The Sunshine Empire

I had some assorted thoughts on the politics so far on Sunday morning.  Turned on Meet The Press and everyones favorite overweight thrice divorced teddy bear Newt Gingrich was debating with Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin.  The debate was interesting in some of the misconceptions that continued.  Newt seemed several times in the discussion of terrorism to wish to frame it again as a failure of the Clinton administration.  What always gets lost in this is that 9/11 happened on a Republican’s watch.  Eight months after taking office and weeks after getting a memo stating that bin Laden was determined to strike the very way he did, the failure was a Republican one and Gingrich was running interference like always.  Dick Durbin let several things slide that were pertinent.  The former Speaker kept insisting that the current Speaker said the CIA lies all the time, which she didn’t.  Gingrich also kept insisting that President Obama wanted to create a truth commission and prosecute CIA officers and agents, which is interesting because the President has come out and consistently said he was against both of those things.  It’s one thing to shade something politically but these are bald faced lies.  The one point where Durbin was spot on was when Gingrich stated he would like to see Pelosi go to the House Floor and apologize for claiming they were lying.  Durbin then used a direct quote from Gingrich in stating that the CIA was dishonest in their 2007 NIE on Iran and nuclear weapons.  Gingrich’s reply was that he was saying they were “intellectually dishonest” and he was talking about a specific instance and not something in general.  Being intellectually dishonest is a fancy professor word for lying last time I checked, and Speaker Pelosi did say she was talking about a 2002 briefing specifically.  Durbin then threw Rep. Hoekstra’s claim that the CIA was lying to him and again the only retort Gingrich had was that Hoekstra was referring to something specifically.  The message from Gingrich is claiming the CIA lies about something specifically is a-okay, but claiming they lie in general is damaging.  The Jesus block then began on my local NBC affiliate so I switched to CBS Sunday morning and they were doing an interview with Green Day.  Maybe when This Week comes on ABC they’ll have a special segment with Jay-Z and Beyonce.