A Week's Worth of "Guess the Quotes"

Well, after taking a brief hiatus from the SMS (due in part to a dreadful case of insomnia and an equally dreadful case of autumn blues), I started sending in e-mails to Steph again, and as has been the practice in the past, Steph often turns to my submissions as sources for "Guess the Quote." For those not familiar with the show, (and I must ask, "Why the heck have you not been listening to Steph and the mooks? If I can listen from my computer here in Tulsa, OK, there is absolutely no excuse for you, no matter where you live, to not tune into the Stephanie Miller Show every morning!") "Guess the Quote" is a game played between Steph and Jim "Voice Deity" Ward. Steph reads a quote and then Jim makes a wildly inaccurate and improbable guess as to who is responsible for the quote. Jim typically has a sub-theme in his answers and I enjoy trying to discern Jim's sub-theme almost as much as Chris "Boy Toy" Lavoie does. Anyway, it was a banner week for "Guess the Quotes" from Faye.
Here they are:

Monday, October 1, Hour 1 & Hour 3:

"Christ would not vote for Barack Obama, because Barack Obama has voted to behave in a way that it is inconceivable for Christ to have behaved."
Alan Keyes, Religious Fanatic, GOP Presidential Candidate and former Radio Talk Show Host

"It's about time we all faced up to the truth. If we accept the radical homosexual agenda, be it in the military or in marriage or in other areas of our lives, we are utterly destroying the concept of family."
Alan Keyes, Religious Fanatic

"When we, through our educational culture, through the media, through the entertainment culture, give our children the impression that human beings cannot control their passions, we are telling them, in effect, that human beings cannot be trusted with freedom."
Alan Keyes, Religious Fanatic

"On all the matters that touch upon the critical moral issues, Arnold Schwarzenegger is on the evil side."
Alan Keyes, Religious Fanatic

"Hitler and his supporters were Satanists and homosexuals. That's just a true statement. The notion that is involved in homosexuality, the unbridled sort of satisfaction of human passions" leads to "'totalitarianism,' 'Nazism,' and 'communism.'"
Alan Keyes, Religious Fanatic

Wednesday, October 3, Hour 1:

"Senator Larry Craig is attempting to withdraw his guilty plea. Wonder if his new defense has anything to do with Restless Leg Syndrome?"
Will Durst

"I admire the Islam. There's a lot of good principles in it. But I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles, personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith."
Senator John McCain (R - AZ)

"Each nation will design its own separate strategies for making progress toward achieving this long-term goal. These strategies will reflect each country's different energy resources, different stages of development and different economic needs."
George W. Bush

Thurdsday, October 4, Hour 1:

"What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne."
Barack Obama, October 2, 2002

"Some seek to rewrite history. They argue that they weren't really voting for war, they were voting for inspectors, or for diplomacy. But the Congress, the Administration, the media, and the American people all understood what we were debating in the fall of 2002."
Barack Obama, October 2, 2007

"This was a vote about whether or not to go to war. That's the truth as we all understood it then, and as we need to understand it now. And we need to ask those who voted for the war: how can you give the President a blank check and then act surprised when he cashes it?" Barack Obama, October 2, 2007

Friday, October 5, Hour 2:

"Focus on the children. Their plight is our shame, I told him, and their promise is our future. Reach them and you reach our soul."
Reverend Jim Wallis, Author of God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

"I don't understand poor people. I've never lived with poor people or been around poor people much. I don't understand what they think and feel about a lot of things. I'm just a white Republican guy who doesn't get it."
George W. Bush, after the election of 2000 was decided, but before his inauguration

"The money needed for expanding health care to poor children in America is far less than the money that has been lost and wasted on corruption in Iraq. How have the priorities strayed so far from those children, whom he once agreed were so central to the soul of the nation?"
Reverend Jim Wallis

"If he knows his Bible, the President should remember that Jesus said to suffer the little children. This, however, isn't exactly what he meant."
Reverend Jim Wallis

Like a Serpent's Egg

And therefore think him as a serpent's egg
Which hatch'd, would, as his kind grow mischievous;
And kill him in the shell.
Brutus in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

"Anybody who makes the slightest effort can see what is waiting in the future. It's like a serpent's egg: through the thin membranes, you can clearly discern the already perfect reptile."

From Ingmar Bergman's film A Serpent's Egg

It may indeed to be too late to kill the Bush administration in its shell, for what it has unleashed on the world is evil personified. Today's report on torture that has been the practice of this administration since that fateful day in September of 2001 is a horrifying revelation of what many of us have suspected all along. Not only can this administration not be trusted, but it is also perpetrating some of the most vile acts in our name and with our money.

Here's a nice summary from Obsidian Wings:

The techniques in question are repugnant. But in many ways, the administration's disregard for the law is worse. When your policies violate treaties you have signed and laws that are on the books, you are not supposed to come up with some clever way of explaining that appearances to the contrary, what you're doing is not illegal at all. You're supposed to stop doing it. When Congress decides to pass a law banning "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment, you are supposed to stop engaging in such treatment, not to redefine "cruel, inhuman and degrading" so that it doesn't apply to anything you want to do.

If the stories of Blackwater's unchecked action in Iraq aren't enough to make you wonder what ever happened to the rule of law, then I'm not sure there is anything that remains that this administration could do to shock you.

Following are several more telling portions from the article that appears in today's NYTimes:

Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations

"The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of President Bush's second term and Mr. Gonzales's tenure at the Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies on surveillance and detention into turmoil."
Scott Shane, David Johnston and James Risen, NYTimes, October 4, 2007

"The interrogation opinions were signed by Steven G. Bradbury, who since 2005 has headed the elite Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. He has become a frequent public defender of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and detention policies at Congressional hearings and press briefings, a role that some legal scholars say is at odds with the office's tradition of avoiding political advocacy."
Scott Shane, David Johnston and James Risen, NYTimes, October 4, 2007

"The debate over how terrorism suspects should be held and questioned began shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the Bush administration adopted secret detention and coercive interrogation, both practices the United States had previously denounced when used by other countries. It adopted the new measures without public debate or Congressional vote, choosing to rely instead on the confidential legal advice of a handful of appointees."
Scott Shane, David Johnston and James Risen, NYTimes, October 4, 2007

"The office was designed to insulate against any need to be an advocate," said Mr. Kmiec, now a conservative scholar at Pepperdine University law school. But at times in recent years, Mr. Kmiec said, the office, headed by William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia before they served on the Supreme Court, "lost its ability to say no."

"The approach changed dramatically with opinions on the war on terror. The office became an advocate for the president's policies."
Douglas W. Kmiec, who headed the Office of Legal Counsel under President Ronald Reagan and the first President George Bush

"Never in history had the United States authorized such tactics. While President Bush and C.I.A. officials would later insist that the harsh measures produced crucial intelligence, many veteran interrogators, psychologists and other experts say that less coercive methods are equally or more effective."
Scott Shane, David Johnston and James Risen, NYTimes, October 4, 2007

"For government lawyers, the national security issues they were deciding were like working with nuclear waste — extremely hazardous to their health. If you give the administration what it wants, you'll lose credibility in the academic community. But if you hold back, you'll be vilified by conservatives and the administration."
Scott Horton, an attorney affiliated with Human Rights First

"We are likely to hear the words: 'If we don't do this, people will die.' It takes far more than a sharp legal mind to say 'no' when it matters most. It takes moral character. It takes an understanding that in the long run, intelligence under law is the only sustainable intelligence in this country."
James B. Comey, Deputy Attorney General (2003 - 2005)

"In a frequent practice, Mr. Bush attached a statement to the new law when he signed it, declaring his authority to set aside the restrictions if they interfered with his constitutional powers. At the same time, though, the administration responded to pressure from Mr. McCain and other lawmakers by reviewing interrogation policy and giving up several C.I.A. techniques."
Scott Shane, David Johnston, and James Risen, NYTimes, October 4, 2007

"I know from the military that if you tell someone they can do a little of this for the country's good, some people will do a lot of it for the country's better," Mr. Hutson said. Like other military lawyers, he also fears that official American acceptance of such treatment could endanger Americans in the future.

John D. Hutson, who served as the Navy's top lawyer from 1997 to 2000, said he believed that the existence of legal opinions justifying abusive treatment is pernicious, potentially blurring the rules for Americans handling prisoners.

"The problem is, once you've got a legal opinion that says such a technique is O.K., what happens when one of our people is captured and they do it to him? How do we protest then?"
[Indeed, on what ground do we have to stand?]

John D. Hutson

Steph throws her well-worn ball cap into the ring

"Four Boobs - Better Than an Entire Administration of 'em!"That's right folks Stephanie Miller is joining C.C. Goldwater in a bid for the White House. Our only complaint is that Momma is on the bottom of the ticket (just like her Dad was is 1964).

C.C. called in to the show this morning in hour 3 and made the big announcement (surprising - not really, not after all the hints and teases that Momma had hoisted onto her listeners all last week and in hours 1 and 2 of today's show). Nevertheless, they (C.C. and Steph) made it official and launched their fairly content-free web site at the same time. So visit their web site, sign up for their newsletter, and send them stuff to put up on their empty and sad little web site.

Here's the disclaimer that is emblazoned across the bottom of the welcome page: "The information contained herein is fictitious, satirical and intended for promotional and entertainment purposes only." The key word in that phrase is "promotional" - ya think?