"Bland."
"Mechanical."
"Mr. Broderick often comes across as a dead man walking."
Ouch. I don’t think those quotes are going to make it on to the theater marquee, do you? (Not that it matters — the limited run show is sold out).
BREAKING NEWS IN PLAMEGATE!!!
Four trays of doughnuts have been brought in to the grand jury!!!
Thank you, Fox News, for your masterful journalistic scoop!!
Indictment Update
It seems silly to post about indictment rumors today, especially since I’m kind of busy. So here’s the lowdown — plain and simple.
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will hold a press conference at 2 p.m. ET to announce his actions resulting from his investigation of the CIA leak.
NBC News says Fitzgerald "is expected to release some documents in the case around 12 p.m. ET. That information may be posted on his website.
I have nothing more to say until then.
Except this.
I have a response to the already-developing right-wing talking point that "an indictment is not a conviction".
And that response is: "Wow. You are soooooo smart."
UPDATE: And this stupid talking point:
Libby, apparently, will be indicted for being untruthful during the course of the investigation, not for leaking state secrets.
This is likely to be a case of no crime having been committed until there was an investigation.
You mean like Clinton’s perjury, dickhead? Oh, wait. I forgot Rule # 1: IOKIYAR.
We STILL Didn’t Start The Fire
Shake’s Sister has gone to the trouble of adding more verses to Billy Joel’s 1980’s hit We Didn’t Start The Fire to include subsequent events. It’s very good:
Bush and Cheney, voter fraud,
9/11, war abroad,
Condoleezza, Donald Rumsfeld, neocon cabal.
Mushroom cloud, “Dead or alive,”
More tax cuts, “Now watch this drive,”
Rightwing pundits, propaganda, marches on The Mall.
Swift Boat Vets, Rove takes aim,
Novak outs a covert name,
Terror warnings, Abu Ghraib, Ashcroft takes a hike.
Powell out, Gonzales in,
Kerry takes it on the chin,
Moral values, faux mandate, Georgie rides his bike.
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
Hurricane in New Orleans,
Papers filled with ghastly scenes,
Cronyism, “No blame game,” Miers to the court.
2K dead now in Iraq,
Miers out—she’s just a hack,
Bush in trouble, Scotty spins, dwindling support.
Crooked, lying GOP,
Bill Frist and the SEC,
Abramoff, Robert Nye, indicted Tom DeLay.
Fitzy grills, Rove denies,
Libby didn’t out no spies,
Come one day, Bush will pay, what else do I have to say?!
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it…
Jonah Goldberg – Hypocrite
Hat tip to Shake’s Sister (who is on a roll lately).
If you’re going to call [someone] a Nazi, show me the children with tattoos on their arms. Show me the stockpiles of emaciated corpses. Show me files cabinets full of memos detailing how [they] plan on disposing of millions of dead American citizens killed with poisonous gas.
If you can’t show me any of these things – and you can’t – then stop calling [someone] a Nazi.
— Jonah Goldberg, September 5, 2003, in "Bush Equals Hitler?"
— Cover of Jonah Goldberg’s new book, "Liberal Fascism : The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton"
Bush Administration Withheld WMD Intelligence
One of the wingnut talking points re: Iraq is that Congress had access to the same pre-war intelligence as the White House, so they are just as much to blame as Bush for the no-WMD-in-Iraq fiasco.
Not true. Not true. That talking point is now officially dead. The Bush Administration not only failed to fully inform Congress of all the intelligence it had, but it failed to inform Congress after-the-fact in order to shift blame to "faulty intelligence".
The National Journal is reporting that Cheney and soon-to-be-indicted Libby were responsible for the decision to withhold critical documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 while it was investigating pre-war WMD intelligence claims, in an attempt to deflect accusations that the administration distorted intelligence data to lie the country into war.
Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby , overruling advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers, decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to Bush administration and congressional sources.
Among the White House materials withheld from the committee were Libby-authored passages in drafts of a speech that then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell delivered to the United Nations in February 2003 to argue the Bush administration’s case for war with Iraq, according to congressional and administration sources. The withheld documents also included intelligence data that Cheney’s office — and Libby in particular — pushed to be included in Powell’s speech, the sources said.
***
The Intelligence Committee at the time was trying to determine whether the CIA and other intelligence agencies provided faulty or erroneous intelligence on Iraq to President Bush and other government officials. But the committee deferred the much more politically sensitive issue as to whether the president and the vice president themselves, or other administration officials, misrepresented intelligence information to bolster the case to go to war. An Intelligence Committee spokesperson says the panel is still working on this second phase of the investigation.
Had the withheld information been turned over, according to administration and congressional sources, it likely would have shifted a portion of the blame away from the intelligence agencies to the Bush administration as to who was responsible for the erroneous information being presented to the American public, Congress, and the international community.
A Not-So-White Fitzmas?
The New York Times is reporting that Libby will be indicted. Not Rove. Certain wingnuts are already claiming victory, or at least taking pleasure in the fact that today was no massacre of the Bush Administration.
Their celebration is way premature, since we still could see some surprises:
Mr. Fitzgerald’s preparations for a Friday announcement were shrouded in secrecy, but advanced amid a flurry of behind-the-scenes discussions that left open the possibility of last-minute surprises. As the clock ticked down on the grand jury, people involved in the investigation did not rule out the disclosure of previously unknown aspects of the case.
But assuming that it is just Libby who is indicted today, let’s remember that the Watergate grand jury originally handed down indictments for the five burglars, Hunt and Liddy. And that didn’t end too well for President Nixon, as I recall.
Moreover, the New York Times notes that Karl Rove will remain under investigation. That’s right. The investigation has been extended.
So this is far from over. In fact, the slow hemorrhaging may prove to be worse for the Republicans in the long run.
UPDATE: Ann Coulter agrees. She says a "worst case scenario" is an indictment and a continuing investigation.
I Had A Hunch…
There was a particular Star Trek episode when the Enterprise crew was being terrorized by a disembodied "Jack The Ripper" — an alien who acquired power and strength by feeding on the fear that it generated in human beings (not unlike the Republican Party, actually).
To fight the alien, Dr. McCoy gave shots to the Enterprise crew — shots that would place them in a state of euphoria, and not be scared.
One particular five-second scene in the episode ("Wolf In The Fold", I believe) showed Ensign Sulu (played by George Takei) getting his shot, while the voice of the scary alien echos through the ship.
"I don’t know who he is . . . [shot injection] . . . [big grin from Sulu] . . . . . but he sure sounds gloooomy", said Sulu.
Even as a naive kid, I couldn’t help but noticing that the "but he sures sounds gloomy" came off as a little . . . well . . . effeminate.
Well, I guess my gay-dar was working even back them. Because George Takei has come out of the closet at the age of 68. CNN has the story.
I don’t know why it is a story, to be honest. I don’t really have a good explanation about why I blog about it. It’s just one of those things that make you go "Huh".
So . . . here I go: "Huh".
Takei, by the way, had an interesting childhood. He spent four years in an internment camp during World War II. An American internment camp. Even though he was four years old. Even though he was an American. In the CNN article, he notes how the experience made him ashamed of his ethnicity. Which reminds me — have I said "fuck you" to Michelle Malkin today?
Help Me Find Jesus
According to this article in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, this tree (pictured at the right) has an image of Jesus. Jesus napping, I guess.
Because that’s where Jesus likes to sleep, I guess. On a silver maple tree growing on the front lawn of a clothing factory located at 1155 N. Clinton Ave. in Rochester New York.
Anyway, it’s all the buzz in Rochester.
Some believe the "Jesus tree" is a divine sign. A divine sign that, um, Jesus likes Rochester. Or clothing. Or factories. Or something.
The thing is: I’ve looked at this picture for a long time, and I see lots of things. Like a lizard. Like Rocky Balboa after a bout with Apollo Creed.
But where’s Jesus? Help me find him. ‘Cause I don’t see him.
P.S. This is not a contest. No prizes are being awarded.
Hey! That’s Judy You’re Talking About!!
I like CNN Headline News anchor Judy Fortin as much as the next person, but to be honest —
Okay, I like Judy Fortin more than the next person, but that’s only because I knew her in high school. (Judy will always be "Daisy Mae" to me).
So I am compelled to express my displeasure when Rutgers University geeks use her as the subject of a bizarre experiment entitled "Specifying and Animating Facial Signals For Discourse In Embodied Conversational Agents" (PDF file). An excerpt (click to enlarge):
Ya’ freaks. Leave her alone.
Even Karl Rove’s Mistress Is Distancing Herself
Because convicts make crappy boyfriends, I guess:
[S]everal Texas political insiders say Rove’s longtime relationship with lobbyist Karen Johnson may be in jeopardy, too, if Johnson’s relatives have their way.In July we reported on the very close relationship Johnson, a single, Austin-based lobbyist, has enjoyed with Rove since they met over a decade ago in Texas. But now that Rove’s White House tenure is looking increasingly shaky, friends are whispering that the forty-something lobbyist—who pulls in well over $1 million a year thanks to her administration connections—may be cooling toward the married presidential advisor.
Pleasing The Base
Conventional wisdom on Miers’ withdrawal is that Bush’s next nominee must be someone who shores up his fractured base. A "fundie wingnut".
But Kargo X as the Next Hurrah makes an interesting point:
And as we all know, James Dobson was for Miers.
So, what’s this "base" that needs appeasing? Is the White House likely to throw another bone to this "base," after it failed so miserably to deliver? Why is the takeaway from this more likely to be that this "base" needs feeding than what I said back on the ninth: a terse note to evangelicals — "we sent up one of yours and you couldn’t get mainline Republicans on board, so you’ve still got some learning to do."
The part of George Bush’s "base" that didn’t show up for Miers is the part that knows when to cut bait. The part of the base that a "fundie wingnut" would be designed to satisfy was the part that clung to the Dear Leader’s petticoats no matter how deep the doo-doo got. How hard would you work to appease them, given that wild horses couldn’t tear them from th’ preznit, and they didn’t show when you needed them?
No, the "base" that Bush needs to appease is the one that cost him this ridiculous joke of a nomination. And while they, too, may be very comfortable with a hardline conservative who might be quite acceptable under the "fundie wingnut" test, that probably won’t be the primary reason the next contestant has their name called.
So maybe we won’t get a fundie wingnut after all.
Focus On The Fables
Dr. James Dobson reveals why he believes Harriet Miers is a good nominee for the Supreme Court and addresses the objections that have been raised about her.
— Lead-in to radio show by James Dobson, on his Focus on the Family website, October 5, 2005
"I believe the president made a wise decision in accepting Harriet Miers’s withdrawal as a nominee to the Supreme Court. …Based on what we now know about Miss Miers, it appears that we would not have been able to support her candidacy. Thankfully, that difficult evaluation is no longer necessary."
— James Dobson, today
One hot summer’s day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been trained over a lofty branch. "Just the thing to quench my thirst," quoth he. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: "I am sure they are sour."
— "The Fox and the Grapes", Aesop
If This Doesn’t Piss You Off, You Must Be Dead
Or Cheney.
From CNN Money:
Exxon’s $10B net a U.S. corporate record
The oil company gains from soaring oil and gas prices, but falls short of estimates.NEW YORK (Reuters) – Exxon Mobil Corp. posted a quarterly profit of $9.9 billion Thursday, the largest in U.S. corporate history, as it raked in a bonanza from soaring oil and gas prices.
Record profits for Big Oil at a time when consumers are paying sky-high prices for gasoline have brought calls for a windfall profits tax or other penalties on oil companies.
The companies have been enjoying an unusually rosy environment for months. In the third quarter, oil prices and refining margins rose sharply after hurricanes Katrina and Rita ripped through the Gulf of Mexico, disrupting energy operations in the region.
On Quitting Smoking
I intend to do it soon, and articles like these give me ideas:
Although both marijuana and tobacco smoke are packed with cancer-causing chemicals, other qualities of marijuana seem to keep it from promoting lung cancer, according to a new report.
The difference rests in the often opposing actions of the nicotine in tobacco and the active ingredient, THC, in marijuana, says Dr. Robert Melamede of the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs.
He reviewed the scientific evidence supporting this contention in a recent issue of Harm Reduction Journal.
Whereas nicotine has several effects that promote lung and other types of cancer, THC acts in ways that counter the cancer-causing chemicals in marijuana smoke, Melamede explained in an interview with Reuters Health.
"THC turns down the carcinogenic potential," he said.