GOP DUMBASS ARGUMENTS WORK
WELL ON DUMBASS DEMOCRATS

From Political Animal courtesy of Eschaton, a few words on how the White House is successfully playing rhetorical hardball on the issue of extending legalization of the previously illegal warrantless wiretapping program, including the brand new and all important retroactive immunity clause for telecom companies who participated back when it was illegal:

Look, if it's that important, there's a simple answer: pass the bill without telecom immunity. Then come back and introduce immunity in a separate bill. If you've got the votes for it, fine. If not, too bad. I'm against immunity myself — though hardly hellbent on the subject — but whichever way the vote went, in the meantime we'd have the FISA extension and surveillance could continue normally.

But that's not on the table. The supposed grownups in the GOP are, apparently, perfectly happy to play around with "life and death" if it's in the service of a bit of demagogic brinksmanship over telecom immunity. Why?

More here.

Right. So the Republicans are saying that the ability to listen in on your phone conversations and read your email without a court order is a "life and death" issue. Of course, that's totally wrong; FISA courts virtually always grant warrants for this kind of espionage shit, and are even willing to do so after the fact, so that the CIA or FBI or NSA, whatever, don't have to wait for approval, which might make them miss out on important information.

Put that aside for the moment, however, because that's what the dumbass Democrats are doing, and look at how the GOP is now insisting on shielding from lawsuits the communications companies who participated before Congress decided to let the White House violate the fifth amendment: Bush will veto this "vital" extension bill if he doesn't get his immunity clause, which will, as the argument goes, place the whole damned country in grave danger. That is, as the argument goes, the Democrats, by withholding the clause, will be placing the country in grave danger.

As the excerpt above observes, this is a dumbass argument--if the surveillance is the important "life and death" issue, rather than telecom immunity, why the fuck would Bush ever veto the bill? But it doesn't matter. Dumbshit philosophy works exceedingly well on dumbshits. And by "dumbshits," I mean "Democrats." The GOP knows that they can have their cake and eat it, too.

This is exactly the same thing as when the Dems were threatening to revoke funding last year for the Iraq occupation. The White House's response was something to the effect of "if you cut funding, our troops will be in great danger." Bizarrely, this GOP dumbass argument worked. The Donkey-Butts backed down. The reality is that Bush, by refusing to withdraw after funding cuts, would be leaving the troops in great danger: the whole point to cutting funding was to force an end to the war! All the Democrats had to do was to say this repeatedly in lockstep unison: no danger to the troops if they're not there. But they didn't, and allowed our dumbass President to best them in a debate contest that wasn't even worthy of a middle school debate class.

How the hell can anybody at all support a party as lame as the Democrats?

UPDATE: Well well. Balls in the House. A very pleasant surprise. Now if only they could do this all the time rather than every now and then. I mean, really, they shouldn't even be extending this wiretap shit at all, not simply quibbling over telecom immunity. I'm sure Obama or Clinton will get it all straightened out next January. Of course, I'm just kidding; either one of them will probably continue the pussy 'Crat agenda. Damn it.

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