Fred Honsberger questions Murtha's patriotism

Fred began friday's show with the teaser:

Well, so much for Semper fi

and with it sank further into a despicable political smear. What was Fred doing? Well, let's take a look at the latin first.

"Semper fi" is short for "Semper Fidelis" and it's the Marine Corp motto (Congressman Murtha served in the Marines during Vietnam). It means "Always Faithful." So what Fred Honsberger did by opening his TV show was to question the Congressman's "faithfulness" to the United States and to the Corps itself.

Let's review: Murtha is a decorated Vietnam veteran and Fred, well, isn't. What gives Fred Honsberger the right to question the patriotism of anyone?

Additionally, Fred went on to say that it was all just an act of "political pandering" on Murtha's part.

Fred, do I need to remind you how many American's disaprove of your President? And yet you have the gall to question the patriotism of a decorated Marine, merely because he disagrees with the by now discredited foreign policies of the man most American's feel is untrustworthy.

Who's pandering now, Fred?

And now that your President has seemingly turned his back on such smearing, will you apologise? Let me remind you of what he said:

It's -- this is a worthy debate, and I'm going to repeat something I've said before. People should feel comfortable about expressing their opinions about Iraq. I heard somebody say, well, maybe so-and-so is not patriotic because they disagree with my position. I totally reject that thought. This is not an issue of who's patriot and who's not patriotic. It's an issue of an honest, open debate about the way forward in Iraq.

When will you apologise to Congressman Murtha, Fred?

It's the right thing to do.

Fred on "Johns"

A few days ago, Fred Honbserger, spent a great deal of his radio show discussing the social implications of this Post-Gazette article.

He expounded on the general nastiness of prostitution and how it shouldn't be legalized, blah-blah-blah, it's a sign of the degradation of contemporary society, yadda-yadda-yadda, where are we going as a culture if we just said "prostitution is ok." prostitution destroys families and so on. Fred feels very strongly about how wrong prostitution is and the damage it does to the fabric of our society.

So who did he interview on the air yesterday?

Every conservative's favorite former Clinton advisor turned Clinton-basher, Dick Morris.

Here's what wikipedia has to say about him:

Dick Morris (born November 28, 1948 in New York City) is a political author and commentator who was once a successful pollster and campaign consultant. Morris is best known for managing Bill Clinton's successful 1996 bid for re-election to the office of President of the United States. His tenure on that campaign was cut short two months before the election, when it was revealed that he had had an extramarital affair with a prostitute and allowed her to listen to conversations with the President.

An "extramaritial affair with a prostitute"?? Say it ain't so Fred!

Needless to say, Fred curiously avoided the "p" word when talking to this Dick. No questions about the morality of paying for sex when they can dish about Senator Clinton. No questions about how much damage the extramarital affair had on Morris' marriage when they could dish about Senator Clinton.

Good going, Fred. Your true priorities are indeed showing.

Fred gave me a daunting task yesterday

One thing you can say about Fred Honsberger - as lapdogs go, he's among the most loyal. His level of his defense of the corrupt Bush Administration would be a masterful achievement of political rhetoric were it not for such mundane matters as truth, history, and the deaths of 2000 American servicemen and women. At odds with reality itself, he sticks to his guns and defends his President and his President's version of the truth with great elan.

Now, the task I saw was this, how do I deconstruct such a huge temple of disinformation?

Luckily, it's been done for me. Check it out here. Fred's been very vocal (on KDKA and on PCNC) that Bush and the Congress had the same intelligence and came to the same conclusions about Iraq. Here's the NYTimes editorial on that:

Mr. Bush says everyone had the same intelligence he had - Mr. Clinton and his advisers, foreign governments, and members of Congress - and that all of them reached the same conclusions. The only part that is true is that Mr. Bush was working off the same intelligence Mr. Clinton had. But that is scary, not reassuring. The reports about Saddam Hussein's weapons were old, some more than 10 years old. Nothing was fresher than about five years, except reports that later proved to be fanciful.

Foreign intelligence services did not have full access to American intelligence. But some had dissenting opinions that were ignored or not shown to top American officials. Congress had nothing close to the president's access to intelligence. The National Intelligence Estimate presented to Congress a few days before the vote on war was sanitized to remove dissent and make conjecture seem like fact.

It's hard to imagine what Mr. Bush means when he says everyone reached the same conclusion. There was indeed a widespread belief that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. But Mr. Clinton looked at the data and concluded that inspections and pressure were working - a view we now know was accurate. France, Russia and Germany said war was not justified. Even Britain admitted later that there had been no new evidence about Iraq, just new politics.

And Millbank and Pincus at the Washington Post:

President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence.

Neither assertion is wholly accurate.

Then they follow with this:

The administration's overarching point is true: Intelligence agencies overwhelmingly believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and very few members of Congress from either party were skeptical about this belief before the war began in 2003. Indeed, top lawmakers in both parties were emphatic and certain in their public statements.

But Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions.

In all this Fred Honsberger's avoided the other half of the Adminitration's deceptions - that Iraq and 9/11 were on cahoots. The Times adresses this:

The Bush administration was also alone in making the absurd claim that Iraq was in league with Al Qaeda and somehow connected to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That was based on two false tales. One was the supposed trip to Prague by Mohamed Atta, a report that was disputed before the war and came from an unreliable drunk. The other was that Iraq trained Qaeda members in the use of chemical and biological weapons. Before the war, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that this was a deliberate fabrication by an informer.

Fred also mentions the various Senate committee reports "clearing" the corrupt Bush administration of manipulating the intelligence. Millbank and Pincus:

National security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, briefing reporters Thursday, countered "the notion that somehow this administration manipulated the intelligence." He said that "those people who have looked at that issue, some committees on the Hill in Congress, and also the Silberman-Robb Commission, have concluded it did not happen."

But the only committee investigating the matter in Congress, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has not yet done its inquiry into whether officials mischaracterized intelligence by omitting caveats and dissenting opinions. And Judge Laurence H. Silberman, chairman of Bush's commission on weapons of mass destruction, said in releasing his report on March 31, 2005: "Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policymakers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry."

And then there's this from Dan Froomkin also of the Washington Post:

President Bush on Friday launched his third presidential campaign -- this one to salvage his reputation, and what's left of his second term.

His goal this time is not to win an election; it's to gain back the public trust.

Amid all the tumbling poll numbers of late, Bush's biggest problem is this: A sizeable majority of Americans -- 55 percent according to the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll -- believe that he intentionally misled the American public in making his case for war in Iraq.

So Bush's speechwriters on Veteran's Day added a few fiery paragraphs to his standard war-on-terror address.

Here's the text : "Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs," Bush said.

"[M]ore than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate -- who had access to the same intelligence -- voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power," he noted.

And, he concluded: "The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out false charges. (Applause.) These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will."

But Bush's argument is deeply flawed. Far from being baseless, the charge that he intentionally misled the public in the run-up to war is built on a growing amount of evidence. And the longer Bush goes without refuting that evidence in detail, the more persuasive it becomes.

And his most prized talking point -- that many Democrats agreed with him at the time -- is problematic. Many of those Democrats did so because they believed the information the president gave them. Now they are coming to the conclusion that they shouldn't have.

I know there's more, but what would be the point, Fred? I'll give the editorial board of the New York Times the last word:

The president and his top advisers may very well have sincerely believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But they did not allow the American people, or even Congress, to have the information necessary to make reasoned judgments of their own. It's obvious that the Bush administration misled Americans about Mr. Hussein's weapons and his terrorist connections. We need to know how that happened and why.

Mr. Bush said last Friday that he welcomed debate, even in a time of war, but that "it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." We agree, but it is Mr. Bush and his team who are rewriting history.

Fred Honsberger, a loyal member of Bush's team. Good for you, Fred. We're all so proud.

Fred's Take on ID

Yesterday Fred Honsberger interviewed one of my favorite writers, Simon Singh, on his KDKA radio show. I've read Singh's book Fermat's Enigma and The Code Book and enjoyed both immensely.

Singh's latest, Big Bang, is probably how Fred found him. At one point during the segment, it was obvious that Fred seemed to think that the book was about the conflict between the Big Bang theory and the Intelligent Design theory. If memory serves, Singh corrected him on this mistake. It wasn't the only mistake Fred made.

I wondered whether Singh had any notion of what he was getting into. Not that the interview was mean, but Singh seemed confused by the whole thing.

Fred began the segment with his take on Intelligent Design (ID) and his basic argument boils down to this:

There's no conflict between Science and Religion (The Big Bang describes how the Universe was created and the Bible describes why).
There are many scientists who believe in ID
so therefore,
ID should be taught in Science classes.

But Singh held firm - ID has no place in a science curriculum. He challenged Fred on the second point (about the many scientists who are believers in ID) - by saying that there are sure to be scientists who believe goofy things (I can't remember the example, but it was something like, "I am sure there are scientsts who believe that aliens live next door - but that doesn't make it true.") and so on.

Singh ended by saying that ID is an embarrassment to a nation so steeped in science - a country that has seemingly piles of Nobel prizes in science lying around, embarrasses itself by takingID seriously.

Simon Singh - 1, Fred Honsberger - idiot.

Fred Honsberger, Communist?

In his on-air celebration of the recent PA election results, Fred Honsberger yesterday used some, shall we say, interesting background music.

First off there was "Power to the People" by John Lennon. Imagine that - Fred Honsberger Pittsburgh's loudest conservative quoting a song that has these lyrics in it:

A million workers working for nothing
You better give 'em what they really own

Or this:

I gotta ask you comrades and brothers
How do you treat you own woman back home
She got to be herself
So she can free herself

Power to the people, indeed.

Then I heard Elvis Costello's "Watching the Detectives." Can someone explain to me what these words:

Nice girls not one with a defect,
Cellophane shrink-wrapped, so correct.
Red dogs under illegal legs.
She looks so good that he gets down and begs.

She is watching the detectives.
Ooh, he’s so cute!
She is watching the detectives
When they shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot.
They beat him up until the teardrops start,
But he can’t be wounded ’cause he’s got no heart.

Long shot of that jumping sign,
Invisible shivers running down my spine.
Cut the baby taking off her clothes.
Close-up of the sign that says,we never close
You snatch tune, you a match a cigarette,
She pulls the eyes out with a face like a magnet.
I don’t know how much more of this I can take.
She’s filing her nails while they’re dragging the lake.

Chorus

You think you’re alone until you realize you’re in it.
Now fear is here to stay. love is here for a visit.
They call it instant justice when it’s past the legal limit.
Someone’s scratching at the window. I wonder who is it?
The detectives come to check if you belong to the parents
Who are ready to hear the worst about their daughter’s disappearance.
Though it nearly took a miracle to get you to stay,
It only took my little fingers to blow you away.

Just like watching the detectives.
Don’t get cute!
It’s just like watching the detectives.
I get so angry when the teardrops start,
But he can’t be wounded ’cause he’s got no heart.
Watching the detectives.
It’s just like watching the detectives.

have to do with the election results?

More Silliness by Fred

On yesterday's program Honsberger chided Pittsburgh City Council for voting in favor of accepting a GRANT to plant a couple of hundred of trees in low income areas.

Fred's objection? They can't afford to fix the roads and they're planting trees! Why not spend the money to cut down old diseased trees? Etc., etc., etc.

Of course Fred knows the answer to that: The grant money was only to be used to plant new trees. So the choice wasn't plant trees vs. fix roads.

The choice was: get some FREE trees vs. no new trees.

Of course you wouldn't know that from watching the program.

But of course what Fred was really ACTING peeved about was Council President Gene Riccardi's gentle chiding of Fred for his past criticisms of school crossing guards. Fred acted outraged that council would spend time on him, but it was easy to see that Fred LOVED being mentioned.

Some Recent "Mistakes" of Fred Honsberger

Recently, Fred's been repeating the right-wing talking points on Bush's war. I'd like to take the opportunity to clear some of them up (is that OK with you, Fred?).

First off, the Senate and the White House did not "see the same intelligence" in the run up to the war. Mediamatters.org has already covered this so I'll just quote them. They start with:

Shortly after leading Democrats pushed for the completion of a congressional investigation into the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence, White House officials responded that such scrutiny of their handling of the intelligence is unwarranted because both the White House and Congress possessed the same flawed reports and came to the same incorrect conclusions.

Fred parrots this line relentlessly. Mediamatters goes on to list the ways that the Senate and White House did NOT have access to the same info. Way back in 2004, Senator Bob Kerrey said as much on CNN:

HEMMER: Back to the first question and your first answer. Senator Kerry had access to the same intelligence. And again, he voted for the war.

KERREY: That isn't true. The president has much more access to intelligence than members of Congress does. Ask any member of Congress. Ask a Republican member of Congress, do you get the same access to intelligence that the president does? Look at these aluminum tube stories that came out the president delivered to the Congress -- we believe these would be used for centrifuges, didn't deliver to Congress the full range of objections from the Department of Energy experts, nuclear weapons experts, that said it's unlikely they were for centrifuges, more likely that they were for rockets, which was a pre-existing use. The president has much more access to intelligence than any member of Congress.

Read the whole thing and educate yourself, Fred. The Senate and the White House did NOT have access to the same intelligence.

But on this point, let me elucidate (look it up, Fred - it'll improve your vocabulary). If the White House misled the people in the run-up to war - and it looks that way, don't it? - and in that same run up to war, the Senate took the President at his word, then how can THEY have been lying to the American people then? They were duped like the rest of us. And before you say, "but they saw the same intelligence!" I'd ask you to let your eyes trail upwards about 4-5 inches and take a look at the above. The Senate did not have the same intelligence as the White House.

A New Poll for Fred to Comment on...

Morning, Fred.

I've been away for a few days and so I haven't been able to keep up my side of our on-line conversation. My apologies.

By the way, I have no opinion on the Man Bag. As John Lennon once said, "Whatever gets you through your life, is all right."

Anyway, your president is still in deep doo-doo if the latest Washington Post/ABC poll is in any way accurate. Here's the gist of things:

When asked "Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president? Do you approve/disapprove strongly or somewhat?" only 39% of the people polled approved in the way Bush is handling his job (20% strongly approve v. 18% who only "somewhat" approved). A full 60% disapproved of how he's doing his job (47% strongly disapproved, while only 13% "somewhat" disapproved). Would you look at that. Almost half the population stronly disapproved of the way Dubya is handling his job.

Back to the larger picture. It's pretty bad, isn't it Fred? 6 out of 10 Americans don't like how your guy is doing his job.

But it gets worse.

61% disapprove of the way he's handling the economy and health care.

64% disapprove the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq. And 60% feel the war was not worth fighting. A full 73% feel that, in comparision to the goals of the war, the level of casualties is unacceptable. That's almost three-quarters of the country.

Here's one quesiton so important that I will quote it completly. When asked, "In making its case for war with Iraq, do you think the Bush administration (told the American public what it believed to be true), or (intentionally misled the American public)?" a majority of 55% said they believed that the administration "intentionally misled the American public."

68% think the country is headed in the wrong direction.

58% doesn't think Bush shares their values. 58% think he is untrustworthy.

When asked how they feel about the Bush admistration policies, 62% answered in the negative (37% dissatisfied and 25% angry) and only 38% anwered in the positive (30% were satisfied and 8% were enthusiastic). Be honest, Fred. You're in that 8%, aren't you?

Finally, when asked whether Roe v Wade should be overturned, 64% said no.

Given where the country is right now, Fred, and given where YOU are philosophically, I have to ask, "How does it feel to be in the minority on so many important issues?"

Some (non-Libby) bad news for Fred Honsberger to ponder

This past summer, when Cindy Sheehan was in the news, Fred Honsberger is very fond of saying that a majority of military families disagree with her position on the war in Iraq.

That may indeed have been the case then (although to my knowledge Fred has NEVER backed that assertion up with any real data), it may not be the case now.

I got this story from dailykos.

There was a state-wide poll done in North Carolina recently and it was reported on by the Winston-Salem Journal. You can find the story here. Here's how it begins:

More than half of North Carolina military members surveyed in the latest Elon University poll disapprove of President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq and his overall job performance.

Nearly 53 percent of military members said they strongly disapproved or disapproved of Bush's handling of his job. Just more than 56 percent of the same group strongly disapproved or disapproved of how he has dealt with the Iraq war.

Overall, 53 percent of those surveyed for the poll released yesterday did not approve of Bush's job performance, while 57 percent did not approve of his handling of the Iraq war.

And then this follows. Read it very closely, Fred.

"We see that those most involved in the Iraq situation, the military, are not so different from the general public after all and share the same concerns about Iraq," said Hunter Bacot, the poll's director. "Conventional wisdom might suggest that the military would be more supportive of Bush in Iraq, but that simply isn't the case if you look at the numbers."

The Charlotte Observer adds this:

More than 51 percent of military members said they did not know if the war was worth fighting. Roughly 29 percent said the war was not worth it and 19 percent said it was.

So among military members from NC, there's this HUGE chunk (a slight majority, in fact) that doesn't know whether the war is worth fighting. That in itself is a big story - they're not sure?? But the important part is the part that says that only 19% of those polled said it was worth it.

That's only about one-in-five, Fred.

Now I have to reassert that this poll was taken in only one state - North Carolina and it may be way too early to assume that these findings are indicative of the feelings of the military as a whole, but as they come from North Carolina and not say Berkeley, California, I think they do give one pause.

Don't you think, Fred?