Fun fact of the day

Karl Rove was fired by President George Herbert Walker Bush...for leaking...to Bob Novak.

You can't make stuff like that up. Actually, that's kind of old news. I'd heard it before, but it was months ago and I'd forgotten about it until I saw this great flash editorial cartoon from the great Mark Fiore. Don't know why that hasn't been mentioned much recently. Seems pretty relevant. But no one's been accusing the press of reporting relevant facts for a while.

How long can they hang on?

With regard to Rovegate, I think that the actual question at hand (Did Rove deliberately blow Plame's cover? or, Who blew Plame's cover?) is only of distant secondary importance to what should be the real issue: Why did Rove (or whoever) blow Plame's cover? Because the Bush administration deliberately distort the facts and misled the nation to war, and Plame's husband found out firsthand that his most powerful claim (They're getting uranium from Niger!) was pure bullplop.

As I noted before, if Rove did leak Plame's name to Bob Novak or Matt Cooper (you'll see in a minute why I leave out Judith Miller's name), it certainly harmed the intelligence community. But more importantly, it was done with the express purpose of discrediting someone who was discrediting Bush's justification for war. Someone found some facts that disproved (or, in AP style, "appeared to contradict") his "facts." The extent to which he went to try to cast doubt on Joe Wilson's findings clearly demonstrates how badly he wanted this war, and how afraid he is that America will finally shake free from the stupor that enshrouded them during "Shock-and-Awe" and "Indecision 2004."

I still hold on to a shred of hope that one day, preferrably soon, one of these straws will finally break that camel's back. In the face of all the evidence (No WMD, Downing Street Memo, Rovegate), it is no small miracle that Bush is not already locked up somewhere, the calendar on his cell wall full of court dates for countless crimes against humanity. One looks back on it all and gasps, why aren't the streets filled with angry Americans who are tired of being lied to every single time Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, McClellan, Mehlmann, Card, Novak, O'Reilly, or Limbaugh talks?

It has to happen sooner or later, doesn't it? The house of cards can't stand forever. Howard Zinn talked about why we must protest and fight when we feel we are victims of the injustice. We must believe that we can reach just one of the perpetrators of the injustice, one who has enough knowledge of the inner workings of the death star to bring it down. We want to make that one person wake up, have a moment of conscience, and come out and tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and free us all from the web of lies. Can't see any of the people above doing it, though...

Now, returning to Judith Miller, you may remember that I mentioned that there is a blogland rumor that she is actually Rove's source, not the other way around. And you may remember that she was the administration's WMD PR voice circa New Year's 2003. Well, Arianna Huffington links the two with this report on NYT's internal struggle over their "hero." It modifies the rumor and explains her potential motivation:

Not everyone in the Times building is on the same page when it comes to Judy Miller. The official story the paper is sticking to is that Miller is a heroic martyr, sacrificing her freedom in the name of journalistic integrity.

But a very different scenario is being floated in the halls. Here it is: It's July 6, 2003, and Joe Wilson's now famous op-ed piece appears in the Times, raising the idea that the Bush administration has "manipulate[d]" and "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Miller, who has been pushing this manipulated, twisted, and exaggerated intel in the Times for months, goes ballistic. Someone is using the pages of her own paper to call into question the justification for the war -- and, indirectly, much of her reporting. The idea that intelligence was being fixed goes to the heart of Miller's credibility. So she calls her friends in the intelligence community and asks, Who is this guy? She finds out he's married to a CIA agent. She then passes on the info about Mrs. Wilson to Scooter Libby (Newsday has identified a meeting Miller had on July 8 in Washington with an "unnamed government official"). Maybe Miller tells Rove too -- or Libby does. The White House hatchet men turn around and tell Novak and Cooper. The story gets out.

This is why Miller doesn't want to reveal her "source" at the White House -- because she was the source. Sure, she first got the info from someone else, and the odds are she wasn't the only one who clued in Libby and/or Rove (the State Dept. memo likely played a role too)… but, in this scenario, Miller certainly wasn't an innocent writer caught up in the whirl of history. She had a starring role in it. This also explains why Miller never wrote a story about Plame, because her goal wasn't to write a story, but to get out the story that cast doubts on Wilson's motives. Which Novak did. This version of events has divided the Times into two camps: those who want to learn everything about this story, and those who want to learn everything as long as it doesn't downgrade the heroic status of their "colleague" Judy Miller.

Ya gotta love McCain...

...for the same reasons the Christian Coalition hates him. He does his own thing, and nothing is ever black and white or party line.

Matt Drudge recently tried to make a big deal of the fact that Sen. McCain makes a cameo in the new movie, "The Wedding Crashers," because there are lots of boobs in the movie. He called it a "boob raunch fest," whatever that is. (Though it has been compared to '80s raunch movies like Porky's.) See, once upon a time, McCain crusaded against just that sort of movie in Congress. So obviosly he's a hypocrite, can't be trusted, etc., and therefore can't be the GOP presidential nominee in 2008.

Does McCain go into damage control? Nope. He goes on Leno to make fun of Drudge: "In Washington, I work with boobs every day."

'Nuff said.

Interfering in Intelligence

Here's what four real American patriots, CIA agents who worked with Valerie Plame, and who are all registered Republicans, have to say about Rovegate:

Not only have the Bush Administration leakers damaged the career of our friend but they have put many other people potentially in harm's way. If left unpunished this outing has lowered the bar for official behavior. Further, who in their right mind would ever agree to become a spy for the United States? If we won't protect our own officers how can we reassure foreigners that we will safeguard them? Better human intelligence could prevent any number of terror incidents in the future, but we are unlikely to get foreign recruits to supply it if their safety cannot be somewhat assured. If more cases like Mrs. Wilson's occur, assurances of CIA protection will mean nothing to potential spies.

Read the whold thing here.

Help me understand

Would someone please explain to me why, as the United States works on its "roadmap to peace" in the Middle East, it rigs the Iraqi election to ensure that people cozy with the U.S. but "hostile to Iran" gained power. The "Middle East" is not just Israel vs. the Palestinians. It is also Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Jordan, and several other states. Why do we seek out people who hate their neighbors and boost them into a position to act on that hate?

This stupid war, therefore, is actually counterproductive in the roadmap to peace. And not only that, it's counterproductive to peace in America, London, and everywhere else in the world. So I ask you again, Mr. President, what is our sacrifice for?

Drop the puck!!

It is a time to celebrate. Hope has returned to the pathetic slice of society known as Bay Area Sports. Because it appears that the NHL lockout is over. I'll tell you right now that I'm not one who's going to wait a while, pretending to hold a grudge against both greedy sides. No, count me in now.

I love hockey. I don't understand why people don't like hockey. Actually, if you don't like hockey, you may as well not read the rest of this. You have obviously never been to a hockey game. You have never even seen someone do this (2MB, avi), leaving two defenders and a goalie feeling quite abused.

And that's not even a Sharks highlight. The game's just amazing to watch. Think about it: They're doing this all while ice skating! And unlike all other Bay Area teams, save the Cal football team (ugh) (I'm a lifelong Stanford guy) blow chunks on their respective fields or courts, the Sharks have a good chance to be and stay good under the salary cap rules. They went to Game 7 in the West Finals last year against Calgary and their ex-coach and goalie. And with the new collective bargaining agreement, it'll be easier to retain guys like Patrick Marleau, Jonathan Cheechoo, and Brad Stuart.

And I don't want to get too giddy about it, but Scott Burnside of ESPN.com says that "it's not that big a stretch to imagine former captain Owen Nolan returning" to the Sharks. That would be awesome, and not only because my jersey would no longer be of an ex-Shark. He's solid, as long as he doesn't ever do this (2MB, avi) again right before the playoffs.

(Yes, I know some would argue that it's stupid stuff like that that turns some people off from hockey, and they may have a point, but men will be men, and things happen in the heat of the moment. And besides, I still don't think it detracts from the beauty of the game. If you need to be reminded why, watch the first video again. Or watch this one (4MB, Windows media). It's of the above-mentioned Stuart and Cheechoo during the last pre-lockout playoff season. Watch closely on the slow-mo replay. Absolutely amazing.)

Yes, I am still very upset that an entire Stanley Cup Playoffs was lost for apparently nothing, as the players could actually accepted a better offer in February that would have saved the postseason. Yes, I am still very upset that the owners simply hunkered down and wouldn't budge, insisting on a salary cap and revenue-tying, when it is their own foolish spending on free agents that got them in a financial bind in the first place.

But that's just the nature of the stupid world of capitalist, testosterone- and greed-driven "Business of Professional Sports." And now that this ugly episode is over, I say, "Game On."

Exactly

It's late and I had no intention to blog right now, but this gem needs to be read by every American, especially Republicans and "phony libertarians." It explains what Molly Ivins called "the divide between the rhetoric and the reality" of the Bush White House:

But conservatives lionize a President who speaks of “freedom,” as he enacts a program which threatens civil liberties here at home on the most fundamental level (some recent examples: here, here and here), and who speaks of “progress” in Iraq as that country descends further into bloody chaos with each day that passes. Bush is a man for whom concepts mean precisely nothing. The phrases he employs to justify his actions are devoid of content, and they refer to no specifics at all. And almost all his actions lead to results in reality which contradict the “ideas” he says he supports in utterly disastrous ways.

This is much deeper, and much worse, than mere hypocrisy, which is almost clean in intellectual terms by comparison. When someone is hypocritical, there is at least the hope of reaching him if we are able to make him see and acknowledge how his words are contradicted by his actions (and/or by other words). If someone alters his behavior after understanding his error, it is because he acknowledges at least to some extent the connection between words and particulars.

But if someone uses words and concepts in a manner which consistently reveals that those words mean absolutely nothing to him, it is not possible to reach him at all. There is nothing to reach—in the sense that there is no mind there capable of understanding what you are saying. On the most basic level, such people do not know how to think. When someone functions in this way—that is, when he is not capable of thinking in the most rudimentary manner—there is one method of survival that tends to overshadow all the others: membership in a group, or tribe, which he hopes will protect him.

The Devil's M.O.

Last week in discussing the Plame case, I referred to Karl Rove as the devil. Today, I found a WaPo column by Harold Meyerson that nicely explains why:

...becoming Karl Rove's fair game means you're in for a bumpy ride. Rove did not become George W. Bush's indispensable op only because of his strategic smarts. He's also the kind of ethically unconstrained guy Bush has wanted around when the going gets tough -- when the case Bush is making is unconvincing on its own merits, when he needs to divert attention from himself with a stunning attack on somebody else.

That's been the hallmark of Rove's career -- and Bush's. After Bush lost the 2000 New Hampshire primary to John McCain, Rove directed a slanderous campaign in South Carolina that knocked McCain virtually out of the race with a barrage of fabrications about the personal lives of the senator and his family. Once Bush decided to invade Iraq, and particularly after the weapons of mass destruction failed to materialize, Rove orchestrated the campaign to depict the war's critics as terrorist sympathizers...

Nice guy, huh? The WSJ Op-Ed page certainly thinks so. In today's editorial, titled "Karl Rove, Whistleblower," the WSJ actually thanks Rove for trying to prevent Cooper from getting the story wrong. It hails him as a hero, proposing that

the White House political guru deserves a prize--perhaps the next iteration of the "Truth-Telling" award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud.

Rrriiiggghhhttt... Sorry, don't think so. With apologies to my family for the cursing, Rove is a true Nixonian ratfucker of the highest order, and until recently, was very good at it. But this has the potential to be his undoing, which would probably leave Dubya feeling very naked and strip the GOP of its dirtiest political operative. This story is suddenly all over the media, the NYTimes is pissed off and fighting back, and Rove can't kill the story with a distracting attack on someone else because he is the story.

And even many Republicans are saying that it's in Dubya's best interests to deal with it directly, right now, even if that means firing Rove. After all, as White House Spokesman Scott McClellan said on Sept. 29, 2003, "If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration." If Bush hangs on too long in the face of mounting evidence, he will soon he appear to be complicit, if not in a legal sense, to a growing majority of the country. However, that's not yet the official party line. Nope, that's here. Maybe the whole party will just go down with Rove's ship, chanting the talking points all the way into the water.

One question everyone should want answered: Who told Rove that Plame was a covert agent?

Two rumored answers: UN Ambassador nominee John Bolton and New York Times Reporter Judith Miller. I think I'm going to be sick.

Obesity is patriotic

And also on this day, the Center for Consumer Freedom (God, I love lobbying group names) wants you to remember that many of our founding fathers fought and sacrificed so that you could have the right to be fat:

Far too few Americans remember that the Founding Fathers, authors of modern liberty, greatly enjoyed their food and drink -- from drafting the Declaration of Independence over pints to serving French fries in the White House. Now it seems that food liberty -- just one of the many important areas of personal choice fought for by the original American patriots -- is constantly under attack.

That is so utterly ridiculous I don't even know where to begin. Maybe I'll just direct you to a NYT op-ed piece by Paul Krugman instead.

Protecting the devil

For some reason, I haven't written before about the grand jury investigation of the leaking of Valerie Plame's name to the press. This may be because the public knows very little about what's going on inside the investigation. For one, it is amazingly hard to understand why the New York Times' Judith Miller is facing jailtime when she never wrote about the subject while Robert Novak is not, when he's the first person to actually have published her identity.

But now the case is nearing an end, and I find myself having very mixed feelings about it. Time Magazine's editor recently decided that the magazine would turn over all documents relating to Matthew Cooper's source to the grand jury, because "the same Constitution that protects the freedom of the press requires obedience to final decisions of the courts and respect for their rulings and judgments." Basically, since the court told them to, they have to, in the editor's opinion.

Here's why I'm conflicted: I believe that the Supreme Court made the wrong decision in declining to hear Miller and Cooper's appeal. Miller and Cooper were both prepared to go to jail to protect their sources, which, as a general ideology, I agree with. Anonymous sources are immeasurably valuable to news agencies, and allow us to know more of the truth.

The problem, however, is that in this particular case, the anonymous source they are "protecting" may very well be the devil himself, Karl Rove. More significantly, Miller and Cooper should have thought about Rove's (if it was him) motivation in leaking this information "anonymously." This was not the equivalent of Mark Felt, aka Deep Throat, who, whether out of true patriotism or personal vendetta, exposed corruption in the highest levels of government. Quite the opposite. This was to further the corruption in the highest levels of government and get revenge against someone who dared to question the administration's justifications for war.

Journalistic principles notwithstanding, why would Miller or Cooper be willing to go to jail for that? Besides, given both the NYT and Time's utterly pathetic record on reporting any of the administrations deception regarding this war, who cares if you lose Rove as a secret source. Doesn't make a damn bit of difference. It's not like your coverage can get worse.

What is our sacrifice for?

Happy Fourth of July! The president wishes to take the opportunity on this holiday to remind us that "times of war are times of great sacrifice."

Um, yes, but you still haven't convinced the majority of Americans that we are actually gaining anything from this "great sacrifice." In fact, every day more Americans are (finally) starting to realize that your "War on Terra" is in reality helping out the other side, making America less safe from terrorists.

If, in March 2003, we had spent the money and resources that we wasted on Iraq in Afghanistan and northern Pakistan instead, we most likely would have found Osama and crippled al-Qaeda. But because Shrub had to avenge the attempt on Daddy's life, we have done just the opposite. We abandoned Afghanistan, where the Taliban is apparently regrouping, and almost literally opened Iraq's doors and put out the welcome mat for thousands of terrorists, when there were none there before.

One of the curious things to me is why it took most Americans so long to realize this. I knew it nearly two years ago. But the rest of America somehow didn't figure it out until seven months after they voted to keep Dumbass Dubya in charge of things for another four years.

Even the seemingly incriminating Downing Street Memos don't seem to anger Americans enough to mobilize them into calling for impeachment. Oddly enough, the reaction I've gotten, even from some liberals, is, "So what? We already knew he was lying about the reasons for war. That's old news."

So what?! This is a "smoking gun" if I ever saw one. The man's lies have killed at least 1,740 American soldiers and cost $200 billion. And both of those numbers continue to rise with no end in sight. (BTW, is the insurgency in its "last throes" or will it continue for 12 more years, Messrs. Cheney and Rumsfeld?) Bill Clinton was impeached over a blowjob that cost zero lives, and the $45 million (not billion) that it cost was only on Ken Starr's pointless investigation.

But none of this apparently matters. With a Congress controlled by mindless GOP drones, Sen. John Conyers can't even secure an actual conference room in the Capitol building to hold his Downing Street hearing. Why should we expect actual impeachment proceedings to begin? And the press isn't doing a damn thing about it, either. Robert Redford, who starred in the Watergate movie, "All the President's Men," is right on:

There are deep similarities going on but where is the press? Where is the press?

There is stone-walling, not telling the truth, getting people under wiretaps. The US public continues to be told things that are not true...

But does the press care? Nope. Remember, Bush lying is old news. No need to dwell on the past. We must finish what we started in Iraq.