Here Come The Subpoenas

Jeff Cohen's New Book

There's a great post on TruthDig.org along with an mp3 interview with Jeff Cohen on his new book, "Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media".

Cohen was the communications director for the 2004 Kucinich campaign, founder of Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. His life in media includes being a "pundit" for CNN, FOX and producer with MSNBC.

Here's are exerpts from his book:

"What I found inside cable news was a drunken exuberance for sex, crime and celebrity stories, matched by a grim timidity and fear of offending the powers-that-be—especially if the powers-that-be are conservatives. The biggest fear is of doing anything that could get you, or your network, accused of being liberal."

*****************

"As I sat at my MSNBC desk watching Bush or a top associate carry on, I knew painfully well that my network would not be following the administration event with a critical view, no matter how dubious or manipulative were the official claims. To do so—to practice actual journalism—might prompt the dreaded charge of 'liberal bias.' "

*****************

"When Phil Donahue toughly interviewed big-name guests, MSNBC execs were petrified that the VIPs would be offended and not make return engagements. They’d complain that Phil was “badgering” the guests. “Access is everything in Washington,” Phil later told a reporter. “If you’re the executive producer at one of the big news shows and you piss off Karl Rove, you’re not going to get Condi or Rummy or any of those guests who would legitimize your show as a serious, important program.”

Snowstorm At It Again

"Evidently, [the President] wants to shield virtually any communications that take place within the White House compound on the theory that all such talk contributes in some way, shape or form to the continuing success and harmony of an administration. Taken to its logical extreme, that position would make it impossible for citizens to hold a chief executive accountable for anything. He would have a constitutional right to cover up.
... Most of us want no part of a president who is cynical enough to use the majesty of his office to evade the one thing he is sworn to uphold -- the rule of law."

Reading this, one would think that it was written in response to George the Liar's assertion that presidential aides who fear testifying under oath would then be gun-shy to give candid advice to the President.

But no, that was written in 1998 by the current White House Press Secretary, Tony Snow. Yet, Snow continued to pound on the latest talking point, "show trial" regarding the current about the current pressure by Congress to have Karl Rove and Harriet Miers testify under oath regarding the US attorney firings.

Here is part of a Press briefing transcript:

Q: Presidential aides have testified in the past when there was evidence of impropriety. April mentioned Watergate. This is a case in which the White House is asserting that there is no evidence of impropriety and that nothing was done wrong. So how do you face the American public and say, we're telling you we didn't do anything wrong, but we won't let the top advisers to the President speak publicly about it?

MR. SNOW: No, because -- I thought this was a fact-finding mission, and not a ratings-finding mission.

What a punk. How does he sleep at night?

Meanwhile Bush had this to say: “We will not go along with a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honorable public servants."

Someone should explain to this village idiot that Congress will ask questions regarding what they're trying to investigate, namely the true reason that these US attorneys were fired. First they tell us it is a normal thing, happens all the time. It does not. Then they claim it was poor performance. Well just a cursory look at their performance records tells you it was not. Now they claim executive privilege.

Executive privilege exists between the president and the person he is talking to, but the claim was that the president was never advised on these decisions on the attorney firings. If that is the case, as CNN's Ed Henry pointed out to the Snowman, then why is the White House claiming executive privilege if the President was not involved?

Snowjob's response: "That's an intriguing question."

God! This guy is an asshole of epic proportions.

And what honorable public servants is Chimpy possibly talking about, because from I've seen, there aren't any in this administration. The only honorable public servants we've seen lately are the ones that were fired.

Video courtesy of CrooksAndLiars.com

In George We Trust

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." ~ John Adams, 1772

"After telling a bunch of different stories about why they fired the U.S. Attorneys, the Bush administration is not entitled to the benefit of the doubt. Congress and the American people deserve a straight answer. If Karl Rove plans to tell the truth, he has nothing to fear from being under oath like any other witness." ~ Senator Harry Reid, March 20, 2007

And yet after George the Liar has waived his mighty scepter, he is appalled that his subjects rejected an offer from the Child-King "to allow members of Congressional committees to hold private interviews with Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser and deputy chief of staff and Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel" as long as they did not testify under oath.

How can Curious George and his administration stand there, lying day after day, in front of the American people and think that this generous offer is acceptable?

W. and his corrupt cronies have either never been truthful or never been correct on anything in the past six years in regards to the debacle in Iraq, or anything else for that matter. Illegal wiretaps, suspension of habeas corpus for "enemy combatants" at King George's discretion, rendition of prisoners to other countries for the purposes of torture, prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib, cherry picking faulty intelligence to drum up the case for an illegal pre-emptive strike on a country that had nothing to do with the attacks on our land. And the list goes on and on and on.

“I don’t accept his offer. It is not constructive, and it is not helpful to be telling the Senate how to do our investigation or to prejudge its outcome” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Senator Leahy along with Senator Charles Schumer of New York are holding the administration's feet to the fire, but for how long? This is a game of chicken... or at least chicken vs. chickenhawk. I can only hope that the Democrats realize that they are in the driver's seat on this one and don't back down to King Liar and his minions. Why else would anyone suggest a private meeting with no transcripts and not testifying under oath unless they had the specific intention to mislead and lie?

Is Gonzales A Victim?

I just heard this on an MSNBC bumper at 10:32am EDT and had to rewind to make sure I heard it corectly:

"Is the White house already looking for a replacement for Alberto Gonzales? How the US Attorneys controversy could claim another victim in the Bush Administration."

Uh, excuse me, but I thought "victim" had another definition. Let me look it up.

vic·tim [vik-tim] –noun
1. a person who suffers from a destructive or injurious action or agency: a victim of an automobile accident.
2. a person who is deceived or cheated, as by his or her own emotions or ignorance, by the dishonesty of others, or by some impersonal agency: a victim of misplaced confidence; the victim of a swindler; a victim of an optical illusion.
3. a person or animal sacrificed or regarded as sacrificed: war victims.
4. a living creature sacrificed in religious rites.
[Origin: 1490–1500; <>

Okay, I did know the definition. Maybe number 3 fits Gonzo, but then he would be a victim OF the Bush Administration, not a victim IN the Bush Administration.

Here's another definition:

per·pe·trate [pur-pi-treyt] –verb (used with object), -trat·ed, -trat·ing.
1. to commit: to perpetrate a crime.
2. to present, execute, or do in a poor or tasteless manner: Who perpetrated this so-called comedy?
[Origin: 1540–50; <>

per·pe·tra·tor - noun
1. someone who perpetrates wrongdoing

Yeah, this one fits Gonzo better.

War in Iraq - 4th Anniversary

With the 4th anniversary of the official start of the War in Iraq, and as of this writing, 3,217 American soldiers dead, 32,544 wounded, approximately 650,000 Iraqi dead, and an estimated cost to date of almost $500 billion, I thought it would be fitting to go back and quote the thoughts of some of our fearless leaders in the war on terror.

*September 17, 2001-
President George W. Bush on Osama bin Laden: "I want justice. And there's an old poster out West… I recall, that said, 'Wanted, Dead or Alive.'"

* March 14, 2002-
Bush on Osama bin Laden: "I truly am not that concerned about him."

* Feb. 7, 2003-
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."

* Feb. 27, 2003-
Rumsfeld: "What is, I think, reasonably certain is the idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces I think is far from the mark."

* March 4, 2003-
Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz: "The notion that it would take several hundred thousand American troops just seems outlandish."

* March 16, 2003-
Vice President Cheney, on NBC's Meet the Press: "I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . (in) weeks rather than months."

* April 23, 2003-
USAID Director Andrew Natsios: "In terms of the American taxpayers contribution, [$1.7 billion] is it for the US. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries and Iraqi oil revenues...The American part of this will be 1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this."

* May 1, 2003-
President Bush: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended."

* June 14, 2003-
Cheney: "...I think has been fairly significant success in terms of putting Iraq back together again and certainly wouldn't lead me to suggest or think that the strategy is flawed or needs to be changed."

* June 20, 2005-
Cheney: "The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

Krugman: Don't Cry For Reagan

Today's NY Times opinion by Paul Krugman (password protected by TimesSelect unfortunately) is very telling of the modern conservative movement. He states that as conservatives long for the good ol' Reagan days, the realization is that given the chance, Reagan would have been what Bush is, had it not been for a Democratically controlled Congress.

Krugman quotes Johnathan Cohn's 1993 American Prospect article, in which "Changing just a few words in that article makes it read as if it were written in 2007."

KRUGMAN: "Thus, Mr. Cohn described how the Interior Department had been packed with opponents of environmental protection, who 'presided over a massive sell-off of federal lands to industry and developers' that 'deprived the department of several billion dollars in annual revenue.' Oil leases, anyone?

Meanwhile, privatization had run amok, because 'the ranks of public officials necessary to supervise contractors have been so thinned that the putative gains of contracting out have evaporated. Agencies have been left with the worst of both worlds — demoralized and disorganized public officials and unaccountable private contractors.' Holy Halliburton!"

Modern conservatism isn't what the party of Eisenhower once was, and that is what is misleading those who misunderstand the definition of conservatism. What you're seeing now is what could have happened in the 80's, had we not kept the system of checks and balances in place.

Falling To Earth

It is only matter of time before George the Liar and the rest of his corrupt administration is in such shambles that, in this writer's opinion, the White House of Cards will finish its collapse. Will the media feeding frenzy start then or will it just be more conservative spin?

With the calling of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' head (including increasing Republican members of Congress) in the wake of the ever growing federal attorney firings, the Chimp-Man threatening veto power with the latest Congress "transparency" bills, another protest march on the Pentagon, the moral musings and subsequent non-apology of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace, former CIA operative Valerie Plame's testimony this past Friday, and [INSERT SCANDAL HERE], it won't be much longer before more Rovian rats desert the sinking S.S. Moron and the abundance of subpeonas and indictments begins.