bush

New Favorite Blog Title and Pithing on rove

This entry was posted in bush Republicans on by

Don’t ask me what my old favorite was.
The new favorite is pith in the wind. Today they bring this fine bit of pithing in the wind to our attention:

Q: Does the President stand by his pledge to fire anyone involved in the leak of a name of a CIA operative?
MR. McCLELLAN: Terry, I appreciate your question. I think your question is being asked relating to some reports that are in reference to an ongoing criminal investigation. The criminal investigation that you reference is something that continues at this point. And as I’ve previously stated, while that investigation is ongoing, the White House is not going to comment on it. The President directed the White House to cooperate fully with the investigation, and as part of cooperating fully with the investigation, we made a decision that we weren’t going to comment on it while it is ongoing.
Q: Excuse me, but I wasn’t actually talking about any investigation. But in June of 2004, the President said that he would fire anybody who was involved in this leak, to press of information. And I just want to know, is that still his position?
MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, but this question is coming up in the context of this ongoing investigation, and that’s why I said that our policy continues to be that we’re not going to get into commenting on an ongoing criminal investigation from this podium. The prosecutors overseeing the investigation had expressed a preference to us that one way to help the investigation is not to be commenting on it from this podium. And so that’s why we are not going to get into commenting on it while it is an ongoing investigation, or questions related to it.

This goes on and on. Be sure to bring a towel before reading the rest. It is hard to imagine how much mcclellan had to have imbibed to be able to leave it hanging out for so long and this is only a part of today’s press conference.
Josh Marshall and Arthur Silber were also thrilled by this display. And via Atrios here are some of mccellan’s past statements on the subject.

Justices and Litmus

This entry was posted in bush Constitution Supreme Court (US) on by

bush will not appoint someone who will vote to overturn Roe V Wade.
“Why not?” you ask. Jack Balkin has this answer:

Bush must decide if he wants to overturn Roe or preserve the Republicans as the majority party. With Roe gone, the pro-choice movement will be energized and Republican politicians will have to state on the record whether they want to criminalize abortion. Women, libertarians, and moderates may bolt the party, destroying Bush’s winning coalition. Republicans may dislike Roe, but they may dislike losing elections even more.

On the other hand Balkin argues that the real plan is likely much more damaging to Roe supporters.

How Stupid Are the Aliens?

This entry was posted in bush Iraq Movies on by

Natasha suggests that the alien invaders in War of the Worlds are pretty stupid:

You’ve had a million years (or even tens of thousands) to plan the invasion of a planet, and not only do you wait as an established civilization grows up, but you neglect to do even minimal epidemiological surveys? In all that time, you don’t send one bloody probe to take air and soil samples, culture the results and maybe experiment with some of the lifeforms on your planet to see if there’s anything to be worried about?
It’s almost as blitheringly stupid as planning to re-invade a middle eastern country for over a decade, ignoring every well-founded opinion on how things will probably go once you get the opportunity, and creating conditions that ensure you can’t call for backup if the things people said would go wrong, go wrong. But not quite. There’s a lot of recent and well-documented history describing the outcome of land wars in Asia, whereas the movie aliens were clearly invading an inhabited planet for the very first time, so there’s an excusable learning curve to go through.

This might be stronger than some of the other 9/11 comparisons I’ve seen over the past week.
Well, the Modulators are on there way to turn off their brains, enjoy the movie and then turn their brains back on to watch some fireworks.
Happy 4th!
Update: Movie Review courtesy of Mrs Modulator: “That Sucked!” I’m not about to argue with her. If you are human you can not turn off enough brain cells or suspend enough disbelief to make War of the Worlds a good movie.
As to the current event analogies: Spielberg stuck some hooks in the movie to try snag folks but it was too obvious to be meaningful.
How about this for another variant, one for the 4th of July: If you infect it with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness the slimy red tendrils of government will wither and die.

One Aspect of the Media’s Liberal Bias

This entry was posted in bush Journalism on by

Bryan, Why Now, reports on the perspective of a republican NPR radio jock:

Tonight he was responding to someone complaining about NPR reporting being biased. Greg stated his party affiliation and pointed out that the Republican Party has the White House and the US Congress, the Florida governor and legislature are also Republican, so get a grip, if the news is negative, it is going be negative about Republicans. If people want to elect some more Democrats, and give them control of something, then the news can be negative about them.

There’s a lot of truth in this though at the national level it sure seems that the bush administration got a pass from the media and the democratic congress critters throughout his first term…