Stuffy fell down on the job not questioning Rudy here, but seriously, what is the point of telling bald-faced lies this?
“What he [Obama] should be doing is following the right things that Bush did — one of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama,”
I understand the idea of bamboozling people with crazy shit about the deficit and Social Security and Gitmo releasees and so on, but why say something that everyone watching the show knows isn’t true?
It would make a lot more sense to trot out a wiseman-for-hire like Tom Keen and have him say, in a very staid and serious voice, that Obama fucked up all the great anti-terrorism stuff that Bush did. Not just because the Village would nod along but because it would seem more plausible to viewers.
scav
Just the next stage of “I don’t recall”itis.
JenJen
Haven’t found video of it online yet, but Giuliani repeated his claims today on “Morning Joe.” At one point, Mike Barnicle asked him, “What about 9/11?” and Rudy replied something like, “Well, I said ‘after 9/11′” (he said no such thing).
Then, he followed up by saying (paraphrasing by memory): “But you have to remember, 9/11 was completely unexpected. It was a total surprise.”
Nobody called him on this, and at any rate, I still don’t see how that supported his argument, or why on earth he said it at all.
There was also a moment where he and Scarborough bonded over the absolutism of our intelligence agencies. It was a sight to see, and one helluva way to wake up this morning.
If anyone has found a link to that “Morning Joe” segment, I’d love to watch it again. I think it’s far more awful than the Steph segment.
gonzone
Mr. 9/11 can’t seem to remember 9/11?
Or is he saying the conspiracy theorists are correct and this was an inside job?
I’m voting senility and old GOP habits never die.
roseyv
Ah, yes. Good ol’ Rudy “A noun, a verb, and — what? Whaddya mean? Huh? Move along. Nothing goin’ on here” Giuliani.
I remember him well from his uneventful stint as the mayor of that small midwestern town.
kommrade reproductive vigor
I guess President McCain wasn’t available.
malraux
It’s all part of the Big Lie. Keep saying it till no one argues against it. Hell, the memory of the anthrax letter terrorism went down the hole almost immediately.
Bad Horse's Filly
Just off the top of my head, I guess that since the shoe bomber couldn’t get his fuse lit and the underpants bomber torched his dick, he counts the undies but not the shoes as a terrorist attack.
The Grand Panjandrum
Dave Waldman (KagroX):
The intertubes is a tough motherfucker when you say stupid shit, Rudy.
roseyv
Actually, I think one of the most egregious failures of the Obama administration to date is its utter refusal to address the epidemic of rampant, sudden-onset amnesia currently decimating our pundit class. Won’t somebody for God’s sake PLEASE think of the pundits?
AnotherBruce
I guess President McCain wasn’t available.
Yes, I’m sure his memory is much better than Rudy’s, which appears to be slightly worse than Grandpa Simpson’s.
Dork
The Bush Prez’nitsee didnt start until AFTER
9/12anthraxDick Reid2005.scarshapedstar
That’s two Republicans who now insist that the WTC was blown up during the Clinton Administration, or maybe even during the Obama Administration.
No good will come of this.
Shawn in ShowMe
We make our own reality, Doug. All you have do is repeat a lie enough times with conviction. Wingnuts fifty years from now will remember 9/11 as the day Iraqi storm troopers bombed the Pentagon while Clinton was getting a blow job.
Comrade Dread
Most journalists stay silent on the matter and nod along taking the “Serious” person very seriously even though they personally may know he’s full of shit.
These stalwart stenographers parrot the information to viewers. The more informed among them (we’ll be generous and say 25% of their readership) recognize the bullshit and roll their eyes. The rest:
1. Nod along because it’s a “Serious” person talking and they obviously know more about the topic than I do and they’re too busy to fact check and expect journalists to do their jobs correctly so they don’t have to.
2. Are Beckians who hate libruls (read: anyone to the left of the John Birch Society) and will believe any lie that confirms their bias.
These 75% parrot the lie until it becomes the Conventional Wisdom, at which point, no one listens to the responsible journalists and fact checkers who call it out as Bullshit, because EVERYONE knows it’s true that Obama is weak on terrorism and took 10 days to respond to the most horrific attack on American soil since 9/11, and I’m so frightened I can’t move or I’ll wet my pants.
mcd410x
Walnuts!
They do it because it works. Who’s going to bring up 9/11 or anthrax or anything really …
Michael
Yes, the flat out lying raises the outrage meter even higher; however, even IF the “domestic attack” lie was somehow true, isn’t it still highly insulting to the global community that creeps like Rudy ignore, oh, the London bombing, the Bali bombing, the Madrid bombing, the Istanbul bombing, the Casablanca bombing, the almost daily bombings in Iraq between 2003 and 2008…?…and I’m sure I’m missing more.
I wish the media would ask Guiliani if he’s chucking away US claims to global leadership, as Newt “I-am-NOT-a-citizen-of-the-world” Gingrich did.
Punchy
The veracity of this utterance is soooooo he said-she said. Totally partisan, Democrat revisionist history. Depends on how you define “under”. Unless it happened in a basement somewhere, pretty sure you cant say it happened under Bush.
mcc
Probably just a system of reinforcement to give people emotional support in pretending to believe something they know isn’t true
Probably a lot of television is like that
J.W. Hamner
Even if you say, o.k., “9/11 changed everything” blah-blah-blah… so it doesn’t count… it’s still a baldfaced lie. I mean, c’mon, Richard Reid tried almost exactly the same thing as the underwear bomber. If a failed underwear bomb counts as a domestic attack, so does a failed shoe bomb!
Martian Buddy
Dana Perino made the same bizarre claim back in November and then likewise had to walk it back with a lame qualifier, claiming that she meant “in Bush’s second term.” (Which, of course, also allows her to handwave away Jose “dirty bomb” Padilla, the anthrax mailer, and Richard Reid the shoe-bomber.)
I’m guessing that this is part of the “kept us safe” meme that the echo chamber has been pushing.
Edit: redundant “of course” was redundant.
Davis X. Machina
“Truth” and “falsity” are bourgeois concepts. Rudy’s revealing the Aufhebung that combines, reconciles, yet surpasses, those dialectically opposed ideas.
It’s not a lie if it advances the Party, and promotes its role as the Vanguard of the Revolution.
It’s not just bullshit, it’s dialectical bullshit. And the GOP is the party of Lenin.
Jerry Critter
Here is a list of 25 attacks since 9/11.
Xenos
Try this experiment: go to the nearest wingnut and ask them what their reaction was when Clinton’s ATF sniper killed the people at Ruby Ridge.
I have yet to find a single wingnut, including lawyers, who would correct the question when asked. Five times so far, perfect record.
scarshapedstar
You know what’s kinda funny?
In the Republican mythos, 9/11 was an act of god, and Katrina was preventable (by the city of New Orleans, not Bush, of course).
Litlebritdifrnt
Oh and FYI the “took three days to respond” has now magically morphed into “took two weeks to respond” just so’s ya know.
scav
and, speaking of the party of Lenin (Table for 6!), Bush is being airbrushed out of the picture so very little could have conceivably happened under him.
Jason B at Work
I actually saw this segment on GMA this morning, was right in the middle of getting my son Xavier’s terribly complicated winter jacket on before taking him to school. I heard what he said, and just dropped the jacket and started cursing in ways not fit for children to hear.
Xavier, who was also listening, just looked at me with a sardonicism that is totally beyond his years and said “Let me guess, that guy is a Republican.”
I love my boy.
By the way, it’s of course meaningless now but Snuffy did follow up on his blog about the comment. Why couldn’t he have just called him on it at the time? Just the word anthrax alone would have been enough to make me roll.
KCinDC
@Xenos, everyone knows Bush the Elder was a Democrat.
mcc
Come to think of it, even saying “We’ve had one under Obama” is extremely problematic. It implies this wasn’t a “domestic attack”.
Sasha
I really believe that 9-11 occupies a special place in the conservative narrative. They feel that they own it so it can’t have been Bush’s fault. The disconnect surrounding 9-11 is almost surreal. When the Daily Show went to Wasilla and interviewed some guy in a bar, he honestly seemed to believe that 9-11 affected rural America more than it did New York City.
But in any case, this is really no different than insisting that Bush inherited every problem from Clinton while Obama is responsible for everything that happened from day one. The don’t need a coherent, consistent narrative because they are never challenged on the inconsistencies.
SP
For some reason I feel like an analysis of this is going to be a “Talk of the Town” entry in next week’s issue.
Mike in NC
Made the necessary correction there…
Comrade Darkness
You know, I follow the news, but I someone missed when the ANTHRAX attackers were arrested. You know that second terrorist attack under Bush that also was never flipping solved. For being all “law and order”, chests puffed out, these guys really suck at actually implementing it.
Although, I’d rather the republicans be lying through their teeth, instead of fearing this level of cult delusion gets back in power.
tavella
Yup. As Xenos points out, this has worked for them before; they just keep lying, the ‘press’ bats their eyes and writes down or films whatever they say without correction, and pretty quickly it becomes assumed knowledge among the general population. The majority of Americans quite probably still think that 9/11 was an Iraqi-plotted attack, for example.
Bill E Pilgrim
Pure Karl Rove. You just repeated blatant lies until people hear them everywhere, and soon they become “everyone just knows…” category.
If someone disputes it after you’ve said it you can always find some idiotic “point” to argue (oh, that was before the “9/11 era”, when we should know better, I meant since 9/11, not on it) and then just keep repeating it anyway.
They really just took the “Common wisdom in DC is like concrete, once it sets its impossible to change” lesson to its logical extreme.
Lie, truth, doesn’t matter if it’s repeated often enough, and a compliant media will do the repeating for them, every time.
Martian Buddy
@Jerry Critter: The link isn’t working for me.
The Dangerman
F’xd.
Rick Taylor
This is the second time I’ve heard a prominent Republican say that there was no terrorist attack on American soil during the Bush presidency. It reminds me when Bush said on multiple occasions that Saddam Hussein wouldn’t let weapons inspectors in to Iraq so we had to invade (and Mitt Romney repeated the lie).
SpotWeld
Have the tea-baggers started repeating this “No Domestic Attacks under Bush” things…
Tax Analyst
@ #18 J.W. Hamner said:
Except the Undie-bomber scorched his testes, but Reid didn’t scorch his toesies (at least from what I remember about it). I think next semester’s Terrorism I class ought to include a chapter on the difference between nuts and toes.
New Yorker
Can someone please tell me if there’s a difference between Pravda and the GOP talking heads? Because all I can think of as Guiliani airbrushes 9/11 from history is how the Soviets tried to cover up Chernobyl even as radioactive particles falling from the sky were setting off Geiger counters in Sweden.
ricky
@Mike in NC:
Please get it right:
Demo Woman
@Jerry Critter: If you are still here, your link did not work. Would you mind trying again?
slackjawedgawker
It’s wingnut magic. If a person says “9/11” 911n911 times, it erases the date from existence.
This also helps explain rightwingers’ annoying insistence that everyone exclusively refer to “12/25” as Christmas.
ricky
So would Biden now characterize a Giuliani campaign speech as “A noun, a verb, and non existent.”?
Johnny B
Clearly, the gasbags in the wingnut propaganda machine want to start feeding the lie that there were no terrorist attacks under Bush. As wildly ridiculous as the claim is, we no longer live in a country of verifiable facts. We live in a country where “truth” is those ideas held by whoever claps their hands the loudest.
I’ve long felt that conservatives were holding a grudge over a number of (accurate) claims made by the left during the Bush Administration. So rather than find a fresh set of critiques against Obama, they’re more interested in accusing him of things Bush and the Republicans were accused of.
So, Obama and Acorn stole the election. Obama has failed to address the risk posed by terrorists. Democrats don’t read the bills they pass. Obama isn’t qualified to be President. Obama is making us less safe.
These are all claims (accurately) made against the Bush Administration and the Republican Party. Like little children, the GOP is in the business of now screaming: “So are you.” For these people, it doesn’t matter how wildly off the mark their false equivalences are. And it certainly doesn’t matter to the Broders of the world. It is the latter that is the worst crime, as far as I’m concerned.
ricky
@SpotWeld:
No, the America they want back is so pre 9-ll it is unthinkable.
Bill E Pilgrim
@New Yorker:
Yes. One had Boris and Natasha and the other Moose and Squirrel.
At least that’s what I always called the 2008 GOP candidates.
Aside from that, pretty similar though.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@mcc:
Are we talking about religion? Have a born again Christian give you their testimonial sometime.
Daddy-O
They’ve been telling some particularly clumsy lies of late.
It’s all they have, anyway, but the least they could do is dress them up a bit more.
Shawn in ShowMe
I can’t wait for the day where SETI actually makes contact with real aliens only to be ridiculed by the Area 51 crowd who “know the truth”.
Sinister eyebrow
That’s it. Why am I busting my ass running this stupid law practice? I’m going to get a job as a TV journalist so I can stay home, drink beer, play video games and collect a whopping big paycheck. I’ll just tape my photo onto a PEZ dispenser and let it conduct interviews.
My mini-PEZ-me can’t do any worse than the rest of the well-coiffed ignoramuses who pretend to be journalists– nodding along with malicious know-nothings while they spout absurd, demonstrably untrue one-liners.
licensed to kill time
These guys describe reality as they see it, which is a combination of wishful thinking, willful blindness and “there is nothing, NOSINK! that is OUR fault” ! despite all evidence to the contrary.
Also @Johnny B: This.
Violet
Repeat a lie long enough, it becomes truth. Pretty simple, really.
The story isn’t that Giuliani said it. The story is that Stephanopoulos didn’t call him on it.
I think it’s a wingnut talking point. Remember Mary Matalin tried to say the same thing on MTP a week or two ago. The more they say, the more people believe it.
Mark S.
I don’t know much about the military justice system, but I’m going to guess this is bullshit.
gwangung
@Daddy-O:
Well, Sarah Palin is their patron saint and mouthpiece.
Monkey see, monkey do.
Rick Taylor
Just to add, it’s mind boggling how incompetent our highly paid prestigious press personalities are. How on earth do you let a Republican utter the words there was no terrorist attack under Bush without bringing up 9/11? That’s license to remind him the warnings the Bush administration ignored, as well as the President’s deer in the headlights response as he continued to read a children’s book. Republicans ought to be scared to death to remind everyone about that sorry scene, but the press let’s them get away with murder, so why not.
Cervantes
Tom Kean.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Technically he is correct, since Bush wasn’t actually Preznit until Cheney was ousted in a silent coup after the 2006 elections.
New Yorker
I know the MSM will never call them on it, but just in case someone like Matt Taibbi does, they need to get their follow up story straight. Did 9/11 happen under Clinton or Obama?
Or maybe it didn’t happen at all. Is the reason I can’t see 2 1300+ foot tall skyscrapers from my front steps because the lib’rul media is lying to me in telling me that they ever existed in the first place?
daryljfontaine
@Violet: Yep. I keep waiting for them to run into either a journo or a panelist who channels Howard Beale and says, “Will you just shut the hell up with your revisionist history bullshit?” followed by the laundry list of why this particular meme is a coordinated, deliberate lie.
D
Rick Taylor
__
I doubt it. The tea baggers like to say they’re as against Republicans as they are Democrats. And considering their strategy of challening Republican incumbents in primaries from the right, there’s some truth to this.
JenJen
@The Grand Panjandrum: Thanks to you for hunting down the video of Rudy’s appearance on “Morning Joe”:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/#34764849
Staggering, even on second viewing.
Chat Noir
@Violet: And let’s not forget Dana Perino spewing the same bullshit recently.
geg6
Despite all the things Obama has and hasn’t done that piss me off royally and almost make me regret all I did during the campaign for him, I have to say that I agree with this sentiment:
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/
Jules
@Chat Noir:
And Mary Matalin.
Can Chaney and his spawn Liz be far behind?
geg6
@Chat Noir:
Actually, much as I hate to give any props at all to Dana Perino, she actually kinda sorta stuck up for Obama on the Today Show the other day, saying that the meme that he needed to fire people before the review and investigation was completed. And she even said that maybe no one needed fired, that it may have been the system. Then she spewed a lot of other bullshit. But for one second there, she seemed like a reasonable person.
ricky
I have heard of the 9/11 Truthers. Should we call these people the 9/ll Deniers?
Cat
From Wiki:
2002:
May: Luke Helder injures 6 by placing pipebombs in mailboxes in the Midwest. Motivation to protest government control over daily lives and the illegality of marijuana and promotion of astral projection
July 4: An Egyptian gunman opens fire at an El Al ticket counter in Los Angeles International Airport, killing two Israelis before being killed himself.
October: John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo conduct the Beltway Sniper Attacks, killing ten people in various locations throughout the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area from October 2 until they are arrested on October 24.
2005:
October 1: Joel Henry Hinrichs III detonated a bomb near the packed football stadium at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma killing himself in the process.
2006:
March : Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, an Iranian-born graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, drives an SUV onto a crowded part of campus, injuring nine.
July: A woman was dead and five others were hospitalized this afternoon after a shooting at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle building in downtown Seattle by a man who declared he was “angry with Israel.”
August: Omeed Aziz Popal, An Afghani Muslim, hit 19 pedestrians, killing one, with his SUV in the San Francisco Bay area.
2007:
July: Knoxville Unitarian Universalist church shooting, Jim David Adkisson kills 2 people and injures 7 in Knoxville, Tennessee.
2008:
October: An explosion at a personal injury law firm in downtown Dalton, Ga., injured four people, including at least one lawyer, and resulted in the death of the apparent bomber in what a federal law enforcement spokesman described as a suicide attack.
December: Woodburn, Oregon. Woodburn police Capt. Tom Tennant, and Oregon State Police bomb technician Bill Hakim were killed, and Woodburn Police Chief Scott Russell was critically injured after a bomb exploded at the West Coast branch of Wells Fargo in Woodburn.
BC
Ya think that when Rudy calls for military courts, etc., he’s really saying “Let’s torture”? That’s what I get from the GOP – not-civilian-courts=torture. If I were in the military, this’d make me pretty mad because the military does pride itself on having a robust due process in their judiciary.
licensed to kill time
@Cat:
Well, that makes sense. This would be comical if it weren’t for the injured.
I wonder who he thought was promoting astral projection? The men who stare at goats?
Phoebe
I love the Clash lyric post titles, even when shoehorned, but this one was particularly fitting.
Colette
@Cat:
Let’s not go overboard; there were multiple attacks that could legitimately be called terrorism during Bush’s terms, but this guy’s killing spree had nothing to do with being an Afghani Muslim and everything to do with being a pitiful, severely mentally ill and delusional man whose illness was neglected both by his family and under California’s (and the US’s generally) totally inhumane and inadequate mental health system. Also.
Chad N Freude
@Bill E Pilgrim:
At the risk of being accused of exemplifying Godwin’s Law, I point to Wikipedia:
Cat
@licensed to kill time:
Oh, It gets better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_Helder
He even had a manifesto.
He was ruled mentally unfit.
licensed to kill time
@Cat: I feel really bad for laughing my ass off at that.
daryljfontaine
@Cat: I remember the Smile-a-bomber. I remember talking heads on the news trying hard not to laugh at the absurdity of it in the face of the fact that people were being seriously injured by these pipe bombs.
D
ellie
I was just listening to this song the other day.
Cat
@licensed to kill time: That means we can cross you off the list of “People who will plant a series of bombs that represent an emoticon”.
Corpsicle
@licensed to kill time: Hate to burst your bubble but astral projection is very real. It is a mental trick that relatively bright people can learn with a little effort.
Martian Buddy
@BC: I’d get a little more specific and say that the message is “let’s torture swarthy Muslims.” With all the calls for profiling of young Muslim men in the wake of the failed undie-bombing, the wingnuts aren’t even being particularly coy about it.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Because it will garner attention and he will face no adverse consequences for having done so.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Chad N Freude: Oh I’m not claiming that Karl Rove invented lying. Or even that he invented it as a political strategy.
But the GOP is still the party of Karl Rove, and he’s the one who most fully embraced it in our time.
But lying, yes that goes way back.
licensed to kill time
@Cat:
Uh, yeah. I always hated that smiley face thing, too.
@Corpsicle:
It was more the idea of astral projection being promoted that I found humorous, like selling dish soap or something. Was he himself trying to promote the idea? Or protesting that it was not being promoted? I guess I should read the article.
Corpsicle
@licensed to kill time: Yeah, that is kind of funny. There must be an astral projection lobby somewhere on K Street. Wish there was, I need a job.
Chad N Freude
@Bill E Pilgrim: Right, but what we’re talking about here is lying on such a grand scale that it couldn’t possibly be untrue, so the populace believes it.
Colette
Can’t wait to see what the pantswetters make of this one:
Arab-American high school kids in Michigan busted for wearing 9/11 themed T-shirts.
Obviously, we must incarcerate all young males of Arab descent now, before they utterly destroy our society and all we hold dear.
bob h
To the Republicans talking the talk is more important than actions. I would say that Obama has actually stepped up the fight against terrorism via the drone attacks that are coming thick and fast in Pakistan, but he cannot talk about them because of the Paki sensitivities. Obama kills militants; the Republicans wet their pants over Captain Underpants.
David
@slackjawedgawker:
This also helps explain rightwingers’ annoying insistence that everyone exclusively refer to “12/25” as Christmas.
After all, most people refer to Christmas as 25/12.
David
Crawling into Rudy’s head briefly: he may have been thinking of successful and lethal attacks by Muslims who were, you know, domestic. Fort Hood, that is.
OK, I’m out now. Nearly turned blue there.
jeff
I think the original line was “drinking booze for breakfast,” but that’s still an awesome Clash reference. Well done, Dougj!