Blah Blah Blog

A few out there are catching on to the update I added to Tuesday's post about Gonzales trying to have it both ways with his testimony.

From the left: TPMMuckracker.

From the right: National Review.

My take? Technically, Attorney General Gonzales is right. He's been careful to answer questions specifically about the program "described by the President" in January 2006. The lie is that his questioners have always been asking about the broad scope of spying activities, long before it became public and got a big fancy Orwellian name - "Terrorist Surveillance Program."

National Review suggests Mr. Gonzales is parsing to keep details of classified activities classified. They're wrong. He's parsing to keep presumably illegal activities classified.

And no one seems to remember that when all of this started, the big liarhead wasn't even under oath.

Jesus. Thanks, Senator Specter.

If the dumbest semi-retired soul-rocker in Delmar can figure this crap out, why hasn't anyone in the meanstream media stumbled on it?

UPDATE 1: Wow. I wrote "meanstream" instead of "mainstream." Paging Dr. Freud.

UPDATE 2: Here comes the meanstream with some choice leaks: the New York Times and some careful whistleblowers remind us about the "other activities" that top DOJ officials were ready to resign over: domestic data mining.

Tip. Of. The. Iceberg.

Keep those leaks coming, y'all.

Labels: in the news

Incompetent? That's EXACTLY what he wants you to think.

If his testimony in April was a train wreck, then his testimony today was the effin' Hindenburg.

But that's okay. Because in Mr. Gonzales' mind, his job as Attorney General is not to enforce the laws of the nation. His job is to serve the White House - and specifically President Bush - which is why he will say whatever it takes to keep from revealing White House involvement in the politicization of the Justice Department and the illegal domestic spy program. No matter how silly, forgetful, stupid or incompetent his answers make him seem, as long as it deflects the white-hot light of a Congressional investigation from the White House and back to him, he'll say it. He's cool with it.

The result? Classic Abbott and Costello "Who's on First" shit. Under oath. In the halls of Congress.

Starts in video at 3:30 remaining.

GONZALES: I clarified my statement two days later with the reporter.

SCHUMER: What did you say to the reporter?

GONZALES: I did not speak directly to the reporter.

SCHUMER: Oh, wait a second -- you did not.

(LAUGHTER)

OK. What did your spokesperson say to the reporter?

GONZALES: I don't know. But I told the spokesperson to go back and clarify my statement...

SCHUMER: Well, wait a minute, sir. Sir, with all due respect -- and if I could have some order here, Mr. Chairman -- in all due respect, you're just saying, "Well, it was clarified with the reporter," and you don't even know what he said. You don't even know what the clarification is. Sir, how can you say that you should stay on as attorney general when we go through exercise like this, where you're bobbing and weaving and ducking to avoid admitting that you deceived the committee? And now you don't even know. I'll give you another chance: You're hanging your hat on the fact that you clarified the statement two days later. You're now telling us that is was a spokesperson who did it. What did that spokesperson say? Tell me now, how do you clarify this?

GONZALES: I don't know, but I'll find out and get back to you.

GONZALES: I Don't Know.

SCHUMER: Third base!

The most telling phrase in that transcript is "LAUGHTER." In all-caps, no less! His testimony is so ridiculous it evokes laughter. Like the great convicted perjurer and obstructer of justice Scooter Libby before him. If it was a Saturday Night Live skit I'd think it was too over-the-top to be funny.

Even the White House wants you to think Gonzales is incompetent. Remember the leaks by those oh-so-concerned White House insiders after the April testimony? Remember all of the concerned GOP representatives predicting Gonzales would have to resign?

Bunch of liars. They want you to think Gonzales is the issue, not the White House. Liars.

Don't fall for it. He is not incompetent - he knows exactly what he's doing.

Indeed, in serving as a firewall to the White House, he is absolutely competent.

UPDATE JULY 25: Well, what have we here? If all goes well I spoke too soon and Mr. Ridiculous has perjured himself. Like Scooter Libby before him.

Don't get your hopes up. If you parse his responses, he's linguistically having his cake and eating it too - something I noticed back in April that became more obvious on Tuesday.

It's like this: if one specific - even illegal - aspect or operation of the domestic spy program was never officially authorized by the Department of Justice as part of what eventually came to be known as the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program, then technically he's right.

Remember: the White House didn't use that term publicly until January 2006.

So to paraphrase one headline I saw late yesterday, it depends on what your definition of "program" is. Is it the illegal bullshit that was going on before Ashcroft and Comey stood their ground in the hospital room, or the revised version of the illegal bullshit that went on after the hospital visit?

In his testimony he's been super careful to always refer to the program as the after-the-fact bullshit, but in a way that's vague enough to leave the impression that the before-the-fact and after-the-fact bullshit were one and the same. Dig:

"The dissent related to other intelligence activities," Gonzales testified at Tuesday's hearing. "The dissent was not about the terrorist surveillance program."

"Not the TSP?" responded Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. "Come on. If you say it's about other, that implies not. Now say it or not."

"It was not," Gonzales answered. "It was about other intelligence activities."

When he once again returns to the Senate to "clarify" his previous testimony, he's going to argue to the teeth that he's always been referring the "program" as whatever was finally authorized after that hospital visit.

It's absolutely misleading and I wouldn't let my four-year-old get away with that kind of an answer. But I think that's his loophole. And you could drive a Hummer through it.

Not an armored HumVee, of course. You drive through a loophole with the Hummer you have, not the Hummer you wish you had.

Labels: in the news

[Photo by Luanne Ferris appears courtesy of the Times Union.]

See all of the musicial celebrations of the Capital Region tonight at 9 on WMHT.

Including yours truly.

Preview it all here.

Follow along with the lyrics here.

Labels: hiddencity, music

Our little ham, hamming it up after dinner Friday night.

I'm playing in Woodstock this weekend - a short set as part of the Colony Cafe's Second Sunday Songwriters Series, with Patrick Fitzsimmons (From Good Homes) and our fearless host/leader Carl Bethge. Q&A on songwriting immediately following our sets. The fun starts at 7. Five tiny dollars gets you in.

See ya there?

Cheers,

B.

Any idiot could have predicted that President Bush would commute Libby's sentence.

Why not a full pardon? Because a pardon means that Libby would lose his Fifth Amendment right to refuse to testify under oath about the president and vice president's involvement in the Plame leak in future proceedings, such as, oh, maybe congressional hearings, or the civil suit filed by Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson.

Libby's crime is that he lied to investigators to provide a firewall to Bush and especially Cheney's direct involvement in the Plame leak. The lie is the perjury charge - the firewall is the obstruction of justice.

I vomit a little bit in my mouth every time I hear a conservative say that there was "no underlying crime," because the conspiracy to out Plame - orchestrated by Cheney and directly sanctioned by the president - was absolutely a crime. You go after a vice president or a president, you betta have all of your ducks in a row. Libby's lies made it hard - if not impossible - for Fitzgerald to pursue Cheney or Bush to prosecute. He had the ducks, maybe - but not in a row.

And yes - Libby didn't just misremember. He flat out lied. He was counting on journalists not talking when he told investigators he heard Plame's identity from NBC's Tim Russert "as if I was learning it for the first time" - until his notes and Cheney's notes made it clear that he'd already been informed of Plame's identity by the vice president himself. Ooops. Then his story became: I forgot that I already knew. Ooops.

I listened to all 8 hours of testimony (yes, I'm a geek, I know). Towards the end, there's an "I can't recall" that's so oddly yet conveniently placed that the grand jury actually LAUGHS at him.

FITZGERALD: Have you talked to [Ari Flesicher] at all about [this investigation] since he's left government?

LIBBY: Not that I know of. [Muffled laughs in grand jury room.] Was that a strange answer?

Listening to the actual testimony, it's never that he can't recall - it's that he remembers everything in large detail - including the made-up events of the phone conversation with Russert - right up until the moment where Fitzgerald asks him to go into detail about anything that might implicate him or the vice president in the aforementioned conspiracy. After seven hours of this B.S., that "not that I know of" becomes the straw that breaks the grand jury's back. Laughter!

In keeping Libby from going to prison, President Bush guarantees there will be no last-minute deals between Libby's lawyers and Fitzgerald, no incentive for him to finally come clean about Bush and Cheney's involvement in the Plame outing.

So Libby sees no jail time.

"Excessive," says the president.

Think about that: Even one minute of prison time for the guy who let Judy Miller sit in jail for three months is "excessive."

So now it's not just Libby who's directly obstructing justice.

By acting to guarantee Libby's silence, President Bush is a party to the obstruction, too.

Nice.

Happy Fourth of July.

Labels: in the news

President George W. Bush. July 2007.

I respect the jury's verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.

Gov. George W. Bush. September 1999. (Interview with Tucker Carlson for Talk magazine.)

In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, a number of protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Karla Faye Tucker. "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask.

Bush whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't meet with any of them", he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with Tucker, though. He asked her real difficult questions like, 'What would you say to Governor Bush?'"

"What was her answer?" I wonder.

"'Please,'" Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "'don't kill me.'"

I must look shocked - ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel - because he immediately stops smirking.

UPDATE: Olbermann:

Even Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign

Would that you could say that, Mr. Bush.

And that you could say it for Mr. Cheney.

You both crossed the Rubicon yesterday.

Which one of you chose the route, no longer matters.

Which is the ventriloquist, and which the dummy, is irrelevant.

But that you have twisted the machinery of government into nothing more than a tawdry machine of politics, is the only fact that remains relevant.

It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them - or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them - we would force our independence, and regain our sacred freedoms.

We of this time - and our leaders in Congress, of both parties - must now live up to those standards which echo through our history:

Pressure, negotiate, impeach - get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.

And for you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task.

You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed.

Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.

Resign.

Labels: in the news