[Ninong]

Yesterday the House leadership announced that they were removing that provision in the budget that authorized drilling in ANWR, one of Bush's pet projects, because they didn't think they had the votes to pass it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't they have a 27-seat majority? (P.S. -- It seems 22 of their more sensible members refused to drink the Kool-Aid this time.)

Now, today, it appears that they can't pass the budget with or without ANWR drilling because they can't keep their own troops in line! Enough moderate Republicans in the House are revolting and refusing to accept the drastic cuts in social service programs: http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Republ...they_1110.html

P.S. -- Let's all wish the President a pleasant trip to China! I'm sure he's ready for another excursion away from Washington. Hopefully his Asian jaunt will be less taxing than his Latin American tour.

[Ninong]

The rats are running as fast as they can away from George "Typhoid Mary" Bush. Even the fascist wing of the party is defecting now!

See if you can guess who just wrote this today:

Thus, in March, 2003, Bush, in perhaps the greatest strategic blunder in U.S. history, invaded an Arab nation that had not attacked us, did not want war with us, and did not threaten us—to strip it of weapons we now know it did not have.

Answer: http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=10210



P.S. -- I guess that means he can forget about ever giving another keynote speech at a GOP convention?

[Ninong]

Oh, and guess who has "other commitments" tomorrow when the President of the United States will be appearing in his home state? OK, he doesn't actually live in that state but that's the state he was elected from. That last little clue should give it away. I'm sure Rebecca will know who I'm talking about.

The junior senator from Pennsylvania, Little Ricky Santorum, regrets that he won't be able to appear with President Bush tomorrow. The moderate senior Republican senator from Pennsylvania will be there on stage with Bush as well as the local Democratic congressman.

[schrocat]

Fox News Poll

weeeeeeeeeee!!!

Is 36% bad?

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by schrocat

Fox News Poll

weeeeeeeeeee!!!

Is 36% bad?

It's in the same range as the other polls released this week. They range from 35% to 38%.

I couldn't help but notice that Fox News conducted a poll that shows Rudy Giuliani at the top of the list of potential Republican candidates in 2008 who are perceived as Strong Leaders.

Great! That should really please the religious right that runs the GOP right now. Giuliani is pro-choice, pro-gun control and pro-gay rights! He also went through a messy divorce after shacking up with his girlfriend for quite a while before dumping his wife. And then there's that little problem of his recommendation of Bernie Kerik to be Secretary of Homeland Security.

And John McCain was second on that same list! Another favorite of the wingnuts.

I'm beginning to like these Fox polls. They should keep up the good work.

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by Ninong

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) has signed a letter calling for an investigation into who leaked information about secret CIA prisons to the Washington Post, after earlier denying that he has signed it, CNN reported Tuesday evening.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert has also signed the letter. Any investigation is now up to the respective chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees.

The Republican leaders have called only for an investigation into who leaked the information, not into why the United States has set up secret prisons overseas.


P.S. -- What these morons don't seem to understand is that members of their own staff leak this stuff (via fax) to the indie press all the time. So I guess now Dr. Frist will have to say that that's not his official signature. Maybe he should just stick to making eye contact with blind women from now on. Or go back to "adopting" cats from the SPCA for his personal medical experimentation.

OK, this is turning out to be even funnier than I expected. It seems that someone in Dr. Frist's office LEAKED THAT LETTER to Drudge. Not only that, they leaked it before Denny Hastert even saw it much less had a chance to sign it. This would be the letter calling for an investigation into who leaked the information on the C.I.A. black sites.

As a refresher, so that you can keep track of who's stabbing whom in the back, Dr. Frist says he's not interested in what they do in those prisons, he just wants to know who told the world about them. Sen. Graham said that Dr. Frist can't see the forest for the trees here because it's the prisons and what goes on inside them that is the real story. And Sen. Lott said that "the enemy is us," meaning another Republican Senator likely leaked the classified information about the prisons. Meanwhile, Sen. McCain was all over the cable TV talk shows last night doing a remarkable job of destroying Cheney's pro-torture position.

And, as a side note, Larry King interviewed Judith Miller, former stenographer to Scooter Libby and Ahmed Chalabi, and called her "Judith Martin." He said, "We'll be right back with our conversation with Judith Martin, former reporter for the New York Times." Then a few seconds later he had to come back and say, "I meant Judith Miller. I don't know where Martin came from. I'm giving her a new name. Haha!" Cut to Judy Miller with a constipated look on her face.

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by Ninong

I couldn't help but notice that Fox News conducted a poll that shows Rudy Giuliani at the top of the list of potential Republican candidates in 2008 who are perceived as Strong Leaders.

Great! That should really please the religious right that runs the GOP right now. Giuliani is pro-choice, pro-gun control and pro-gay rights!

Chris Matthews (Hardball) just predicted that Giuliani would be the Republican nominee in 2008 against Hillary as the Democratic nominee. There are two ways to look at his prediction. Either he is simply going with the two frontrunners or he's predicting the complete collapse of the right-wing of the Republican Party between now and 2008.

The idea of Giuliani being acceptable to the religious right of the GOP is absurd. There is no way that the Republicans will run a candidate who is pro-choice, pro-gun control and pro-gay rights.

[Ninong]

I watched Woodward on Larry King Live last night. Sickening. He's just making matters worse every time he opens his mouth. He should just accept the criticisms of his own paper's public editor and move on with his life. The more he explains things, the worse he looks.

Woodward repeated the inaccurate claim that Fitzgerald stated in his indictment of Libby that Libby was the first official who told a reporter about Valerie Plame. That's when Woodward decided he had to tell Fitzgerald that he was probably the first reporter to have learned of Valerie Plame from a different government official.

They're all missing one crucial word that Fitzgerald used in the language in the indictment AND in his opening statement at that press conference. What Fitzgerald actually said was that Libby "was the first official known to have told a reporter." Fitzgerald made it VERY clear that his investigation had been frustrated by Libby's false statements, perjury and obstruction of justice. He also made it clear that it was impossible for him to charge the underlying crime at that point because he was unable to uncover the whole truth of what happened because of all the false statements.

Fitzgerald realized that there might be other official leakers and leakees out there and that's why he worded his statement the way he did. Fitzgerald suspected all along that this was a massive conspiracy within the White House but he has been careful to charge only what he can prove.

The most damaging thing for the White House now is the fact that the President of the United States has been insisting all along that he had no idea who the leaker was and he doubted that we would ever find out. Either he was lying to us or he was totally clueless as to what was going on all around him. Take your pick.

[schrocat]

My wife made me turn it off.

Woodward would make a statement, then Larry would throw out "But...[insert major contradiction here]"..and then Bob would counter with these constipated faces.

My beloved didn't like the sound effects I was adding.

I love how Bob summed up the incompletness of Fitzgeralds work due to "obviously he didn't ask me".
...and if he had "asked" ...Bob "wouldn't have told him anyway".

Give it up Woody. It's crystal clear now.
You sold out for your precious access a long, long, time ago.

[Ninong]

I have noticed that it doesn't really matter which political party is in power, the "reporters" will eventually come down with acute Stockholm syndrome. They begin to identify with their sources and become less objective.

Remember the articles that appeared just after Bush and Laura invited selected reporters for barbeque? Call it fraternization with "the enemy" or whatever but personal relationships don't make for objective reporting. Just look at how Judy Miller became a tool of the neocons in the White House. She was basically acting as their stenographer, printing whatever bullsh!t Cheney, Libby, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Chalabi handed her verbatim. And, it goes without saying, that they didn't hand her any of the dissenting opinions that said that the stuff they gave her was unsubstantiated. She's the one who broke the story on the aluminum tubes being used for a centrifuge even though we knew at the time (from our own Dept. of Energy) that they couldn't possibly be used for that purpose. Most of our intelligence operatives were scared to death to come up with anything counter to what they knew Cheney wanted to hear. If they did, they knew they would have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt or risk their careers. That allowed Cheney to select the "intelligence" that he liked best and ignore the stuff that he didn't like.

Getting back to Woodward, I'm not saying he actually got in bed with his sources but he came awfully close. He had virtually unlimited access to George W. Bush (3-1/2 hours over two days) for his first book. They were telling him stuff that was classified. It seems that it's OK for the President and the Vice President to disclose classified information. I'm serious, I'm not joking. I don't think it's illegal for the President to disclose whatever he chooses to disclose.

Speaking of getting in bed with sources, Judy Miller did exactly that back when she was shacking up with Les Aspin.

[Ninong]

No, not Scooter Libby, he hasn't even been convicted yet.


President George W. Bush invites children on stage, Tuesday, November 22, 2005, to pet "Marshmallow, " the National Thanksgiving Turkey, at the official pardoning of the turkey at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington.



President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney participate in the annual pardoning of the National Turkey in the Rose Garden Nov. 17, 2004.


Notice anything missing in the 2005 ceremony? Either he wasn't invited or he had "other priorities."



P.S. -- On second thought, that's probably his head just above the turkey's head in the 2005 photo but the White House chose not to mention his name in the photo caption. Both photos and captions are from the White House website. Does Bush wear the same outfit every time he pardons a turkey?

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by schrocat

Fox News Poll

weeeeeeeeeee!!!

Is 36% bad?

Good news, Mr. President, your numbers are rising!

As of last week, the United States was $8,084,858,891,735.31 in the hole, according to the Treasury Department.
We went from $300 billion surpluses under that womanizing Democrat to $300 billion deficits under your conservative stewardship; but at least you have returned honor and decency to the White House as promised.

In fact, you have borrowed more money -- $1.05 trillion -- from foreign governments and banks since taking office than all other presidents combined.

From 1776 to 2000, the nation's first 42 presidents borrowed a combined $1.01 trillion from foreign interests, official statistics show. In just five years, you have out-borrowed them all.

When you took office, the debt ceiling for federal borrowing was less than $6 trillion and hadn't been raised since 1997. That's because that philandering Democrat ran up huge surpluses in 1998, 1999 and 2000. Last year, you signed into law an $800 billion increase in the debt ceiling to $8.2 trillion -- the third time in as many years that a higher credit limit has been required by your free-spending administration.

Looks like we're about to hit that $8.2 trillion ceiling soon. Time to ask Congress for another increase in the debt ceiling.

Eight trillion dollars may sound like a lot of money but I'm sure you can pass the $9 trillion mark before leaving office, assuming, of course, you get to serve the full term.

[Ninong]

Looks like Fitzgerald is very close to indicting Rove. He will be presenting evidence to the new grand jury this week. Either Rove agrees to a plea deal or he will be indicted -- one or the other.

If he agrees to a plea deal, we may not hear anything at all from Fitzgerald because that means that Rove has agreed to rat out his pal, Scooter Libby, and will be required to testify against him at trial. Whether either of these two fine gentlemen rat out Big Time is anybody's guess.

Remember Susan B. Ralston, who was Jack Abramoff's personal secretary before she became Karl Rove's personal assistant and assistant to the President? Well it seems that in her most recent appearance before the grand jury she testified that Karl Rove instructed her to not log a phone call Rove had with Time Magazine reporter Matt Cooper about Plame in July 2003. She also provided Fitz with more information and "clarification" about several telephone calls Rove allegedly made to a few reporters, including syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

P.S. -- While working with Abramoff, Ralston arranged fundraisers and events at Washington MCI Center skyboxes for members of Congress and their staff. Ralston communicated with Rove on Abramoff’s behalf on tribal affairs, though she does not stand accused of any wrongdoing.

[Ninong]

Now it seems, according to all the self-serving leaking lawyers, that the only reason Fitzgerald is calling Time reporter Viveca Novak (no relation to Boob Novak) to testify before the grand jury is at the insistence of Robert Luskin, Karl Rove's attorney. It seems that Luskin is personal friends with Novak (Viveca, not Boob, who has no personal friends) and he is convinced that conversations he had with her more than a year ago will prove exculpatory to his client.

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by Ninong

Looks like Fitzgerald is very close to indicting Rove. He will be presenting evidence to the new grand jury this week. Either Rove agrees to a plea deal or he will be indicted -- one or the other.

OK, so I was off by a couple of days.

"Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald appeared this morning to present information to a new grand jury in the CIA leak investigation."

He was there for more than three hours. I assume he was presenting evidence of criminal acts.

Santa Claus is coming to town!

[Ninong]

Quelle surprise!

Remember when Robert Luskin was telling the press that if Matt Cooper was going to go to jail to protect his source, it wasn't Karl Rove he would be protecting? Turns out he knew all along that Rove was Matt Cooper's source and he even used this on Fitzgerald at the last minute as a reason for NOT indicting Rove. He told Fitzgerald that he learned from Viveca Novak, a Time reporter, that it was common knowledge at Time that Rove was Cooper's source. He immediately went back to his client and helped him search his records to refresh his faulty memory. That's when they discovered the email from Rove to Stephen Hadley discussing Rove's conversation with Cooper about Plame. And that's why Rove asked Fitzgerald to allow him to revise and extend his previous testimony before the grand jury. Again!

There's only one little bitty problem with this story. According to Luskin, his conversation with Viveca Novak took place in October 2004 but according to Viveca Novak it took place in either March or May of 2004. Very big difference! Why? Because Rove didn't decide to revise and extend (aka recant) his previous testimony until two days AFTER he learned in October 2004 that Matt Cooper had agreed to testify.

So... All the time that Luskin was claiming publicly that Rove couldn't possibly be Matt Cooper's source, he knew for a fact that he was based on his conversation with Viveca Novak, Cooper's co-worker. And furthermore, neither Luskin nor his client, Karl Rove, had any intention of telling Fitzgerald about Rove being Cooper's source as long as they thought Cooper was going to keep his mouth shut.

I guess this is more "good" news for Scooter Libby in that it supports his argument that everyone knew and everyone leaked and why's everybody always picking on me. What a bunch of liars!

P.S. -- It's perfectly legal for lawyers to lie to the press. They do it all the time. It's not legal for their clients to lie before grand juries. That's considered bad form. I think it can get you at least five years in the pokey.

There is, however, the possibility of subornation of perjury if you advise someone to commit perjury.

[Ninong]

Even Republicans have a sense of humor.

Sen. Lindsey Graham jokes, "I'm fulfilling the seat that was held by Strom Thurmond, which means my wife will be born next year."

[zhenya]

Originally Posted by Ninong

Even Republicans have a sense of humor.

Sen. Lindsey Graham jokes, "I'm fulfilling the seat that was held by Strom Thurmond, which means my wife will be born next year."

Good one, Ninong.

[Ninong]

It's no longer a question of if, it's only a question of when. Will he be indicted before or after Fitzmas?


Now what?

[schrocat]

Really?

I'm not so sure Luskin is done floundering...

They seem to have an endless supply of time frame clarifying reporters...although I think they've run out of time frame clarifying reporters with the last name "Novak".

You think it's a done deal?