Korean Job Discussion Forums

[desultude]

[sundubuman]

More media disinfo...

Cooper, whose wife is a Democratic party bigwig

CALLED Rove, not the other way around.

What this is all about is the death of the old clubby East Coast Media Establishment.

They are sinking, and this whole NON-STORY, just like Rathergate (the fake memos meant to bring down Bush), the retracted Newsweek Korangate, and now this.

When will they realize that the blogosphere is already more powerful than they are????

[Ya-ta Boy]

[The Bobster]

[The Bobster]

James Moore

Why Karl Rove Will Never Go

People who think the president might cast his deputy chief of staff to the wolves need to get another fantasy. Short of a Nixonian resignation by George W. Bush, or an indictment and conviction, the Architect, Bush's Brain, Turd Blossom, or by whatever name he is called, Karl Rove is on for the long ride. There would be no Bush presidency without Rove. All hopes of Republican realignment would be cast aside without Rove. Any aspirations George W. Bush had for a legacy beyond a hopeless war would be disappear as quickly as evidence of a Rove dirty political attack.

Inside the Beltway, where everyone spends far too much time sniffing each other's fumes, speculative frenzy has the Rove crisis reaching a point where the president has no choice but to separate himself from Rove. Nonsense. In Texas, we dance with the ones that brung us. Bush's presidency is a creation of Rove. In 1989, before Bush was even a marginally successful managing general partner of a losing baseball team, prior to the time Bush made the strategic move of trading Sammy Sosa, Rove was sitting down with a friend and explaining how he could make W governor and use that office as a platform for the presidency. And five years later, Bush was elected governor on his way to the White House 11 years after Rove had first given voice to his ambition to make Bush president.

But he did more. Rove sniffed the wind better than anyone in modern American politics. He sensed the rise of the Chrisitian Right, and then he facilitated it. He understood the potential of crafting messages around 911. And he built a money and issues infrastructure that is without equal in the history of our republic. There is not a Republican in Congress who did not get money, ideas, strategies, or some kind of support from Rove and his GOP machine. Republicans would take exception with the analogy, but Rove is very much like a tumor that has metastisized into healthy tissue and cannot be completely excised. At the present time, he is both the disease and the lifeblood of the Republicans.

Just look down the block to see why he won't leave President Bush or why he will not be asked to clean out his West Wing desk. In the foreground, the president is trying to salvage some element of the Social Security reform plan, and select Supreme Court justices and manage the political debate over their confirmation. Those are both Rove's job. For Republicans to retain their control of congress, Rove has to remain at work picking candidates, raising money, and developing campaign strategies for congressional and senate candidates for 2006. Retaining majority control is critical to the Rove and Bush plan to set up America for decades of GOP guidance. And when Rove indicated, during a moment of weakness at the end of the last campaign, that he was interested in stepping back from presidential electoral politics, he was advised by his client the president that he needed to hang around and execute the long term master plan for GOP takeover. If Rove goes away, the Republican dream dies.

There is a notion that Rove's continued occupation of his White House office will make the president a target and do long term damage to Mr. Bush's credibility. This leads to the coffee shop conjecture that the party will pressure Mr. Bush to send Karl away until the temperature cools on the Potomac. Not gonna happen. Ken Mehlman's entire career, for instance, is a Karl Rove creation and Mehlman is not exactly going to urge the president to move Rove out of the large white building. And, even though congressional members may begin to worry about how their support of Rove is harming them in their home districts, how can they ever push very hard to ditch the guy who took them to the prom? They can't. They won't.

So where is it going? This is in the hands of an able prosecutor, a man whose reputation is apolitical and whose performance in the criminal justice system is a good reason to retain one's faith in the way our democracy works. Patrick Fitzgerald has gone after terrorists and politicians with equal fervor. And his only standard has been the law. If an act of treason or perjury has been committed, there will likely be indictments. But that won't change anything with Bush and Rove. Their fates are inseperable. They are two heads on the same body. If you cut one, they both bleed.

Karl Rove has worked his entire life to reach a point of power where he can change the American political landscape for a generation. Unless something changes, however, his narrative line is shaping up as a Greek tragedy with Democrats singing the chorus in the background. Rove's anger at a former diplomat's opinion piece in a newspaper may destroy all that he has dreamed. And if it does, it will ruin more than just a political operative. A president will likely come to grief. And disaffected Americans, made cynical by the failures of their government and its elected leaders, will find one more reason to disengage from the democratic process.

And that's the reason we all ought to be worried.

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

Bobster said:

Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2005 1:17 pm

http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/korea/viewtopic.php?t=41306&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

[The Bobster]

[some waygug-in]

An interesting article about this case can be found here:

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20050718&s=scheer0712

Is this administration "ABOVE THE LAW"? It would seem so.

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

[Nowhere Man]

To start with, comparing this investigation of a single White House-based incident to McCarthy's vast, open-season, broadside attack on "communist traitors" is ludicrous. Both the scale and the charges do not match. McCarthyism had nothing to do whatsoever with leaking classified information vs. government protocol. This is a non-point.

Joseph Wilson's behavior and statements have absolutely no bearing on whether a crime has been committed and/or some other form of unethical behavior. If Wilson did something wrong or unethical, let there be another special investigation. In respect to Rove and the leaking of information, Wilson is a non-point.

What the CIA itself leaks is also irrelevant. If something is wrong at the CIA, let there be a separate investigation of that. CIA leaks are a non-point.

So, what is the point? The point is that this was information marked secret in the memo from which it came. This information was leaked for the purposes of a Republican smear campaign.

Something unethical, if not illegal, has taken place that involves the inner circles of the White House.

But this is a "non-story". Just keep repeating it: Non-story, non-story, non-story.

Something unethical, if not illegal, has taken place that involves the inner circles of the White House.

This is a story.

Let us remember Clinton. A special investigation of real estate deals in Arkansas ended in a discussion of fellatio. Was that a non-story?

I don't think so.

Therefore, all of the "dignified" members of the press should give up bleating this non-story nonsense while they comment on the story.

Non-story?
GRAND JURY.
'nuff said.

[some waygug-in]

[quote="Nowhere Man"]To start with, comparing this investigation of a single White House-based incident to McCarthy's vast, open-season, broadside attack on "communist traitors" is ludicrous. Both the scale and the charges do not match. McCarthyism had nothing to do whatsoever with leaking classified information vs. government protocol. This is a non-point.



Not everyone would agree with you. By the way, the "Rove incident" is just a symptom of a much greater issue. So the comparison has more to do with the entire Bush administration and its policies than just this one incident regarding Wilson/Plame/Rove.

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/12196189.htm


Posted on Fri, Jul. 22, 2005




EDITORIAL


FBI files are chilling


Back in the 1960s, under the guise of fighting communism, the FBI opened thousands of secret files on American citizens whose sole crime was to protest government policies that they found unjust.

Under COINTELPRO, a covert intelligence program, federal agents bugged people's homes, sent anonymous letters to their spouses about alleged marital infidelities and infiltrated pacifist organizations, creating havoc within their ranks.

The goal was to crush public opposition to the Vietnam War and destroy an emerging civil rights movement that J. Edgar Hoover feared might produce a "Black Messiah."

For those old enough to remember those dark times, there is a chilling sense of d�j� vu.

Once again, the FBI is spying on anti-war protesters. Only this time, agency officials say it is part of the war on terrorism.

One prime FBI target is the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU has been a sharp critic of the USA Patriot Act, which expands law enforcement's powers of search and seizure at the expense of the individual protections guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.

The notion that the legal advocacy organization poses a threat to national security is absurd. The only weapon in its arsenal is the legal brief. Yet, the FBI has collected more than 1,000 documents on the ACLU's activities. The secret snooping came to light after the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit against the agency.

As a result of the lawsuit, FBI officials were forced to admit that they were monitoring the ACLU, Greenpeace and other organizations.

So why is the FBI spending its time spying on these groups? Don't they have more important things to do? Like looking for the real terrorists?

Therein lies the $64,000 question. FBI officials refuse to elaborate, saying only that no one has been put under surveillance for merely practicing their constitutional right to free speech. That assurance rings hollow.

It all smacks of a disturbing pattern within the administration of labeling anyone who disagrees with the president as either un-American or a terrorist.

No one knows what is in the classified files. The FBI has stubbornly refused to release all but a handful and claims it will need another 10 months to review the ACLU documents before they can be released, which in our opinion is an unacceptable delay.

If, indeed, the administration is using the FBI to stifle public dissent, it is a scandalous abuse of power and goes against everything that our nation stands for.

Thirty years ago, a Senate select committee headed by Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, mandated sweeping changes at the FBI after COINTELPRO abuses came to light.

It became illegal for FBI agents to spy on U.S. citizens unless they had reasonable belief that an individual was engaged in criminal activity.

Said Church: "The American people need to be assured that never again will an agency of the government be permitted to conduct a secret war against those citizens it considers a threat to the established order."

It is our collective responsibility as Americans to hold our government accountable so that those kinds of unchecked abuses don't ever happen again.

If the FBI has legitimate reasons for collecting data on perfectly law-abiding U.S. citizens, then agency officials need to stop the snow job and tell us what they are, lickety-split.

[Nowhere Man]

Way-gug,

To clarify, my response was to Joo's Hitchens article, wherein he suggests that investigating Rove is the same as McCarthy investigating anyone and everyone he wanted to.

It's not.

I believe what you're saying is that this little puddle of Bush Administration misbahaviour is but a plop compared to the larger lake of the Bush Administration trampling civil rights to privacy.

If that's what you mean, I totally agree.

The Patriot Act is much akin to McCarthyism.

Investigating Rove is not.

It is very interesting that Hitchens invokes McCarthy and the "silly" 1982 CIA law, both of which came about under Republican administrations, to defend current Republican misbehaviour.

Paradoxical and hypocritical.

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Ya-ta Boy]

Newest wrinkle: Andrew Card was told there was an investigation planned and that he was to spread the word in the White House. MSNBC says he took 84 hours to do so...not the 12 hours as earlier reported. Even 12 hours is sufficient time to shred a lot of documents.