Day: July 20, 2007

Romney: When al-Qaida Calls, America Answers

Trish
“We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the Bush Administration.”

Mitt Romney is too stupid to live.

“Our president, for all the criticism he receives, has kept America safe these last six years, and he has done it by: One pursuing the Patriot Act, which has given us the intelligence information we needed to find out who the bad guys were and get them out before they got us, and No. 2, when al-Qaida was calling America, he made sure someone here was listening,” Romney said. “And No. 3 … when terrorists were detained, were captured, he made sure we interrogated them.”

Olbermann Not Always an Uber-Good Guy

Buck Banks

Co-editor Jon thinks MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann is the cat’s pajamas. He’s fond of posting Olbermannic diatribes and lambastings and bully-pulpit blatherings of the increasingly distinguished-looking anchor of Count Down with Keith Olbermann. Jon even posted an angry seven-minute-plus Obermann oration today.

Now that one was a real tour de force, but as the folks at FishBowl NY note, Keith and Count Down don’t always take the high road:

Considering its “Nappy ‘Hos” history, MSNBC should’ve learned a lesson or two about off-handed, misogynistic remarks. Still, no one should be surprised — Olbermann and Countdown have done this kind of thing before. One example, as we reported way back in October, involved a pre-penitentiary Paris Hilton. At that time, it wasn’t the “A Slut and Battery” that drew our attention — it was what he said: “Paris Hilton claims she was punched in the face yesterday morning at a nightclub in Hollywood. [pause] ‘Course she’s had worse things happen to her face …”

Appears you can take the pundit out of the locker room, but you can’t take the locker room out of the pundit.

Cheney To Be President While Bush’s Ass is Probed

Trish

I was enjoying the thought of Bush’s impending colonoscopy and the discomfort it might inflict upon the world’s biggest ass’s ass. Then I realized with horrifying clarity that Cheney will be president while Bush is under anesthesia.

Snow says the president will hand over presidential powers to Vice President Cheney while he is under anesthesia.

White House press secretary Tony Snow says Bush will have the procedure at Camp David in Maryland.

Snow says the president will hand over presidential powers to Vice President Cheney while he is under anesthesia.

Bush did this before in 2002, at that time becoming only the second president in history to invoke Section 3 of the 25th Amendment. The first was none other than Ronald Reagan — again for a colon procedure — making Poppy Bush the first “acting” president in history.

Why the overabundance of caution? As Bush likes to persuade us, we’re at war. Whether an occupation really qualifies as “war” I’m not sure, but in a 2002 press conference he said it did.

Q Should we read anything into the fact that you are going to transfer the power, the length of time of this?

THE PRESIDENT: No, not at all. It’s just that I made the decision. We looked at the precedent. I’m the first President to have done so under this type of procedure and/or physical examination. I did so because we’re at war and I just want to be super — you know, super cautious.

And I informed the Vice President of this and he’s fully prepared to — he’s standing by. He’ll realize he’s not going to be President that long. (Laughter.)

The more cynical among us might wonder if he’s doing it so there can be no question of Dick’s authority.

Anybody up for a coup?

Bush Launches Campaign to Blame War Failure on Critics

Jon Ponder

The Pentagon’s attack on Hillary Clinton’s patriotism yesterday may be the opening salvo in an aggressive new disinformation campaign from the White House, according to Keith Olbermann on MSNBC’s Countdown last night:

“This, sir, is your war. Sen. Clinton has reinforced enemy propaganda? Made it impossible for you to get your ego-driven, blood-steeped win in Iraq? Then take it into your own hands, Mr. Bush. Go to Baghdad now and fulfill, finally, your military service obligations. Go there and fight, your war. Yourself.”
– Keith Olbermann

…For days, possibly for weeks, there have been these murmurs and rumblings in places that this was the next political tactic to be taken by the administration, that it was time to get out the blame the critics, it‘s the antiwar faction‘s fault, if only they had not said what they said, did what they did, protested violations that they protested, this all would have gone well in Iraq.

Earlier in the week, Sen. Clinton wrote to the Pentagon to inquire about the status of planning for a redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq. As a member of the Armed Services Committee, the senator’s request was hardly out of bounds. And yet the response from the Pentagon came in the form of a barely veiled allegation that even by inquiring about withdrawal she wasaiding and abetting the terrorists:

“Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq,” [Under Sec. of Def. Eric] Edelman writes, “reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia.”

Edelman adds: “Such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks.”

Edelman, a partisan Republican, was said to have written the letter under the direction of the vice president. (It sure doesn’t sound like Sec. Gates.) Sen. Clinton responded by calling Edelman’s accusations “outrageous” and “dangerous.”

Olbermann was less restrained. He accused the president of attempting to make his critics the scapegoats for his own failings as a war president:

[…]

West Hollywood Becomes 80th City to Call for Impeachment of Cheney and Bush

Jon Ponder

On Wednesday, the West Hollywood City Council unanimously adopted a resolution calling for the impeachment of Pres. George W. Bush and Vice Pres. Dick Cheney:

The … resolution states that President Bush and Vice President Cheney have repeatedly violated the U.S. Constitution and other laws of the United States.

The resolution cited these impeachable actions:

  • Stripping Americans of their constitutional rights
  • Ordering and authorizing the U.S. Attorney General to override judicial order for the release of detainees
  • Directing the National Security Agency to spy on Americans
  • Misguiding Congress and the country on false intelligence in order to lead the United States into war

The resolution was co-sponsored by Mayor John Duran.and city council member Abbe Land, one of two openly straight members of the five-person city council.

West Hollywood is the 80th city in the country to adopt an impeachment resolution, and, according to the National Impeachment Center in Los Angeles, it is the first in Southern California to do so.