From the way Fitzgerald spoke in the press conference...sm

• Bye..Bye..Scooter Enjoy Your Time in the Federal Pen - gt
  • From the way Fitzgerald spoke in the press conference...sm - Democrat
  • You really devalue yourself.... - SM
    • It's bittersweet...sm - Democrat
    • He is *innocent* but is up to his eyeballs in lies and deciet...sm - Democrat
      • He is "innocent until - he fell on his sword
        • If you were accused of something, would you want the same? - Remember the golden rule. nm
        • Your choice, but it doesn't mean you're right (nm) - Rep
      • On the other hand.... - SM
        • Democrats/Liberals - Proud conservative
          • Iraq did not attack America, as much as you want to lump it all in one pot - they didn't...sm - Democrat
            • Iraq - Proud Conservative
              • I don't think anyone is less or more deserving, sm - Democrat
                • That's start of the war in *2003* nm - Democrat
            • Okay, as long as....SM - wordwizard
              • I remember when *intelligence* actually meant knowledge...sm - Democrat
                • Agree with you 100%, Democrat! - see msg - Starcat
                • Reply - SM
            • Iraq.... - SM
        • Much sleep is to be lost over this...our soldiers are losing their sleep...so - Democrat
        • Perhaps we can make a - distinction between - sm - Starcat
          • I do. nm - Democrat
          • Wow, you are amazing... - SM
            • Why thank you, I think you - are too! sm - Starcat
              • I have not defended anybody, but since nobody knows the facts,including you, - I reserve judgment. It's the American way.nm
        • Clinton wasn't killing innocent people. NM - AJ
          • One could argue that. - nm
            • Yes, one could. Is that an invitation? nm - AJ
              • The right did not have the same venom for Saddam when Clinton was in office...sm - Democrat
              • Do a little research on... - See msg
                • Hindsight is 20/20. The same argument could be made of North Korea if they decide to attack...sm - Democrat
                  • You said it all in one sentence... - SM
                    • I have read the quotes, so I hear what you're saying...sm - Democrat
      • That's *innocent* until proven guilty...sm - Democrat
    • I'm sure you defended - Pres. Clinton...sm-- Starcat
      • It may have started with sexual escapes. It ended with Perjury to a grand jury. - Myra
        • No, it started with a real - estate deal, but -- sm -- Starcat
          • The Clintons had more scandals than fleas on a dog. - NM
            • Here are some the conservatives forgot to add to his list...sm - Democrat
      • You're wrong... - SM
        • I certainly didn't expect - you to say I was right, but - sm - Starcat
      • Getting ready for all the excuses that cronyism attaches to their colleagues. It's coming soon, - AJ
        • Yes, AJ, don't forget the - always popular--sm- Starcat
          • That's the problem, they can't attack Fitzgerald...sm - Democrat

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If I didn't lose count, that's #8 since he was elected. Do I have to listen to 4 years of this?  Or is this just about chosing his cabinet and if so, did he fill all the spots yet?

I can read. I don't need to see him except when he takes questions from reporters.

FYI, I never listened to GW's press conferences either. I can't stand canned speeches.

Here is NPR's write up of today's press conference by the president for those who would like a quick run down.  I just listened to it.  Made me nauseous.

WASHINGTON December 4, 2007, 1:04 p.m. ET · President Bush said Tuesday that the international community should continue to pressure Iran on its nuclear programs, asserting Tehran remains dangerous despite a new intelligence conclusion that it halted its development of a nuclear bomb four years ago.

"I view this report as a warning signal that they had the program, they halted the program," Bush said. "The reason why it's a warning signal is they could restart it."

Bush spoke one day after a new national intelligence estimate found that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003, largely because of international scrutiny and pressure. That finding is in stark contrast to the comparable intelligence estimate of just two years ago, when U.S. intelligence agencies believed Tehran was determined to develop a nuclear weapons capability and was continuing its weapons development program.

It is also stood in marked contrast to Bush's rhetoric on Iran. At his last news conference on Oct. 17, for instance, he said that people "interested in avoiding World War III" should be working to prevent Iran from having the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon.

Bush said Tuesday that he only learned of the new intelligence assessment last week. But he portrayed it as valuable ammunition against Tehran, not as a reason to lessen diplomatic pressure.

"To me, the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) provides an opportunity for us to rally the international community — to continue to rally the community — to pressure the Iranian regime to suspend its program," the president said. "What's to say they couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program."

He also asserted that the report means "nothing's changed," focusing on the previous existence of a weapons program and not addressing the discrepancy between his rhetoric and the disclosure that weapons program has been frozen for four years.

Bush said he is not troubled about his standing, about perhaps facing a credibility gap with the American people. "No, I'm feeling pretty spirited — pretty good about life," Bush said.

"I have said Iran is dangerous, and the NIE doesn't do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world."

Bush said the report's finding would not prompt him to take a U.S. military option against Tehran off the table.

"The best diplomacy — effective diplomacy — is one in which all options are on the table," he said.

The president also said that the world would agree with his message that Iran shouldn't be let off the hook yet.

In fact, Europeans said the new information strengthens their argument for negotiations with Tehran, but they also said that sanctions are still an option to compel Iran to be fully transparent about its nuclear program. European officials insisted that the international community should not walk away from years of talks with an often defiant Tehran that is openly enriching uranium for uncertain ends. The report said Iran could still build a nuclear bomb by 2010-2015.

In Kabul, Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates reinforced the U.S. position that the new U.S. intelligence assessment shows that Tehran remains a possible threat. He said it shows that Iran has had a nuclear weapons program and that as long as the country continues with its uranium enrichment activities, Iran could always renew its weapons program.

The U.S. intelligence assessment "validated the administration's strategy of bringing diplomatic and economic efforts to bear on Iran," Gates said Tuesday, speaking at a news conference with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai.

Bush called the news conference, his first in nearly seven weeks, to intensify pressure on lawmakers amid disputes over spending and the Iraq war. Taking advantage of his veto power and the largest bully pulpit in town, Bush regularly scolds Congress as a way to stay relevant and frame the debate as his presidency winds down.

Democrats counter that Bush is more interested in making statements than genuinely trying to negotiate some common ground with them.

Specifically, Bush again on Tuesday challenged Congress to send him overdue spending bills; to approve his latest war funding bill without conditions; to pass a temporary to fix to the alternative minimum tax so millions of taxpayers don't get hit with tax increases; and to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

"Congress still has a lot to do," Bush said. "It doesn't have very much time to do it."

On another matter, Bush was asked about a rape victim in Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to prison and 200 lashes for being alone with a man not related to her — a violation of the kingdom's strict segregation of the sexes. Saudi Arabia has faced enormous international criticism about the sentencing.

"My first thoughts were these," Bush said. "What happens if this happens to my daughter? How would I react? And I would have been — I'd of been very emotional, of course. I'd have been angry at those who committed the crime. And I'd be angry at a state that didn't support the victim."

Bush, however, said he has not made his views known directly to Saudi King Abdullah, an ally. But he added: "He knows our position loud and clear."

The president said the U.S. economy is strong, though he acknowledged that the housing crisis has become a "headwind." He said administration officials are working on the issue, but he is wary of bailing out lenders. "We shouldn't say, 'OK, you made a lousy loan so we're going to go ahead and subsidize you.' "

Asked about the 2008 election, Bush steered himself back out of commenting on politics. "I practiced some punditry in the past — I'm not going to any further."

On other issues, Bush said:

—"The Venezuelan people rejected one-man rule" when they rejected a constitutional provision that would have enabled Hugo Chavez to remain in power for life and drive changes throughout Venezuelan society. "They voted for democracy."

—He talked by telephone Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and briefed him on the new Iran intelligence estimate. Bush also said he told Putin that "we were sincere in our expressions of concern" about irregularities in the voting that produced a sweeping parliamentary victory for Putin's party.

—He has "cordial relations" with Democratic leaders of Congress despite the sharp words between the White House and Capitol Hill. He blamed Democrats for the lack of compromises, saying, "In order for us to be able to reach accord, they got to come with one voice, one position."

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, October 21, 2005; 1:00 PM

Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has just launched his own brand-new Web site.

Could it be that he's getting ready to release some new legal documents? Like, maybe, some indictments? It's certainly not the action of an office about to fold up its tents and go home.

Fitzgerald spokesman Randall Samborn minimized the significance of the Web launch in an interview this morning.

I would strongly caution, Dan, against reading anything into it substantive, one way or the other, he said. It's really a long overdue effort to get something on the Internet to answer a lot of questions that we get . . . and to put up some of the documents that we have had ongoing and continued interest in having the public be able to access.

OK, OK. But will the Web site be used for future documents as well?

The possibility exists, Samborn said.

Among the documents currently available on the site:

* The December 30, 2003, memo from then-acting attorney general James B. Comey establishing Fitzgerald as an independent special counsel with all the authority of the Attorney General with respect to the Department's investigation into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee's identity.

* A Feb. 6, 2004, follow-up confirming that his mandate includes the authority to investigate and prosecute violations of any federal laws related to the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure, as well as federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, your investigation.

The Web site is bare bones and is still a work in progress, Samborn said. We have some document formatting issues that we're still resolving. As a result, the site has not yet been officially announced -- although there is a link from Fitzgerald's home page as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.

Up until now, the only official repository for documents related to the special counsel's investigation had been a page on the U.S. District Court's Web site. But it only included court motions and rulings.

Incidentally, if you call the number the new Web site lists for Fitzgerald's D.C. office, the phone is somewhat mysteriously answered counterespionage section.

But as Samborn explained to me, that's because the special prosecutor is borrowing space in the Justice Department's Bond Building from the counterespionage section. The office of special counsel doesn't really have its own dedicated space, he said.

about to come to an end soon?

I think October is going to be a very interesting month.

    Sunday 16 October 2005

    There hasn't been anything like it since Martha Stewart fended off questions about her stock-trading scandal by manically chopping cabbage on The Early Show on CBS. Last week the setting was Today on NBC, where the image of President Bush manically hammering nails at a Habitat for Humanity construction site on the Gulf Coast was juggled with the sight of him trying to duck Matt Lauer's questions about Karl Rove.

    As with Ms. Stewart, Mr. Bush's paroxysm of panic was must-see TV. The president was a blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts, Dana Milbank wrote in The Washington Post. Asked repeatedly about Mr. Rove's serial appearances before a Washington grand jury, the jittery Mr. Bush, for once bereft of a script, improvised a passable impersonation of Norman Bates being quizzed by the detective in Psycho. Like Norman and Ms. Stewart, he stonewalled.

    That stonewall may start to crumble in a Washington courtroom this week or next. In a sense it already has. Now, as always, what matters most in this case is not whether Mr. Rove and Lewis Libby engaged in a petty conspiracy to seek revenge on a whistle-blower, Joseph Wilson, by unmasking his wife, Valerie, a covert C.I.A. officer. What makes Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation compelling, whatever its outcome, is its illumination of a conspiracy that was not at all petty: the one that took us on false premises into a reckless and wasteful war in Iraq. That conspiracy was instigated by Mr. Rove's boss, George W. Bush, and Mr. Libby's boss, Dick Cheney.

    Mr. Wilson and his wife were trashed to protect that larger plot. Because the personnel in both stories overlap, the bits and pieces we've learned about the leak inquiry over the past two years have gradually helped fill in the über-narrative about the war. Last week was no exception. Deep in a Wall Street Journal account of Judy Miller's grand jury appearance was this crucial sentence: Lawyers familiar with the investigation believe that at least part of the outcome likely hangs on the inner workings of what has been dubbed the White House Iraq Group.

    Very little has been written about the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG. Its inception in August 2002, seven months before the invasion of Iraq, was never announced. Only much later would a newspaper article or two mention it in passing, reporting that it had been set up by Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff. Its eight members included Mr. Rove, Mr. Libby, Condoleezza Rice and the spinmeisters Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin. Its mission: to market a war in Iraq.

    Of course, the official Bush history would have us believe that in August 2002 no decision had yet been made on that war. Dates bracketing the formation of WHIG tell us otherwise. On July 23, 2002 - a week or two before WHIG first convened in earnest - a British official told his peers, as recorded in the now famous Downing Street memo, that the Bush administration was ensuring that the intelligence and facts about Iraq's W.M.D.'s were being fixed around the policy of going to war. And on Sept. 6, 2002 - just a few weeks after WHIG first convened - Mr. Card alluded to his group's existence by telling Elisabeth Bumiller of The New York Times that there was a plan afoot to sell a war against Saddam Hussein: From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August.

    The official introduction of that product began just two days later. On the Sunday talk shows of Sept. 8, Ms. Rice warned that we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud, and Mr. Cheney, who had already started the nuclear doomsday drumbeat in three August speeches, described Saddam as actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. The vice president cited as evidence a front-page article, later debunked, about supposedly nefarious aluminum tubes co-written by Judy Miller in that morning's Times. The national security journalist James Bamford, in A Pretext for War, writes that the article was all too perfectly timed to facilitate exactly the sort of propaganda coup that the White House Iraq Group had been set up to stage-manage.

    The administration's doomsday imagery was ratcheted up from that day on. As Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus of The Washington Post would determine in the first account of WHIG a full year later, the administration's escalation of nuclear rhetoric could be traced to the group's formation. Along with mushroom clouds, uranium was another favored image, the Post report noted, because anyone could see its connection to an atomic bomb. It appeared in a Bush radio address the weekend after the Rice-Cheney Sunday show blitz and would reach its apotheosis with the infamously fictional 16 words about uranium from Africa in Mr. Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address on the eve of war.

    Throughout those crucial seven months between the creation of WHIG and the start of the American invasion of Iraq, there were indications that evidence of a Saddam nuclear program was fraudulent or nonexistent. Joseph Wilson's C.I.A. mission to Niger, in which he failed to find any evidence to back up uranium claims, took place nearly a year before the president's 16 words. But the truth never mattered. The Bush-Cheney product rolled out by Card, Rove, Libby & Company had been bought by Congress, the press and the public. The intelligence and facts had been successfully fixed to sell the war, and any memory of Mr. Bush's errant 16 words melted away in Shock and Awe. When, months later, a national security official, Stephen Hadley, took responsibility for allowing the president to address the nation about mythical uranium, no one knew that Mr. Hadley, too, had been a member of WHIG.

    It was not until the war was supposedly over - with Mission Accomplished, in May 2003 - that Mr. Wilson started to add his voice to those who were disputing the administration's uranium hype. Members of WHIG had a compelling motive to shut him down. In contrast to other skeptics, like Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency (this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner), Mr. Wilson was an American diplomat; he had reported his findings in Niger to our own government. He was a dagger aimed at the heart of WHIG and its disinformation campaign. Exactly who tried to silence him and how is what Mr. Fitzgerald presumably will tell us.

    It's long been my hunch that the WHIG-ites were at their most brazen (and, in legal terms, reckless) during the many months that preceded the appointment of Mr. Fitzgerald as special counsel. When Mr. Rove was asked on camera by ABC News in September 2003 if he had any knowledge of the Valerie Wilson leak and said no, it was only hours before the Justice Department would open its first leak investigation. When Scott McClellan later declared that he had been personally assured by Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby that they were not involved with the leak, the case was still in the safe hands of the attorney general then, John Ashcroft, himself a three-time Rove client in past political campaigns. Though Mr. Rove may be known as Bush's brain, he wasn't smart enough to anticipate that Justice Department career employees would eventually pressure Mr. Ashcroft to recuse himself because of this conflict of interest, clearing the way for an outside prosecutor as independent as Mr. Fitzgerald.

    Bush's Brain is the title of James Moore and Wayne Slater's definitive account of Mr. Rove's political career. But Mr. Rove is less his boss's brain than another alliterative organ (or organs), that which provides testosterone. As we learn in Bush's Brain, bad things (usually character assassination) often happen to Bush foes, whether Ann Richards or John McCain. On such occasions, Mr. Bush stays compassionately above the fray while the ruthless Mr. Rove operates below the radar, always separated by a layer of operatives from any ill behavior that might implicate him. There is no crime, just a victim, Mr. Moore and Mr. Slater write of this repeated pattern.

    THIS modus operandi was foolproof, shielding the president as well as Mr. Rove from culpability, as long as it was about winning an election. The attack on Mr. Wilson, by contrast, has left them and the Cheney-Libby tag team vulnerable because it's about something far bigger: protecting the lies that took the country into what the Reagan administration National Security Agency director, Lt. Gen. William Odom, recently called the greatest strategic disaster in United States history.

    Whether or not Mr. Fitzgerald uncovers an indictable crime, there is once again a victim, but that victim is not Mr. or Mrs. Wilson; it's the nation. It is surely a joke of history that even as the White House sells this weekend's constitutional referendum as yet another victory for democracy in Iraq, we still don't know the whole story of how our own democracy was hijacked on the way to war.

First, he's talking about Iran. They say he is going to talk about health insurance, the economy, etc.

If history is still allowed to be accurate generations from now, this is how the inception of America, the evangelical theocracy, should be documented.

From: http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110007415
JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL

Judgment Call
Did Christian conservatives receive assurances that Miers would oppose Roe v. Wade?

Monday, October 17, 2005 12:01 a.m.

Two days after President Bush announced Harriet Miers's Supreme Court nomination, James Dobson of Focus on the Family raised some eyebrows by declaring on his radio program: When you know some of the things that I know--that I probably shouldn't know--you will understand why I have said, with fear and trepidation, that I believe Harriet Miers will be a good justice.

I don't know how they can stand up there and lie through their teeth like that...blaming the White House and Republicans for this financial debacle.  They know that is a lie.  They know, especially Chris Dodd, was central to this.  Also mentioned Barney Frank.  Good grief.  The hypocrisy is staggering.  They should be talking about getting us out of this mess....just yesterday they were saying don't play the blame game.  Telling McCain not to politicize it while they are politicizing it.  That man makes my skin crawl. 

And saying there was a "deal" and McCain blew it up.  The only "deal" was among senators...the only house person present could not negotiate.  He just had to listen.  If they had the plan and had gone to the house with it, then the house would have blocked it there and hours if not days would have been wasted.  Amazing the gall of some folks.  Ridiculous!!!

Why can't they all stop the political posturing and just fix this mess.  The House is only reacting to the onslaught of emails from their constituents saying protect us here, we don't like this carte blanche 700 billion.  I for one am GLAD at least the Republicans in the house said whoa wait just a minute here. 

You've got more guts than I do. They would have definitely gotten a dirty look from me, but I wouldn't have had the courage to say what I felt.

I hope they weren't able to "snare" too many impressionable young people with false promises and other lies. 

Did you hear that they're even telling would-be recruits how to pass drug screen tests so that they can still get into the military even if they're on drugs?  I don't think there's anything they WON'T do or say to meet recruitment quotas.

nm

Yesterday. This is a college that prepares students for teaching jobs. You can see part of his speech here: 

http://www.wgal.com/video/18971823/index.html

There was a one-on-one interview with him at:

http://www.wgal.com/video/18971823/index.html

The press might finally be wising up to a fact that's even more important (to their bosses) than playing suck-face with BO - namely, that even Americans who voted for this President are starting to really, really dislike his policies.  The last issue of Newsweek to feature an Obama (was it number 19?) barely sold enough copies to pay for the printing, and it's more or less a rule in the news business (and it IS a business) that "if they don't sell, they smell".  Obama is starting to sell less, and smell worse.  Lots worse. 

If the most recent news conference with BO is any indication, the honeymoon might just be over...and BO didn't like it one bit.  In fact, he got downright surly - and he is really one UGLY man when he gets surly.  Tsk - such a thin veneer.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/columnists/goodwin/index.html

Wallace's bash-the-media exercise has its merits as a campaign tactic. It certainly rallies the base. But the base won't lift McCain to 50% in November. More importantly, in her smug dismissal of the media's role in asking questions of the candidates, Wallace was really showing contempt not for reporters, but for voters.

for the answers to these allegations.