Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Brutally Honest Rant - 01/25/06

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: How the Dems Fumbled On Alito
Audio Transcripts
01/25/06

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – "American Idiot Remix" – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening, and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

I’m going to start off with a little confession… I am guilty of over-thinking.

It’s true. In fact, it’s a part of the reason why my social life has been abysmal. I see a beautiful woman and I will over-think about how she sees me. Most guys will simply work on instinct and ask her out, even if they know they don’t stand a chance with her. Me? I’ll go over every possible outcome in my mind, from the realistic to the absolute horrific. I’ll mentally envision everything from her publicly belittling me and laughing at my shortcomings to her walking down the isle with me and bearing my children. And by the time I even get around to asking her out, she’s already deduced that I wasn’t interested in her because I didn’t step up when I needed to.

That’s what over-thinking does, folks. It actually paralyses you from doing what needs to be done.

You know who also has this problem? The Democrats in Congress. Especially in the US Senate!

Every time there is a judicial nomination, the Dems are talking about how they’re going to raise holy hell if that nomination is even the least bit conservative. Oh, they’re going to RAISE THE ROOF! They’re going to lay into that nomination at the confirmation hearings. They’re going to press that nominee HARD on their previous stances and why they decided cases the way they did and make sure that EVERY "I" is dotted and EVERY "T" is crossed. And if they don’t like what they hear, then they’re going to filibuster the whole damned thing and shut the process DOWN if they have to!

BUT… when the time comes… it just… doesn’t happen! They waffle. They wimp out. They ask the occasional hard question, but more often than naught the nominee is already prepared for that hard question with a soft answer that the Dems simply let slide. And then, when the time comes for a vote, the Dems simply let this nominee go through.

In fact, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware made the comment that the confirmation hearings are pretty much useless because the nominees are often so well prepared for them that they don’t produce anything substantial. The nominee will give some soft answer to even the most controversial of positions to give the illusion of being fair and impartial.

Well I have a simple question to the career politician from Delaware about these so-called "useless" hearings…

Why did YOU let them become useless?

I mean, folks, let’s get brutally honest here… if the Democrats want to complain about how these confirmation hearings have become meaningless circus acts for the air-fluffed sound byte media, they have nobody to blame for this but themselves! THEY’RE the ones who made it such!

Whatever happened to all of that talk about "raising the roof" and stalling the process and filibusters? Whatever happened to standing up for principles and supposedly representing the very Americans that the Republicans refuse to represent? It all gets pretty much LOST once that gavel hits.

And that’s certainly the case with Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito!

Now folks, I’m going to out on a limb here, but I think that it’s a pretty fair assumption that Samuel Alito will become the next Supreme Court Justice. This is a nominee that the conservatives have been WANTING to elevate to the highest court for quite some time. They have hoped for this moment… they have PRAYED for this moment… they even had lurid sexual fantasies about this moment! In fact Alito had might as well be considered the GOP version of VIAGRA!

And the liberals KNEW THIS! Not only did they KNOW it, but they FEARED it, because they knew they didn’t have the numbers in the Senate to stop the process.

So what’s with all of the "tough talk" rhetoric? Why promise to raise holy hell if you’re not going to deliver? Do you REALLY think that your voter base is THAT STUPID???

And here’s the thing with Alito: the Dems HAD their chance. They HAD their opportunity to BLAST the Alito confirmation process completely. They had the perfect opportunity to get at the conservatives, including right at the beginning of the whole thing.

Just prior to the confirmation process, a fundamentalist Christian group actually went through ANNOINTING THE DOORWAY with oil! They were consecrating the hearing room. Now if Judge Alito is supposed to be such an open-minded member of the judiciary, why were religious groups treating his confirmation hearing like the Second Coming of Jesus Christ?? The Democrats in the committee should have immediately condemned the process and requested the hearing be moved to a different room… one that was free of theocratic bias. But, of course, they didn’t. They let it slide.

There were the usual questions on abortion, which were met with the usual soft answers. There were SOME questions about the scope of executive power, but those were quickly deflected. And then a LOT of time and A LOT of hot air was directed at some obscure college alumni group that Judge Alito was a member of once upon a time that he used in his Reagan Administration resume. A LOT of limited time was WASTED on this snipe hunt.

And I’ll take it one step further… I firmly believe that the whole matter with the "Concerned Alumni of Princeton" membership was nothing more than a carefully staged and deliberate diversion designed to waste limited time and energy so as to portray Judge Alito as a "victim" of Democratic bashing.

And the hoax worked! It made the Democrats look mean-spirited and spiteful and it garnered sympathy for Alito. It was a dirty trick of dirty tricks, but they pulled it off and nobody was the wiser… except, of course, for yours truly.

Now folks, I personally don’t want Judge Alito in the Supreme Court… but it’s NOT because he’s a conservative, or because Christian groups get aroused over his name… I object to Judge Alito’s nomination because this guy has a judicial record of siding with the government no matter what! Sure he talks about how "no man is above the law", but we have a White House being run by people who think that THEY ARE the law! People who think that they can do WHATEVER they want to as long as they invoke "Executive Privilege" and say "we are at war".

We need a judicial system that is strong enough to slam these power-hungry fear-mongers DOWN like a toilet seat! We need people in the system who will look at that gross abuse of government power and say "NO, THIS IS ILLEGAL!"

And I don’t see Judge Alito doing that! I don’t see him having the courage or the character to question the government. I see him as yet another rubber-stamp for the government. I see him as someone who will wimp out at these power-grabs and say "well, they’re wrong… but if the government is doing it then there must be a good reason… so we’ll let it slide." It’s the same mentality that led the Supreme Court to issue FATAL constitutional errors such as allowing a blank check for eminent domain abuse, allowing cart blanche for campaign finance reform to suppress free speech, and giving the government carte blanche over the anti-American PATRIOT Act.

And that’s how you kill freedom in America. It’s not done by terrorists. It’s not done by protesters. It’s not even done by the media. It’s done by people who wuss out and say "well if the government is doing it then they must have a good reason."

So why aren’t the Dems stepping up? Because they are over-thinking. They are not stepping up and taking a stand for what they supposedly believe in because they figure that it’ll be better for THEIR re-election!

It was the same way with the rest of the Bush Junior cabinet! Remember FEMA director Michael Brown? You don’t think for a minute that the Senate looked at his resume and smelled cronyism? But they certainly said nothing about it. You know why? Because the more inept the Imperium looks, the better THEIR positions look as the supposed "voices of reason". They’re thinking about the next election when they should have instead been thinking about the here and now! If they DID speak up and if they DID raise those concerns like they should have, then we probably would’ve had someone better and more qualified running FEMA that would have moved those emergency resources to New Orleans BEFORE Hurricane Katrina hit that area instead of FIVE DAYS LATER!

THAT’S what happens when you over-think!

(Computer – various clips)
(Fade Music In – "Halcyon On and On" by Orbital)

You know… it’s one thing to step up and say that "I support THIS value". But the caveat to doing that is you then have to actually SUPPORT it when the time comes. And not just SOMETIMES or whenever it’s politically expedient or when it’s time for the next election. You have to support it at ALL times, good or bad. And that applies to liberals, ultra-liberals, conservatives, neo-conservatives, moderates, and libertarians.

On one side, we have conservatives who like to talk about freedom and how "no man is above the law" but then waffle when that abusive government is upon us. On the other, we have liberals who promise to raise holy hell and then back down when the time comes to step up.

And politicians wonder why they have such a bad reputation! Go figure!

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production, all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/"End of Recording")

[End of program]
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