Guests: Horace Cooper, Flavia Colgan, Ted Nugent
LAWRENCE O’DONNELL, HOST: And welcome to SATURDAY FINAL. I’m Lawrence O’Donnell, coming to you today from Los Angeles, where this week, luxury SUVs went up in flames and the stars started to come out against Arnold Schwarzenegger’s run for governor. We’ll be talking about both of those stories later in the show.
But first, the latest Zogby poll released this week shows President Bush’s job approval ratings slipping down to 52 percent, lowest point since 9/11 for President Bush. The disapproval is running as high as 48 percent now.
Turning to our panel, we have with us today-who do we have with us? We have musician and activist and outdoorsman extraordinaire, Ted Nugent with us today. Also, Horace Cooper of GOPUSA.com, Democratic political analyst and operative Flavia Colgan and MSNBC analyst Noah Oppenheim. Flavia Colgan, what is driving the Bush numbers down?
FLAVIA COLGAN, DEMOCRATIC ANALYST: Lawrence, I think there’s a lot going on here. Ironically, President Bush has had really high approval ratings when it comes to foreign policy. So in his month-long vacation in Crawford, Texas, his political team has him out on these trips promoting a lot of his domestic agenda, whether it would be environmental policy-who knows why he would want anyone to know about that, but that’s for another show.
And he can’t get any traction on those issues because of the spiraling violence in both the Middle East and Iraq. So his domestic numbers are going to stay down. The foreign policy numbers are going down. And the thing that he is going to have to be really worried about, the only thing that’s keeping him really afloat at this point is the fact that a lot of American people simply like him. Kind of an inverse of what Bill Clinton experienced. His job approval a little bit lower, but people liking him very high. And to the extent that we don’t start seeing the weapons of mass destruction, the connection with al Qaeda, and all of the things that the president said was the reason we’re going to war, that is going to eat away at his credibility, and he has squandered the greatest asset he has.
So I think that’s when you’re going to see even more deterioration in numbers, but I think he has a lot of trouble right now.
O’DONNELL: Ted Nugent, what job approval score do you give to President Bush?
TED NUGENT, MUSICIAN: You know, I’m a little different. I have a Nugent poll going on here. I head down to Ace Hardware with a bunch of my ranching and cop buddies today. I pretty much hang around with the salt of the Earth, people that really get up early and try to be an asset to their family, and be productive, and according to the cops and the farmers and the feed mill guys I hang out with this morning, they know these are extremely difficult times, that terrorism is an extremely outrageous condition, and that under the circumstances, our president is doing a good job.
We don’t care what the foreigners are thinking about him right now. We want to make sure he is maximizing the safety and security for the people of the United States.
O’DONNELL: But Ted, but Ted, if 48 percent don’t think he is doing a very good job, you know that 48 percent of the American public includes farmers, guys hanging out at hardware stores, cops and everybody you mentioned. What is driving his numbers down with those people? Is it as Flavia is suggesting, the foreign policy mess that’s developing in the Middle East?
HORACE COOPER, GOPUSA.COM: I think a reality check is needed here.
O’DONNELL: Hold it, hold it, Horace, I just want to get Ted on this.
Go ahead, Ted.
NUGENT: Well, again, you know, I get to travel. I’ve done about 75 concerts this year. And I don’t just go to my hotel room and order room service and then play my concert. I really hang with people. People from every imaginable walk of life, every social strata. And yes, there’s a lot of suspicion. We should always remain suspicious. That’s the job of we the people, with an experiment in self-government. I see that alive and well.
I’m not buying the overall polls. I know that there’s suspicion, we should remain suspicious and we should ask questions all the time. But overall, we know these are extreme conditions, and we think he’s doing a good job. I don’t buy the 48 percent negative. I believe that it is much higher on the positive side.
O’DONNELL: OK, Horace, before your reality check, this poll was taken before the bombing of the U.N. office in Baghdad, which adds to the sensation of trouble in Iraq, things getting worse, not better. That stuff cannot be helping the Bush numbers.
COOPER: Well, I think you’re right, that that’s not helping the Bush number. But this is clearly a case of talking about the glass being half-empty, rather than half-full.
O’DONNELL: But Horace, that’s the problem. It is exactly half now.
And it used to be much, much higher.
COOPER: This is not true, not true at all.
O’DONNELL: This is a guy who had astronomical numbers not a long time ago.
COOPER: Not with the Zogby survey. In fact, he is about six points lower than his high watermark for the last 13 months in the Zogby poll. He has had him no higher than about 58 percent, with a disapproval rating over the last 13 months-with a disapproval rating of about 36 to 40 percent.
So we’re very close to the median in the Zogby poll.
But what is interesting is, Pew, “New York Times,” the Gallup survey, since the month of August, each month they have shown-the Fox Dynamic survey-have shown an increase. In fact, they’re hovering around the 60 percent.
The other point real quick is that the Zogby’s favorability poll is actually showing a 58 percent approval rating. So what you’re seeing here is the Zogby number, which is an outlier from the rest of the surveys, and that Zogby number has stayed pretty same. It only changed a little bit during the first events after the war began in Iraq.
O’DONNELL: Noah, his numbers have drifted down to the point where the White House starts to look like a very competitive target in the presidential campaign next year. These are numbers that aren’t going to scare anyone from taking on President Bush next year.
NOAH OPPENHEIM, MSNBC ANALYST: Look, I know you woke up and saw these numbers and got very excited about them, but I’m inclined to agree with Horace, which is that this is not exactly shocking news here. This country has always been roughly divided. It was roughly divided when President Bush was first elected in 2000.
Obviously, September 11 created extraordinary circumstances that led to extraordinary bumps in his poll numbers. But look, this country is split relatively right down the middle with regard to liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans.
President Bush is on vacation this month. He has been out fundraising, but he has not been all that visible on a national level. He’s been down in Crawford. People haven’t seen him. People are scared about what’s going on in the Middle East. That’s a given. They’re scared about what’s going to happen in Iraq. It’s not clear how well that’s going to work out. And people are concerned.
But you know what, it’s not like his numbers have fallen through the floor here. We’re back to where-we’re back to a sort of normal, normal condition, where people are relatively split.
So obviously, look, he has got to make Iraq into a success. He has to get control of the situation there. He has got to work hard on the Mideast situation and try to bring that under control. No one is saying he’s going to coast to reelection. He has got to be a successful president. But there’s still ample time for that.
O’DONNELL: Noah, what if he doesn’t? What if Iraq continues along the path that’s going now, with roughly the same number of disruptions and killings, and then what if the peace process in the Middle East stays off track where it is now? How do Bush’s numbers look six months from now if everything keeps going the way it is in the Middle East?
OPPENHEIM: Well, look, you’ve got to-what direction is it going? If you read “The New York Times” today, which is not exactly President Bush’s greatest cheerleader, they report about how the great majority of Iraq is actually quite peaceful and actually happy to have an American presence there. We have a problem in Baghdad. We have a problem in the predominantly Sunni areas in the center of the country and in parts of the northwest. But for the majority of the country, it is pretty calm and peaceful and actually headed in a positive direction.
Now, with regard to the Mideast peace process, no president has ever been able to bring peace to the Israel and the Palestinians. If Bush is unsuccessful there, I don’t think someone’s going to say, you know what, John Kerry is going to be able to do it, but George Bush couldn’t. I mean, that’s outrageous.
NUGENT: You see, Lawrence, uncle Ted’s poll. It’s the uncle Ted poll that we need to watch. It’s the connection, the pulse of America. You have got to get out on the streets to really get a reading. It is so ugly over there that that’s where the negative comes from.
O’DONNELL: Hey, the Zogby poll is not my poll. OK? The Zogby poll has come out...
NUGENT: I understand that.
O’DONNELL: ... and said that...
NUGENT: It’s not my poll either.
O’DONNELL: ... the difference between approval and disapproval on this president is now within the margin of error. In fact, according to that poll, there might be more disapproval than approval, within the margin of error. This is a huge development in the polling of the Bush presidency.
COOPER: Lawrence, this is not. It absolutely is not.
O’DONNELL: Now, you might not like it and you might not want it...
COOPER: It’s not about liking it.
O’DONNELL: But they’re scared in the White House about it and you know it.
COOPER: They’re not. Look at the July number. Look at the June number. Look at the January number.
O’DONNELL: All trending downward.
COOPER: Look at the February number.
O’DONNELL: Horace, that’s not a good thing. Nobody in politics likes seeing the numbers go down.
OPPENHEIM: Yes, but if you have an 85 percent approval rating, things are going to tend to trend downward afterwards. When you’re at those heights, things are going to come down. But the fact of the matter still remains. You have a condition of normalcy here. Republicans aren’t saying we need to coronate George Bush and have him as president in perpetuity.
We’re going to have an election. He’s got to prove himself. That’s true. And yes, right now, the country may be roughly split down the middle because there are a lot of things that are unresolved. It’s not like President Bush has made a disaster of the country. He hasn’t made a disaster of foreign policy. Things are playing themselves out. And there’s a wait and see attitude. But generally, people I think still lean positive. They do. They lean positive by 52 percent.
(CROSSTALK)
COLGAN: The spin going on here-the spin going on here is making me dizzy. I don’t know how anyone can look at a poll-if this were a poll for a Democratic candidate, especially the two on my right, would be saying, you know, how their numbers are going through the floor. I think this is very concerning, and the White House, you know, does seem to be picking up their pace. They’re trying, although it’s not working, to put him out on the road. And although he’s been on vacation, he has been making two and three day swings.
It’s not getting any coverage. You know, he’s out in Oregon with the unemployment rate of 7.8 percent, and Noah may be right that maybe there’s some progress in Iraq, but that’s not what the people hear or are feeling. They see body bags coming back. People aren’t at work. The president can say how great the economy is until he is blue in the face, but tell that to the people who aren’t picking up checks every month.
O’DONNELL: OK, we’re going to hold it right there. Hold it right there. Panel, we will come back, and when we come back, we’ll talk about the California recall and other big news. This is SATURDAY FINAL right here on MSNBC.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL SIMON (R ), FORMER CALIFORNIA GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: I come before you today to announce that I am withdrawing as a candidate for governor. This historic recall election has been about bringing profound and substantial change to our great state, and I strongly believe that the desire of Californians must come before the aspirations of any single candidate. There are too many Republicans in this race.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O’DONNELL: Welcome back to SATURDAY FINAL. I’m Lawrence O’Donnell. There you see Bill Simon pulling out of the California recall election. He was the Republican nominee who ran against Gray Davis in the last gubernatorial election, and lost. That leaves Tom McClintock and Peter Ueberroth, who’s running as an independent, although he is a Republican, running against Arnold in the Republican side of the race.
Noah Oppenheim, with Bill Simon, conservative Republican pulling out, who does this help? Where does his support go?
OPPENHEIM: Well, obviously, it helps Arnold. I mean, the problem that Republicans have here is that because Arnold is such a huge figure on the stage, that he becomes the frontrunner. And even though some of his positions aren’t exactly what mainstream-what a lot of conservatives would like, we have got to make a strategic choice here, do we throw all our eggs in that basket because he’s the likely winner?
O’DONNELL: But Noah, last week on this show you made the strategic choice that you would go with the purest Republican conservative, Tom McClintock.
OPPENHEIM: I did. I’m very happy with that choice, because I’m not a registered voter in the state of California. So I can afford to vote with my conscience here, because I actually can’t vote. But the people in California have to make a decision whether they want Cruz Bustamante to be their governor. And obviously, that’s a pretty unpalatable prospect. So if I were actually a registered voter in California, I might think differently and start considering going back the Terminator.
O’DONNELL: Ted Nugent, here’s the problem. In recent polling, Tom McClintock was polling at 9 percent. Bill Simon was polling at 8 percent. And Arnold at 22. So if the Simon purist conservative Republicans go to McClintock, McClintock instantly become within striking distance of Schwarzenegger. What should they do?
NUGENT: Well, I’m going to throw a grenade in your poll here once again.
O’DONNELL: Here we go.
NUGENT: They did a poll in Michigan, they did a poll in Michigan, God help us all, where I got on the talk radio show. Not necessarily a Ted Nugent rock ‘n’ roll demographic. I got a 91 percent recommendation to run for governor of Michigan. So everybody head for the hills.
Arnold has got a hell of a job ahead of him, but he is in a state where you’ve got Redding, California, which is the red, and then you’ve got the southern California, with a whole lot of blue.
He is going to really have to prove himself, and he’s going to have to be the ultimate moderate, which is why I can’t put my voice behind him at this time. I think he’s going to have to prove fiscal responsibility. He’s going to have to make sure that the productive people of California get out there and vote.
But I don’t like all his policies. I don’t like his gun control. I don’t like the recommendation of paying for gay considerations with taxpayer dollars. Abortion rights with taxpayer dollars. So he’s got a lot of hurdles. It can be like a landmine field for the Terminator out there.
O’DONNELL: Horace, should your Republican friends in California go from Simon to McClintock, or Simon to Schwarzenegger? And which way will they go?
COOPER: They will go to the Terminator for this precise reason. If you’re looking at those polls, and that’s why I keep trying to focus on this point, you can’t pick and choose which poll you like. You look at the trends among the polls. And what was happening, the same thing that Simon saw and the same thing that other conservatives saw, is that if they’re backing a guy who’s under 10 percent, then Bustamante is more likely to win. One thing that the Republicans and conservatives are united on is they don’t want another set of years with the failed policies of the Gray Davis-Cruz Bustamante administration.
O’DONNELL: It’s really funny for me watching you Republicans not understand this race. Conservative talk radio in California is driving conservatives to McClintock. You have to know this. McClintock is the third strongest candidate in this race. Simon voters are going to McClintock.
COLGAN: Lawrence, I completely agree with you.
O’DONNELL: Flavia, what about the Democratic side? What are national Democrats going to do, if anything, to try to hold on to this governorship for Democrats?
COLGAN: Well, I think that’s one of the benefits Cruz Bustamante is going to have. This week you saw them really uniting behind him. The congressional delegation lining up. The state legislature set to do that this coming week, with a strong Latino voting. Even Gray Davis warming up to the no-yes strategy.
And I agree with you. I think that Simon getting out of the race is going to help McClintock fundraising immensely. I think he’s going to get a lot of those votes. And I think that Arnold’s numbers are going to be very fluid, and he doesn’t have that much room to grow, because he already has extreme name recognition.
And I think that with every day that goes by, whether it’s Buffett coming out and making a remark, whether it’s him imploding because he’s a complete political neophyte, I think that McClintock has a chance here to pick up a lot of those votes, and you’re going to see Ueberroth, McClintock and Arnold still splitting it, with Cruz Bustamante, you know, being the only one with labor and teachers and firefighters, and more people coming behind him and potentially a huge Latino vote, which makes a 15 percent of the voting population in California. I think it’s going to be a horse race.
O’DONNELL: OK, let’s take a look at what Arnold had to say this week about his support in the show business community.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER ®, CALIFORNIA GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: This is a town where we have obviously more Democrats than Republicans. But it is extraordinary the amount of actors and actresses and producers and directors and studio executives that came forward and said, we want to help you, we want to have a fundraiser. Republicans and Democrats alike. So that has been an incredible thing. And the reason is because they know where my heart is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O’DONNELL: Well, so far his list of stars is exactly one, my good buddy Rob Lowe. No one else, no other stars have come out in support of him.
COOPER: Who cares? Who cares who the stars support?
O’DONNELL: Let’s see what Martin Sheen has to say about this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARTIN SHEEN, ACTOR: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) through the door. You know, he’s a good and decent man, he’s a very sweet man. But he’s not in politics. He’s not a public servant.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O’DONNELL: Noah, who cares?
OPPENHEIM: I don’t know, I don’t care what Martin Sheen thinks.
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: The Schwarzenegger camp seems to care desperately. They announced Rob Lowe’s affiliation with the campaign in the same breath that they were announcing George Schultz.
OPPENHEIM: Which is lunacy, if you ask me. Look, Lawrence, as you pointed out, I am not a fan of Schwarzenegger. But the point is, conservatives do need to make a choice. And while the talk radio conservatives that you talk about, they’re the most hard-core ideologues. And obviously, they’re going to like McClintock more than they’re going to like Schwarzenegger.
But at a certain point, a tactical choice needs to be made, which is who is the most delectable candidate? This is a classic situation that you played out in the primaries, where the hard-core party members often times gravitate towards a candidate that can’t win in the general election. I like McClintock, I think-I agree more with his policies than I agree with Arnold’s, and I’m sure the talk radio show hosts agree with him more. But at the end of the day, who is going to win this election?
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: Ted Nugent, are the stars going to make any difference in this race? Or is it just the one big star who is going to make the difference, Arnold?
NUGENT: You know, it just scares me to death when I see more weight put on a celebrity’s voice. I know I’m here because I’m the guitar player. But I’m an activist. I’m involved with the churches and the schools in my community. I am involved with our neighborhoods. I’m involved with the senators and the congressmen and the governors in the states that I travel in, and most importantly, I live in.
I can’t understand on an intellectual level or certainly a political level how we can give more credence to a celebrity’s endorsement of a celebrity. I’d like to just wash the celebrity clean and listen to the content, listen to the issues, listen to his policies.
You have got the attention because they’re celebrity. But that’s all that’s good for. Now, what are you ready to deliver? It’s got to be policy. And if California is going to vote for somebody based on celebrity, then they’re going further downhill than they are right now.
COLGAN: Lawrence, but this is part of my problem with Arnold’s campaign. He is so obsessed with who is his new advisor of the week, who is the new endorsement of the week. Every day there’s a press release with Schultz coming in, Rob Lowe coming in, Buffett coming in. I care about the man who is going to be governor. Why can’t he have press conferences and tell us what he plans to do, what cuts he plans to make?
O’DONNELL: OK, Flavia, hold it, hold it right there, Flavia. We’ve got the clearest thinking celebrity on TV in Ted Nugent.
All right. We’ll be back with this week’s “Winners and Losers” right after this. You’re watching SATURDAY FINAL.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. GRAY DAVIS (D), CALIFORNIA: For the next several weeks, my highest priority will be doing the job you elected me to do. But make no mistake, I am going to fight this recall and the right wing forces behind it. You can take that to the bank.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O’DONNELL: Welcome back to SATURDAY FINAL. Now it’s time to the panel for the people, places, ideas or events that they’ve picked as this week’s winners and losers.
Let’s start with Horace Cooper. Horace, who is your winner and loser?
COOPER: My winner this week is civil liberties. Tampa had a facial recognition system they put in place to track the faces of all people as they’re walking through the city park, and they found after a year’s time, they never found a single violation that merited having the system, and they scrapped it. So civil liberties have won.
My loser for this week, I have a combination. The ACLU losing in this lawsuit to stop the recall, claiming that the punch card system would somehow be unfair. And Cruz Bustamante, proving why this administration is such a low approval rating, asking for an $8 billion tax increase if he is given the privilege of being governor.
O’DONNELL: OK, two losers. That’s not fair. Noah Oppenheim, your winner and loser.
OPPENHEIM: Yes, my winner of the week is an unfortunate winner. Unfortunately, the winner is Kathy Boudin, who shot and killed two police officers and also killed a security guard in an armored car heist in 1981, who was paroled this week after serving a little over 20 years in prison, largely because her cause was adopted by a sort of a lot of the same celebrities that are probably rallying against Arnold Schwarzenegger. She was a so-called 60’s radical, and I guess everyone felt real bad for her. She was misguided. She also helped people in prison who had AIDS, which is a nice thing to do, but those two cops and that security guard are still dead.
My loser of the week is General Wesley Clark, who has been banned from appearing on CNN’s “MONEYLINE WITH LOU DOBBS,” according to a “U.S. News and World Report,” because Lou Dobbs has come to the conclusion that Wesley Clark was providing a political commentary when he should have been providing military analysis throughout the Iraq war.
O’DONNELL: That’s really going to ruin General Clark’s future.
(CROSSTALK)
OPPENHEIM: One show at a time. It starts with “MONEYLINE.” Pretty soon he won’t be able to get on anywhere and then we’ll be in business.
O’DONNELL: Ted Nugent, your winner and loser.
NUGENT: Well, the winner of the week is Governor Mike Huckabee from the great state of Arkansas. A hunting buddy of mine who has lost 50 pounds and is showing by leadership how to get a healthier lifestyle through a more intelligent form of exercise.
O’DONNELL: Do you have any before and after pictures with you of Mike Huckabee?
NUGENT: We shall soon. I’m the skinny guy, consistent.
And obviously, the loser of the week are the hair-brained celebrities like Bill Maher and Pamela Anderson who support the animal rights terrorists, like the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front, who burned down the SUVs. And of course, Sharon Osbourne is the loser every week because she continues to pimp her husband, who doesn’t deserve this kind of public ridicule. So there’s lots of winners and lots of losers out there.
O’DONNELL: Hey, come on, what about fellow rock stars kind of hanging together? What’s going on?
NUGENT: Well, I love Ozzy. That’s my whole point. Ozzy does not deserve this. Ozzy is a good guy, but Sharon is taking advantage of him. I just can’t-find that reprehensible.
O’DONNELL: All right. Flavia Colgan, your winner and loser.
COLGAN: Well, my winner, I think there are a lot of winners in the recall out in California. We’ll have to wait until next week to see who all these shifts really benefited the most.
My loser, no question, the road map to peace in the Middle East, which took devastating blows this last week and a half. Already a fragile truce. And I’m going to follow Horace’s lead, because I don’t want to leave out the Brazilian man who walked into a hospital, definitely a loser. He went in with an earache, came out with a vasectomy, and asked why he didn’t think it was unusual the procedure they were doing for his ailment said, I just assumed the doctors thought it had spread. So this guy, no question, is a big loser this week as well.
O’DONNELL: OK, you guys are going to have to reread the “Winners and Losers” rules. It’s one of each.
All right. Stick around. More SATURDAY FINAL right after this.
We’ll be back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROY MOORE, ALABAMA CHIEF JUSTICE: Acknowledgement of God is not a religion, it is a responsibility in the Alabama constitution. In fact, the Alabama constitution says that our justice system is established upon God, and no judge, federal or otherwise, can tell the chief justice of the state of Alabama that they cannot acknowledge God.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O’DONNELL: Welcome back to SATURDAY FINAL. That was Alabama chief justice, Roy Moore, who has been suspended with pay for his refusal to remove his Ten Commandments monuments from his courthouse. Justice Moore says it represents a rock in the foundation of American law. Ted Nugent, he went to the University of Alabama Law School where apparently they don’t teach judicial review and the authority of the Supreme Court and federal courts over state judges. That’s why he’s got himself in this trouble. How could a judge who went to law school get himself into this situation?
NUGENT: Well, in an extreme fashion, I believe it’s not unlike Rosa Parks refusing to sit for tradition on that bus in Selma, Alabama, if that’s where, in fact, that took place. I like judge Moore. I like people who defy bad policy. I think his principles are to be saluted. I do believe that this experiment in self-government is based on those Ten Commandments. All of our laws are based on that. I believe that there’s time to comply and there’s a time to defy. I think Judge Moore has made a stand and I like a man who makes a stand against bad policy.
O’DONNELL: Well, Ted. The guy has been a judge for over 10 years.
NUGENT: I have been watching that, yes.
O’DONNELL: Why now? What got into this guy’s head? Why did he never before, in his entire career, try to violate the law this way?
NUGENT: Well, I’m not so.
O’DONNELL: What is he up to?
NUGENT: . sure he’s tried to violate the law.
O’DONNELL: What’s he running for?
NUGENT: I think he’s making-I think his stand-I don’t really know and I don’t really care what he’s running for. I believe that his stand and the words out of his mouth and the historical evidence and the logical evidence that he is citing, the Ten Commandments, is the very foundation of this country. I believe he is right on the money, and I believe that he is making a stand for good over bad. And I happen to stand with Judge Moore on this.
O’DONNELL: Well, was he making a stand for bad every day of his career up until the time that he.
NUGENT: No. I don’t believe so.
O’DONNELL: I mean, see, I don’t get it. I don’t get why suddenly one day, after all these years in his career, and all these years on the bench, he decides to pull this illegal act. I don’t get it.
NUGENT: Was it really suddenly one day or was it all of a sudden, because you have a monument, you have this plaque that showed up, this tribute. I don’t believe it was suddenly one day. I believe that the way this nation is going, the more we dismiss God, the more we dismiss the Ten Commandments, the more we dismiss the importance of right over wrong, now is the 2003.
(CROSSTALK)
COLGAN: Lawrence, Lawrence.
NUGENT: I believe now more than ever.
COLGAN: Lawrence.
O’DONNELL: Let me go to Horace Cooper and (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Horace, you know, I don’t care that it’s the Ten Commandments or has anything to do with God. This judge is nuts. This judge has no judicial demeanor whatsoever. He seem to have no idea what it is to be judge.
COOPER: OK. Everyone who doesn’t want to see the Ten Commandments displayed is hiding behind judicial demeanor. When he ran for the State Supreme Court, he said, if you elect me, I promise to honor and acknowledge the Ten Commandments prominently. He followed through on his commitment. He had served as a lower court judge before that. But now, he is honoring that and the liberals have all gotten upset about it. And now that the.
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: It’s not the liberals. It is.
COOPER: . it’s all about judicial demeanor.
COLGAN: It’s taking people.
O’DONNELL: . the Alabama Supreme Court, all of whom, except for one, is a Republican. Everyone of them have said, in effect, this guy is out of his judicial mind.
COLGAN: Lawrence, he’s doing this.
O’DONNELL: Go ahead, Flavia.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: This guy, his principles. He is standing up.
COLGAN: Hold on, Horace. One second.
COOPER: By the way, everybody else on that court believes in God.
COLGAN: Absolutely. Lawrence, the reason he’s doing this is because he’s acting like a political candidate and not a judge. He crisscrossed the state saying he was going to bring Christian values back to the Alabama State Courthouse. And this is starting to make me think that the judiciary should be all appointed because this guy is just being a hotdog.
My biggest problem with this is not that he wanted to perhaps appeal to the United States Supreme Court, is comparing him to Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King or whoever-whatever name they’re throwing out there. Those were private citizens. This man is sworn to uphold to rule of law.
And he is now making a mockery of it by completely defying a higher court.
If he wants to file the appropriate papers and take it to the U.S. Supreme Court, he did that. It’s not going to happen for him. He knows this is a futile effort. He is doing it for the fanfare. He is doing it because it is a big huge campaign circuit.
O’DONNELL: Noah Oppenheim, what should the judge do next?
OPPENHEIM: I think the judge should abide by the orders of the higher court. But, I think those orders are unfortunate. I don’t understand what everyone is so afraid of. It is a stone statue of one of the pillars of western civilization that is sitting in a courthouse. I don’t get why that’s such a horrific thing that needs to be...
(CROSSTALK)
COLGAN: No.
O’DONNELL: But, at least you do understand the law better than Judge Moore does. All right. In California this week.
COLGAN: It’s because of the intent.
O’DONNELL: . a few Hummer dealerships went up in flames. You probably all saw this on TV already. Eco terrorists are claiming credit. They went out there in the middle of the night and hit a few different dealerships attacking the Hummer, the biggest of the gas guzzling SUVs. Let’s take look at the TV commercial that was aired earlier in the year by Americans For Fuel Efficient Cars.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is George. This is the gas that George bought for his SUV. This is oil company executive who sold the gas that George bought for his SUV. These are the countries where the executives bought the oil that made the gas that George bought for his SUV. And these are the terrorists who get money from those countries every time George fills up his SUV.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O’DONNELL: That ad was paid for by a group of Hollywood supporters. Ted Nugent, if you see an ad like that which says, if you drive an SUV, you are supporting terrorists. Is it a big leap to see people attacking SUVs after that? I mean, isn’t there some logical consistency from that TV ad to what happened yesterday?
NUGENT: Well, there’s a number of issues at play here. Are we gluttons in America? Certainly we’re gluttons. Do we need to be more environmentally conscientious and responsible individual families and neighborhoods? Yes, we do. Are we heading that way? I believe we are, fast enough no. But, let’s get one thing straight. The Nugent family has a very close relationship with this issue. Our life has been threatened.
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: How many Hummers do you have, Ted?
NUGENT: My children-Well, I have to have-I don’t own any Hummers. My life has a Hummer. But, I have a number of SUVs because do I a lot of school activities and we take six, seven, eight, nine kids on activities, so you have to have multiple passenger vehicles to accomplish that.
But make no mistake, The Animal Liberation Front, The Earth Liberation Front, People For Ethical Treatment of Animals, these organizations have been concluded to be terrorist organizations. And ELF and ALF have been funded by the animal rights organization who have threatened to kill my children because we eat barbecue. So let’s just make sure that we get one thing straight.
Do we need to get more efficient use out of our fossil fuels and out of our energy resources? Of course we do. Is the answer to burn down car dealerships and threaten people’s lives because they eat meat or own a bigger vehicle? That’s just insanity. So these people should be caught. They should be prosecuted as the terrorists that they are. That is an act of arson and that is the act of life threatening felony, and I believe that we’ve got to get real tough with these home grown terrorists, because that’s what ELF is.
O’DONNELL: Flavia Colgan, ELF, according to the “L.A. Times”, has taken credit for this on their Web site, and they are obviously an extremist group. But, if extreme leftist groups like those that funded that TV ad equating the ownership of an SUV with the support of terrorism are out there advocating that position, doesn’t the left bear some responsibility for what went on yesterday?
COLGAN: Well, I’ve never been a big believer that rap music or ads promote people to do violence. I think people have ideas in their head already and I think it is outrageous what they did. And frankly, I don’t like the ads either. I think if you want to encourage people to have fuel efficient cars or solar energy, you should do that, but not by doing this emotional blackmail and making people feel guilty or framing it in such a negative way.
I think that they should have ads that are more positive, encouraging people, you know, to, you know, to conserve energy. They don’t have ads saying people who heat gigantic huge homes are, you know, also linked to terrorists. I’m not a fan of the ad. I certainly think that these people should be prosecuted.
O’DONNELL: Horace.
COLGAN: . who committed this crime. Absolutely like any other terrorist, because that’s what they are.
O’DONNELL: Horace Cooper, I can assure you that a lot of people behind that ad fly on Gulfstreams alone in the plane and have very expensive homes to heat. But, do you think this tactic is going to work? I mean, when you’re in Los Angeles and you’re watching Hummers burn by the dozens-and by the way, the worst part of the story was someone who owned a Ford Expedition that was just parked in front of his house-it wasn’t at a dealership. These same terrorists attacked that with a firebomb.
This story of life in Los Angeles now is, if you own one of these, it can be attacked at any time. I’ll tell you, I thought about getting one of these things last year. I didn’t. I am now glad I didn’t and I would not buy one. This campaign is going to work with me. I’m not going to have a car that they’re going to want to bomb.
NUGENT: What about NASCAR? What about the drag.
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: Go ahead, Horace. I want to hear from Horace Cooper on this.
COOPER: OK. In my mind, this is lawlessness. This is dangerous. This is extremists. This is behavior that we should all be concerned about. It is not like a principle position on the Ten Commandments. It is these kind of people, even if they’re in the private sector, that we ought to be aggressively going after and telling them, in America, the way you persuade people to do what you want to do is not through violence. You stand up and you can be accountable. That’s what the Rosa Parks model is all about. These people need to be shut down.
O’DONNELL: OK, Horace. Hold it right there, Horace. We’re done on this segment. We are going to be right back.
You are going to watch the panel get really ticked off back here on
SATURDAY FINAL.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O’DONNELL: Welcome back to SATURDAY FINAL. Now it’s time to watch the panel get really ticked off. We are going to give each one of them 60 seconds to tell us what really drove them crazy this week. We are going to start with you, Ted Nugent. And you must-you must begin with the words ‘I’m ticked off because’. You cannot use that other phrase that you use all week. It has to be ‘ticked off’. Go ahead, Ted.
NUGENT: All right, 60 seconds. There are so many issues I could talk about. It’s a target rich environment. I am really ticked off because we are avoiding an opportunity, because it is politically incorrect to have current and retired law enforcement carry their guns in every jurisdiction of this country who are the best trained individuals to stop terrorism. The ultimate force for homeland security are the military trained, the law enforcement trained, and the civilian trained, who already own and carry tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of guns around this country where there’s no problems taking place, no one is being hurt, no one is being shot accidentally. We need to utilize this force of an armed homeland security soldier network that is available, ready trained right now across this nation, where no restrictions...
O’DONNELL: Ah, Ted. You used up all your time.
NUGENT: You are not allowed to.
O’DONNELL: So we can’t argue with you. But, we got to bring you back to talk about that one. That will be a good fight we can have here. Flavia Colgan, go ahead.
COLGAN: What I’m ticked off about, Lawrence, is that a year and a half after the Taliban fell, the government there is deeply divided, very weak, Taliban is very alive and well, killing U.S. soldiers, western aid workers, and our target date of 2004, when we’re supposed to be out of there in fabulous nationwide elections are going to take place, looks completely dubious at this point and almost laughable.
And there are not many people who have seen any economic reconstruction. Why isn’t the administration telling me, a voter and a citizen, anything about how disastrous Afghanistan is right now and what we plan to do to get out by 2004 like we said we were going to.
O’DONNELL: Hey, Flavia left time to argue with her. Go ahead.
OPPENHEIM: I love how Flavia manages to blame the Bush administration for the fact that Afghanistan, which has been a wreck of a country for the last however many hundreds of years, and still somewhat-is not like up to perfect. It is not like Orange County yet, and so therefore, it is the Bush administration’s fault. Yes. It is a mess over there. We’re doing our best. It is going to take some time.
O’DONNELL: OK. Horace Cooper, your turn. Go ahead.
COOPER: I’m ticked off that Governor Gray Davis dared to play the victim card. He claimed that this recall is a result of a vast right-wing Republican conspiracy, not the fact that he had the lowest approval rating of any governor in the state. Not the fact that a third of Democrats say that he deserved to be recalled. And not that he played no part in creating the largest deficit of all the states combined, or any of the cronyism for appointments. He takes no responsibility for any of those things. He is just a victim. Well, if Republicans are that effective, then we deserve to have more victims like Gray Davis.
O’DONNELL: Well, Horace, California has the biggest of everything. It had the biggest surplus of any state in history. It has the biggest deficit. That’s what it is. It is the biggest.
COOPER: And they have the biggest (UNINTELLIGIBLE) governor.
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: If you want to recall him because of a deficit, why aren’t you trying to recall President Bush because of an even bigger deficit?
COOPER: We don’t have a recall system for the United States.
O’DONNELL: Yes, yes, yes. But, you get the point.
COLGAN: Or 47 other governors.
COOPER: And that is not concern. The concern is the mismanagement of that state.
COLGAN: Forty-seven governors...
O’DONNELL: Ok.
COLGAN: . running in the red.
O’DONNELL: Noah Oppenheim, go ahead.
OPPENHEIM: Yes. I am extremely ticked off about the way that the press has covered the break down of cease fire in the Middle East. The press acts as if somehow the road map was to blame. It wasn’t constructed right, or President Bush is to blame for not being involved enough, or the Israeli government is to blame for not making enough concessions. The fact of the matter is, is that 10 years after the Oslo Accords were first signed, the Palestinian government is still.
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: Wait a minute - what - all right. Who said that?
OPPENHEIM: The Palestinian government has still refused to confront the militants and - every headline you look at. You know, road map fails, road map off track, what will Bush do? You know, Israel still hasn’t found a way to live with its neighbors. The fact of the matter is, is until the Palestinian leadership gives up on its dreams of driving all the Jews into the Mediterranean, we’ll have this problem in the Middle East. I am just sick and tired of people.
(CROSSTALK)
COLGAN: Noah.
OPPENHEIM: . always asking, how many more concessions can Ariel Sharon make?
COLGAN: I thought Noah was-I thought Noah was tougher than this. You seem pretty paranoid and sensitive. I haven’t seen any headlines like that. They’re simply asking, just like many in the Arab world have asked also, for the-for Americans to get involved.
OPPENHEIM: What is America supposed to do? The only thing Americans could do now is..
(CROSSTALK)
COLGAN: Nobody is blaming.
OPPENHEIM: . wage war on the Palestinian leadership, because they are the ones that.
O’DONNELL: Oh, I love that buzzer. I love the way it shuts everybody up. All right. When we come back, final thoughts from our panel. We will be right back on SATURDAY FINAL.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O’DONNELL: And we’re back on SATURDAY FINAL. Flavia Colgan, do you want to take a shot at Ted’s idea of allowing all law enforcement personnel to have their guns with them at any time? Would that make us safer?
COLGAN: It sounds like I would be living in a military state. To me, I had would hate to see any of those people having a cocktail on a Friday night, I mean, fights ensuing. That sound more terrifying to me than domestic terrorism, to tell you the truth.
O’DONNELL: Armed cops. It is horrifying. That is terrifying.
COLGAN: He said civilians. He said civilians.
NUGENT: That’s what he said, that you would think that way. These are trained law enforcement professionals. These are warriors. These are the heroes of America. And you’re afraid they might shoot you? That is really sad.
COLGAN: And you said civilians as well. The civilians who are trained should also carry weapons. We should all just carry weapons around. I don’t think that more.
(CROSSTALK)
NUGENT: I didn’t say we all should, but those.
OPPENHEIM: If you’re a graduate from a police academy or a military academy, I think I have a certain level of trust in you. I would be fine with that.
COOPER: I agree with Ted. I think it’s a great idea. And in fact, in local jurisdictions, people can do it. Ted will expand it so you can do it anywhere.
COLGAN: I’m getting sandwiched with these Republican blasts all coming towards my head right now.
O’DONNELL: All right. We’re going to save you, Flavia.
NUGENT: We’re the good guys.
O’DONNELL: . by going - we are going to save you by the buzzer. We’re at the end of the show. That’s it. That’s it. We’re out of time for this week. Thanks to the panel. Flavia Colgan, Horace Cooper, Noah Oppenheim, and Ted Nugent. And thanks for watching. Up next on MSNBC, “NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORER.” Gorilla wild.
I am Lawrence O’Donnell. See you next week on SATURDAY FINAL, same time, same place.
END
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