Roundtable: Demon Sheep, Tea Party and the Politics of National Security

Since at the end of the show, next week’s guest was announced, FORMER VP
Cheney, I won’t be watching. Don’t need to hear the consistent negative message that he and daughter Liz has been spewing every since President Obama took office!Cheney and Will should be on Fox; if ABC continues to run its venue in the manner of FOX, they will certainly lose this veiwer.

“Since at the end of the show, next week’s guest was announced, FORMER VP
Cheney, I won’t be watching.”
Good. Then we won’t have to read any of your comments about what was said.

Jake actually had a graph of that on one of his broadcasts…entitlements have to be dealt with. With our aging population it’s going to get much worse, very quickly.
I’m 50 and very willing to have a gradual age adjustment to when you start receiving benefits. People really have to start taking responsibility and planning for their retirement. I don’t want future generations having to face this overwhelming burden.

In 1957, when Ayn Rand wrote “Atlas Shrugged,” the top 1% of earners made about 8% of the pie, and paid taxes at top rates of 91% (ordinary income) and 45% (capital gains).
Now the top 1% takes in about 23% of the pie and pays top rates of 35 and 15% respectively. To hear George Will talk of it you would think these not so small trends had not occurred.
Yet, and as he ususally does; Mr. Will did not hesitate to take a swipe at “unionized” public employees.
So tell a carpenter that his lifestyle is in trouble because of shifting wealth to the rich, that’s “Class Warfare.” But fail to tell him to be angry at a teacher or cop, that’s unpatriotic?

Dont question the Christmas day bomber
Just take him into the rose garden and shoot him

Why would ABC want to emulate Fox and their 1st place ratings. ABC should broadcast only what Patty needs to hear…like all socialist, communist and fascist regimes.

Finally a chance to engage serial liar George Will on a matter of substance instead of simply pointing out his propensity to fabricate facts and events.
Will says:
WILL: “The point of counterterrorism is not to prosecute successfully terrorists; it’s to prevent terrorists from committing their acts in the first place. It is prevention, not prosecution. And this looked like just another way of saying, “We’re not George Bush,” which isn’t the point.”
Will is wrong.
Its not that it isn’t Bush, except insofar as Bush represented policies of torture, extension of US monied interests abroad, and provocative militarism.
Otherwise, it is precisely the point.
Why do we read suspects their rights:
1) It is the law, and our government believes that no man is above it, including the President.
2) Because of #1, people can trust the US to be fair, and believe that the US represents moral values that they agree with;
3) Because of #2 people around the world are less likely to provide aid to terrorists, and will in fact cooperate in turning them in, thus preventing attacks.
Will has it exactly wrong. This is ultimately a political battle, one that Will is on the wrong side of.
Why does George Will want us to lose the war against terrorism?

Yes paul is correct those rich people like ford, gates, jobs, buffet, they keep all that money, never hire anyone, or make anything anyone needs. the author of Pippy Longstockings left Sweden because she was taxed a very fair 120%. why should anyone do more with themselves, do all that creative, innovative stuff. they should have been a real man and be a carpenter. look, quit praising the carpenters that didn’t bust his ass to be a doctor. GM, now listed on the stock exchange as Liquidation Motors is bankrupt because their costs to do business was too high. it wasn’t from not selling enough product. When your out go is greater than your income then your upkeep will be your down fall. where in the constitution does it say in the constitution that the government shall be the greatest shareholder of someone’s pay check.

The Witch of Wasilla is vile, and I think she’s a great representative of the Republicans. If there is a way to keep them out of power, she’s is it. Go SAINTS!!

the underwear bomber flew in from a country that thought it wasn’t “fair” to use the unplugged scanners that would have detected his explosive. “all’s ‘fair’ in love and War.” Fair is why we lost Nam. Fair is why we have thousands of men sitting on a wall in Korea for some 60 years. “fair” cost too much. Kyle’s 3 laws of liberal robotic stupidity doesn’t explain why we are missing two towers.

Oops I spoke too soon. Will brazenly lied within the first minute of his time, when he alleged that the Bush tax cuts affect mainly small businesses.
This is so demonstrably false I suppose I should be surprised that nobody on the show called him on it. However, I think that I am getting used this type of fawning acceptance of the corporate party line of the corporate media and it doesn’t surprise me anymore.
For the thousandth time, very few small businesses make enough profit to fall into the highest tax bracket. In fact, nine out of ten businesses don’t get into the top two tax brackets.
Just because a billionaire CEO happens to make a few thousand dollars renting out his chalet in Aspen and reports that as small business income, or another reports ten thousand in speaking fees for his self incorporated entity, doesn’t mean that we should cry any tears for their ‘suffering’.

i think that if “this week” continues to invite peggy noonan on the show, i’m going to have to go elsewhere on sunday morning. i cannot stand that woman and her misinformation, delivered with a smugness unequaled by almost anybody. other than george will of course. yikes, don’t think my stomach or my blood pressure can handle her first thing in the morning.

I’m so tired of the snobby Harvard egghead lecturing us, and looking down his nose at the people.
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It’s this kind of talk that conned people into voting for George Bush and Cheney – just two aw-shucks kind of guys.
Sorry, we’ve hand enough of that kind of ‘down-home’ incompentence.

“Scott Brown, Sarah Palin they are something the elitist Washington insiders (from both parties)will never be–one of us.”
Just like when you buy failed businessman frat-boy George Bush a ranch in Texas and have him clear a little brush on weekends and he becomes a cowboy.

Reagan, like Palin, was called a dunce by the left.
Not quite as dumb as the millions that were hoodwinked by “hope and change”.
How’s that hopey changey thing working out for you? Palin
I’m guessing Obama will drag out the same slogans for 2012–fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

This show is just that a show. The Tea Party is a grassroots movement of people who are concerned with the direction of this country. They are people who want our representatives to represent rather than become surrogate parents. They want representatives to follow the US Constitution – for a change.
What they did not say is that the shoe bomber was an American citizen, and there were no military tribunals crated at time he was prosecuted. Try to compare oranges with oranges, rather than with potato chips.
If you are going to have a news show, make it accurate.

Palin doesn’t have a Haaarvard education.
But I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be so arrogant, and weak, and clueless to sit on a historic supermajority–and accomplish absolutely nothing.
So arrogant as to to set deadlines with no plans, so blatantly corrupt to bribe special interests, so full of herself to lecture the people, so narcissistic to go on TV everyday.
Unlike Obama, Palin has executive experience and has a record of accomplishment.
Obama blew a supermajority backed by 90% of the media in less than a year.
Do Obama supporters still think he is playing chess?

The surprising thing coming out of the Tea party convention was plainly Palin poignantly pointing out that Obama should learn to listen instead of lecture. Obama and the Democrats are below the waterline when Palin can make that observation.

“Palin has executive experience and has a record of accomplishment”
-A truncated governorship of a backwater state? Having been President for a year Obama is light-years beyond that already. What are Palin’s alleged accomplishments? -selling alot of books?

Posted by: Jamie-NY | Feb 7, 2010 3:43:40 PM
We would call them people who forgot all about the Republican administration under Bush and Cheney – how they came in promising ‘smaller government’ and the ‘elimination of the deficit’ and doubled the national debt, greatly enlarged the deficit and left the country ill-prepared for the economic crash that happened on their shift.
We would call them people who are blissfully ignorant enough to forget we are going through the biggest recession since the Great Depression.
We would call them people who are blissfully ignorant of the effects of a recession of this size on government programs and deficits.
We would call them people blissfully ignorant enough to not know EVERY western industrialized nation has gone into deficit funding, stimulus programs and tax cuts to try to survive the economic collapse.
We would call them – naive.

We would call them people who are blissfully ignorant enough to forget we are going through the biggest recession since the Great Depression-Posted by: tierra | Feb 7, 2010 3:52:09 PM
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It sounds that you mean them to Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Eric Holder. Right ?

“Cut the rhetoric and whining and show us something worthwhile – we’ve seen nothing of worth from Palin or the Republicans.”
Palin and for that matter republicans are not in control, they can suggest but that is about it.
As for the Democrats cutting anything to save money they have basically offered to copy both sides of a sheet of paper and ask for more tax money.

“Cut the rhetoric and whining and show us something worthwhile – we’ve seen nothing of worth from Palin or the Republicans.”
Palin and for that matter republicans are not in control, they can suggest but that is about it.
Posted by: david | Feb 7, 2010 4:14:46 PM
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Where is Palin’s itemized budget of what she would cut and how much it will save?
Where is the Republicans’ itemized budget of what they would cut and how much it will save?

These tea party folks are driving the lefties crazy. Come on guys. It’s just a handful of people who want to have their 15 minutes of fame. They can do no harm and they have a right to express their concerns. Something about freedom of speech as I recall.

tea party=adherence to the Constitution. A relatively new and novel idea…why are everyone’s knickers in a twist.

“Where is the Republicans’ itemized budget of what they would cut and how much it will save?”
Typically, the President draws up a plan and then lets Congress hash it out being that Congress is really the people who say what and where to spend (which I may add that Democrats have held this power for 3 years now).
I think what has drawn the ire (of most of us) was the stimulus package, where and how it was spent…the fictional congression districts money was sent to,the union bailouts of pension plans, the bank bailouts, the choo choo trains for Harry, the frog refuge for Nancy or the entourage Nancy stuffs full of tax payer supplied food and beverage on her weekly jaunts home. Those are a few examples of of what most of us consider waste in a time of famine. All of us realize the need to care for and feed the sick and destitute but lavish nonsense should be torn apart, not only by the Republicans but by the President himself.
But I haven’t seem an itemized list from anyone.

Good interviewing by Jake Tapper & GREAT round table today. Great questions for the table with interesting twists.
The demon sheep … still laughing at that one.
I have to say, thankfully, ‘spun facts’ did not rule the conversation & were called out. That’s what I expect a good round table to do.

Great job Jake! Perhaps the best “This week” i’ve seen. Hope you stay on this show permanently. No offense George Steph. Great roundtable! Loved the stimulus bill creating at least one job, Sen Brown and the demon sheep ad. Great banter and hit on many of the key topics, including the issue of bipartisanship or lack thereof. Wished you pushed Geitner about his own personal taxes. Was that off limits? Keep up the great work.

How’s that hopey dopey change-y working for ya?
How’s that charsmatic guy with a teleprompter working for ya?

GO SARAH PALIN/SCOTT BROWN IN 2012
I wish that fool Palin would run in 2012. It would be a sure win for Obama. She is the reason you stupid nuts lost a year ago. Please Please Please put that fool back on the ticket.

Republicans aren’t responsible for producing a budget.
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Nonsense.
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No. Republicans aren’t responsible for this budget. Saying differently sounds like the diversion it is meant to be. Nothing but rhetoric, whining and posturing.

“Republicans aren’t responsible for producing a budget.”
It’s attitudes like those that are why Washington is broken. It’s all or nothing all the time.

“Republicans aren’t responsible for producing a budget.”
It’s attitudes like those that are why Washington is broken. It’s all or nothing all the time.
Posted by: Doc Rock
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That doesn’t change the facts. Republicans are not running the show up there. Asking for the other guy’s plan is one of the last refuges of a pol who’s losing popularity and has no other way of helping himself. Admit it or not, that mess up there belongs to the Democrats. And Democrats are up for reelection with Obama’s unpopular policies and no George Bush to beat up on. And Independants leaving in droves.
Obama has turned into a gift for everyone. Face it or not, that is y’all’s reality.

The Republicans are criticizing the current administration’s budget and spending.
Where are the Republicans specific proposals that outline what they think should be cut and how much it will save?
If they have so much criticism, what do they have to offer?
Where’s their plan?
No wonder they’re the party of no ideas. The party of ‘no’.

Thank you wow for that information. A first bit on immediate feedback . ..
“But whatever one thinks of it [Rep. Ryan's budget] . . . John Boehner, House Republican leader, promptly disowned it.”
Not as easy as it looks.

It’s too funny. In the late summer of 2008 when candidate John McCain announced his curious choice of a running mate, I immediately ran to the computer to do a google-search of the name, “Sarah Palin”. I knew next-to-nothing about the woman other than the fact that she was the governor of Alaska. The first thing in her paper-thin biography that stood out for me was the date of her birth: February 11, 1964. I remember that day – distinctly! That was the day my beloved grandma, Loretta Doran Clements, died in South Bend, Indiana at the age of sixty-eight.
But other than that interesting coincidence there was not a heck of a lot in her biography that really stood out. Truth be told, I was more than a little puzzled as to why the GOP would think her an asset to the ticket. The moment she opened her mouth at her first campaign stop in Dayton, Ohio, I could only think of one thing:
Sally Field as “Gidget”.
When someone like Sarah Palin can make it as far as she has, it can mean only one thing and it’s not a particularly good sign: we are living in a culture that has been custom-tailored for idiots. When a person who can barely put two coherent sentences together without the aid of a teleprompter becomes one of the best-selling non-fiction authors of the decade, that’s usually a pretty good indicator that society is spiraling downward at a fairly decent clip. Fasten your seat belts, kiddies!
I had always believed that Monty Python alumni Michael Palin was the funniest person in the world to bear that name. In fact it should be stated for the record that the two Palins are equally funny. The only difference is that Michael works very hard at it. Sarah’s funniness, on the other hand, is purely accidental. The woman is a scream; the Buster Keaton of unintentional comedy.
Tom Degan

I like the demon sheep guy when he’s on all fours going away from the camera.. very creative.. quite a sight..
The GOP needs to dance carefully on this razor edge of budget and spending.. they are as dirty as the donkeys.. in this regard..

Big Banks are throwing their financial support to the REPUBLICANS…..why you Think? hehe

The Tea Party will NOT be effective, unless it separates itself from the GOP, and becomes its own party, with its own candidates.
There must be, more than one alternative option, in future elections.

NO NO NO No has become the symbol of the Republican Party today. And that is the reason so many of us have left the GOP and never to return. My wife and I were faithful and active Republicans for over a half century until the party was high-jacked by the fanatics of the religious right and the neo cons. Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower & Bayy Goldwater must be turning over in their graves. Disagree when one must, but have something, almost anything reasonable, to offer in place of what you disagree with.

sara: “Privatizing Social Security, “cutting” social security payouts to Individuals, and Turning Medicare over to Private Insurance Industry…….sounds familiar…”
It’s called simple mathematics. We have $12.3 TRILLION in debt. We have $107 TRILLION in unfunded mandates for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (and rising rapidly). The government only collects $2.5 TRILLION in tax revenue on a YEARLY basis, and that’s to pay for EVERYTHING, including defense. But Obama spent $1.41 TRILLION more in 2009 and now projects a $1.6 TRILLION deficit for 2010. It’s out of control and unsustainable. Taxes on everyone are going way up and benefits will be drastically cut, I don’t care who is in power.