April 27, 2006

Honor and dignity
Federal prosecutors are investigating whether two contractors implicated in the bribery of former Rep. Randall "Duke" Cunningham supplied him with prostitutes, pursuing evidence that could broaden their long-running inquiry.

Oilscenity
Exxon is reporting a $8.4 billion profit in the first quarter of this year alone.

Exxon Mobil, in January, posted the highest quarterly and annual profits of any US company in history: $10.71 billion for the fourth quarter of 2005 and $36.13 billion for the full year.

ConocoPhillips announced record profits yesterday.

On Friday Chevron is expected to announce close to eleventy brazillion dollars in profits.

Fun fact: The American Petroleum Institute is spending millions of dollars in newspaper and television ads to convince Americans that their profits have nothing to do with higher gas prices.

Fun fact 2: Senate rethugs are now calling for a $100/person gas rebate - paid for by taxpayers, not the oil companies. So... how many fill-ups will that buy you? I'll get 4. That's like, what -- 2, net?

Fun fact 3: The rebate is only good if they're allowed to drill in ANWR.

Fun fact 4: The proposal is sponsored by brainless twat Rick Santorum.

Get out the shovels
Cover-up? Hours after it was announced that Tony Snowjob would be the new WH spokesliar, all of his many posts at RimJob's Circlejerk Central were deleted.


[W]hen it was announced he would be the new press secretary, the mountain of information Mr. Snow had submitted and had posted on the site disappeared. What is he hiding? This is who the White House has chosen to be a trusted deliverer of important information?

My assumption is that the White House doesn't want any of his private comments easily available.

- from OpEdNews.




Update: Blah3 did a Google search of Snow's posts.

Going down?
Oh yes.

The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that the public’s view of President Bush’s job, the economy and the nation’s direction have continued to decline.

“You have never seen such a sour mood in the country,” says Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducted the survey with Republican Bill McInturff. “It is sour, sour, sour.”


No lemonade for you!
----



Prelude to a perpwalk
We hope.
Karl "The Teflon Turd" Rove testified for the 5th time before Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury, 'undergoing several hours of questioning' yesterday -

Though his lawyer says Rove is not a target, one legal expert, Washington lawyer Stanley Brand, says Rove's latest appearance is 'an ominous sign' for the sneaky little shit rather than an indication the probe is coming to an end.

"I don't think you need to drag a guy before a grand jury just to wrap up," said Brand. "Rove is testifying in an investigation in which a White House aide has already been indicted for lying."

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Clicky.

April 26, 2006

Hammertime
Whack-a-mole - the Tom DeLay version.

PSM
Hey all, I'm going on vacation this Friday, so unless my hosts bought a new puter and got rid of AOL I won't be posting for a week.

Breaking: Karl Rove meeting with special prosecutor about leak case
According to sources, the slimy svengali is meeting to clear up some 'lingering questions' about his role in the White House campaign to undermine Ambassador Joe Wilson, ThinkProgress reports.

Dems: Lieberman too close to Bush
Democrats 'discontented' with quisling douchebag.

Bumper stickers spotted in Connecticut read, "Anybody but Joe - I want a real Democrat in '06." Campaign buttons show Bush and Lieberman in an embrace, with the words "The Kiss: Too Close for Comfort."

Edward Anderson is a New Haven blogger who helped a friend set up the Web site http://www.DumpJoe.com. in December 2004, angered by Lieberman's continued support of the Iraq war.

"In Joe's hometown, I can't find a Joe booster. If they are, they're a republican," said Anderson.

Lieberman has surprised several Democrats with personal calls asking for their support.

The Bushlapping vichycrat has also raised the prospect of running as an independent, the idea of which would be funny if it didn't end up aiding the republicans should he and Lamont split the Democratic vote. #ucking twerp.


Ick.

Appreciate you, decider-explainer
The Decider-in-Chief welcomes his new spokesliar:

Good morning. I'm here in the briefing room to break some news: I've asked Tony Snow to serve as my new press secretary.

Tony already knows most of you, and he's agreed to take the job anyway. And I'm really glad he did.

I'm confident that Tony Snow will make an outstanding addition to this White House staff. I am confident he will help you do your job.

My job is to make decisions. And his job is to help explain those decisions to the press corps and the American people.

He understands like I understand that the press is vital to our democracy. {Since when?!? - Ed.}

I appreciate Scott's offer to help Tony Snow prepare for his new job. And I'm proud to welcome Tony as part of our team. Appreciate you, buddy.



New propaganda minister announced
"Tony Snow changes departments at Fox News" - headline on the intarweb.

Fox News has confirmed that Tony Snow - who months ago called Chimpy McFlightsuit “impotent,” an "exhibitionistic frat boy" and “an embarassment” - will succeed Scott McClellan as White House press secretary. Helen Thomas seen giggling in the back of the press room.

April 25, 2006

"I believe there's an Almighty"
... an' he's got one helluva cokespoon with my name on it, dude.

Preznit Drinky McCrackhead tells audience "I base a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true" - like God - and says he tried to avoid war with Iraq "diplomatically to the max." Dignitude!

Yore doin' a heckuva jorb, Dumbyah
Joe Lieberman seen polishing his flipflops as a Hartford Courant poll shows that Preznit Liar McNutcase's job approval rating has dropped to 24 percent in his home state of Connecticut.

Party of accountability flailing in panic to distance themselves from skyrocketing gas prices, furious voters

Sen. Elizabeth Dole, brainless fuckwit chairwoman of the Republican Senate campaign committee, issued this statement:

"Democrats have decided to play partisan politics with gas prices in a flailing attempt to distract from the growing economy."
Oh really. Funny how familiar that sounds (scroll down to 7).

Fun fact: according to Open Secrets, oil and gas interests have given 80% of their political money to the GOP over the past couple cycles, AmericaBlog reports.

Fun fact 2: Bush today ordered a temporary suspension of environmental rules for gasoline.

Fun fact 3: both Bunnypants and Cheney are long-time oil men.

Shining a light on truth

Porter Goss' decision to fire Mary McCarthy for [allegedly - if you believe this misadministration - Ed.] leaking classified information to reporters perfectly fits the pattern of this administration: Hide unflattering information that Congress and the public should know, while selectively leaking classified information that fits the White House political agenda.

Examples of this administration's intelligence manipulation abound. The entire issue of whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was twisted like a pretzel to make a phony case for war. Then there's the administration's brazen, secret program to listen in on Americans' phone conversations, examine their e-mails and investigate them on the flimsiest of excuses that they might be tied to terrorism.

There is a good reason for classifying information that would damage national security if released. But the Bush administration has warped that concept in order to deceive Congress, the American people and the world about the nature -- not the substance -- of highly questionable activities.

- from a Star Tribune editorial.

Quote

"Few things are less becoming in a political party than desperation, as Republicans are now demonstrating as they panic over rising oil and gas prices."
- heh. From the usually gpuke-blowing Whore Street Journal. Boo-#ucking-hoo.

Catapulting the propaganda
Sources close to the White House said Monday that Fox News anchor Tony Snow-job is likely to accept the job as White House spokesliar, replacing sweaty doughboy Scott McCliar. He is expected to announce his decision within the next few days, allegedly.

Bush gets tepid welcome on GOP turf
Popular war preznit and decider dissed at repug 'town-hall' speech

President Lying Dumbass, aiming to shore up sagging support in a Republican bastion, came for a heart-to-heart talk on immigration Monday, acknowledging that some were puzzled by his choice of Orange County -- the heart of an area opposed to his immigration policies.

"That's what a leader does," the Decider inexplicably told a crowd of 450 business leaders at the Hyatt Regency as he roamed the room with a microphone during an hourlong town hall-style meeting.

Smirky McStupid got merely a polite reception from the kind of Southern California business crowd that usually lavishes him with cheers. And republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of Huntington Beach, who favored the tough House bill on immigration, didn't attend the event.

Mwwaaaa!

Swiftboating
A WTF alert: Falafel-abusing stalker off meds!

"For a number of years, some media people have been using personal attacks and smears to try to marginalize people with whom they disagree. They do this because they can't win the debate. So they try to demean and demoralize their opposition."
Why does Fox News gasbag Bill O'Reilly hate republicans? Oh. Wait.
"There's no question, the committed left wing media hates Fox News — along with me and some other commentators here — because we provide a balance to the overwhelming secular presence in the media. Well, that's no longer tolerable. And The Factor's now going to launch a campaign to hold these smear merchants accountable.
Secular? I don't think it means what he thinks it means. This is hysterical. You've got to read the whole thing. What a #ucking loon! Ladies and gentlemen, the Most Ridiculous Item of the Day is - once again - Bill O'Reilly.


Pic by Frederick David.

Bush's approval ratings slide to another new low
32% of Americans still extremely fucking stupid, poll shows.

Even more shamefully, perhaps, mouthbreathing sheeptards by 40 percent still consider the Lying Warmonkey "honest and trustworthy," even after new revelations that he lied us into war. Americans were evenly split on whether the Decider is "competent," with 47 percent saying not a chance, and 47 percent wacking off to Rush Limbaugh.

April 24, 2006

A new political headache for the White House
Soaring gas cost may mean worry for Bush, GOP

New polling data suggest the rising cost of gas could cause more political damage for the lying crooks of this misadministration.

Three-quarters of Americans said they disapprove of [the Decider]'s handling of the gas price surge, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll.

Fuel and oil prices jumped to third place - behind Iraq and immigration - in a Gallup Poll survey asking Americans to rate the country's most pressing problems.

Floaters
Josh Bolton stirring anxiety, fear in the WH.

[N]o one is sure who is in and who is out. Aides say they are on edge, and Mr. Bolten has promised more housecleaning this week, after ['the Decider'] returns from a trip to California.
Fun fact: though the 'shake-ups' are regarded as a good thing, repugs close to Bolten say that he "may be getting too much news media attention for the petulant little fuckwit Bush's liking."


The petulant little fuckwit.

****

Rethugs on edge after calls for more resignations
Hee hee.

The panic in Republican circles is palpable but the Democrats will face a tough fight. Yet the potential benefits for Dems are huge if they can win control of one of the Houses of Congress. It would mean that they could start heading investigative committees. Those committees would be armed with the power of legal subpoena and could take aim at a series of scandals from pre-war intelligence in Iraq to the fallout from Hurricane Katrina. That could lay a strong basis for launching hits against the Republicans in the run up to the 2008 presidential elections.

{evil laugh sounds here!}

"Perhaps it might be better, Mr. President, if you were more concerned with the American people, than with your image in the history books." - Gen. Buck Turgidson.

This was no boat accident...
Whoa - wrong movie.
"This was no intelligence failure. This was a policy failure."

When no weapons of mass destruction surfaced in Iraq, President Accountabilitude insisted that all those WMD claims before the war were the result of faulty intelligence. But a former CIA official, Tyler Drumheller - a 26-year veteran of the agency and the CIA's top man in Europe - has decided to do something CIA officials at his level almost never do: speak out.

Last night he told 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley the real failure was not in the intelligence community but - surprise surprise - in the White House. He says he saw how the Bush administration, time and again, welcomed intelligence that fit the president's determination to go to war and turned a blind eye to intelligence that did not.

"So in the fall of 2002, before going to war, we had it on good authority from a source within Saddam's inner circle that he didn't have an active program for weapons of mass destruction?" Bradley asked.

"Yes," Drumheller replied. He says there was doubt in his mind at all.

"It directly contradicts, though, what the president and his staff were telling us," Bradley remarked.

"The Decider - THAT asshat The policy was set," Drumheller says. "The war in Iraq was coming. And they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy."

You can't always get what you want
Mick Jagger refuses to give up hotel room to spoiled brat when White House asks for it.

“Bush’s people seemed to be under the impression that [the Stones] would just hand over the suites but there was no way Mick was going to do that,” a source saud.

"But... but... muh daddy stayed there!" the Boy King replied, pouting.


Pic by chakalakasp.

Bush fixer to advise Preznit Dumbass on Iraq
Now that Bunnypants has totally fucked things up, the adults in charge have called in Bush family consigliere James Baker "to generate new ideas on Iraq."

Baker, a longtime confidante of President Bush-the-Slightly-Smarter who has maintained a close but complicated relationship with the dumbass current president, plans to travel to Baghdad and the region to meet with heads of state on a fact-finding mission that officials say was encouraged by both father and son and mommy Condoleezza Rice.

April 22, 2006

Scenes we'd like to see
Via the marquee generator and Elayne:

Fun with captions


"It's hard work bein' the Decider!"
"Damn! Ah knew ah shoulda taken that dump before comin' out here!"
"Aw shit! It's Helen Thomas!!"

*****

Rice allegedly leaked national defense info

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice leaked national defense information in the same manner that landed a lower-level Pentagon official a 12-year prison sentence, the lobbyist's lawyer said Friday.

Prosecutors disputed the claim.

The allegations against Rice came as a federal judge granted a defense request to issue subpoenas sought by the defense for Rice and three other government officials in the trial of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, former lobbyists who are charged with receiving and disclosing national defense information.

Defense lawyers are asking a judge to dismiss the charges because, among other things, they believe it seeks to criminalize crime or something.

Heh - protestors drive Bush off campus
"This is what democracy looks like!"

Although President George Bush was scheduled to meet with fellows at the Hoover Institution on Friday, the presence of more than 1,000 protestors forced him to change his plans...

People continued to join the movement, and the slogans for reform grew louder as time passed. The magnitude of the protest ultimately forced Bush to conduct the meeting at Shultz’s house on the outskirts of the Stanford campus.

Let freedom ring!
Democracy's on the march!
They hate us for our freedoms!
We're a freedom-loving nation!

Protestor Wenyi Wang was charged on Friday with federal misdemeanor charges of "harassing, intimidating and threatening a foreign official." She may face up to six months in jail.


"It would be a heckuva lot easier if I was the dictator."
*****

Oh please oh please oh please
MSNBC: all signs point to Karl Rove's indictment.

1. The latest court documents, for the first time, name slimy fuck Karl Rove as a subject of the investigation - a "subject" being a technical term meaning somebody is under investigation.

2. The court documents go out of their way to say that Rove will not be called as a witness in Scooter Libby’s trial, even though Rove is a key part of the narrative.

3. Rove is referred in court documents as “Official A.” In every single case prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald designates somebody as Official A in an indictment, that person eventually does get indicted themselves.


Pic by Dieter Biskamp.

Smoking mushroom cloud
The White House knew there were no WMD before going to war.

The CIA had evidence Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction six months before the invasion but was ignored by a White House intent on ousting Saddam Hussein, a former senior CIA official said, according to CBS.

"The (White House) group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they were no longer interested," Tyler Drumheller told CBS on Friday.

"We said: 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said: 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change'," added Drumheller.

"The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy," the former CIA agent told CBS.

April 21, 2006

Tide turns on Dubya's wreck
Criminal sleaze and arrogant, Nixonian trampling of the law in Washington

The Bush Administration is falling to pieces.

In recent weeks, scanning the political coverage in the mainstream US media and sampling the blogs has been to watch a flood tide ebbing to reveal a rotting, skeletal hulk. It is the George W. Bush ship of fools, stuck in the mud for the world to see in all its mendacity, its incompetence, its faith-based stupidity.

It is possible, at this late stage, that even Bush himself has begun to realise something is wrong. That oddly simian face is ashen, the eyes leaden. The voice is shrill and its tone defensive.

"I'm the decider and I decide what's best," he squawked to reporters in the White House rose garden the other day, as the screws turned tighter on his disastrous Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Can you imagine Roosevelt, Eisenhower or Kennedy blurting something like that?

This is a trash presidency, founded on lies and knavery, fraud and ignorant ideological crackpottery. Compared to this lot, Bill Clinton was John the Baptist.

Dayyum! Word!!1!

Man, what a dog
Sanctimonious fuckwit Rick Santorum is officially the least popular senator in the US.

Eyes wide shut
“Vice President Dick Cheney gets caught napping yesterday as Donald Rumsfeld and other White House aides leave a press briefing by President Bush and Chinese leader Hu Jintao. The veep’s people later insisted he was reading his notes.”

Rummy looks like he's pretty much zonked himself...


"Zzzzzzz. Get off my lawn! Phthtph...
I'm gonna blow your goddamn heads off!
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz... mmmmph...."
******

PSM
Crooks and Liars is holding a Scott McClellan video clip contest.


"No, it is NOT true: small hands do not mean a small..."
****

Prayers
Sending hugs to Stranger, whose brother passed away last night.

Friday cat blogging


Berry and SpiceGirl. This is what they're probably doing right now, while I'm at work. Damn them.
****

John Dean: things are getting a bit 'Nixony' at the White House
'An increasingly dangerous president'

This administration goes through scandals like Rush Limbaugh does oxycont a compulsive eater does candy bars; the wrapper is barely off one before we've moved on to another.

Currently, Preznit Partypants is busy reshuffling his staff hoping the public will buy into the whole "he's reinvigorating his presidency" thing. But the hiring and firing of subordinates will not touch the core problems that have plagued Bush's deranged tenure. That is because the problems belong to the president - not his staff. And they are problems that go to character, not to strategy.

George Bush has misled America into a preemptive war in Iraq; he is using terrorism to claim that as Commander-in-Chief, he is above the law; and he refuses to acknowledge that American law prohibits torturing our enemies and warrantlessly wiretapping Americans.

Americans, increasingly, are not buying his justifications for any of these positions. Yet "the grown-up in charge" has made no effort to persuade them that his actions are sound, prudent or productive; rather, he takes offense when anyone questions his unilateral powers. The fucking dumbass responds as if personally insulted.

And this may be his only option: With Bush's limited rhetorical skills, it would be all but impossible for him to persuade any others than his most loyal supporters of his positions.

Whoa, snap!

Ummm, I've paraphrased somewhat, btw.

Land of the free
"The Constitution is just a goddamn piece of paper!"

As our dear Freedom Preznit urged China's President Hu to allow Chinese citizens to "speak freely," an American protester speaking freely was muffled and whisked away by the secret service. Now she may be charged with a federal crime.


Last night, officials with the Secret Service, which eventually dragged Wenyi Wang away and arrested her -- literally seconds after Bush called on China to permit more free speech -- said they are seriously considering charging Wang with an obscure federal offense, intimidating a foreign official.

According to our research, Wang -- a permanent US resident who reportedly practices pathology at Mt. Sinai Hospital -- could face a fine and federal prison time of up to six months.

'I'm sorry this happened,' the Dictator-tot said to Hu as the woman was dragged off by his imperial stormtroopers.