Hannity had the day off. Instead, I went toe-to-toe with his guest host, Mark Simone. I was "Cliff" from Park Slope...
flip for the transcript (to the extent of my ability to recall)
Simone: Let's go to Cliff from Park Slope.
Me: Hi - as long as we are talking about Joe Wilson, I think it is appropriate to note that the first George Bush called his efforts in the run-up to the first gulf war heroic...
Simone: Oh, yes... we can give him that. Evidently there were some American hostages being held by Saddam and he was able to secure them diplomatically... George Bush did express his appreciation
Me: and then he was Director for Africa at the National Security Agency between '97 and '99...
Simone: Oh yes... we should note that when it came time to hand out ambassadorships - when George Bush was assigning ambassadors, Joe Wilson, for all his heroism, didn't get a real plum ambassadorship...
Me: (laughing) but he got an ambassadorship, right
Simone: well, Gabon isn't the flashiest place to be...
Me: whatever... my point - the reason I called is that this should not be about Joe Wilson - this is about 2,000 dead kids and over 15,000 injured heros that went off to fight over WMD. And this administration outed a CIA agent working on the most important thing the CIA does - WMD analysis and tracking.
Simone: Oh, I know the talking points... but answer this for me... If Scooter Libby wanted to discredit Joe Wilson, why would he release Valerie Plame's name? Why wouldn't he just release the report he wrote?
Me: You aren't going to ask me to get into the head of a criminal are you?
Simone: Oh - well wait a second - this is still America, where you are innocent until proven guilty...
Me: Well, the same applies to the guy caught on videotape shooting a cashier in the head - they are "innocent until proven guilty" also, but we all know they are guilty - so let's not play semantics games...
Simone: Alright, alright... but ya know, it wasn't alleged that Libby leaked Valerie Plame's name...
Me: Well, did you see the press conference?
Simone: Yeah, I watched the whole thing.
Me: Well, so did I. And the prosecutor said he couldn't charge the leak because Scooter told so many lies that he couldn't ascertain Libby's state of mind...
Simone: Well, when Hilary Clinton faced investigation...
Me: (interrupting) oh, you aren't going to get me to defend scumbags...
Simone: Oh no, no, no... I'm just trying to make the point that when Robert Ray released his report that he said Hilary wasn't being hoinest with him, was evasive when it came to the truth... but he wasn't going to charge her for that.
Me: Well, I guess Ken Starr could have done the same thing, but there you go... getting me to defend scumbags...
Simone: I'll ask you to watch your language, but thanks for the call
As far as calling the Clintons scumbags... I know that might not win me a lot of friends around here, but I do think they are both unprincipaled power seekers. Bill's behaviour speaks for itself. Halary's unprincipaled support of the war says everything I need to know about her.
I have plenty of other reasons for thinking those two are disgusting human beings, but this isn't the place to air them out. With apologies to Tom Kertes, I think America can do better than a Bush/Clinton power-splitting dynasty...
