January 1, 2010

So what does a good little Bushie do when he gets all of his talking points shot down by the liberal guest on the air? Why start talking over them of course and say you don't want to talk about the past any more. Tanya Acker whacks around Bushie Terry Holt's talking points on how Dick Cheney is supposed to be some terrorism expert, and since she's getting the better of him of course he just starts talking over her until Candy Crowley throws him a life jacket and ends the segment.

One thing Acker didn't call Holt out on is that "vast bureaucracy" he was carping about, was put in place by his former boss, not the Obama administration. I don't know why anyone ever thought making The Department of Homeland Security was going to make any of the agencies functioning under it work better. Of course Candy Crowley wasn't going to correct Holt for any of his hackery. That might be expecting her to act like a journalist instead of a referee.

CROWLEY: Terry, you know, listen...

HILL: Sure, Candy.

CROWLEY: ...I just think that people out there sit and listen to the former vice president sort of going after the president, saying he's not taking this seriously enough. And I want to read you a quote from Congressman Eric Massa. He is a Democrat of New York. And he had this to say when he wrote on the Huffington Post: "I, for one, am sick and tired of these Bush-era chicken hawk politicians that never served in uniform attacking Democrats on national security when, in fact, they are largely to blame for our nation's current national security problems."

Is anybody covering themselves in glory when -- I've got to believe most Americans were certainly frightened when they heard about the attack on Christmas -- about the near attack on Christmas Day. And we've got everybody sort of firing about who's to blame.

TERRY HOLT, FORMER NATIONAL SPOKESMAN FOR BUSH-CHENEY 2004: Well, you know, and Dick Cheney is coming to this with -- with -- with a lot of information. You know, he -- he didn't -- he wasn't exactly a shrinking violet in the last administration. He was every day engaged in national security issues, in defense issues, in foreign policy issues.

So I think he's got a good handle on what's at stake in this world. And he's been very consistent throughout the year of pointing out weaknesses that he's perceived in the way Obama has -- has -- has prosecuted the war on terror.

And I'm going to say that, because at the very beginning of this year, Barack Obama declared war not on terror, but on the intelligence community itself.

And if you look at what's happened over the last year, with -- with Eric Holder threatening to -- to jail people who interrogated terrorists, this administration has made some significant missteps that have added up, to people like Dick Cheney and others in -- in our foreign service and intelligence communities, very concerned that we might have taken our eye off the ball and that we have put this vast bureaucracy in place -- hundreds of billions of dollars and, hey, guess what people, at the end of the day, the passengers on the plane have to protect themselves because this government can't. It's scary...

TANYA ACKER, POLITICAL ANALYST: Terry...

HOLT: ...and I think Dick Cheney's put his finger on it.

CROWLEY: Go ahead, Tanya.

ACKER: Terry -- Terry, taking your eye off the ball is refusing to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, which is what the Bush-Cheney administration did for years. Taking your eye off the ball is reducing New York's anti-terror funding by $80 million because you decide that they don't have any landmarks there that are worth protecting. Taking your eye off the ball is saying that we're going to give control of six U.S. ports to a Dubai company and then say, oh, but, by the way, we're not going to insist on mandatory screening of incoming cargo from -- from overseas ports. So, you know, this whole rhetoric.

HOLT: You're living in the past.

ACKER: This whole...

HOLT: These terrorist threats are...

ACKER: No, I -- no, no. Wait. Wait.

HOLT: ...in our face today.

ACKER: Wait one -- one second.

One second...

HOLT: Let's go forward.

ACKER: No, excuse me. I want to go forward. But the interesting thing is that Dick Cheney and his allies and those partisans seem to think that the only way to go forward is to profile people, is to suggest that the Constitution doesn't work, is to pretend like we've never been subject to threats before...

HOLT: Let's just put the crazy people...

ACKER: ...in this country...

HOLT: ...on a list...

ACKER: Terry, one second...

HOLT: ...and not let them on our airplanes.

ACKER: Terry...

CROWLEY: Let me -- let me call a time out here...

(CROSSTALK) CROWLEY: Hold it, folks.

(CROSSTALK)

CROWLEY: Hold it. Hold it.

STEIN: Tanya...

CROWLEY: Hold it.

STEIN: Tanya...

CROWLEY: Hold it.

STEIN: Tanya, with respect...

CROWLEY: I can trust you...

STEIN: Tanya...

CROWLEY: Hey, Ben can I get you to...

STEIN: Tanya, with a great respect...

CROWLEY: ...to hold off for...

(CROSSTALK)

CROWLEY: Let me get you all to hold off for just a second. I shouted over my brothers, too, during the family affairs, so I can do that.

We are going to come back and I promise we will continue this discussion.

Former presidential adviser, Karl Rove, has come out with some suggested New Year's resolutions for President Obama. We'll discuss those and much more when we come back.

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