BottleOfBlog

Jackass: The Presidency

WASHINGTON (AP) -- With the American death toll above 2,000, President Bush said Saturday the war in Iraq has required "great sacrifice," but that progress is being made and the United States must remain steadfast...

"We will train Iraqi security forces and help a newly elected government meet the needs of the Iraqi people. In doing so, we will lay the foundation of peace for our children and grandchildren."

More progress?  What kind of progress?

In the Iraq war, 2,014 U.S. service members have died, including 81 this month.

In October of 2003, 44 Americans were killed for no reason at all in Iraq.  In October of 2005?  Over 80.  That is some kind of progress!

And what was the War Preznit saying in 2003, when half as many Americans per month were being killed in Iraq for no good reason at all?

We spent time, obviously, on the security situation. There are terrorists in Iraq who are willing to kill anybody in order to stop our progress… The Iraqi people understand that there's a handful of people who don't want to live in freedom… And they'll do whatever it takes to stop this progress…

And our job is to work with the Iraqis to prevent this from happening. That's why we're working hard to get more Iraqi policemen; that's why we're working hard to build up the Iraqi armed forces…

It would be like Groundhog Day, only if instead of Bill Murray, the movie actually starred the oversized rodent.

Gee Oh Pee Soft On Crime

Rep. Tom DeLay, under indictment on campaign finance violations, railed against Democrats in a letter Thursday, accusing them of engaging in "the politics of personal destruction…"

"What we're fighting is so much larger than a single court case or a single district attorney in Travis County," the Texas Republican wrote. "We are witnessing the criminalization of conservative politics."

Oh, you redundant fool.  Criminalizing modern conservative politics is a bit like liquifying soup.

Alternative ending:  No, Tom, you're criminalizing conservative politics.

Alternative ending:  No, Tom, I think that's the U.S. Code that criminalized conservative politics...

Write your own.

A Uniter In Dividing

One conservative leader suggested Bush could help bring together a Republican Party in "disarray" by nominating a conservative that Democrats would vehemently oppose.

"A fight I think would be helpful," said the leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "What will bring people together is to have a common goal, and that would be the nomination of a conservative nominee."

Yep, what will be helpful will be an incredibly divisive nominee, that will aggravate the subtle differences among ninety percent of this country.  It will be helpful to focus on the few things that divide Americans rather than work, productively, with the many things that make us so very similar.

These are the kinds of people we--Democrats, liberals--are dealing with.  This is the reason kneecap suckers like Joe Lieberman or Joe Biden are, at best, just mindlessly clinging to their jobs, but, at worst, are, after all this time, naive dangerous fools.

These people didn't come to Washington to "change the tone".  Well, maybe they did.  But not the way you think.  And they aren't interested in compromise.  Democracy is repugnant to them.  To them, a two party system is one party too many.

Personally, I like compromise.  It ain't a good bargain unless everyone is unhappy.  And this country was founded on--without argument--the idea that the minority--whoever they might be--would keep the majority in check.

That's the checks and balances of the three branches of our government.  That's the two Houses of our Congress--slow and thorough deliberation and debate checking the heated passions of the moment.

But this thoroughly rotten and, frankly, fascist, modern Republican party hates all that.  And they have no interest in any of it.  They want what they want, how they want it, when they want it. 

And if it requires tearing this country in two, if it requires maligning the institutions that make this country great, if it requires making democracy into a joke to do it, so be it.

Well, to be fair, you can't say they didn't change the tone in Washington.  They certainly did.  Even in our most cynical years, Washington always did it's best to preserve the idealism of representative democracy and a United States.

These pricks want to make a useful joke of all of that and benefit, for cheap political purposes, from our differences.

What's Up With The Lack Of Leaking About The Lack Of Leaking?

Patrick Fitzgerald:

There's another thing about a grand jury investigation. One of the obligations of the prosecutors and the grand juries is to keep the information obtained in the investigation secret, not to share it with the public.

And as frustrating as that may be for the public, that is important because, the way our system of justice works, if information is gathered about people and they're not charged with a crime, we don't hold up that information for the public to look at. We either charge them with a crime or we don't.

Kenneth Starr:

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, Feb. 6) -- With the blessing of President Bill Clinton, the first family's personal lawyer David Kendall took angry aim at independent counsel Ken Starr Friday, calling the special prosecutor's office "out of control," while threatening court action to stop selective news leaks.

"The leaking of the past few weeks is untolerably unfair. It violates not only the criminal rules -- rules of court, rules of ethics, and Department of Justice guidelines -- it also violates fundamental rules of fairness in an investigation like this. We have seen leak after leak which ultimately ... turns out to be false information," said Kendall in a statement Friday…

The president's lawyer has also sent a 15-page letter to Starr blasting the independent counsel's probe and stating his intention to "seek judicial relief from these tactics, including contempt sanctions, as soon as practicable…"

Specifically, the Clinton Administration is furious about articles in Friday's New York Times and Washington Post about grand jury testimony given by Clinton's private secretary Betty Currie. And earlier in the week the Wall Street Journal reported on the grand jury testimony of a White House steward.

Such leaks are illegal as they break the secrecy of grand jury proceedings.

Currie's lawyer Lawrence Wechsler said, "I am shocked and dismayed by the numerous leaks regarding Mrs. Currie's grand jury testimony." Wechsler went on to say that news stories of Clinton trying to influence Currie's testimony on his meetings with Lewinsky were "absolutely false and a mischaracterization of the facts…"

Twelve pages of Kendall's letter are citations of specific news stories based on sources that Kendall said must have been members of Starr's staff of investigators and prosecutors. One of the specific stories cited is the Times apparently based Currie's testimony…

Lewinsky's lawyer seems to back-up that characterization, accusing the Starr camp of trying to strong-arm his client into lying. "Any question regarding Ms. Lewinsky and her status have been fomented by the Office of the Independent Counsel and their orchestrated campaign to pressure Ms. Lewinsky into statements that are not true," Ginsburg said.

Please, by all means, keep comparing Starr, appointed by House Republicans, to Fitzgerald, appointed by the Republican Justice Department.

I'm sure Bill Clinton enjoys the brutal contrast.

Bonfire Of The Inanities

Well, that didn't take long at all.  We got stupid in a hurry!

I was just watching Paula Zahn on CNN--and, no, not because I thought that was a good idea.  I was frantically hitting the clicker, but nothing was happening.  I was in a cold sweat panic.  No matter how much I cursed the technology, or tried the modern man's remedy--banging the remote and calling it a "piece of shit"--the channel remained the same.  I couldn't understand it.

It was only later that a neighbor stopped by to ask me if I knew my garage door was going up and down like crazy that I...well.  The TV works fine.  That's all you need to know.

But Paula, who makes a fortune, on CNN, spent about a half an hour saying, and I'm not making this up, "Well, Scooter Libby was not charged with leaking Valery Plame's name.  So the question is:  if Scooter Libby didn't leak her name, who did?  And if Scooter Libby didn't leak Valery Plame's name, is this whole investigation simply politics?"

Jesus Christ.

The indictments are only a couple of hours old and the "liberal" media is nearly as stupid and confused as they were over hanging and dimpled chads and butterfly ballots.

Libby leaked the name.  Repeatedly.  It's in the fucking indictment, you dumbasses.

The fact that Fitzgerald didn't indict Libby under the Espionage Act or the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or any other act doesn't mean Libby didn't leak Plame's identity to the press and public. 

It just means Fitzgeral doesn't think he could prove Libby knew Plame was a covert operative and Libby was intentionally revealing her covert identity.

Under any of those acts, you can unknowingly or accidentilly reveal a covert operative's identity and not face criminal charges.  To oversimplify the criminal act, you must:

One:  reveal the identity of a covert operative;  and

Two:  know that the operative was covert.

The incredibly lame and unbelievable defense of Libby is that he didn't know Plame was a covert operative.  Neither Libby nor Fitzgerald, nor anyone in the world has reasonably suggested that Libby didn't leak Plame's identity.

He did.  He lied about it.  He's been charged with lying about it.  The prosecutor has emphatically alleged that Libby did it.  There is no question regarding who revealed Plame's covert identity.

The only question is:  Did Libby know Plame was actually covert.  That's it.

There is no question who leaked her identity to the press and public.

And, yet, within hours of the indictment, here's Paula Zahn, on CNN, wondering if Libby didn't leak Plame's identity, who did?  And if Libby didn't leak Plame's identity, should he be charged with any crime?

And this idiocy is on television.  And it will be on television and radio and in the newspapers for months to come.

Douchebags, Libby leaked Plame's identity!  Libby has not been charged with a crime unrelated to Plame's outing!  He's been charged with lying in such a way that the government will never, ever be able to prove whether he leaked Plame's identity with knowledge and intent.  That's it.

Maybe he had knowledge and intent.  Maybe--if you're insane--he didn't.  But the government will never be able to prove it, since Libby has insisted on lying to the FBI and the grand jury.

But no one--not Libby, not the prosecutor--is denying that Libby leaked Plame's identity.

Except CNN.  And probably FOX News.  And MSNBC.  And The Washington Post.  Probably The New York Times, as well.  Newsweek might say that, too.  And, blah, blah, blah, blah...

Fuck.  Let's just pardon Libby now and he can join O.J. out on the golf course, the two of them can delve into the tall grass, looking for Nicole's killer and the leaker of Valery Plame's identity.

Let's Pretend Yesterday Was Our First Day On Earth!

Josh Marshall has a good post about the Libby indictment:

Go to page 5 of the indictment. Top of the page, item #9.

    On or about June 12, 2003, LIBBY was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Divison. LIBBY understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA.

This is a crucial piece of information. The Counterproliferation Division (CPD) is part of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, i.e., not the Directorate of Intelligence, the branch of the CIA where 'analysts' come from, but the DO, where the spies, the 'operatives', come from.

Libby's a long time national security hand. He knows exactly what CPD is and where it is. So does Cheney. They both knew. It's right there in the indictment.

Yes, it is right there in the indictment.  And Billmon also wonders about a lot of legal mumbo jumbo that is right there in the indictment.  And it's all very interesting.  And I'm sure, over the next few months, one bazillion cable "legal analysts" will be able to translate the very clear, specific English language of the indictment into ancient Greek.

By the time the "liberal" media is done with this, I'm also sure the legal implications of the indictment will be as clear to the average person as the practical applications of the natural logarithm e.

The Very Worst People In The World, Part Whatever

An internal memo sent to Wal-Mart's board of directors proposes numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits while seeking to minimize damage to the retailer's reputation. Among the recommendations are hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart…

The memo acknowledged that Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, had to walk a fine line in restraining benefit costs because critics had attacked it for being stingy on wages and health coverage. Ms. Chambers acknowledged that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million United States employees were uninsured or on Medicaid.

Wal-Mart executives said the memo was part of an effort to rein in benefit costs, which to Wall Street's dismay have soared by 15 percent a year on average since 2002. Like much of corporate America, Wal-Mart has been squeezed by soaring health costs. The proposed plan, if approved, would save the company more than $1 billion a year by 2011.

Wow!  If Wal-Mart can even further screw it's employees, one half of which have children who are uninsured or on Medicaid--that's right!  The children of Wal-Mart employees are relying on taxpayers to pay for their meager health care--Wal-Mart can save one billion dollars by 2011!

And Wal-Mart can pass those savings--at the expense of American taxpayers--onto its shareholders!  Who are mostly the Walton family.  And we all know how much the Walton family needs a few extra dollars at the expense of their employees and the American taxpayer.

After all, of the richest Americans who have ever lived only five of them are Waltons:

NAME                               NET WORTH($mil)  AGE    
1     Gates, William Henry III             51,000     49   
2     Buffett, Warren Edward             40,000     75   
3     Allen, Paul Gardner                   22,500     52    
4     Dell, Michael                             18,000     40    
5     Ellison, Lawrence Joseph           17,000     61    
6     Walton, Christy                         15,700     50    
6     Walton, Jim C                           15,700     57    
8     Walton, S Robson                      15,600     61    
9     Walton, Alice L                         15,500     56    
10   Walton, Helen R                        15,400     86   

Gee, I wonder how many crumby group rate family health insurance policies you could buy with about seventy nine billion dollars.  Don't bother adding it up.  It's a waste of time.

But you have to wonder why five people who have nearly a hundred billion dollars, who are all over the age of fifty, need to screw thousands of working men and women, with young children, out of their health care to save their shareholders a billion dollars in the next six years.

Christ, Helen Walton is eighty six years old.  She could write a check for a billion dollars tomorrow, and I doubt it would much cramp her Golden Years style.  In fact, Christy, Jim, S Robson, Alice and Helen could all write a check to Wal-Mart employees for a billion dollars each and not one of the precious powdered wigged, God blessed, sun kissed, leisure graced, test cheating Walton offspring would even notice any of it was even gone.

They'd still have seventy billion dollars to scrape by with.

There's a special place in hell for people who have more money than they can ever spend, than their children, or their grandchildren, or their grandchildren's grandchildren can ever, ever spend, and rather than be generous or grateful, spend their considerable resources on thinking of ways to make themselves even richer at the expense of their fellow men and women.

Good Christians all.  Tell me how pleased Christ would be.

Our Long National Nightmare

It's been five years of watching the sometimes gradual, sometimes sudden erosion of nearly everything that makes America the greatest country in the world.  We've seen election fraud, illegal and unjustified war, the torture and murder of prisoners in American custody.

People, Please, Get Your Horseshit Story Straight

Since we're on the eve on multiple indictments involving the White House, the Gee Oh Pee talking point for the whole last week has been that there's no real crime and that any indictments will just be for something silly like perjury or obstruction of justice.  And the only reason for those indictments will be not that anyone actually did anything wrong, but just so the prosecutor can justify has use of taxpayer dollars.  For instance, we had:

Tom DeLay, who insisted that Bill Clinton must either resign or be impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice:

I know Karl Rove.  I know that he's never intentionally violated the law.  I also know, though, these investigations, because I've been dealing with them, can always sully your reputation, because sometimes these overactive investigators, when they find nothing wrong, then they try to find something else, like perjury or obstruction of justice, just so that they can have something.

That's what's happening in this process.  This criminalization of politics and elections, it's incredibly dangerous for our democracy.

And, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, who voted to impeach Bill Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice:

And secondly, I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars.  So they go to something that trips someone up because they said something in the first grand jury and then maybe they found new information or they forgot something and they tried to correct that in a second grand jury.

And any number of hacks and pundits writing columns and blathering on cable news shows about how perjury and obstruction of justice aren't even real crimes and Fitzgerald should just drop the whole thing and go back to Chicago.

And so what does the Republican chaired U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations do yesterday?

The 65-page report by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations accuses Galloway of perjury and obstruction of congressional proceedings. The evidence will be handed over to the Department of Justice for possible criminal charges.

Good timing that, huh?  Christ, these jokers are nearly as stupid as they are dishonest.  I mean, that's just embarrassing.  Even for them. 

Close Enough For Gubment Work

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Karen Hughes, who has faced a rocky road since being named Washington’s public relations chief, answered tough questions Friday about the invasion of Iraq and wrongly stated that Saddam Hussein gassed to death “hundreds of thousands” of his people.

Although the U.S. undersecretary for public diplomacy twice repeated the claim after being challenged by journalists, Gordon Johndroe, a State Department official traveling with Hughes, later called The Associated Press to say she misspoke.

Hughes, a longtime confidante of President Bush, was in the world’s most populous Muslim nation to improve America’s battered image after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq…

Iraqi authorities have indicated Saddam may later face trial on charges stemming from a 1988 poison gas attack on the Kurdish border town of Halabja, in which about 5,000 guerrillas and civilians died.

When asked to elaborate on claims that Saddam had poisoned hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to death, Hughes told reporters: “I know it was upward of 200,000.”

“I think it was almost 300,000. (That) is my recollection,” she said. “They were put in mass graves.”

It's that kind of attention to detail, that kind of encyclopedic knowledge about your job, which has earned the reputation for credibility and competence the Bush administration enjoys around the world.

It certainly should go a long way to helping the Muslims of the world trust the Bush administration.