Day: October 8, 2005

New, Unbelievable White House Spin: Rove Lied to Bush about Leaking Plame’s Name

Jon Ponder

They’ve got to be kidding: Last Sunday, George Stephanapolous dropped a bombshell on his ABC show when he said that a source told him that both the President and Vice President were aware of the efforts of their flying monkeys – including Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and others – to smear ambassador Joe Wilson that led to the leaking the secret identity of his CIA agent wife, Valerie Plame. Now we get this malarkey from the spin room at the White House:

Maybe the Unsmart Americans who comprise Bush’s base will buy this load of crap but count us out! What did the president know – and when did he know it?

Senior aide Karl Rove denied to President Bush that he engaged in an effort to disclose the identity of a covert CIA operative to discredit her husband’s criticism of Iraq policy, say people familiar with Rove’s statements in a criminal investigation…

Beginning two years ago, the White House flatly denied that Rove had been involved in unlawfully leaking the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, the wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

The White House denials collapsed in July amid the disclosure of Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper’s conversations in July 2003 about Wilson’s wife with Rove and I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff.

Bush asked Rove in the fall of 2003 to assure him he was not involved in an effort to divulge Plame’s identity and punish Wilson, and the longtime confidant assured the president so, people familiar with Rove’s account say…

Bush’s discussion with Rove did not get into specifics concerning Rove’s conversations in July 2003 with syndicated columnist Robert Novak and Cooper, who wrote stories identifying Plame, the people familiar with Rove’s account said.

Maybe the Unsmart Americans who comprise Bush’s base will buy this load of crap but count us out! What did the president know – and when did he know it?

Finally! A Serious Effort to Recall Schwarzenegger

Jon Ponder

Sign up: This effort needs all the encouragment we can give it:

A California physician launched an effort to gather a million signatures to force a recall vote on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who came to office two years ago following an unprecedented recall.

Kenneth Matsumura announced the campaign prior to submitting a petition to California’s Secretary of State, who oversees elections.

“People are desperate, they’re suffering, and I think the governor’s going to have to listen,” he told reporters, saying Schwarzenegger has hurt the poor and students.

“The task at first seemed daunting but in the last week the number of hits to our Web site at SaveCalNow.com has been really overwhelming.”

The Republican star of the “Terminator” films rode a wave of discontent against his Democratic predecessor Gray Davis in 2003 to become the state’s first governor elected in a recall election. Yet Schwarzenegger has seen his own poll numbers fall to record lows this year after enjoying wide popularity in a state where Democrats are the largest party.

Letter from Prosecutor Prodded Libby to Release Miller

Jon Ponder

Lies, lies and more lies: So Scooter Libby was lying when he said he had no idea Judith Miller had languished in jail for 85 days waiting for him to release her from their confidentiality agreement. In fact, the prosecutor prodded Libby issue a new waiver – the one she used to get out of jail:

The prosecutor’s encouragement, in a letter obtained by Reuters, has prompted some lawyers in the case to question whether Cheney’s aide was acting completely voluntarily when he gave Miller the confidentiality waiver she had insisted on…

Miller maintains she only agreed to testify — after spending 85 days in jail — because she received what she describes as a personal and voluntary waiver of confidentiality from her source. She dismissed an earlier waiver by Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby, as coerced.

But Libby offered a new waiver that Miller accepted after he received a September 12 letter in which the prosecutor, investigating a possible White House role in the leak, repeatedly encouraged him to do just that.

“I would welcome such a communication reaffirming Mr. Libby’s waiver,” prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald told Libby’s lawyer, Joseph Tate. “It would be viewed as cooperation with the investigation,” Fitzgerald said.

Some lawyers in the case called the letter a thinly veiled threat seeking Libby’s cooperation, and said it raised questions about whether Libby’s waiver was as voluntary as Miller and her lawyers had described.

Bush Nominee Withdraws Because of Contacts with Abramoff

Jon Ponder

Tentacles: The scandal surrounding former GOP lobbyist – and friend of Tom Delay, Karl Rove and Grover Norquist – Jack Abramoff is really starting to heat up:

Timothy E. Flanigan on Friday withdrew his nomination to be deputy attorney general amid a delay in his confirmation because of his dealings with indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Flanigan, a senior lawyer for Tyco International Ltd., wrote to President Bush that he was withdrawing because of “uncertainty concerning the timing of my confirmation…”

Flanigan was facing a second hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, requested by the panel’s Democrats, that was expected to focus on Abramoff’s lobbying on behalf of Tyco. Lawmakers also have raised questions about Flanigan’s role, when he was deputy White House counsel, in crafting administration policy allowing aggressive interrogation techniques to be used on detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Bush Exaggerated the Number of Disrupted Terror Threats

Jon Ponder

Where’s the outrage? How many times will President Bush make speeches that include false assertions, facts and figures before he is exposed to the world as a congenital prevaricator?

Looking to bring back the Fear Factor that worked so well in the 2004 campaign, the president boldly declared that the U.S. and its partners “have disrupted at least ten serious al-Qaida plots since September 11 — including three al-Qaida plots to attack inside the United States. We have stopped at least five more al-Qaida efforts to case targets in the United States or infiltrate operatives into our country.” Holy Moly — that sounds impressive… and effective… and scary.

That is, until the details of exactly which “serious” plots the president was referring to came out. Hours after the speech, the White House released a helpful worksheet… and the experts started scratching their heads. Check out this L.A. Times article and see if you can’t hear the law enforcement officials quoted offering up a collective “Huh?” […]

Bing Donates to Gov’s Opponents on CA Redistricting Prop

Jon Ponder

The campaign against Proposition 77 now has additional $4 million in its war chest, according to the Los Angeles Times. The donation came from movie producer and real estate heir Stephen Bing, and will be used to fight the ballot measure that would take control of redistricting in California from the state legislature and place it in the hands of a committee.

Supporters of the measure, including several wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, have raised about $5 million. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is backing the measure and is expected to spend heavily to promote it.

Bush’s Tranformation from Obnoxious Drunk to Obnoxious Teetotaler

Jon Ponder

Bushie’s renunciation of booze has gained such mythic status that many people (Republican true believers) conveniently overlook the fact that his renunciation of adult beverages was hardly a redemptive turn of fortune. All that happened was that Bush the obnoxious drunk became Bush the obnoxious teetotaler, proclaiming that his life was now in the hands of Jesus Christ, not Jim Beam…

Bush’s prolonged sousitude also explains his verbal miscues, his syntactical insurgencies, his grammatical catastrophes. It’s as if the bourbon marinade left deadly lacunae in his already diminutive brain, making it impossible for the most elementary thought to navigate its way through the decimated labyrinth of his frontal lobes.

Then there are the quirky smirks, the bug-eyed glares and goofy grimaces, his words and facial expressions so out of sync that you are reminded of a badly dubbed Japanese monster movie. Finally, what about all those lip gyrations when Bushie is under stress, the tiny mouth working this way and that as if it were engaged in attempting to remove the cap from a bottle? It must be the sauce.

— D.P. Sorensen, Salt Lake City Weekly