I will never say it on television again. The vice president and the way they reacted, but it was just one, long, tawdry series of events after another.
JOHNNY FLATLINE: Ancient history my ass. For four years we had a Republican Congress with it‘s head in the sand while our constitution was being destroyed. We have a bit of catching up to do, just to fix what broke back then. That is not ancient history because we are still suffering the consequences. The list of crimes of this administration is longer than any President in the history of this country. And of all the crimes Bush has committed, this deal against Plame ranks near the top. The only thing that competes with it is our illegal war, and our torture of prisoners. It’s hard to decide which of these three crimes is worse. The fact that people like Brooks can brush this under the rug with a smirk is what worries me about the mental state of this country.
JIM LEHRER: New subject, speaking of the White House, David, the fired U.S. attorneys and Attorney General Gonzales, is he on his way out?
DAVID BROOKS: I think he might be. What strikes me, aside from the substance of this, what strikes me about this story is, first of all, how much Republicans around the country, and especially on Capitol Hill, are sick of the White House and sick of them, of the Republicans having to wake up in the morning and try to defend something which they think is incompetent.
And so there's just a wall of hostility coming from Republicans now. And there's also, apparently, disputes within the -- between the White House and the attorney general.
And there's also the knowledge that, if they want to pursue substantive matters, having to do with national security and other things that go through the attorney general's office, this guy is not going to be able to do that in an effective way.
So I think all that adds up to the likelihood, regardless of the merits of this case, that they're going to have a new attorney general.
JIM LEHRER: New attorney general, Johnny?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: Come on, Gonzales is an embarrassment. If you know anything about this guy, you can‘t possibly take him seriously. He‘s an accident waiting to happen. The odds of him screwing up are 100%. He so dumb, he makes Ashcroft look smart. Now how bad can that be?
JIM LEHRER: But should he go?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: I‘m not even going to dignify that question with an answer. Where have you been? Are you serious? Should he go? Do I really need to answer that for you? If you audience doesn’t already understand what a criminal Gonzales is, then there’s no hope in my trying to explain it now.
JIM LEHRER: Do you feel, David, that something really wrong was committed here by the White House, Gonzales, and all of the above?
DAVID BROOKS: I really don't know. I'm amazed everyone else around town seems to have an opinion on this subject.
It goes on to whether these attorneys were wrongfully fired, wrongfully dismissed for political reasons. And a lot of the cases which the administration was pushing these guys to push have to do with New Mexico, voter fraud in New Mexico and Washington State, capital defense cases, immigration law. I nothing know nothing about any of these cases.
But a lot of people in Washington assume that the White House must be wrong and the attorneys were right not to push these cases. I don't think we know that.
Nonetheless, I think what's clear and what's created this furor, especially on the Republican side, is just the incompetent way they first said they were not being fired for cause, then said cause, denied that there was any politics in it, when of course there's politics in it.
And so it's that whole atmosphere that has created this little skirmish. But the substance, unless you're a real expert in these cases, I don't think anybody knows.
JIM LEHRER: Do you agree that this is more of a handling offense rather than a substance offense?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: This executive branch has destroyed our constitution. We have an illegal war going on, people are being tortured, scandal is everywhere, elections are being stolen, Americans are being illegally spied on, CIA spies are destroyed who don‘t play ball, and you find it a stretch that maybe some prosecutors are being fired for political reasons? Jim, what kind of show is this? Are you out of your f. . king mind? This is not news. It‘s been circulating for some time that Karl Rove was implementing a plan to keep GOP power running for eternity, and this was part of that plan. Wake up and smell the fascism. You‘re living in it. People are dying. We are there. It’s time for you to start being an American and asking some tough questions.
DAVID BROOKS: I thought Johnny knew all about number theory in Albania. But this is the thing -- this follows on Plame. This is the second attempt to get Rove. This is the great white whale of Washington politics. And he's sort of vaguely implicated in this, and so there's a desire to see if he's deeply involved.
JOHNNY FLATLINE: Get Rove, get Cheney, get Rice, get Gonzales, get Bush. Please, get them all. This country is in big trouble, with the worst administration in the history of this country. I’m very worried about the next 22 months, because I’m in complete agreement with Zbigniew Brzezinski that the entire future of this country as a world power is at stake. That’s really the biggest story of the week is Brzezinski’s message, which has been well circulated in the intellectual media. Our democracy is on the line. Our future is on the line, and Brzezinski, who understands power better than most, has articulated the problem to perfection.
JIM LEHRER: That this could play out by then end of Bush‘s term.
JOHNNY FLATLINE: If Bush attacks Iran, we are basically finished. We will be stuck in a 20 year battle with 4 countries that we won’t be able to get out of. We will be done for. If we can escape the next 22 months without Bush creating this mess, then we have a chance of recovering our democracy and world respect. But we are truly on the line here. We are sitting on the edge of a cliff. That is Brzezinski’s position and I agree with it 100%.
My hat is off to Jon Stewart for airing the most reality on TV this past week. Leave it to Comedy Central to surpass news stations for the umpteenth time. He had Brzezinski on his show, and he probably has the most educated listeners of any show in all of TV. And Stewart is one of the few who works at characterizing Cheney as the horrible Hitleresque maniac that he truly is. And what Zbigniew has to say was so startling, that Stewart didn’t even bother to be funny, or end with a laugh. This is a serious charge against the Bush administration of the highest order.
Buy the book. Read it. 2nd Chance is the title. I think a few Americans are starting to listen. That’s the only part that give me some encouragement. But you, Jim Lehrer, could be doing more yourself. You should be living up to Jon Stewart’s example, and quit kissing ass to this kind of insidious power. Your country needs you. Step up to the plate. You can start by getting Brooks off of your show. Stop cow towing to his lies. Get some real people on this show. Help our democracy. Please.
JIM LEHRER: OK. We have to leave it there. Thank you both.
Johnny, what did you think of Valerie Plame before Congress today, what she said?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: I‘m in love.
JIM LEHRER: Did she persuade you?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: In ways that I can‘t reveal on public television. But if I were stuck on an island . . . with just one wish . . . . Joe Wilson, first of all, is a most impressive man. And his wife is every bit as impressive. What a couple. They can be my friends any time. And she was smart to keep her mouth shut while the Republican lie machine worked so hard to smear her. They only look more foolish, now that she is able to set the record straight about how she was destroyed for despicable reasons.
JIM LEHRER: That she was a victim.
JOHNNY FLATLINE: She was destroyed as a national security asset, no telling at what further cost to this country, to protect a lie to go to war. I just wonder how many other covert operatives were also put out of business or endangered from this that we don’t know about.
JIM LEHRER: What was your reaction to her story?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, just on that subject, there are laws about who is covert and who is not. And once you're covert, you're not always covert, as she claimed. You have to be in the field and such things. I'm not an expert on the law, but that is a matter of dispute.
And then as we saw, as the Republicans said, did the Republicans intentionally out her? I personally think this story is over and done with, to be honest with you.
I thought that the story was hot as long as people thought Rove and Cheney might be at the end of the line from the investigation. Once it became clear it was Richard Armitage, interest in the story died down. The prosecution went on. The only trial that is going to be has concluded, so I basically think the story is over.
JIM LEHRER: You don't think she's a victim?
DAVID BROOKS: No, no, she certainly was a victim. No, she certainly was a victim of a campaign to out her. And I thought -- you know, I've said on this program before, I thought the whole process was terrible.
I thought it started with the misleading things her husband said. I think it continued with the vicious campaign by the White House to destroy her and to overreact to the op-ed piece. And then it continued, I thought, with a prosecution that went off in the direction it was not supposed to go on.
It was supposed to be about outing a CIA officer, not about going after the vice president. And so I thought it was a travesty from beginning to end with no real influence on policy.
JIM LEHRER: Do you agree, no real influence on policy?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: This makes me want to just bitch slap David Brooks until his nose bleeds. This is probably the single worst case of treason I have ever witnessed in my lifetime. This is like shooting one of your own soldiers in the back. A covert spy was destroyed for political gain. It's not so hard to see the truth here. And Plame was explicity that she was definitely covert. There was no gray line. You don't get to bounce in and out of being covert. That's nonsense that Brooks is babbling on like a rag doll as if there was something to it. This was treason. I don't need a lawyer to explain it.
DAVID BROOKS: I feel like I'm getting involved in a dispute about the Dead Sea scrolls. I mean, this is ancient history, but Wilson's report, as a bipartisan commission found, was not disputing what the president said in those 16 words. It was mildly supportive.
He was dishonest about what it said. I mean, there's a whole series, as I said, of dishonesties building upon dishonesties, which is not to exculpate, whatever that word is.
JIM LEHRER: That's a great word, whatever it is.
DAVID BROOKS: The vice president -- I will never say it on television again. The vice president and the way they reacted, but it was just one, long, tawdry series of events after another.
JOHNNY FLATLINE: Ancient history my ass. For four years we had a Republican Congress with it‘s head in the sand while our constitution was being destroyed. We have a bit of catching up to do, just to fix what broke back then. That is not ancient history because we are still suffering the consequences. The list of crimes of this administration is longer than any President in the history of this country. And of all the crimes Bush has committed, this deal against Plame ranks near the top. The only thing that competes with it is our illegal war, and our torture of prisoners. It’s hard to decide which of these three crimes is worse. The fact that people like Brooks can brush this under the rug with a smirk is what worries me about the mental state of this country.
JIM LEHRER: New subject, speaking of the White House, David, the fired U.S. attorneys and Attorney General Gonzales, is he on his way out?
DAVID BROOKS: I think he might be. What strikes me, aside from the substance of this, what strikes me about this story is, first of all, how much Republicans around the country, and especially on Capitol Hill, are sick of the White House and sick of them, of the Republicans having to wake up in the morning and try to defend something which they think is incompetent.
And so there's just a wall of hostility coming from Republicans now. And there's also, apparently, disputes within the -- between the White House and the attorney general.
And there's also the knowledge that, if they want to pursue substantive matters, having to do with national security and other things that go through the attorney general's office, this guy is not going to be able to do that in an effective way.
So I think all that adds up to the likelihood, regardless of the merits of this case, that they're going to have a new attorney general.
JIM LEHRER: New attorney general, Johnny?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: Come on, Gonzales is an embarrassment. If you know anything about this guy, you can‘t possibly take him seriously. He‘s an accident waiting to happen. The odds of him screwing up are 100%. He so dumb, he makes Ashcroft look smart. Now how bad can that be?
JIM LEHRER: But should he go?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: I‘m not even going to dignify that question with an answer. Where have you been? Are you serious? Should he go? Do I really need to answer that for you? If you audience doesn’t already understand what a criminal Gonzales is, then there’s no hope in my trying to explain it now.
JIM LEHRER: Do you feel, David, that something really wrong was committed here by the White House, Gonzales, and all of the above?
DAVID BROOKS: I really don't know. I'm amazed everyone else around town seems to have an opinion on this subject.
It goes on to whether these attorneys were wrongfully fired, wrongfully dismissed for political reasons. And a lot of the cases which the administration was pushing these guys to push have to do with New Mexico, voter fraud in New Mexico and Washington State, capital defense cases, immigration law. I nothing know nothing about any of these cases.
But a lot of people in Washington assume that the White House must be wrong and the attorneys were right not to push these cases. I don't think we know that.
Nonetheless, I think what's clear and what's created this furor, especially on the Republican side, is just the incompetent way they first said they were not being fired for cause, then said cause, denied that there was any politics in it, when of course there's politics in it.
And so it's that whole atmosphere that has created this little skirmish. But the substance, unless you're a real expert in these cases, I don't think anybody knows.
JIM LEHRER: Do you agree that this is more of a handling offense rather than a substance offense?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: This executive branch has destroyed our constitution. We have an illegal war going on, people are being tortured, scandal is everywhere, elections are being stolen, Americans are being illegally spied on, CIA spies are destroyed who don‘t play ball, and you find it a stretch that maybe some prosecutors are being fired for political reasons? Jim, what kind of show is this? Are you out of your f. . king mind? This is not news. It‘s been circulating for some time that Karl Rove was implementing a plan to keep GOP power running for eternity, and this was part of that plan. Wake up and smell the fascism. You‘re living in it. People are dying. We are there. It’s time for you to start being an American and asking some tough questions.
DAVID BROOKS: I thought Johnny knew all about number theory in Albania. But this is the thing -- this follows on Plame. This is the second attempt to get Rove. This is the great white whale of Washington politics. And he's sort of vaguely implicated in this, and so there's a desire to see if he's deeply involved.
JOHNNY FLATLINE: Get Rove, get Cheney, get Rice, get Gonzales, get Bush. Please, get them all. This country is in big trouble, with the worst administration in the history of this country. I’m very worried about the next 22 months, because I’m in complete agreement with Zbigniew Brzezinski that the entire future of this country as a world power is at stake. That’s really the biggest story of the week is Brzezinski’s message, which has been well circulated in the intellectual media. Our democracy is on the line. Our future is on the line, and Brzezinski, who understands power better than most, has articulated the problem to perfection.
JIM LEHRER: That this could play out by then end of Bush‘s term.
JOHNNY FLATLINE: If Bush attacks Iran, we are basically finished. We will be stuck in a 20 year battle with 4 countries that we won’t be able to get out of. We will be done for. If we can escape the next 22 months without Bush creating this mess, then we have a chance of recovering our democracy and world respect. But we are truly on the line here. We are sitting on the edge of a cliff. That is Brzezinski’s position and I agree with it 100%.
My hat is off to Jon Stewart for airing the most reality on TV this past week. Leave it to Comedy Central to surpass news stations for the umpteenth time. He had Brzezinski on his show, and he probably has the most educated listeners of any show in all of TV. And Stewart is one of the few who works at characterizing Cheney as the horrible Hitleresque maniac that he truly is. And what Zbigniew has to say was so startling, that Stewart didn’t even bother to be funny, or end with a laugh. This is a serious charge against the Bush administration of the highest order.
Buy the book. Read it. 2nd Chance is the title. I think a few Americans are starting to listen. That’s the only part that give me some encouragement. But you, Jim Lehrer, could be doing more yourself. You should be living up to Jon Stewart’s example, and quit kissing ass to this kind of insidious power. Your country needs you. Step up to the plate. You can start by getting Brooks off of your show. Stop cow towing to his lies. Get some real people on this show. Help our democracy. Please.
JIM LEHRER: OK. We have to leave it there. Thank you both.
posted by Johnny Flatline at 11:43 PM
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