Is this real?



Click to expand.

[stolen from Poundy]

Giblets on Grover Norquist and creeping fruitism:

Even now they are introducing creeping fruitism into our proudly heterosexual stock market and pansying up our once-butch interest rate! They even handle the same money we do, getting microscopic particles of gay all over our precious national currency! Did Abraham Lincoln just wink at Giblets from the five dollar bill? Get away from me, Honest Abe! Giblets doesn't need your mincey forfathery leering and your log cabin jokes! Help!

Hott.

"Hat hair."



Click for the story.

[via Poundy]

I'll have what he's having.

Oh dear. The descent into delusion continues.

RE: SMEARING FITZGERALD [Jonah Goldberg]
Wow, [suggesting that the Republicans are smearing Fitzgerald] is really, really lame. Even for Conason. The real story is obviously the reverse, as Byron suggests. This White House -- unlike Conason's preferred Clinton White House -- has cooperated with the prosecutor. It hasn't attacked him. Nor have any of Bush's surrogates or supporters in the press. You'd think Conason would prefer to stay quiet rather than conjure the more obvious comparisons.

Well, Jonah may believe that the White House has "cooperated" with the prosecutor, but credible allegations of perjury on the part of White House staffers and probable indictments forthcoming lead those in the reality-based community to think otherwise. Obv. What a tard.

And it's not as if the loony wingers haven't already started the Fitz smears. Howz about you start over at Jonah's (MILNF) mom's joint? Woops!

Woof!



UPDATE: The pudge can just eat it. Jeebers.

With a decision expected this week on possible indictments in the C.I.A. leak case, allies of the White House suggested Sunday that they intended to pursue a strategy of attacking any criminal charges as a disagreement over legal technicalities or the product of an overzealous prosecutor.

Froomkin:

John Borland writes for CNET News.com: "In a quiet cafe in Washington, D.C., a cell phone rings. But instead of the commonplace digital bleeping or buzzing, it plays a recording of President Bush's voice.

" 'Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job,' he says, and Arlo Guthrie's 'City of New Orleans' starts playing under the looped quote. The remark is a snippet from a speech Bush made in the flooded southern city, in which he praised Federal Emergency Management Agency head Michael Brown shortly before Brown resigned.

"The homemade ring tone, a pointed political statement, is the creation of Eric Gundersen, a Washington-area Web developer for nonprofits. It's an early take on the genre of protest ring tones, a grassroots practice now picking up steam in the United States after emerging in the Philippines a few months ago."

Here's the Brownie ring tone from Gunderson's blog post on the developmentseed.org Web site.

This is genius.

Click here to get the ringtone.

With Joe Wilson.

But the LA Times article is giving off a distinctively creepy vibe with regard to Scooter Libby, and I'm wondering who in that WH inner circle is craven enough to plunge that knife deeper into Libby's back to save his own skin. (*cough* Rove? *cough* Bartlett? *cough* McClellan *cough*...well, I could go on, but it's a long list of possibilities.)

After Wilson published a book criticizing the administration in April 2004, during the closely fought presidential campaign, Libby became consumed by passages that he believed were inaccurate or unfair to Cheney, former aides said. He ordered up a meticulous catalog of Wilson's claims and public statements going back to early 2003.

The result was a packet that included excerpts from press clips and television transcripts of Wilson's statements that were divided into categories, such as "political ties" or "WMD."
The compendium used boldfaced type to call attention to certain comments by Wilson, such as one in the Daily Iowan, the University of Iowa student newspaper, in which Wilson was quoted as calling Cheney "a lying son of a bitch." It also highlighted Wilson's answers to questions from television journalists about his work with Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee.

The intensity with which Libby reacted to Wilson had many senior White House staffers puzzled, and few agreed with his counterattack plan or its rationale, former aides said.

Okay, that's not so beyond the pale. I mean, opposition research is a way of life in Washington, D.C., right? Of course they'd want to keep track of what a critic of the Administration was doing, right? I mean, the extreme anger is a bit unusual, considering you do your best oppo with a cool head -- loyalty is one thing, but outright, intense and sustained hatred suggests something a bit deeper than "he said something bad about my boss, that jerk," doesn't it?

Then we get to this:

The documents and interviews portray Libby as highly attuned to detail. He dictated the format for internal memos, including that paragraphs be indented.

The documents and interviews show that, when it came to monitoring media coverage of Wilson and other issues affecting the vice president's reputation, Libby was meticulous. Staffers were instructed to use Nexis and Google to watch even the most obscure publications.

Is it me, or is this anonymous leaker trying to twist that knife a little more in Libby to do some serious damage control for everyone else involved in this mess? But in doing so, are they willingly throwing Cheney under the bus as well?

Woof!

The new Murray Waas article only really assures us of two things:

(1) Scooter Libby's gonna get indicted; and
(2) Judy Miller isn't a journalist, she's a political operative. And she should also be indicted.

Woof!

Fairly quiet in Plameworld. Fitzy better hurry up. I'm getting fidgety.

Why does everyone who sees the behind-the-scenes of this administration come out looking a little green?

In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.

“Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.”

Mr Wilkerson said such secret decision-making was responsible for mistakes such as the long refusal to engage with North Korea or to back European efforts on Iran.

It also resulted in bitter battles in the administration among those excluded from the decisions.

“If you're not prepared to stop the feuding elements in the bureaucracy as they carry out your decisions, you are courting disaster. And I would say that we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran.”
[snip]

Mr Wilkerson said his decision to go public had led to a personal falling out with Mr Powell, whom he served for 16 years at the Pentagon and the State Department.

“He's not happy with my speaking out because, and I admire this in him, he is the world's most loyal soldier."

I really don't think Colin Powell is all that. He's been sadly tainted.

Lookee.

One suspects that when the inside story of this investigation is finally told, it will be seen that the key to breaking the case open was the alacrity with which top White House aides clawed their way to the tape recorder in order to squeal on each other. No Gordon Liddys in this bunch, I think.

Whiskey Bar
October 10, 2005

Kudos.

Another flip-flopper in the White House?

Oh. Dear, dear me.

And his name is suspiciously similar to this guy. Antonomasia?

Woof!

When he told the press that he didn't know who the leaker was.

And Clinton got impeached for lying about a blowjob.

Meow!



MORE: And he may have lied when he was questioned in the Oval Office. Could that be a problem? Maybe:

Regardless of whether or not the President was under oath, lying to federal prosecutors seems like a pretty clear case of obstruction of justice.

Of course, proving the President's involvement is another matter entirely. Can Fitzgerald prove that the President lied? If the rumors are correct that someone in the Administration has "flipped", then there's a good chance that the President's "displeasure" towards Rove was well known within the White House. After all, this is a President who wears his heart on his sleeve getting pissed at his most trusted advisor over an issue that everyone was talking about. This wouldn't just get the rumor mill buzzing, but would likely lead to some communications within the White House about the President wanting everyone to get their shit together. Remember, the big news out of today's scoops isn't just when the President found out but his anger that his team "did a clumsy job". A single saved email along these lines and some fibbing by the President about what he knew and when he knew it could be all the rope Fitzgerald needs to hang Bush out to dry.

*dances a little jig*

If the indictments come out in the next day or two, with this scary hurricane in the Gulf...oh dear. It's gonna be bad.

At the top of every newscast on every network: "A massive hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico and a massive political hurricane in Washington."

Ick. Ickickickickick.

I hate it already.

Please no.

UPDATE: Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg.

Highly important information on that "Bush knew" story here.

Sounds credible.

And very troubling for everyone in the White House, including, possibly, Bush.

That Rove was smearing Wilson.

According to "a Presidential counselor."

Hm.

Read this Times article on Fitzgerald not issuing a report (because he's gonna indict). The last sentence is sort of strange and out-of-place.

Right?

Under Justice Department regulations, it is not clear whether Mr. Fitzgerald has the authority to issue a final report, even if he wanted to, although he has operated under a broad delegation of authority, issued in a pair of letters by James B. Comey, the former deputy attorney general. Those directives gave Mr. Fitzgerald virtually the same power as the attorney general to conduct criminal inquiries.

But even the attorney general is restricted in what information he can release publicly or present to Congress when it has been obtained, as Mr. Fitzgerald has gathered it, through extensive use of a grand jury, whose proceedings are secret. Even so, some lawyers have argued that Mr. Fitzgerald could issue such a report and have said there is general authority to report his findings if they are requested by Congress.

Without a report, it seems likely that questions about the case may remain unanswered and that a complete account of the administration's activities may never be known, including the details of testimony by the scores of administration officials who were interviewed in the inquiry.

The likelihood that crucial details might be kept secret would be increased if Mr. Fitzgerald brought charges that were narrowly focused on perjury, false statement or obstruction of justice counts involving misstatements by officials in their testimony. But he has also examined broader potential violations, among them whether there was an illegal effort, directed by senior officials, to disclose Ms. Wilson's identity.

Officials who testified or were questioned by investigators also included John Hannah, Mr. Cheney's principal deputy national security adviser.

Boom. End of article.

It's an obvious signifier. Hannah really hasn't been mentioned much until today, when he was identified as the White House Flipper.

The Times knows Cheney's gonna be indicted. That's my take.

Else, it's an awfully odd way to end an article...

Woof!

Read the article carefully. Look who the quotes are from.

Cheney's getting indicted.

And don't forget to read the article about the Cheney aide that apparently flipped.

I don't even know if I'm ready for it.

In a move people involved in the case read as a sign that the end is near, Fitzgerald's spokesman yesterday told the Associated Press that the prosecutor planned to announce his conclusions in Washington, where the grand jury has been meeting, instead of Chicago, where the prosecutor is based. Some lawyers close to the case cited courthouse talk that Fitzgerald might announce his findings as early as tomorrow, though hard evidence about his intentions and timing remained elusive.

You heard it here first: Cheney is an unindicted co-conspirator, at minimum.

MORE: Thrills and chills here and here.

Frist day at new job. Internet access here, apparently, which may mean this blog picks up speed.

Be warned.

Is probably going to be more about this than any of this fancy criminal indictment stuff.