Don't you love it when a liberal blames George W. Bush for whatever is annoying that liberal at any given moment, followed by said liberal undercutting his argument minutes later?
If you are cursed to watch MSNBC on a regular basis you're probably familiar with one of its frequent guests, attorney Mike Papantonio, co-host of the weekend radio show "Ring of Fire" along with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Sam Seder. (Audio after the page break)
Papantonio is also Ed Schultz's main go-to guy when Schultz needs time away from his radio show, as on Wednesday. Main topic of discussion that afternoon was the burgeoning scandal over domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency. Goo-goo lefty that he is, Papantonio couldn't resist blaming Bush (h/t for audio, Brian Maloney, mrctv.org) --
You know, Rick (Outzen, Daily Beast contributor), to some degree it's kinda cheap entertainment to watch all these moving parts just spin out of control, I mean, this, this, this story that has so many moving parts. At the top of the cuckoo list is, of course, the usual low-information, tea party Republican types moving in on Obama for simply con-, for him continuing the spy program that their very own buffoonish duo unleashed on all of us. It was Dick Cheney and the Shrub and they did a spectacular job scaring themselves, scaring Congress, scaring the American people into letting the NSA, the FBI and spook organizations that we don't know the name of 'em are, to read our emails, our tweets, and so that's part of the story.
You have this deviant Dick, you know, Dick Cheney and the Shrub and these close circles of really reactionary senators and congressmen had all of us under this magnifying glass even before the Patriot Act was signed into law. And so now, you know, the first part of how ridiculous this is is that you got Republicans attacking Obama for this. They did this. They brought us this.
A scene from "Jaws" comes to mind -- despite two fatal shark attacks, Amity's beaches remain open, town officials and business owners fearful of scaring off tourists. With the shoreline and waters crawling with cops, two young boys decide to terrify beachgoers by snorkeling past with a fake shark fin. Heavily-armed police quickly converge and discover the fin's not attached to a fish, whereupon the younger boy points to his brother and blurts out, "He made me do it!"
No sooner had Papantonio made a similar attempt to pass the buck, he all but refuted it's all Bush's fault (audio) --
It's not a matter of who's in charge. Obviously it doesn't make any difference who's in charge. I mean, Bush started this program with Cheney, the Republicans jumped on this, drafted it, pushed it through, scared the hell out of all of us, thought there was a Muslim terrorist around every corner, and we said, yeah, go ahead and do this. But then Obama comes in and he simply continues it. As a matter of fact, he puts it on steroids.
A warm round of applause for our 43rd president -- his power to coerce liberals to act in ways they allegedly otherwise wouldn't never ceases to amaze.
