Karl Rove

Dismembering George W. Bush

Posted by on December 8, 2008 at 12:15 pm. 1 Comments :

As the administration of George W. Bush at long last comes to a close, the historical record of his presidency will begin to take shape. And like everything else that touches this president, the outlines of his legacy will be distorted by his accomplices and apologists. They will seek to recast in the public mind an accounting that bears little resemblance to reality. It will not be a remembering of the Bush era, but a dismembering, a mutilation of facts and consequences.

In pursuit of that goal, a coven of Bush minions has already convened to forge a counterfeit version of recent events. This faction of falsifiers includes the most notorious of Bush’s inner circle. Amongst the notables who have converged to sanitize and canonize the outgoing misleader are:

  • Karl Rove – Also known as the Architect or Bush’s Brain. Rove was the source of some of the most insidious propaganda emanating from the Bush White House.
  • Margaret Spellings – A Bush crony from the Texas clan. As Secretary of Education, with no experience in teaching or administration, she presided over millions of children being left behind.
  • Mark McKinnon – The Bush media advisor who received a recess appoint to the Broadcasting Board of Governors. His role as an advocate of fake news reports makes him an obvious choice to help fictionalize the Bush years.
  • Karen Hughes – A long-time PR flack for Bush whose work with the White House Iraq Group was instrumental in developing the lies used to sell war to the American people.
  • Alberto Gonzales – The Former Attorney General. A natural choice for historical recollections when, during testimony before Congress, he couldn’t seem to recall anything about his own tenure at the Justice Department.

The determination of this group to whitewash Bush’s reign of error will no doubt be intense. But so will be the level of difficulty. Bush is skipping out of Washington with the lowest approval rating of any president for as long as such ratings have been measured. Even worse, with regard to forming a legacy, is that majorities of historians rank Bush as the “worst president ever,” an awesome achievement considering competition from the likes of James Buchanon, Herbert Hoover, and Richard Nixon. The comments of one historian in the survey summarize the situation nicely:

“No individual president can compare to the second Bush. Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”

It will be interesting to see how the defenders of the Bush legacy respond to that. Karl Rove has already provided a preview of how the history manglers are going to proceed. And he is not shy about disseminating nonsense. He asserts that no one will regard the decision to take out Saddam Hussein as a mistake or that the broader war on terrorism was a miscalculation. Rove may have a point there, except for the fact that most Americans already regard the Iraq war as a mistake, and the broader war on terrorism has been miserably miscalculated, as evidenced by the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and the recent bombings in Mumbai. However, some of what Rove says is disturbingly plausible:

“No administration in the foreseeable future is going to go in and say, ‘You know what, we’re repealing the Patriot Act. You know what, we’re throwing out that terrorist surveillance program.'”

If Rove is right about this, than the American experiment was a failure. This is why it is imperative for Bush to be reprimanded by the law for his transgressions against the American people, the Constitution, and the world. If the Obama administration fails to undo these legislative and executive atrocities, then an abhorrent precedent will be set for decades to come. Americans may forever lose the freedoms for which Bush says the terrorists hate us. Maybe that’s his secret plan. If terrorists truly do hate us for our freedoms, then if you take them away the terrorists will no longer hate us – or hurt us. Safe at last. But Rove isn’t through prognasticating:

“We are better off for having woken up to the fact that we were in a war, and, mark my words, no president in the foreseeable future is going to step back from the tenets of the Bush philosophy, which are: better to fight them over there than to fight them here, and we will not wait until dangers fully materialize before we strike.”

The tenets of the Bush philosophy are nothing less than the grotesque advocacy of superiority and aggression. The phrase “fight them over there” is an overt declaration that non-American lives have less value and are expendable in the war on terror. Rove is making the argument that, while it is Americans who are fighting terrorists, it is everyone else who should suffer the consequences. And Bush’s doctrine of preventative war is not a policy of striking before “dangers fully materialize.” It is a policy of striking whether or not danger even exists. It is a policy of striking at shadows and illusions, except with real victims. Rove seems to have forgotten that no WMDs were ever found in Iraq. It’s too bad that thousands of Americans and more than a million Iraqis had to die in the interim. More likely, however, Bush’s philosophy is just a policy of manufacturing false justifications for attacking economic and ideological adversaries.

In the passage of time it is going to be important to preserve honest representations of the past. We must foil the legacy perverters in their attempts to fictionalize history. This means vigilance over the sort of odious assemblies described above, as well as over the media that has already been infiltrated by these and other revisionist historians.

If we are not vigilant, our legacy will be that we misunderestimated their strategery and we will forever dismember what actually happened in the dark days of Bush. And thus we will be condemned to repeat it.

Karl Rove’s Backup Dancer To Host Meet The Press

Posted by on December 3, 2008 at 1:59 am. NO Comments :

The official announcement may not come until Sunday, but it appears that David Gregory has been tapped to permanently replace Tim Russert on Meet The Press.

Gregory is currently the host of MSNBC’s “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” a dreary collection of monotonous pundits that barely registers a blip in the ratings. Gregory is probably best known for agreeing to embarrass himself by pretending to be one of Karl Rove’s Pips in a performance that has been immortalized on YouTube.

But I wouldn’t worry too much about whether he has what it takes to fill the fabled shoes of Tim Russert. Mainly because the fable has exaggerated the girth of Russert’s footwear. For the most part, Russert simply stole from Jon Stewart the device of juxtaposing his subject’s recent contradiction with his previous lie. Except it was funnier when Stewart did it.

I, however, will never forget the role Russert played in advancing the goals of the Bush White House as described by former Cheney communications director, Cathie Martin (wife of soon-to-be ex-FCC chief Kevin Martin) when she testified at the trial of Scooter Libby. Her testimony included the following:

Option 1: “MTP-VP”, she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under “pro,” she wrote: “control message.”

“I suggested we put the vice president on ‘Meet the Press,’ which was a tactic we often used,” Martin testified. “It’s our best format.”

In other words, it was a PR song and dance. Come to think of it, Gregory may be the perfect successor to Russert. So long as he can suppress the urge to shake his booty when presidential advisors are in the guest’s chair.

O’Reilly, Hannity, And Beck: What Recession?

Posted by on October 24, 2008 at 2:09 pm. 4 Comments :

The economy continues to spiral downward in the U.S. and the world. Nearly a million Americans have lost their jobs just this year. Trillions of dollars in value have been lost in retirement and pension funds. Home foreclosures long ago surpassed all-time highs. Close to 50 million Americans have no health insurance. But why focus on the negative?

In some quarters there is good news and unreserved celebration. That’s because there is an unshakable bull market in Fox News Pundits (Or should I say bullshit market?). In just the past few weeks Bill O’Reilly signed a four year contract extension for more than $10 million annually. Sean Hannity re-signed a multimillion dollar per year contract for TV, plus another $20 million for his radio show. Glenn Beck will receive millions more for his new Fox hackfest. Neil Cavuto’s income leapt when he was promoted to managing editor of the Fox Business Network (the “Business-Friendly Business Network”) In addition, Mike Huckabee, Judith Miller, and Karl Rove, were all hired on as Fox contributors within the last year.

So when you hear the elitists at Fox dismiss the severity of this downturn, when you hear them say that things aren’t really so bad, remember that what they are really saying is that things aren’t really so bad for them. It’s easy for them to be stoic in the face of adversity when they are raking in more millions every year. Their mansions and limos and vacation villas are as glamorous as ever.

They have absolutely no sense of the loss or pain or sacrifice that the rest of us are suffering through. And yet they will continue to pretend to speak for us. They will push their phony arguments as fighting for the average Joe (Six-pack, Plumber, Blow, or whatever). They will soft-peddle the crisis and project blame on the lazy, and the irresponsible and, of course, on Barack Obama. Just minutes ago Cavuto did just that, saying that the markets were reacting to Obama’s comments on “spreading the wealth.” For confirmation, Cavuto then turned to well known financial experts Joe the Plumber and Ted Nugent. Seriously!?! That’s the sort of ludicrous financial analysis you can expect from Fox.

For the record, a little over a year ago Cavuto, disputed reports of the economy’s weakness saying that he “[didn’t] believe a word of it.” Bill O’Reilly, recently asserted that the market was tanking because traders were pricing in a presumed Obama victory in November. He also foolishly claims that the drop in the stock prices of GE and the New York Times affirms his positions opposing them. But the stock of Fox News’ parent company, News Corp., has fallen even farther than either of them, so whatever O’Reilly thinks is wrong with GE and the Times, it is even more wrong at Fox. Here’s the real reason for the market’s decline.

In the end, these disingenuous con men have no frame of reference for what ordinary Americans are experiencing. They only have their comforting wealth and their rightist agenda that is focused exclusively on enriching themselves and their friends. And anyone who believes that these impostors are advocating on their behalf is terminally naive.

Fox News Hires Disgraced Journalist Judith Miller

Posted by on October 20, 2008 at 11:25 am. NO Comments :

In an effort to further make a mockery of the phrase “fair and balanced,” Fox News has announced that former New York Times reporter Judith Miller has been hired as a commentator for the cable propaganda network. Coming on the heels of last week’s announcement that imbecilic blabber Glenn Beck will be getting his own show on Fox News, Miller should feel right at home, along with Mike Huckabee, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and her very own White House source, Karl Rove.

Miller is best known for spending 85 days in jail for protecting Rove and Scooter Libby, who had conspired with her to slander Valerie Plame. Plame was the wife of Ambassador Joe Wilson who had revealed the lies that the Bush administration was peddling with regard to Saddam Hussein’s alleged aspirations for weapons of mass destruction. Miller and her cohorts outed Plame as a covert intelligence operative with the CIA, ending her career as well as her important work gathering intelligence about Iran’s nuclear activities.

Miller is also the author of some of the most distorted propaganda in support of the Bush administration’s intention to invade Iraq. She operated as a functionary of the White House, retelling their lies on the pages of the New York Times so that they could cite her stories as proof of the need to initiate a preemptive war of aggression. After the fact, the Times’ editor was forced to apologize for the journalistic sloppiness and deceit of Miller and her colleagues:

“Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper…while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.”

Miller left the Times in disgrace and later joined the conservative Manhattan Institute. Now she will expand her reach to viewers of Fox News, who will likely appreciate her right-skewed world view. And Fox gets another mouthpice to further its propaganda assault on America and the world.

To Fox News Hurricane Gustav Is A Political Problem

Posted by on August 28, 2008 at 12:02 pm. 9 Comments :

Currently a top story for Fox News is one that is blaring this headline:

Gustav Threatens GOP Convention Plans

That’s right…The category 3 hurricane that is bearing down on the vulnerable population of New Orleans and the rest of the gulf coast, is identified by Fox News as merely a threat to the GOP. Never mind the millions of Americans in harm’s way who must be pretty anxious considering how awful this administration handled a similar threat a few years ago.

Giving Fox the benefit of a doubt, it may be entirely appropriate to report on the impact of a severe storm on what is one of the biggest events for the Republican presidential campaign. If the headline were simply an unfortunate phrasing that tipped the tone of the article toward an insensitivity that they didn’t intend, it could be forgiven. But the article contains some affirmation of the headline’s myopic self-centeredness. The constricted view is first expressed in a quote from Karl Rove, a FOX News analyst:

“The Republicans can’t seem to get a break when it comes to August and when it comes to the weather.”

According to Rove, it is the Republicans who are the victims of these dang storms. Why does God hate the GOP? Especially when they prayed so hard for him to smite the Democrats. White House press secretary Dana Perino also noticed the hardship that her party faces when she left open the possibility that Gustav could “rain on the Republicans’ plans.”

It really is all about the Republicans. At some point I may even summon up some sympathy for them. Not that they need my help. Fox News is always there to provide some positive reinforcement for the beleaguered Party who has to do battle with a political rock star:

“The Bush administration came under fire for appearing slow to react when Katrina struck New Orleans three years ago. Democratic speakers have reprised that criticism during their national convention in Denver, where so far no serious disruptions have occurred.”

Huh? In an article about a hurricane and its impact on GOP convention plans, Fox News finds a way to inject the totally unrelated notion of Democratic convention unrest. This has nothing to do with anything else in the column. It is purely an egregious attempt to sow some negativity, but with the promise of disruption that may yet occur – it just has not “so far.”

Can this get any more ridiculous? Sadly, yes.

The Scott McClellan Confessional

Posted by on May 28, 2008 at 12:28 pm. 6 Comments :

Former White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, has joined the ranks of Bush administration castoffs to write a tell-all book illuminating their role in degrading our Democracy. While this book is a particularly damning reminiscence, it is also a stab at absolution. Here a few of the atrocities that McClellan is revealing while asserting he had little to do with them:

  • McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war.
  • He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.
  • He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.”
  • He asserts Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff “had at best misled” him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.
  • He opines that “the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder […] war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary.”
  • He admits that “the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”

Much of McClellan’s revelations are couched in his insistence that he was as much a victim as the nation. He asserts that Rove, Cheney, and Libby, were allowing him to go before the press corps and dispense information that they knew was false. In the big picture it doesn’t matter all that much if he is telling the truth now. His complicity is irrevocable whether it was due to intention or stupidity. And his superiors in the White House are still just as guilty.

The response from the White House is the predictable refrain that McClellan is:

  • untrustworthy and disloyal.
  • just trying to sell a book.
  • ignorant and out of the loop.
  • a liar.
  • to blame for not having spoken up sooner.

But the response from the media is somewhat more nuanced. Considering that it was the media that dropped the ball and allowed BushCo to peddle lies, you would think that they might be more repentant. But only Katie Couric, amongst the network anchors, seems to acknowledge any responsibility. Couric called it “one of the most embarrassing chapters in American journalism. Our responsibility is sometimes to go against the mood of the country and ask hard questions.” By contrast, Charlie Gibson said he thinks “the media did a pretty good job.” and that “it’s convenient now to blame the media.” Brian Williams said that you have to take into account the “post-9/11” mindset. No, Brian … You don’t! You only have to do your job responsibly and ethically. Anything less is (and was) a disservice to your viewers, the nation, and the world.

Another member of the media, as of this year, Karl Rove had his say about McClellan as well:

“This doesn’t sound like Scott. It really doesn’t — not the Scott McClellan I’ve known for a long time. … It sounds like a left-wing blogger. …If he had these moral qualms, he should have spoken up about them. And frankly, I don’t remember him speaking up about these. I don’t remember a single word.”

I think we can expect Rove’s memory to be equally faulty in the months to come as he battles congressional subpoenas and the other legal hazards hovering around him. And if there is something we can be assured that Rove would forget, it is anything having to do with “moral qualms.” However, it was thoughtful of Rove to praise McClellan’s writing as sounding like “a left-wing blogger.”

The book will be released next week, and there is likely to be a lot more discussion in the days to come. It must be considered a net positive that an insider like McClellan is blowing the whistle on the criminals in the White House. But it would be going to far to buy into his claims of victimhood. I would support a grant of immunity if he spilled all he knows before a grand jury, but short of that, he is just another member of the gang.

Stuttering Karl Rove Won’t Deny Siegelman Allegations

Posted by on May 25, 2008 at 4:26 pm. NO Comments :

Last week the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Karl Rove, who has refused to appear before the Committee to answer questions regarding the investigation and prosecution of the former Democratic governor of Alabama, Don Siegelman. Rove is alleged to have improperly directed the Justice Department to pursue the Siegelman case for political purposes. Rove, who still appears on Fox News as Senior Political Contributor, despite his position as an “informal” adviser to John McCain (which Fox does not disclose to their viewers), was interviewed today by George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week. At the end of the interview, Stephanopoulos asks Rove about the Siegelman case and illicits this guilt-ridden response:

Stephanopoulos: To be clear, you did not contact the Justice department about this case?
Rove: Uh, I read about … I’m going to simply say what I’ve said about this before, which is I found out about Don Siegleman’s investigation and indictment by reading about it in the newspaper.
Stephanopoulos: But that’s not a denial.
Rove: Uh … I … I … I’ve … I’ve … uh … uh … I … you know … heh … I read about it … I’ve heard about it, read about it, learned about it for the first time by reading about it in the newspaper.

Stephanopoulos never actually asked Rove where he heard about the case. He asked if Rove had ever contacted the Justice Department about it. Not only did Rove evade answering the question, he couldn’t even spit out the lies his attorney had obviously coached him on. Watch for yourself:

It remains to seen if Rove will ever be brought to justice. The Congress has not been particularly assertive in these matters. And Rove is famous for squirming out of tough situations like this. In fact, that is how he got the nickname “Turd Blossom” bestowed by none other than George W. Bush.

Fox News Fires Woman For Negligent Honesty

Posted by on May 9, 2008 at 3:10 pm. 12 Comments :

TVNewser is reporting that a Fox News employee was fired for telling John McCain that she voted for him and that he was going to win. Jennifer Locke was a production assistant on assignment for Fox News to cover the Time 100 Gala when she confessed her admiration for McCain. McCain reportedly replied:

“You’re not supposed to reveal that.”

Quite right, Senator. She was not supposed to reveal that. It’s a good thing you were there to scold her for letting the cat out of the bag. Your Fox handlers will reward you for that with more fawning coverage. Everyone knows that it’s perfectly alright for Locke to think that way, so long as she keeps it to herself. All Fox personnel should be aware that any disclosure of political bias is a violation of company policy and is punishable by termination. Particularly if you are an anonymous PA with no real clout. Of course, if you are a chief political consultant (Carl Cameron) or a Washington managing editor (Brit Hume) you are exempt.

Locke’s views would seem to have little relevance while working the entertainment beat, but she still needed to made into an example. It’s not as if her employers were unaware of her views. In 2004 she was the subject of an Associated Press article (published in the Washington Post) wherein she related her experiences as a lonely Republican at the American University of Paris:

“Locke surfaced in an informal sampling of AUP students at a broadcast journalism course. When an AP reporter asked students who favored Bush, her hand shot up.

Most students accused Bush of spurring terrorism and alienating America’s old allies, but Locke, an international affairs major whose ambition is to be an anchor on Fox News, stuck to her guns.”

What a sadly poignant tale. This young woman, who dreamed of stardom at Fox News, was on her way to realizing her dreams, but was summarily dismissed for articulating the sort of opinion that likely got her hired in the first place.

If only she had followed the lead of wise elders like Karl Rove, who appears regularly on Fox News without ever disclosing his role as an adviser to the McCain campaign. Or she could have looked to role models like the Pentagon Pundits (SPINCOM), who appeared on TV news programs (mostly Fox) clandestinely spewing pro-war disinformation.

The trick is to keep your prejudices safely behind a curtain of obfuscation. You can season your reporting with all the partisanship you want as long as you never admit that you’re doing it. You can enter into relationships that are clearly journalistic conflicts of interest as long you deny such relationships exist. Had Locke known better than to publicly reveal her biases she would still be able to pursue her career at Fox and advance to positions where she could happily slant her reporting. As it is, she will just have to chalk it up to experience and take her learned lessons with her to the next propaganda outfit down the road.

Karl Rove’s Blogger Smackdown

Posted by on March 21, 2008 at 4:12 pm. NO Comments :

Karl Rove may have been Bush’s Brain, but the nimrods at NewsBlusters are the ones who seem to be in need of gray matter reinforcements. NB’s Matthew Sheffield did an interview with Rove that is downright hilarious.

The first question dealt with why wealthy conservatives do not invest in media, whereas wealthy liberals do. [Pause for laughter] Sheffield didn’t bother to cite a single example of a wealthy liberal media investor, and Rove answered the question as if the premise wasn’t nonsense.

“I think wealthy conservatives are busy investing in profit and job creation and enterprise and wealthy liberals, many of them either from the media industry themselves or from – recognize the value of communications and are more ready to put money into a less profitable enterprise, namely the media.”

Rove ignores the fact that his new boss, Rupert Murdoch, deficit-financed Fox News for five years, and it is still less profitable than CNN despite having more viewers; his New York Post has never made a profit as long as he’s owned it; the newly hatched Fox Business Network is struggling to stay afloat; and he purchased MySpace for over half a billion dollars though it had never, and still has not, made a profit.

As for conservative investors in the media, Sheffield and Rove might want to familiarize themselves with former GE chief Jack Welch; or the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his Washington Times; or former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer of Freedom’s Watch, a $200 million propaganda factory; or the Heritage Foundation; or the American Enterprise Institute; or Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal al Saud (of the Saudi Sauds) who is a significant shareholder in both Time Warner in News Corp.

When asked about the Internet, Rove came out swinging at liberal blogs saying that…

“…most of them are hate-filled, obscenity-clogged rants of anger and hatred.”

[Pause for laughter] But that’s not the funniest part. When asked why there are more liberals in the Blogosphere, he said…

“I hate to sound sort of diffident about it but it strikes me that a lot of people on the right have got active lives and are doing other things and the idea of spending a lot of time on the internet and taking their talents and displaying them there is not something they really do.”

[Still laughing] Bear in mind that he was speaking to a blogger. Did Rove intend to insult him as a loser who had no life? Or is it only liberals who blog because they have nothing else to do? Another reason that people on the right are not “taking their talents” to the Internet may be because they haven’t got any – witness Sheffield.

Rove returns often to the theme of blogging as something conservatives haven’t the time for. He says they have more “active lives;” or they are “busy investing in profit;” or they are “not completely absorbed in politics;” or that they “have other enterprises and charitable efforts.”

If all of that were true, then what does it say about the conservatives who do stoop to blogging? And why does he want them to do it more? Does he want their lives to be more shallow and vacant as he imagines the lives of liberal bloggers to be? I also wonder how Rove reconciles the claim that conservatives have more profitable endeavors to pursue with the claim that conservatives tend to engage more in philanthropic activities. Which is it – are they helping themselves or helping others? It hardly matters because, according to Rove, being charitable is a compliment to conservatives but an attack on liberals. And the same is true for being wealthy.

What’s really funny is that NewsBlusters published this incoherent, contradictory spew as if it were somehow newsworthy. Sheffield didn’t seem the least bit perturbed by Rove’s insults. Nor did he pick up on any of the obvious contradictions. I can’t say that I expected much more from the NewsBlusters team, but I do appreciate a good laugh.

Republican Spin? That’s What They’re There For

Posted by on March 17, 2008 at 8:54 pm. NO Comments :

I love it when Fox News honchos confess to their biases. Like when Rupert Murdoch admitted that he tried to shape public opinion on the Iraq war.

Now, Fox News senior vice president, John Moody, has stumbled into honesty. In discussing his hiring of Bush adviser Karl Rove, Moody said:

“Are we getting a Republican spin? Of course. But that’s what he’s there for. There’s no attempt to conceal that.”

Now, if we can only get Moody to admit that with regard to the rest of his network’s hosts. As for Rove, he does appear to be attempting to conceal his spin, describing instead as “insight.”

This isn’t Moody’s first truth eruption. In November of 2006, following the Democratic sweep of Congress, an internal Fox News memo from Moody to his troops was leaked. Amongst the many disclosures of bias contained in the memo were these:

“…let’s be on the lookout for any statements from the Iraqi insurgents, who must be thrilled at the prospect of a Dem-controlled congress.”

~~~

“The elections and Rumsfeld’s resignation were a major event but not the end of the world. The war on terror goes on without interruption.”

See? It’s not the end of the world. We still have our lovely war.