January 31, 2006

Interview with a Deaniac

It seems this past weekend that Howie Dean was a guest on Fox News Sunday. And during the interview, he was referred to as Lord Governor Dean.

For those who tried to watch the interview, or just fell asleep during it; or were at church, or cannot stand wading through it to get to the good parts, we have once again assembled the crackstaff here to interpret and convert what was said into actual English, with attempts at finding the true meanings -- reading between the lines.
*** START TRANSCRIPT

DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN HOWARD DEAN: Chris, thanks for having me on. We have to do this again soon, then, or now, or later, but sooner than later, I would hope, before we go to South Carolina and South Dakota and

WALLACE: Yes, yes, absolutely. As we said, the president goes up to Capitol Hill this week. What do you see as the state of the union?

DOCTOR OF DEMOCRACY DEAN: Oh it's bad. Come on, everyone knows it's bad. We do need some new ideas on the economy. What they will be, I have no idea because the polling results aren't in yet. After someone tells me what to think, I'll get back with you. I do know that since Bush is president, everything is bad.

WALLACE: You know, let me look at it from the other side. Millions of Iraqis voted three times in elections over the last year. The unemployment rate is 4.9 percent. Economic growth last year was 3.5 percent. Are things really so bad?

DEANY-DEAN-DEAN: Well, I think most Americans think they are. But then, I think most Americans are too stupid to know what's right. If they would just listen to me, I'd tell them that the middle class is suffering, even if people don't actually know anyone who is suffering. These people need to take my word for it and realize that someone is suffering, and only by electing Democrats will that suffering end.

And as we've seen this week, elections in the Middle East are great, but elections themselves don't necessarily lead to a good democracy, as we've seen here in the US. I mean, how can you trust people to vote when they can pick anyone they want? Some people actually voted for George Bush, so that shows you how crazy things are in a Democracy.

WALLACE: I want to pick up on that in just a moment. But let me just ask you about what you were just saying about the president's pro-democracy movement. When you see what happened in the Palestinian authority with Hamas, does it make you give pause to the idea of the president's idea of pushing elections and democracy?

SIR DEAN, RIGHTFUL HEIR TO THE COUNTRY: No, I think that's a good idea to push elections and democracy. But the problem is elections themselves don't build democracy. You've got to do more than that. You have to tell the people who they should vote for so they don't pick the wrong person. If you give people too many choices, they will just screw things up.

And our troops haven't been supplied with the proper body armor.

WALLACE: What does that have to do with this topic?

D...D...DEANA: Nothing, but I just hadn't said that in about 30 minutes, so it was time for me to say it again.

WALLACE: Governor, let's talk about the war on terror. I want to put up something that you said this last week. Let's take a look. "If we get back in power, we're going to make a real effort to go get Osama bin Laden. We're not going to let him lollygag around for four years after the September 11th attack."

Do you think that the 19,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan are allowing bin Laden to lollygag around?

PRE-REGIME CHANGE IN VERMONT DICTATOR DEAN: I personally believe there are not enough troops in Afghanistan, and I have for some time. But that's only because Bush is in charge. If he put more troops in Afghanistan by reducing the number in Iraq, I would complain about not enough troops in Iraq. I really don't know anything about this stuff, other than anything Bush does is wrong in my little world.

We need to be really tough with these terrorists. We need to do things like arrest them. Of course, we shouldn't do it without proper warning, warrants, and reading them Miranda Rights. And we need to be sure we're not violating any of their rights, including the universal right to free health care, but we still need to be really tough on them -- without hurting them, because that's not nice.

WALLACE: You've also been very critical of the president's NSA surveillance program, and you talked about that this week. Let's take a look at that, if we can. "This is not simply listening in to Al Qaida. It's poking around into people's private lives in order to see if they're doing anything wrong."

Governor, what evidence do you have that the NSA is poking around into people's private lives?

D: Look, I support spying on Al Qaeda, and I think every Democrat in America thinks that we ought to attack Al Qaeda, and spy on them, and do whatever we have to do to beat them. The problem is that Bush is doing it, and I just plain old don't like him.

We need a president that will follow the law -- the law as I personally perceive it to be. And if he's doing anything that will actually support winning the war on terror, I'm going to oppose it because I don't want him to win. If I can paint him as the loser, then people will have to elect me.

We are not asking the president not to spy on Al Qaeda. Instead, we are not demanding that the president not spy on anyone not in the United States because citizens are not the enemy, even if they're members of not al Qaeda. Therefore, the president is breaking the law.

WALLACE: But, Governor, I want to go back to this issue of the NSA poking around in people's lives. It's not like they're just, you know, picking up the phone and taking any phone call that's out there. I mean, they say that every phone call that they're intercepting they have reason to believe has an Al Qaeda connection.

In fact, General Michael Hayden, who used to be head of the NSA and is now the deputy director of national intelligence, talked about that this week. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HAYDEN: These are communications that we have reason to believe are Al Qaeda communications — a judgment made by American intelligence professionals, not folks like me or political appointees.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Governor, do you have any reason to believe that General Hayden isn't telling the truth?

SOME GUY ON TV: I don't know. Blah, blah, blah, president needs to follow my, err... the law. Blah, blah, blah, I don't like him. He's not obeying the law. Everyone else is, but he isn't. Blah, blah, blah.

WALLACE: Again — and I don't want to argue the legal point, but, again, you've got General Hayden here saying these are conversations that we have reason to believe involved Al Qaeda. Do you have any reason to disbelieve that?

?: No, I think that's probably true. But that doesn't mean I have to like it. That doesn't mean I'm going to admit that I'm the one who is lying to try and bring down the president. I mean, look, that's my job -- to get Democrats elected. And it doesn't matter how I do it. If the president looks bad, that helps my team. Therefore, I'm going to do everything I can to make the president look bad.

WALLACE: You and other top Democrats are going after what you call a Republican culture of corruption, but you deny any Democrats are involved. And let me take a look at an exchange of that.

Question, "In the last couple of weeks, but through various Abramoff-related organizations and outfits, a bunch of Democrats did take money that presumably originated with Jack Abramoff." Dean, "That's not true either. There's no evidence for that either."

Governor, it is certainly true that Republicans got twice as much money from Abramoff-related contributions than Democrats did, but Democrats aren't clean in this area either, are they?

REJUVENATED WHITE GUY: Every dime of Jack Abramoff's money went to Republicans. Not one dime went to any Democrat or any Democratic organization — his personal money. Any FEC reports that say otherwise are false and part of Hillary's personal vast right wing conspiracy.

*** END TRANSCRIPT

Okay, it goes on like this for hours minutes. Dean is confronted with out and out lies, like where he claimed that no Democrats got Abramoff's money, and then Dean denies that he's lying. He doesn't actually SAY "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is," but he comes pretty damn close.

I doubt anyone has read this far. I almost fell asleep typing up that transcript. Thanks for reading!

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