This really says it all about this administration:
An article appearing in this week’s edition of Newsweek suggests that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is struggling in preparatory sessions for his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
Michael Isikoff in Newsweek’s Periscope column this week says that Gonzales performed poorly in initial preparation sessions for his testimony.
“Gonzales kept contradicting himself and ‘getting his timeline confused,’ said one participant who asked not to be identified,” Isikoff reports.
He also notes, “His advisers finally got ‘exasperated’ with him, the source added.”
Justice Department staff were nervous according to Isikoff, and had canceled all public appearances scheduled for this week.
Isikoff also describes Gonzales as increasingly isolated.
“The department is in a state of paralysis,” said one “frustrated senior administration official.”
Why, exactly, does one need to prepare to tell the truth. I give you two choices:
1.) You are so stupid that you can not accurately remember time sequences.
2.) You have an AWFUL lot to lie about.
At any rate, the chief law enforcement officer of the country needs to prepare so he does not perjure himself. He is just damned lucky no one has accused him of getting a blow job.
Zifnab
Man, and Gonzo thought the bar exam was tough. I guess one of the disadvantages of promoting people by cronyism instead of merit is that you get alot of cronies who suck at doing their jobs – even when the “job” is “serial liar and information manipulator”.
I’m just waiting for Republicans to start whining about how the investigation’s paralysis of the Justice Department is hurting America and letting pedophiles run free in the streets. Won’t somebody please think of the children!
cd6
If the democrats wouldn’t waste our time with these needless investigations, then our nation’s highest enforcer of the law wouldn’t need to hole up for three weeks learning how to lie effectively.
Our AG should be out there, saving us from terrorists and porno directors. Instead, the defeatocrats have endangered our country by keeping him from his post.
Traitors. Why do the democrats hate America?
Rome Again
My bets on #2.
Chad N. Freude
Did the Bar examiners accept “I don’t remember” as a passing answer? This yutz is the Attorney General of the United States! How did he ever get a job as a lawyer in the first place?
Chad N. Freude
Fixed.
ThymeZone
Just another day at the headquarters of the Joke Government.
I guess the phony “concern” over Nancy Pelosi’s headgear won’t be enough to jackalope more time for Gonzales.
Bring back Ashcroft. He was a better liar.
Tsulagi
That’s pretty fucking good when essentially while talking to a mirror, you can’t get you to be truthful with yourself. Over a period of days. Maybe he can alternatively interrogate himself.
These people are amazing. Like Bush and Cheney, they simply do not have the capacity to tell truth from lie, nor do they care to have it. It’s all the same to them. They believe any self serving bullshit that randomly tumbles from their mouth should be taken as gospels, and you hate America if you question it. McCain was doing a fair impersonation of that recently with The Stroll.
So now poor Gonzo is in wholly unfamiliar territory. Where there is a difference between fact and fantasy. It’ll be fun to see how well he memorizes the “truth.”
mrmobi
Umm, I have a problem with spending $6,000 to cover up tits on statues. Actually, I have a problem with covering up any breasts at all. It clearly should be illegal.
Oh, and he sings badly and too much. Isn’t he the guy who lost to a dead guy in the Senate?
Bubblegum Tate
He was a funnier brand of nutty, too.
Chad N. Freude
At least he had a brain. Which, on reflection, probably means we’re better off with Gonzales.
The AGship was a consolation prize.
… with nudity and justice for all.
cd6
This is a lot of prepping to avoid getting caught lying when Schumer is going to blow Gonzo out of the water with the classic “If-you’re-lying-say-what”
Andrew
Occam’s razor, Bush corollary:
The most simple explanation is that they are both incompetent and corrupt.
Jake
Im n ur office stealin all ur answers.
So. The thought of one man going to answer some questions puts an entire department in “Deer in the headlights,” “Whoops I crapped my pants” mode. Apparently no one in the DoJ can move unless Goner pulls their strings.
Gee, that restores my faith in this nation’s justice system.
Chad N. Freude
That’s only because the evil Democrats are going to shout hostile questions based on lies at him with machine-gun rapidity. They’re in a panic because of the unfairness, not to mention un-American-ness, of it all.
Chad N. Freude
Being a natural-born pessimist, I can’t help wondering how much of an effect this kind of report will have on the populace at large. (Those who post here, of course, are an elite group that understands these things.) As much as we’d like to think that the Limbaugh Commentators Brigade is ignored and ineffectual, I think they still have a lot of influence over their listeners and readers that outweighs the reportage.
Rome Again
Yes, 4 out of 5 of my parents offspring in my family choose Limbaugh. (hint: I’m the one who didn’t).
Go figure.
Andrew
Why do you hate America, RA?
Devil's Advocate
This sounds like an orchestrated campaign to lower expectations, and subsequently have Gonzo resign to “spend more time with my family” or “I am an alcoholic and I am not responsible for my actions. I am going to rehab on Monday.”
Chad N. Freude
If this is the case, they’re bungling it, too. There are better ways to lower expectations than publicly saying “The AG is an idiot and we don’t know what to do about it.”
Rome Again
I haven’t a clue, ask my siblings why THEY do.
jcricket
They keep looking for the “GUL” that will get them out of hot water. This is the “grand unified lie” that will explain away all their bad deeds, illegal acts and otherwise unAmerican (you heard me) behavior.
Unfortunately, reality is stubbornly disinterested in getting sucked into the black hole that is the right-wing world view.
Damn you reality, and your liberal bias.
Mr Furious
I’d much rather have Ashcroft covering Lady Justice’s breasts, than have Gonzales remove her blindfold and put down the scale…
Oh, and it was “over $8,000.”
Punchy
PoTD, The Mantra to Live By, A Dream Worthy of Pursuit, and damn funny.
Screw Gonzo. The guy is toast, and he knows it. The one I want to see on the stand is That Bitch Goodling. Smug, arrogant, and pompous Svengali she is.
Maybe we can combine both my thoughts today and force Goodling to testify topless.
Chad N. Freude
Excuse me, but I think decapitation of Lady Justice is a more apt metaphor.
Hyperion
g1
Zifnab
Only because they’ve popped a squat over the entire AM radio frequency. People spend alot of time in their cars, and after hour three of “Why Nancy Pelosi wants to sell nuclear weapons to Assad”, you can’t help but get a bit worn down. Lock someone in an echo chamber long enough, and the echos stick.
What eventually needs to happen is Limbaugh getting hit with the ridiculous CDC penalties they’ve been leveling against Howard Stern for the past 10 years.
The next time Rush/Savage/Hannity/et al drops the f-bomb or uses racial slang or violates some little known biblical commandment, I’d like to see them slapped with the million dollar fines that got rolled out back in ’02 and ’04.
Chad N. Freude
Unfortunately, that’s because they attract a lot of listeners and therefore a lot of sponsor money. They really are popular, well beyond an audience trapped in cars. I get trapped in my car (I live in LA — it’s our way of life), and there are plenty of less-obnoxious alternatives to the Blow-me-viators. A lot of people really like this stuff. Remember that Fox News, enemy of the mainstream media, is the most-watched news channel.
Devil's Advocate
Chad N. Freude Says:
This sounds like an orchestrated campaign to lower expectations
If this is the case, they’re bungling it, too. There are better ways to lower expectations than publicly saying “The AG is an idiot and we don’t know what to do about it.”
———————————————————-
I agree, but there are a lot of lame brains out there, including our venerable punditheads. If Gonzales can spell his name properly at the hearings, they’ll all marvel at his perfomance…
Chad N. Freude
Couldn’t resist.
Andrew
Is that for Stern’s venereal diseases or what?
mark
All of the above.
Cyrus
I’m sorry, but I just don’t know what to think until I hear from Darrell. What’s the reasonable explanation of Gonzales’s study session? Which of Clinton’s apppointees did it too?
Jake
Get ready to buy a new irony-meter:
Chad N. Freude
Cyrus Says:
Darrell
next posting.
Chad N. Freude
We expect no less from this administration.
Whatever happened to grown-ups?
RSA
Isn’t Gonzales allowed to bring a cheat sheet with him? Or maybe he could write stuff on his arm. But I guess that’s not the image he wants to project. “Mr. Attorney General, what is your memory of this incident?” “Let me check my notes. . .” It’s the strangest thing, prepping to say what you remember and what you don’t.
Chad N. Freude
Not for this crowd.
Punchy
This is misleading, sort of. It’s the only conservative channel out there, so yeah, when it attracts ~50% of the US population, it’s numbers are sky-high. If there was a channel dedicated to the progressive viewpoint, they’d have a shitload of viewers, too. Alas, none exist.
As for this:
Did they catch Alberto alone in a moment of sweaty, lotion-escrusted…uh…er…
Chad N. Freude
You Can’t Make This Stuff Up Department, Laura Bush Is As Dumb and Insensitive As Her Husband Division: From the AP
Chad N. Freude
If any TV execs thought that a progressive news channel would attract enough viewers to be profitable, you can bet there would be one on the air/cable as fast as you can say “fair and balanced”.
Zifnab
CDC, FEC, ABC… one of those. Regardless, it’s a three letter term that gets you censored.
Rome Again
Now if little Georgie would figure this out, we’d be a LOT better off.
Rome Again
In my particular case, that’s called FTD (we don’t need no dying flowers…)
Punchy
Nope. Media owned by media corps, media corps beholden to FCC (Buah Admin) regs, media corps beholden to Bush Admin for corporate tax breaks, corps way too sensitive to winger outrage (read: progressives telling truths on the teevees), thus no progressive channels.
Also, I wonder if Fox is so popular b/c the Bush Admin is SOOOOOOO far removed from reality, that no other channels will still engage in such fantasy. Meaning…in order for them to maintain such a crazed, distorted, and half-baked “reality”, Fox is all they have left.
Rome Again
Not exactly, did you see Anderson Cooper’s special about religion the other night? It was so distorted I had to turn it off after the first five minutes.
Face
IOW, if all porn everywhere was banned, there’d be a huge spike in subscriptions to National Geographic…
Zifnab
I’ll say this about FOX, it gave me a whole new view of CNN. When Wolf Blitzer says something stupid, it can slip by me. But when he parrots the exact same line as Gibson, I at least know I’ve been had.
In the end, the whole “liberal media” line is a bunch of bullshit. The media is “liberal” in so far as it enjoys piling on whoever made the latest PC violation of the day. It’s Joe Lieberman liberal. But its always been a mouthpiece for the guys in power. Even the WP and the NYT are bought and paid for. They’re just not bought and paid for by a psychopath like the Washington Times, so its a bit harder to see when the owner is pushing an agenda.
EdNSted
On April 17, the real stonewalling begins…
http://tinyurl.com/2klnrn
tBone
Three years ago, who would have guessed that the next AG would come out on the losing end of a comparison with the Crisco-anointed, boobie-phobic, lounge-singing Ashcroft? Not me.
See also: Bob Barr, Pat Buchanan, etc.
The Bush Administration: Lowering Expectations Since 2001!
Steve
This strikes me less as expectations-setting and more as “oh shit, this guy is going to embarass himself and he doesn’t get it, we need to get the message out in the press so he realizes how he’s coming across.”
I’ve seen this situation many times in my cases, where the key witness thinks he’s going to single-handedly dazzle everyone with his ridiculous story and make the whole problem go away. If you’re going to pull this schtick off, you need to be more like Oliver North and less like Alberto Gonzales. He’s screwed.
Jake
Abbie Goner: Pushing the soft pornography of flaccid expectations.
Larry
Yes, and always will.
The good news is that the “media” have little direct effect on what people think.
Chad N. Freude
Even this guy isn’t that benighted. He knows that the his tangled tale is as dazzling as a burnt-out light bulb. He doesn’t have the brain power to memorize his lines, and he knows it, if nothing else because he’s just now learned it through experience. Not that there’s any internally consistent story to memorize.
Chad N. Freude
Except the right-wing noise machine is constantly reinforcing the ignorant, false, perverted views of its audience.
Larry
Doesn’t matter much, though. That audience will have an ignorant and false view whether the RWNM reinforces it or not.
It’s not like if we took away the machine, these people would suddenly go, “Dang, Darwin was right!”
Chad N. Freude
Certainly. But if they weren’t constantly being polluted by Fox, Limbaugh and Co. there would be the possibility of some other truth penetrating the fog. They wouldn’t get smart, but they might have more varied information to misunderstand.
Larry
Are you by any chance working on grafting wings onto pigs?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that it’s not a worthy experiment …..
Flying pigs could be used for reconnaissance in combat, for instance.
mrmobi
You are a smart man, Mr. Punchy. Why not make the hearings a little less dry, eh?
Rome Again
But, of course, since Flying Pigs aren’t supposed to exist, therefore nobody will believe it. I can hear it now…
Person #1: ‘I told you there was no WMD in Iraq and recently we learned it wasn’t in Syria either’
Person #2: ‘Pigs don’t fly dear…’
…and we would be FOREVER at an impasse.
Funny stuff though, thanks for thinking of it.
Chad N. Freude
I really hate being condescending to the masses. But in the case of the Fox Faction and the Limbaugh Loyalists, one can’t condescend enough.
Rome Again
I say we change the venue and make her “bare all”.
Larry
I feel your pain. Condescenscion is really best enjoyed when focussed on one or two completely hapless victims.
Rome Again
Yes, it’s a sort of “Schadenfruede” isn’t it?
Larry
Why yes …. yes it is!
:)
Chad N. Freude
My reason for existence. But you’ve guessed that.
Larry
Rome doesn’t miss much.
Rome Again
No, I miss you though, hardly ever see ya.
Chad N. Freude
Do you suppose not being built in a day sharpen’s one’s perceptions?
I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry.
jg
I agree. FOX is saying you shouldn’t watch CNN because they’re liberal and FOX is balanced. Should I believe that or assume its the same as Coke telling me not to drink Pepsi?
Rome Again
With my history, it would be impossible to say my perceptions were an instantaneous gift. LOL
Rome rises, Rome falls… Rome seems to be seriously falling right now.
Larry
Yes, I’m a lurker at heart. I just scurry along the bottom of the ocean and keep my own counsel.
Larry
It takes to create a gem.
Larry needs to go lie down.
Chad N. Freude
Ah, the epic history of Rome…
With all this chummy shtick, we seem to have lost sight of the travails of the AG, that Tower of Intellect who speaks truth to Congressional power. Let’s get back to reinforcing each other’s political views. Sort of like Fox.
Larry
Actually, it takes TIME to create a gem.
(Less time than it might take to think of something as exotic as editable posts in the year 2007 ad, though.)
Rome Again
Hey Chad, you asked the question, I merely answered you.
Larry
We need our own cable network.
jcricket
We all enjoy the benefits of our personal “echo chambers” (like minded friends, news sources, etc.) but the right-wing mindset has become an entire parallel universe, with no means of escape.
It’s not just that the 28%ers listen to or seek out the occasional like-minded commentator. They listen to people who tell them everyone who thinks differently is the devil and/or un-American. That to think differently is to damn their eternal soul and/or give America over to the muslim feminazis.
It’s with that kind of fear-mongering that the RWNM keeps its minions in line.
A few, like David Brock, have the kind of moment where they realize what they’re doing is wrong, but the gravitational pull of RWNM’s black hole is strong.
Chad N. Freude
Fixed to be all-inclusive.
Editable posts? What is this some sort of sci-fi discussion board? It will take years, decades, to achieve this. Get real.
Rome Again
I am merely being myself, a bane to the rightwinger’s existence. I will change for NO man (or woman).
Larry
When is Rome not just Rome?
When she’s the rock of Gibraltar.
Heh.
(I just made that up).
Chad N. Freude
I read something yesterday or today (sorry, don’t have a cite) to the effect that RWNM addicts really do fear that terrorist attacks are imminent, that our only safety lies in offshore wars, etc.
While I think his conversion and on-going penitential service are fine things, I still hold him almost single-handedly responsible for Clarence Thomas. He was one of the early mechanics who constructed RWNM 1.0.
Rome Again
Sorry, I previously saw that scurrying under the ocean thing and then got off on a tangent and I thought you said “edible” posts for a minute. I decided I could probably eat you as long as you don’t mind butter.
Larry
Larry REALLY needs to lie down now.
Chad N. Freude
I guess that nakes them minionaires.
Chad N. Freude
Dude, I wouldn’t touch that with a 10-foot pole. Or Serb or Belarusian or …
Chad N. Freude
Damn keyboard.
Rome Again
Just not your day, is it Schad, I mean Chad?
Rome Again
Yes, please, just lie down here on my plate, and be still for a while. Don’t worry about that butter, lemon and horseradish, it may burn for a short while, but it will soon seem very heavenly (in my mouth).
Wolfdaughter
Getting back to Gonzo, or as some people spell it, Gonezo. (Hey, one can always hope.)
ThinkProgress has a video clip of testimony Gonzales gave before Congress in 2004, when the whole wire-tapping and electronic eavesdropping thing came out.
Gonzales was claiming that previous administrations also used electronic surveillance. This is not an exact quote, but he said that presidents Washington, Lincoln, Wilson, and Roosevelt had all used electronic surveillance to a far greater extent than the Bush Administration had even dreamed of doing…
It does make you wonder how he managed to get a law degree from Harvard.
Larry
{ Larry is speechless }
Rome Again
Yes, it do indeedy!
Chad N. Freude
It never is. That’s why I take such delight in the misery of others.
And Washington crossed the Delaware on a jet ski, and Lincoln’s Kevlar vest failed, and Roosevelt got about on a Segway. It’s well-documented. And don’t forget, Clinton did it, too. Unfortunately, questions on these topics were not asked by Harvard Law on their application forms, and Gunseles got in.
jake
Fixed for truthiness.
PaulB
Damn… Darrell hasn’t shown up, so I still don’t know what to think about this! What am I to do?