Category: White House

White House does John Conlee?

Seems so…

Via Think Progress:

During today’s White House press briefing, deputy spokesman Tony Fratto admitted that the White House has, at least up until recently, been looking at Iraq through “rose-colored glasses.” Responding to a question about the rising violence in Iraq, Fratto said, “I think we have thrown out all of the rose-colored glasses in how we look at Iraq and try to look at it through clear lenses as to what is going on in the country.” Fratto later added: “Like I said, we threw out the rose-colored glasses. I think we have a clear-eyed view of what’s happening in Baghdad.”

Think Progress has the video.

Cue John Conlee:

 

But then again, hasn’t George W. Bush’s Presidency been served by looking through those glasses? 

Others: Salon and The Carpetbagger Report

Living proof that our Government is staffed blatant idiots….

I saw this and I thought, "Has common sense went totally out the window?"

The Article: For the Record: Seriously, What is the FBI Doing? (via Investigative Project on Terrorism)

Quote:

In February, we exposed the latest FBI (and CIA) outrage, advertising for recruits in a pro-terrorist, anti-American magazine, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) – (see: Looking Under a Rock: FBI and CIA Hit New Low in Recruitment Drive). Both of our top national security agencies had placed online advertisements on the webpage of a magazine that included a hagiography to a terrorist the FBI had worked almost a decade to investigate and prosecute, Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Sami Al-Arian.

Just over a month later, it is clear that the FBI has learned nothing. The agency is advertising for recruits in the Arab American News, another publication with a long history of support for terrorism, terrorists and terrorist organizations. The current edition has an editorial titled, "Let our people go!," under an ad banner recruiting for the FBI (which also appears on the home page of the website), about accused Iraqi spy Muthanna al-Hanooti, which states:

Arab American political activist Muthanna al-Hanooti was arrested and jailed this week by federal officials upon arrival at Detroit Metropolitan Airport returning from a trip to the Middle East. The following day he was charged with two counts of conspiracy and three counts of lying to the FBI about working for agents with the Iraqi Intelligence Service under Saddam Hussein. (emphasis added)

Screen shot of said website:

62_large

 

I mean, really gentleman, can we be anymore stupid than this? Advertising on a pro-terrorist website??!?! Somebody dropped a huge ball here, somewhere along the line.

That’s our wonderful government, being ran incompetent ogres, who base their terror warnings on "Gut Feelings".  

…..and we PAY these people??!?!

Others: The Jawa Report and Little Green Footballs

Hillary Clinton fired from Lawyer Job

This juicy bit of info came out yesterday and I didn’t get chance to Blog about it.

This comes via the guys over at HotAir.com.

An Article by Dan Calabrese basically removes any varnish off of Hillary Clinton’s Lawyer days. Calabrese quotes Jerry Zeifman, a life long Democrat as saying the following:

Quote:

As Hillary Clinton came under increasing scrutiny for her story about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, one question that arose was whether she has engaged in a pattern of lying.

The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.

Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.

Why?

“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

It is being reported that this isn’t really news, however, it is the first time that I have heard of it. So, far only Conservative Blogs are talking about it, I haven’t seen any movement by the bigger Blogs, but if this did catch fire, it could spell the end of Hillary Clinton. Because basically, she’s used her years as a lawyer to say she is ready for the White House.

Zeifman goes on to say at his website:

After hiring Hillary, Doar assigned her to confer with me regarding rules of procedure for the impeachment inquiry. At my first meeting with her I told her that Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter Rodino, House Speaker Carl Albert, Majority Leader “Tip” O’Neill, Parliamentarian Lou Deschler and I had previously all agreed that we should rely only on the then existing House Rules, and not advocate any changes. I also quoted Tip O’Neill’s statement that: “To try to change the rules now would be politically divisive. It would be like trying to change the traditional rules of baseball before a World Series.”

Hillary assured me that she had not drafted, and would not advocate, any such rules changes. However, as documented in my personal diary, I soon learned that she had lied. She had already drafted changes, and continued to advocate them. In one written legal memorandum, she advocated denying President Nixon representation by counsel. In so doing she simply ignored the fact that in the committee’s then most recent prior impeachment proceeding, the committee had afforded the right to counsel to Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

I had also informed Hillary that the Douglas impeachment files were available for public inspection in the committee offices. She later removed the Douglas files without my permission and carried them to the offices of the impeachment inquiry staff — where they were no longer accessible to the public.

Hillary had also made other ethical flawed procedural recommendations, arguing that the Judiciary Committee should: not hold any hearings with – or take depositions of — any live witnesses; not conduct any original investigation of Watergate, bribery, tax evasion, or any other possible impeachable offense of President Nixon; and should rely solely on documentary evidence compiled by other committees and by the Justice Departments special Watergate prosecutor.

If any of the above is true, Hillary Clinton could be in deep trouble should this story begin tread water among the main stream media.

Ed Morrissey on this:

The right to counsel is considered one of the inviolable tenets of our justice system. It doesn’t speak well of ambitious attorneys working on a highly-charged political investigation that she wanted to deny someone the right to an attorney. Small wonder Zeifman questioned her ethics.

If all she did was to propose that as a tactic, that would not make it terribly concerning — but she did much more than just spitball ideas. When informed that public evidence showed a precedent for the right to counsel, she absconded with the files to eliminate the evidence. Does that remind anyone of later incidents in the Clinton narrative, such as the billing records for the Rose Law offices and the 900+ raw FBI files on political opponents of the Clintons?

For the sake of the Democrats and for the sake of this election, I am hope that this story just dies off and goes away. I mean, the Democrats have enough trouble right now as it is.

Should be interesting indeed.

Others: protein wisdom, TBogg, Power Line, Doug Ross, Stop The ACLU, PoliGazette, Pat Dollard, North Star Writers Group, NewsBusters.org, QandO, Secular Blasphemy and Digg (via Memeorandum)

US Military to recruit Bloggers to spread Pro-War Propaganda

That is the report from "Danger Room", A National Security Blog at Wired.com.

Quote:

A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested "clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent Bloggers." 

Since the start of the Iraq war, there’s been a raucous debate in military circles over how to handle blogs — and the servicemembers who want to keep them. One faction sees blogs as security risks, and a collective waste of troops’ time. The other (which includes top officers, like Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. William Caldwell) considers blogs to be a valuable source of information, and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, both at home and abroad.

This report does not surprise me, nor is a huge revelation. I believe that US Military in Iraq, at some point, when the Iraq War began to turn sour, began to instruct some of it’s Military personnel to sign up for Blogs, say on Blogspot and WordPress, under false Iraqi names, like Omar and Mohammad, and to begin to preach the good values of this War and the Bush Administration.

One of these blogs already exists. It is called "Iraq, The Model"; it has been in existence since November of 2003. It is "supposedly" run by someone in Iraq.

Sorry, I am not buying it. The English is too good. I accused the person that owns this Blog of being a covert American once and he flew into a rage and called me a liar, and then amazingly my comments on the Blog disappeared. As if he did not want to arouse anyone’s suspicions, I suppose.

My question is, does the Bush Administration really believe that the American people are that damned gullible? That we are just going to blindly buy the lie that this war is just going along smoothly and everything is perfect. I mean really!

Coupled with that and continued moving of the Goal posts as to why we should be there! First, it was to topple Saddam, and then it became to fight against Al-Qaeda, and so forth. I mean, somewhere along the line, the American people realized that the Bush Administration was full of crap.

It just cracks me up, that George W. Bush and his Administration actually sit up there, in the White House thinking of ways that they can deceive the American people into believing that this war was even remotely justified. Everyone knows, that actually reads the news, which is good percentage of America, that the whole invasion of Iraq was an abdication of U.S. Intelligence, from the ground up. Does anyone remember, "Slam Dunk"?

Mr. President, in case you have been away or a bit busy, this is not 1941! We do have the thing called the Internet and a thing called Blogs and various other kinds of Alternative news sources! You cannot control the type of news that comes out of Iraq. No matter how hard you try! You would think a man that ended up in the White House would be smart enough to know this sort of a thing. But then again, we are talking about George W. Bush, the former cokehead, the former womanizer, the former Drunk, the guy who walked away from the Military, the Former Black sheep of the Bush Family, are we not?

Of course, upon further reflection, this is the mindset of the Republican Party, the party of the wealthy in our society. The sick and twisted mentality of "They are just stupid common people, they’ll believe anything we tell them.” The sad part is, within the Republican Party, there does exist a certain amount of that sort of Mentality. It is generally made up of the viewers of the Fox News Channel. In fairness, there are liberals like that too. "Believe what you are told and shut up and accept it and get back to work!" is the mentality of the good part of America. Thank God for people like Edward C. Marrow, and Keith Olbermann and many others, including those in the Blogging community, that have stood up and said, "No More!" and have sought to expose this Administration for what it is. Corrupt.  

I am not sure how I feel about this story, angry or sad. Angry because of the Blatant stupidity that it exhibits, or sad for our nation, sad because the American government is having to stoop to the level of hiring professional Bloggers to print lies about this war.  

November 2008 cannot come quick enough for me.

Others: THE LIBERAL JOURNAL, Think Progress, Shakesville and Left in the West (via Memeoradum)

Clinton not paying her bills

No wonder people want her to drop out!

Quote:

Among the debts reported this month by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s struggling presidential campaign, the $292,000 in unpaid health insurance premiums for her campaign staff stands out.

Clinton, who is being pressured to end her campaign against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, has made her plan for universal health care a centerpiece of her agenda.

The campaign provides health insurance to all its employees, their spouses, partners and children — and that wasn’t interrupted by any lag in payments to insurance providers, said Jay Carson, a Clinton campaign spokesman.

He said the campaign this month paid off all outstanding bills to Aetna Healthcare and CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield. Those payments will be reflected on a report the campaign will file this month with the Federal Election Commission, which Carson said will show “zero debt owed to both vendors.”

“Sometimes invoices are not paid immediately because we need additional information for our records, or to verify expenses,” Carson said in a statement e-mailed to Politico. “Sometimes invoices arrive at the very end of the month at the cutoff of the reporting period, which means that we are required to report them as a debt on the current FEC report, even where they are paid in regular course during the next month.”

But the unpaid bills to Aetna were at least two months old, according to FEC filings.

Wow. Just Wow.

If she doesn’t destroy the Democrat Party, She’ll end up bankruptcy court. Either way. Life’s not going to be kind to Hillary.

I wish Dean would get off his lazy behind to deep six this woman’s campaign. But we all know that ain’t happening!

Rolling EyesStupidity, Innate Stupidity.

Update: Speaking of Innate Stupidity, I called Hillary a Republican by Mistake! I was a bit tired when I wrote that.  Oops! Doh

Others: Pandagon, The Opinionator, Weekly Standard Blog, Hot Air, Prairie Weather, Daily Kos, Political Machine, Real Clear Politics, The Sundries Shack, Don Surber and A Blog For All

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As if President Bush needed any more troubles, Now this….

 Like Wow! It must be open season on his Administration.

Article: Report Says HUD Secretary Will Resign (via New York Times)

Housing Secretary Alphonso R. Jackson is expected to resign Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday night.

Mr. Jackson has scheduled a news conference for 9:45 a.m., 15 minutes before Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. is supposed to outline plans for dealing with the financial crisis set off by the risky mortgage lending.

If Mr. Jackson steps down, it would remove a key player from the administration team dealing with the problem.

It is an interesting read. Corruption at the highest level.

Other Bloggers via Memeorandum

Funding the very terrorists we're supposed to be fighting against

That’s right folks.

Via WorldNetDaily:

Just days after it was announced the U.S. would transfer $150 million directly to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ government, members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group, the declared military wing of Abbas’ Fatah party, were told they would receive cash grants, WND has learned.

According to Palestinian militant sources familiar with the issue, earlier this month, 20 members of the Brigades leadership in the West Bank city of Ramallah complained to PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad they did not have enough money to pay their bills, including, for many of them, rent for their apartments.

Last week, according to the informed sources, Fayyad told the complaining Brigades leaders he would provide them with a one-time grant of $3,000 each, or $60,000 to the Ramallah-based Brigades leadership.

The sources said after Brigades leaders in other West Bank cities, including Hebron and Nablus, heard of the grants, they also demanded pay increases.

"Some of the other fighters accused Fayyad of favoring the Brigades leaders in Ramallah since that’s where Fayyad lives," said a militant source. "So he gave grants also to other cells."

Unreal. Can the lies and deceptions, from this feckless administration, be any clearer?

I guess Ron Paul was correct. Rolling Eyes

Clinton Camp on Richardson's Endorsement…"Doesn't Matter"

"I’d kiss you, but these people and my wife would never understand…"

Via WSJ:

Quote:

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson finally made up his mind and endorsed Sen. Barack Obama today, but a senior adviser to Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign — which likewise spent months courting the former Democratic presidential candidate’s nod — dismissed its significance.

“Look, I think that everyone has their endorsers,” said senior Clinton strategist Mark Penn, adding — with a little huff — “I think New Mexico is a state that, actually, we won.”

“The time that he could have been effective has long since passed,” he continued. “I don’t think it is a significant endorsement in this environment.”

Perhaps sensing that it may not be effective to dismiss out of hand a popular Hispanic governor’s political clout, campaign spokesman Phil Singer chimed in. “We respect Gov. Richardson,” he clarified. “But at the end of the day this campaign is about Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama.”

Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters today that Richardson made up his mind “just very recently” and — unsurprisingly — saw significance in it. “We obviously think it’s very meaningful,” Plouffe said, referencing the behind the scenes jockeying the Clinton and Obama campaigns had conducted since Richardson withdrew from the presidential race in early January. “That process has been going for some time now,” Plouffe noted.

I normally do not use this source for entries, because of who owns them, and their newly discovered Republican and quite conservative slant. But this one warrants a posting.

The quote that bothers me is….:

“The time that he could have been effective has long since passed,” he continued. “I don’t think it is a significant endorsement in this environment."

Yeah, Okay Markus, then why the fuck did Bill Clinton basically invite himself to Richardson’s House to watch the damn Super Bowl? I know it wasn’t because they were best buddies.

Like I said in a previous entry, she can’t win, by a long shot, and now she’s in spin and denial mode.

So typical.

Rolling Eyes

Others: The Huffington Post, TPM Election Central, Donklephant, culturekitchen, Wonkette, Balloon Juice and Hotline On Call (via Memeorandum)

The Left is being played like a fiddle….

A sad, but true fact.

The story, Which comes via Newshoggers, who saw it at Rising Hegemon. A story that appeared in the Village Voice, the story of how the Republican Operatives are strongly trying to weaken the chances of a Democratic Nominee of winning in November.  Now in the interest for fairness, this is really nothing new, this sort of Political underhandedness has been going on for years. Nixon did it, as did others. But the reason why it is so bad in this race, for one, is because there is no fairness doctrine anymore, opening up the ability to editorialize the coverage of the election process, another factor is, that you have a Republican propaganda machine, known as Fox News, or as I like to call it, Faux Noise. But, because I am fair, Fox News is not the only ones that do this sort of thing. MSNBC does it, CNN does, even the so-called NPR, which is supposed to be a-political, has a noticed liberal slant to it. So, all in all, the Bias is on both sides of the camp.

Anyhow, on with the story….

Quote:

The prime movers of both political parties have long tried to game the presidential nominating process—not only to choose their eventual winner, but also to pick their November opponent. And in this landmark election without incumbents, the media wing of the Republican Party, in particular, has quite visibly been playing that game. Right-leaning pundits for months now have very openly not just called for Hillary Clinton’s head, but also coddled and promoted Barack Obama, salivating over the prospect of facing him in November.

Meanwhile, voters have been echoing that program: Barack Obama has been beating Hillary Clinton in part because Republicans are helping him.

Sixteen of the 45 Democratic primaries and caucuses held before this week were open affairs, allowing Republicans and independents to take part, and Barack Obama has won 11 of those contests. He almost invariably carried the Republican vote, which accounted for as much as 9 percent of the total in Wisconsin and Texas, and frequently ran even stronger among independents, who represented a fifth or more of Democratic primary voters in state after state. The 75 percent of the Republican vote that he won in Missouri, for example, may have pushed him over the top, and certainly, when combined with his 67 percent of the state’s much larger independent vote, it delivered many of the district-apportioned delegates to him. Republicans in Obama states like Washington, Wisconsin, and Virginia were even freer to cross the aisle, since by the time they voted, John McCain had already sewn up the GOP nomination. While Obama often won some of these states so handily that Republicans and independents could not have provided his margin of victory, there is no way to know how many delegates in close congressional-district contests will wind up in Denver because of the impact of Republican or independent voters. And there is no exit-poll data to measure their impact on the caucuses.

I highly recommend that you read the rest of this story, as it paints a tale of how the Republicans are attempting to destroy the Democrat nomination in November. The sick and sad part is, they are doing by using the old, outdated system of nomination and voting.

Cernig at Newshoggers weighs in:

In every case, these rightwing mouthpieces have ignored their own previous overt race-baiting to accuse the Clintons of being closet racists, have ignored their own open misogyny to accuse Obamites of sexism and generally muddied the waters every way they could.
Limbaugh, Novak, Kristol, Bennet, York, Hannity, George Will – all have their gamesmanship exposed by this must-read column. They’re all on the same page of the GOP playbook. It’s the page headed "Divide and Conquer".

Truly, this is a sad case, I just hope that Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton have the ability to overcome the negative press coverage and can be elected. Because we do not need four to six more years of the Neo-Conservative nightmare in this country. Now, if McCain nabs the Presidency, I won’t jump off a building or anything. But it will set this Country a great deal if he does. Not to mention, it will be the biggest embarrassment to the Democrat Party.

Here is hoping that things will work out, and the underhanded folk, on both sides, will be exposed, for what they are.