"DOBBS: Joining me, three of the best radio talk show hosts in the country, Lars Larson, KXL in Portland, Oregon and Westwood One, good to have you with us. Joe Madison, WOL Radio in Washington, D.C., XM Radio, Joe, looking sharp as ever.
JOE MADISON, XM RADIO: Thank you.
DOBBS: And Laura Flanders of Air America. Good to see you. Also looking sharp, I must say. I got to get over this rumpled look of mine. Madison is making me worried.
MADISON: You're cool, Lou.
DOBBS: All right, partner. Well, it's good to have you here.
Let's start with first of all President Carter in the Promised Land. Laura, your thoughts?
LAURA FLANDERS, AIR AMERICA: Jimmy Carter has gone and said things that people would not say that need to be talked about. If this is pretext of getting to people to talk about the festering wound at the center in the Middle East, I am all for it. None of this is easy. There are no simple solutions.
I have sympathy with Jimmy Carter saying this is a situation we have to address head on. Simply ignoring it is ignoring a humanitarian disaster that has shock waves going all over the country.
DOBBS: Of whose making?
FLANDERS: Well, no matter of who's making, the question is by cutting off Hamas, by saying well we're just not going to deal with this situation, you've got a crisis that's not getting better, and you've got hundreds of thousands of people literally starving.
DOBBS: Lars?
LARS LARSON, KXL, OREGON: Lou, listen -- this is a terrorist group. There's a solution. Don't talk to terrorists. And as far as Jimmy Carter goes, you said the state department has no guts on Mexico, if they had any guts, they would rescind his Carter's passport and invite Hamas to keep him.
DOBBS: There's an idea.
Joe Madison, lead us into reason?
MADISON: Well, I think the reason is peace is probably the most difficult thing that you can try to bring about in the Middle East right now. I congratulate him for at least trying. The problem I have is that I don't know the details of the proposal. I don't know what he's offering. The news we got was everybody was upset that he hugged the head of Hamas and put a wreath at the tomb.
But you know the point is, where are the details? What is being offered? What can Jimmy Carter bring to the table, other than Jimmy Carter?
LARSON: He's supposed to be negotiating for the United States of America or representing the United States. He's a private citizen now. He should but out. It's illegal for him to do what he is doing. He should butt out.
MADISON: I think he has a right to do that.
FLANDERS: He's using his public profile to draw attention to an issue that he believes this administration and preceding administrations have completely bungled. I don't think he's negotiating on behalf of the United States.
He's trying to draw attention. We can say terrorist all we like; this was a part of the world where this administration encouraged there to be elections, the people there for reasons I think we should get smarter about, elected Hamas and it's the more that we just pay no attention, the less we'll understand.
DOBBS: Let's speak of elections. Let's talk about one we have here that gets, as the saying goes, curiouser and curiouser.
Senator Obama's comments, let me start with you, Laura. How dumb can comments get?
FLANDERS: I mean I don't get it Lou. It's OK for you to talk about the bitterness and frustration of American workers, but not Barack Obama?
DOBBS: At least have the decency to keep the record straight.
FLANDERS: Are you going to focus on a word or on the decades of policy ...
DOBBS: I'm focusing on a man saying people are clinging to guns, religion.
FLANDERS: That's nothing that people haven't said for years.
DOBBS: Keep talking over the people. You and Obama will get along great.
Let me go to Lars first. Lars, go ahead.
LARSON: You have to understand, this man didn't just talk about bitterness; he accused small town Americans and I lived in small towns most of my growing up time of being bitter and having antipathy for people that are not like them. He basically said they are a bunch of small town bigots with guns who go to church as though going to church is a bad thing. He thought because he said it in a California salon, he could get away with it. He didn't get way with it.
DOBBS: Joe Madison, you get the last word as we go to break. We'll be back with our panel.
MADISON: Bull. Last word, bull. I mean, have I never heard, that's a bunch of bull. Obama doesn't have a problem. Let me tell you something. I had a small town guy call my show and said, if you want to get elected in a town on the border of the Mason-Dixon line, he lived in Pennsylvania, he says here's what my grandfather told me for years, we cling to our guns, we cling to the bible and we drape ourselves in the American flag. That's how you get elected in my town. That's came from him.
DOBBS: Who is him?
MADISON: The guy that called my show.
DOBBS: I thought maybe he was running for president, too. We'll be back.
MADISON: This is about nothing, nothing.
DOBBS: We're going to argue about that in just a moment because when we come back, we'll be doing just that.
We want to go to the poll question quickly: Which of these best describes your attitude as an American citizen, partisan and pitiful, bitter and angry or independent and proud?
I'll admit it; we adjusted this poll just a tad. We'll have the results for you later in the broadcast.
We'll be back with the panel.
And backing Obama, Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania. He'll be here to make his case for the senator. Just a week to go before the Pennsylvania primary.
Stay with us. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: I'm back with Lars Larson, Joe Madison and Laura Flanders here in New York.
All right. Let's talk about populists. And we should point out that despite all of this Obama, right now, has a lead of 11 points nationally according to the latest Gallup Poll over Clinton. But let's go to that great modern and I mean recently admitted populist my good friend Senator John McCain.
FLANDERS: This is a joke. I mean everybody is repositioning themselves, particularly we have to say Clinton and McCain on the question of the economy. I mean here are two people who have been part of pouring the pain on poor people now talking about the pain that a word caused. This is a woman that supported NAFTA. This is a woman who supported those trade policies. You read the White House documents.
DOBBS: I will. Lars, what do you think?
LARSON: Listen, I know what McCain is trying to do, but 18 cents a gallon off your tank of gas, I don't think it is not going to move anybody out of the driveway for vacation.
DOBBS: Lars, you're starting to sound like Obama, for goodness sake.
LARSON: That's chump change.
DOBBS: That really adds up.
MADISON: And what's really missing is he's not talking about the tax breaks that the big oil companies get. Come on.
LARSON: Geez, Joe.
DOBBS: But he did talk about the greed of Wall Street.
MADISON: Finally.
DOBBS: I agree. I haven't heard a Republican talk about it.
FLANDERS: We're talking the politics of distraction. We're playing the gotcha on the campaign trail.
DOBBS: I'm not going to buy into that. I want to talk about this with Senator Casey. This is serious stuff. Don't anyone think this is going to get dismissed. This is going to be very serious. The issues of free trade, illegal immigration, the second amendment and First Amendment tied up into the bitter comment. It's important.
MADISON: Guess what? People are angry, bitter about it, have been, I don't know when they stopped being bitter and angry about it.
DOBBS: I'll let you know when we get the poll results here.
Lars, thank you very much.
Laura Flanders, thank you.
OK, Joe, even you. Thank you. Good to see you partner, Joe Madison."
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0804/15/ldt.01.html
Topic: A transcript of a discussion about Jimmy Carter (Read 897 times)