Posted in: Sunday Talkshow Breakdown
Monday Nov 5, 2007
The inimitable Bill Scher normally posts a round up of the Sunday morning gasbag shows on Liberal Oasis each Monday morning. He watches these shows on Sunday while everyone else nurses hangovers, thus sparing us the pain. Rather than try...
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emailMonday May 7, 2007
We are caught up in a worldwide war against an irreconcilable enemy who seeks to destroy us and will use nuclear or biological weapons if they can get them. And they mean literally destroy us ... whether it's Afghanistan, it's...
Sunday Apr 29, 2007
Dubya's veto of the Iraq bill is expected on Tuesday, While the veto will be no surprise, it will still be a historic act, a monumental snubbing of the public will as expressed by Congress. And there will be a...
Sunday Apr 22, 2007
Some Republicans are pushing for Alberto Gonzales' resignation, in hopes of ending media attention on the Prosecutor Purge scandal. But on the Sunday shows, Democrats indicated that they would not consider a resignation a substitute for getting to the bottom...
Sunday Apr 15, 2007
On ABC's This Week, Gov. Bill Richardson had his first national interview since he declared he would leave behind "no residual forces" in Iraq at last week's MoveOn.org Virtual Town Hall. How does Richardson respond to aggressive questions about his...
Monday Apr 9, 2007
On Tuesday, after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid properly framed Bush's expected veto of the eventual Iraq bill as keeping "in place his strategy for failure," LiberalOasis said that would only succeed in framing the overall debate if "all congressional...
Monday Mar 26, 2007
Last week, the GOP talking point on the Prosecutor Purge was that Dem Sen. Chuck Schumer shouldn't be involved in the investigation because he also heads the 2008 Dem Senate campaign committee. But that talking point didn't stick. Mounting evidence...
Sunday Mar 18, 2007
How eager are the Bushies to talk about anything but the Prosecutor Purge? They'd rather talk about the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq. Yesterday, they prevented Attorney General Alberto Gonzales from going on the Sunday shows (see post...
Monday Mar 12, 2007
Saturday was the international conference on Iraq featuring all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran and Syria. The US was in the room as well. Major shift in our diplomatic strategy? Not quite. Here's the Associated Press dispatch: In their first...
Monday Feb 19, 2007
The first step is completed. Both the House and Senate held votes showing a bipartisan majority opposes an escalation of the war in Iraq. (The House passed a resolution. Senate Republicans technically filibustered a resolution, but with 56 Senators supporting...
Sunday Feb 11, 2007
Here we go again. Another trumped up intelligence briefing, masking internal conflict within the federal government. Another trumped up front page NY Times story, masking internal conflict within the newspaper. A week after David Sanger and Mark Mazzetti wrote a...
Monday Feb 5, 2007
It probably won't be recognized by the media today or by historians tomorrow, but yesterday was a tipping point. The point where the worldview of the war's apologists declined in relevance. As the neocon frame became hysterical, and an alternative...
Monday Jan 29, 2007
Why haven't the Republicans united around a plan for Iraq? Why can't they come up with a coordinated message? How can we even have a debate if Republicans refuse to put a strategy on the table? Republicans are in a...
Sunday Jan 21, 2007
Yesterday's Washington Post broke an important Iraq story. [On Nov. 30,]Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had a surprise for President Bush when they sat down with their aides in the Four Seasons Hotel in Amman, Jordan. [He] proposed that U.S....
Sunday Jan 14, 2007
The Bushies and their enablers are trying to parlay their last scraps of political credibility by insisting it's either escalation in Iraq or handing over the region to Iran and Al Qaeda, and daring Democrats to prove otherwise. Here's Sen....
Monday Jan 8, 2007
Facing commanders on the ground who opposed plans for escalating troop levels in Iraq, Dubya just switched commanders. How to respond to criticism that he is recklessly ignoring the advice of military leaders? Blame the troops! The troops with the...
Monday Dec 18, 2006
There's a bit of a kerfuffle over what Democrats said yesterday about a likely troop surge in Iraq. On ABC's This Week, incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid unexpectedly said he would "go along" with a troop surge, if it...
Monday Dec 11, 2006
The Bush Administration let Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton have a free day on the Sunday shows -- one last day for them to flog the Iraq Study Group mush before hanging it up. (The ISG chairs noted that the...
Monday Dec 4, 2006
The Saturday leak of the Rumsfeld memo, which called for a "major adjustment" in Iraq tactics, looks awfully staged when coupled with the round of Sunday show appearances by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Hadley -- on NBC's Meet The...
Monday Nov 27, 2006
On the Sunday shows, Republicans were seemingly all over the map on what to do about Iraq. Reacting to reports that the Pentagon sees our choices as Go Big, Go Long or Go Home, Sen. John Cornyn (TX) embraced the...
Monday Sep 25, 2006
As you probably already know, the big show on Sunday was the Bill Clinton-Chris Wallace showdown on Fox News Sunday. The crystallizing moment of the exchange was: WALLACE: Do you think you did enough, sir? CLINTON: No, because I didn't...
Monday Sep 18, 2006
If you thought you were going to see a big Republican Party crack-up over torture and detainee rights, well ... you may have to keep waiting. Although the White House was rebuffed last week by GOP Sens. John McCain, Lindsey...
Monday Sep 11, 2006
Once again, it's impossible to avoid politics as we remember the lives taken on this day. Families of those who were lost deserve better. Sadly, the day was politicized, and the day's surrounding facts twisted, by Republicans long ago. And...
Monday Aug 28, 2006
With the one-year anniversary of Katrina approaching, the White House knew it's due for another chroncling of how it is failing the displaced victims. So it dispatched Don Powell, the Federal Coordinator of Gulf Coast Rebuilding to ABC's This Week...
Monday Aug 21, 2006
Neocon Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain yesterday found themselves dancing, stretching and straining, as they tried in vain to defend their Iraq positions against reality. Senator Joe "Some Of My Best Friends Are Neocons" Lieberman, is up 12 points...
Monday Aug 14, 2006
How are the neocons reacting to the UN cease-fire resolution? They're pushing for the downfall of the Israeli government. Here's Bill Kristol on Fox News Sunday: I'm afraid the truth is that a terrorist group launched an attack across an...
Monday Aug 7, 2006
Secretary of State Condi Rice went on ABC's This Week and NBC's Meet The Press to discuss the draft UN resolution about the Israel-Lebanon war. And it was a classic, pathetic Condi performance, again indicating that the insincere, foot-dragging diplomacy...
Monday Jul 31, 2006
In the wake of the Qana, Lebanon attack, the Sunday shows generally featured predictable, counterproductive finger-pointing from U.S., Israeli and Lebanese "leaders." But a couple of comments are worth calling attention to. First is from U.S. Undersecretary of State Nick...
Monday Jul 24, 2006
On NBC's Meet The Press, Dubya's Chief of Staff Josh Bolten repeated the White House's main talking point, that the "root problem" is "Hezbollah." Which means that the White House won't support a cease-fire, because that would mean Israel would...
Monday Jul 17, 2006
Last week's neocon Iran Fever continued to spread on Sunday. Newt Gingrich, on " target="_blank">NBC's Meet The Press, and Bill Kristol, on " target="_blank">Fox News Sunday, continued the right-wing effort to pressure the Bushies for accelerated action against Iran, if...
Monday Jul 10, 2006
One of Condi Rice's State Department undersecretaries, Nick Burns, was dispatched to four Sunday shows to discuss North Korea. A small name was probably sent out so not to give North Korea the satisfaction of "getting the White House's attention"...
Monday Jun 5, 2006
If you read the Sunday NY Times, you have been dutifully informed, with the help of several anonymous White House "aides", that Dubya and Condi have boldly changed course and embraced diplomacy with Iran: ...the story of how a president...
