Here is a fun game for you- who are they talking about:
“He’s a vile, detestable, moralistic person with no heart and no conscience who believes he’s been tapped by God to do very important things,” one White House ally said, referring to ___________________.
A.) James Dobson
B.) Rick Santorum
C.) Osama bin Laden
D.) Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald
Unfortunately, I think you know the answer. And how about this, a piece written by Michelle Malkin that is 100% accurate.
My head hurts.
Ned Raggett
Talk about too little too late on the White House flack front (not that I’m approving of this at all, of course, I’m just amused that they left it this long).
Sojourner
“Unhinged left?”
She should just stfu and hide her head in shame for being such a cheerleader to this administration. Way too little and way too late.
StupidityRules
The right answer would have been E.
E.) George W Bush
VictorRay
Many on the unhinged left said just that kind of thing about Ken Starr. Not that I agree with this characterization of Fitzpatrick. But pot, meet kettle.
Kevin K.
E.) Doug Henning
I win!
Ancient Purple
Remember, kids: Party before country.
Always.
Tim F
Dude, don’t talk trash on my Doug Henning. I saw that guy’s magic show when I was like nine. It was the coolest thing I’d seen all week.
Tim F
On topic, you know the message machine has broken down when you’ve got Malkin on your case.
They need a new message. In fact, with the way things are going they need a Hail f-cking Mary. There’s got to be a way to salvage the Miers nomination, discredit Fitzgerald and convince the Iraqi insurgents that hugs solve more problems than guns do. Brainstorm, people.
vnjagvet
This is as despicable coming from a Republican White House as it is coming from a Democratic White House. A tired D.C ritual which has not changed in 75 years. Sad and ineffective.
Ned Raggett
Oh man, you want an example of that that just hit the net? Check out Hewitt’s latest — seriously off the deep end.
VictorRay
Well, in this case we’re talking about a technicality involving staff members. With Clinton, you had the president himself caught dead-to-rights in an outright lie.
srv
Even if Fitz doesn’t come up with any indictments, it’s clear the many of the loyal pundits are w/o proper guidance. Karl no longer has control over the dial.
That’s why this administration is finished. It really could only operate in a vacuum.
Tim F
I for one am pleased that VictorRay has done his part to fill out the starboard side of our commenting retinue. Similarly, I would be delighted if the Browns drafted Pauly Shore to fill a hole in the offensive line.
Sojourner
Starr’s only contribution was an R-rated report and a $50 million bill. I’d say he lived up quite nicely to the left’s criticisms.
Too early to say about Fitzgerald but I suspect he’s a much more serious investigator. I certainly hope he is considering that outing a CIA agent is treasonous, unlike a blow job.
Sojourner
Hewitt likes Miers because he’s found his intellectual equal.
StupidityRules
I miss Kenneth Starr… with him in charge you wouldn’t have had to wait for the indictments to know who would get indicted. I hate all this waiting, it’s like Christmas when you were a kid…
Tim F
He’s definitely a cheaper investigator. But in a good way.
ppGaz
Well, it’s D (Fitzpatrick) of course. I saw the original piece.
Victor Ray is either a put-on, or else he’s what will come to be known around here as a Fitzmas present.
Malkin is a certifiable lunatic. Nobody cares what she thinks about anything. Her only claim to fame now is being the village idiot that once in a while gets something right.
DougJ
Ppgaz, let’s not forget that you and others on the left owe John a big apology if the only charges are perjury and obstruction of justice. After all these months of screaming “treason”, that would really make you and the Kossacks look bad.
ppGaz
John owes all of us “lefties” when he leverages the page views we get him into a Fox News talking head gig. He’s a natural for punditry and has that WV/Western PA charm thing going. All he needed was the push that only you and I and a few others could give him. Besides, what other gang of “lefties” would have been so patient with his refusal to just come out and admit that the Iraq war is a collossal fuckup? Would your garden variety Kossacks do that? Huh-uh.
Do you think “Cordially, Rick” and “FUCKING LEFTIES” Darrell would have gotten him the expected call to Fox fame and fortune?
I think not. I expect him to remember the little people who put him on top.
Thomas
DougJ is right. It goes without saying that if an investigation into a crime can not pinpoint a guilty party because of perjury and obstruction of justice, the crime never happened, and perjury and obstruction of justice are just like jaywalking, but with politicians.
Oh wait, and Joe Wilson was proven to be wrong in his report due to the uranium we found in Iraq. Nevertheless, the serious approach to criticizing him was to out his wife and suggest that she got him the job, which of course he sucked at, because of the uranium we found, as well as the archives of material about Iraq’s nuclear program and the emissaries it sent to Niger.
ppGaz
Thomas = Spoof Alert condition Yellow (elevated).
Sec’y Chertoff will address you shortly.
Ancient Purple
Welcome to Balloon Juice, Sen. Hutchinson.
ppGaz
Cheney is Plame Source — NYT
Just broken on cable by Joe Scarborough.
Biggest news so far in the Plame case.
Start the popcorn machines. It is going to be a helluva ride now.
a guy called larry
Won’t mention any names, but this reminded me immediately of GWB.
I’m surprised only that it took so long for the slamming to begin. If indictments do come down (heh, if), then one can imagine the ramp up to his being the chief Satan-worshipper on the continent will be swift as any boat could be.
Read Hewitt’s piece, no surprises, but what the Hell is up with the quote and apostrophe thing? I’ve seen this before, I figure it’s from MS Word, but I can’t fathom why anyone would post this on their blog, and not correct it. If the reason for posting is to communicate, why obfuscate with all the damn ’ and “. If it’s not laziness or a lack of professionalism, it sure looks that way.
ppGaz
Add Cheney:
According to NYT, Tenet is Cheney’s source.
Slide
It’s beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas
Everywhere you go
Take a look in the five-and-ten, glistening once again
With candy canes and silver lanes aglow.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas,
Toys in every store,
But the prettiest sight to see is the holly that will be
On your own front door.
CaseyL
If we take that story at face value, it strains credulity that Tenet would tell Cheney about Plame and not tell him she was NOC.
So Cheney goes and blabs about it to Libby? Was Libby cleared to know an NOC’s ident? Did Cheney tell Libby she was an NOC, or not? If so, then Libby knew it when he talked to Miller. If not, then Cheney was, at the least, criminally negligent in disclosing Plame’s name and not her status.
And, if Cheney told Libby her name in order to get the smear campaign rolling, that’s a misuse of classified information even by the elastic standard set forth by Bush Administration supporters.
Slide
Thats a good point. And lets not forget that Tenet was the one that refered the matter to the Justice Department. Did he do this because he felt betrayed that the info he gave Cheney ended up in a Novak column? Or did he refer it because he was pressured by people in his agency? This gets stranger and stranger.
Mac Buckets
Better game: Who’s the “they” to whom you refer? “One White House ally” doesn’t cut it for me — sorry.
ppGaz
Personally, I think they all knew exactly what they were doing, and gambled that the law is so tightly written that they could not be “caught.”
They didn’t count on (a) the referral from CIA, which is why we have Fitz, and (b) getting probably the best federal prosecutor in the country, one who won’t flinch at collaring the big game.
Well, tough shit. They gambled and lost.
Slide
Why am I not surprised by that? lol What makes it very credible is that the reporter is Thomas DeFrank. DeFrank has very strong connections to the first Bush administration having co-written a book with James Baker. This is no John Cole, this is a serious journalist.
Slide
so Libby lies to the Grand Jury about who gave him the info on Ms. Plame knowing that his notes will show otherwise? How dumb are these guys anyway? Judy doesn’t know there are secret service logs? Forgets about her notes? Rove forgets he wrote an email about a conversation with Cooper? jesus, they are as incompetent about their cover-up as they were about everything else.
ppGaz
Oww! Now THAT was uncalled for, Slide.
This is not a news site.
Slide
perhaps, but it was still enjoyable. Love tweaking the lil professor.
Slide
well… I can go to bed tonight with the pleasant thoughts of approaching FitzMas. goodnight all.
ppGaz
Kevin Drum nails it
Drum is the most cool headed and rational of the left’s bloggers on this topic, ANAICT. I think he absolutely nails this “mystery” with the timeline on the forged documents.
DougJ
Okay, okay, hear me out. What if Richard Clarke dressed up as Dick Cheney and then told Scooter Libby about Valerie Plame, using a fake Dick Cheney voice? And what if Clarke himself got the information from Hillary Clinton who knew about it from the FBI files she illegall pulled during Travelgate? There’s a lot more to this story than meets the eye.
Andrei
In other news, this oughta make Cole happy:
Senate panel accuses British lawmaker
ppGaz
What if he dressed up as Lynne Cheney!
ppGaz
So much for that “trash Fizty” plan
Responsible persons on the right (yes, there are such people) are not going to sit by and let the noise machine have its way with Fitz.
Bruce Moomaw
As one conservative friend of mine (yes, I do have one conservative friend) points out, it’s very hard to conceive what could have driven the White House into such an illegal frenzy EXCEPT a fear that their use of the
Yellowcake story in Bush’s SOTU address would be exposed as consciously dishonest — after all, by summer 2003, they themselves had admitted that the story was wrong.
This also explains one other interesting thing: the fact that the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report (pg. 44-46) flatly stated that, by the time of his NYT piece, Wilson had changed his original story about what his
investigation had uncovered, and that his original report really contained nothing much to discredit the Yellowcake story. If this was true and the White House knew it, why didn’t they simply reveal that fact and thus expose
Wilson as having dishonestly changed his story, rather than panicking and trying to smear him by illegally leaking Plame’s identity? Obvious conclusion: they were trying to cover up something bigger by attacking him so furiously. (Either that, or the Intelligence Committee’s report is false — but it quotes Wilson himself as having admitted to them that in some ways he had dishonestly changed his original account.)
Footnote: I mentioned this to Kevin Drum himself and just got E-mailed:
“Yeah, that’s more or less my theory, although I’m not sure even I buy it. But the whole thing was so excessive, so plainly crazy, that there just has to be something that scared them shitless. The Niger docs are the only thing I can think of.
“Of course, I have to admit that the alternative explanation is that the whole crew just panicked and went nuts for basically no good reason. In some ways, this is equally plausible.”
Certainly it is with this bunch. They couldn’t have discredited the Right more effectively if they had been collectively possessed by the spirit of Tom Lehrer.
SeesThroughIt
“Gonna read the blitz package…buuuuuuuuddy!”
guyermo
say what you will about Fitzgerald or Starr, at least Fitzgerald knows how to work with a budget:
Fitzgerald Expenses
Starr Expenses
dylan
small print…one white house ally.
Show buisness takes a while to learn. Cole is just slowly pickin’ up the tricks however.
When all else fails, kill, slam, destroy and slander the messanger. Cole didn’t miss that day in RNC class.
Cole: It was just a joke. You guys are moonbat crazy!!!
My sense of logic hurts.
Horshu
Actually, reading it this morning, it sounds kinda like the person is talking about George Bush. Amoralistic…mission from God.
feral1
That quote reads like something from the Onion. I though it was a joke, when I first saw it somewhere else, then I checked the Daily News site and there it was.
Krista
Horshu – that was my first guess, too.
And the “Pot, Meet Kettle” Statement of the Year award has just been granted, boys and girls. A round of applause, let’s re-fill the champagne, and next up, we have our “Fall From Glory” award…a lot of excellent competition for this one! We’ll be right back after this word from our sponsors!
a guy called larry
There’s this, “Ten Things We Will Soon Learn About Patrick Fitzgerald”, via The Poor Man.
I think #7 has been overused, though.
Tim F
Mac Buckets makes, of course, an excellent point. It seems like the famous WH message discipline has broken down to the point that the staff is ad-libbing its leaks. That’s news.
Defense Guy
To be fair, I’m not really sure what the hell ‘white house ally’ means. Once again we get a slimy statement from an anonymous source, and the press feels fine in running it.
DougJ
I think that was Mac’s point, too. It’s a stunning quote, and I don’t dispute that DeFrank had every right to run it, but let’s not read too much into it, since we don’t know who said it.
DougJ
I doubt the sliming of Fitz will go that far. It’s not a good strategy. I don’t think the White House has enough control over its attack dogs to stop the attacks all together, but I expect them to be limited. The safe thing to do is yak about the “criminalization of politics”. That’s the talking point I expect to hear. I don’t expect a WH coordinated smear campaign of Fitzgerald. I don’t even think we’ll see something on the order of the Swift Boat Liars rally against him — there’s no way they can dig up law school classmates of his who said he cheated, is there? Maybe I’m not giving them enough credit. But I just don’t see that happening.
The Disenfranchised Voter
First off, comparing Fitzgerald to Ken Starr? Give me a fucking break.
Secondly, this comment was truly priceless:
I suggest you recheck your facts. The CIA–under Cheney’s watchful eye no less–said that the report actually enchanced the case for uranium. HOWEVER! The State department–who has much more credibility given the blunders on the CIA–sided with Wilson.
Take your misleding statemets elsewhere, Thomas.
The Disenfranchised Voter
damn typos, credible*
The Disenfranchised Voter
oh wait, haha–I had it right the first time.
Sojourner
The biggest problem the Bushies face is that the American public is already beginning to wonder whether they were, in fact, lied to by the Bush administration. Confirmation of that will be accepted much more quickly than before. And as the American body count in Iraq hits the 2000 mark, the questioning will become all that more intense.
The good news is that it will be that much more difficult for Bushie and his friends to continue to pass legislation ripping off the middle and working classes. How ironic that those 2000 souls who gave their life fighting in Iraq may actually have protected us from our own government.
Another Jeff
I don’t like Malkin but she’s consistently ripped this administration on spending, immigration, and big government in general.
If you wanna say she’s a right-wing hack, that’s fine, but she’s far from being an apologist for the administration.
Ancient Purple
Doubtful. Most people around the water cooler have little regard for politicians. Talking about the “criminalization of politics” will get you a line like “there are already criminals in politics.”
The Disenfranchised Voter
I won’t call her a right-wing hack, but I will call her either a walking contradiction, a moron who doesn’t know the defition of a libertarian, or what I think–a liar.
The woman claims to be a libertarain, but as anyone can see, for the most part, her opinions are not libertarian.
Lines
If they want to talk about the “criminalization of politics”, it needs to be brought up that outting a CIA agent for “politics” isn’t a normal thing, that it shouldn’t be considered “fair game” and that all of this is a dirty stinking pile a fecal matter generated not to progress the country, but to strike out at a former ambassador for having a disagreeable analysis of a situation that was being used to forward an aggressive agenda.
This is NOT politics as normal, and all these fucking right-wing hacktacular assholes in the media need to shut up about the “criminalization of politics” and start covering their asses as all the indictments are dealt out like a hand of poker.
Mac Buckets
No fair being reasonable, Doug. This thread is strictly for the naive.
As far as what a “White House ally” might be, let’s first figure out what it is not.
It’s not a White House staffer, or the Daily News would have said that.
It’s not a former White House staffer, or they would’ve said that.
It’s not anyone working in Bush’s government, or they would’ve said that.
So it’s a private citizen who likes Bush and who at least pretends to know Fitzgerald and doesn’t like him.
Wow, what a scoop. Publish that on Page One!
It could’ve been a blogger, for crying out loud. It could’ve been a blog commenter!
Are they sure the full quote didn’t go:
Tim F
Actually, I thought for a while that it might be Bush’s mom. The quote sounds like something Barbara would say.
ppGaz
THAT was funny.
Sherard
Wow, Sojourner. Amazing how many half-truths and distorations you were able to fit into just 2 paragraphs. Is the American public souring on the War in Iraq ? Yes, public opinion is about 2/3 in disapproval. In what context, however ? Conveniently you leave out the fact that those opinion polls specifically ask “Was it worth it?”
The only demographic in this country that believes Bush lied is the harcore moonbat left – you, apparently, included. Opinion polls do not reflect your conspiracy theories. You would probably get more mileage out of honesty than dishonesty.
The simple fact is that the average joe on the street probably 1) doesn’t know who Rove or Libby are, and 2) don’t care. Mostly because the average person thinks all politicians are slime. This certainly won’t change that. The only people this REALLY matters to are those solidly active or interested in politics, and frankly, I’d like to know who among that group has not pretty much made up their mind about both this administration and this case. It’s all a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.
I won’t even address you assertion regarding legislation out to “rip off” middle and working class. That’s ALWAYS the problem to you “World Worker’s Party” types. I and many others are, in fact, PART of that middle class and support many of the Bush initiatives that you, no doubt, think are ripping us off.
I also continue to be amazed at the faux outrage over 2000 lost servicemen in Iraq. As if this weren’t the least deadly war in the history of mankind. I’m just so tired of the worn out, retread mantras. Bush Lied, tax cuts for the rich, the body count. My only surprise is that you weren’t able to work Vietnam and/or quagmire into your post. Surely if you try again you can do it.
Krista
Mac Buckets – nicely done. I’ll be grinning all day about that one.
DougJ
Good work there, Mac.
DougJ
Sherard, I’m going to go one step further: the average citizen doesn’t know who Dick Cheney is, what Uranium is, or what the words “perjury” and “indictment” mean. This whole this will blow over in no time.
Jill
The quote about Fitzgerald is especially despicable coming from a bunch who ordinarily would think that “being tapped by god” or “moraliatic” are prerequisites for joining their club, or voting for their man.
The Disenfranchised Voter
Ha! Never thought of it that way…
Sojourner
Good for you. We’ll see how well Bushie does with his plan to cut the tax deductions for company health insurance and home mortgages. But I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure that most middle-class Americans are delighted with the tremendous increase in the national debt, most of which is due to the tax cuts for the wealthy. I’m sure they smile with pleasure knowing that they will be paying for Cheney, Bush, and Gates’s tax cuts for the next few decades.
Sucker.
Sojourner
Crap. My link didn’t come through.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200510250012
Shygetz
Mac Buckets–Late to the party, but I still want to tip my hat to you. Funniest. Comment. Ever.
Shygetz
And you know what–given the crap that politicians have been up to for the past, oh, few decades, I wouldn’t mind a little “criminalization of politics” one damn bit. Not that I think is what’s going on here, but just sayin’…