Month: October 2005

Ken Mehlman held a conference call Wednesday with right-wing bloggers with two goals in mind:

1. to engage the blogosphere more (like the Dems)
2. to push the Miers nomination for the SCOTUS

According to some right-wing bloggers who participated, the call was far from impressive. Professor Stephen Bainbridge, a corporate law professor at UCLA (according to his online bio), liveblogged the call and posted his transcript and thoughts online. Even after assurances from Mehlman, Bainbridge is still not convinced that Miers is the person for the job.

See excerpts from his transcript below…

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Consider this a late night suppository for photoshopping and jokes… this one from today was just begging to be tinkered with… ; )

SO… HOW MANY POLACKS DOES IT TAKE TO SCREW IN A LIGHT BULB?

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This started as a comment, but well..

Williams leaves his Laura pretty much as we found her, but that doesn’t mean we can’t discuss her options.

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Yikes.

Next time I think I’ll just slink off into a corner rather than expressing my opinions loudly and vocally… hmmm… on second thought, that would be boring and no one would talk to me. And since I’m such a narcissist, that would really suck. Big time.

Do we all need to agree here on BooTrib? Do we all need to have the same points of view? I sure as hell hope not, I didn’t move to Stepford did I?

No. We don’t. We don’t all need to support the Dems. Or support spiderleaf for dogcatcher (I figured that was as good a place as any to start, and since I am recently, ie today, unemployed I figured a change of scenery might be nice… be the change you seek and all…). But we do all need to support and embrace our community of misfits. If we don’t, who the hell else will? I don’t think we’ll be welcome at Freeperville or the Communist party blog or anything… and even if we were, are we better as a whole debating each other or fracturing off into ever smaller communities where we only reinforce each other without question? I know my answer. I stay. And I let y’all know when I disagree… but I do so respectfully (I didn’t rule out snark because how could I LIVE without it, but respect is another matter…) because I don’t have all the answers, no one does (unless you talk to God or Bill Gates directly, in which case drop me an email, maybe you can help me find a job…).

New members have joined. Members who aren’t necessarily used to our civility. ‘Older’ (I hate that term because I am still a spring chicken thank you very much!) members get cranky & pissed off. Oh well. Tell them about it. Everybody. No one is a sacred cow (except for Susan… sorry, but I draw a line somewhere…) Debate them the way you would like to be debated. Or walk away and don’t post… but whatever you do, do it with the knowledge that as a whole we can affect change, within ourselves and within others… alone we sit and scream at our TV’s. I pick together… always.

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Oh, the deflation today after some of the overnight buzz — that the WSJ and Bloomberg were going to nail Dick Cheney — fell flat. (‘course, there are always tonight’s editions.)

Now there’s all this buzz about the little-known White House Iraq Group whose documents — as I quoted yesterday from a 2004 Newsday article — were subpoenaed clear back in 2004 by Patrick Fitzgerald (Grand Jury List of Witnesses & Documents [from 2004], Oct. 11, 2005).

“The news is flying fast and furious this evening,” wrote a breathless Jane Hamsher last night at FireDogLake. “Raw Story has an excerpt from tomorrow’s WSJ saying that the investigation may have broadened to include the whole of the White House Iraq Group.”

But that “excerpt” turned out to be this ho-hummer: “Lawyers familiar with the investigation believe that at least part of the outcome likely hangs on the inner workings of what has been dubbed the White House Iraq Group.” (WSJ, Oct. 12, 2005)

In the spirit of entertaining speculation, let’s look at some snapshots of the primary members of the nearly secret WHIG that sold the American people, the media, and the Congress on the Iraq war. And how. By the way, if you’re hip, or you read Catnip’s fine piece last night, you now know that WHIG stands for White House Iraq Group.

First — and this is an exclusive! — here’s WHIG’s mascot:

WHIG FOUNDER — and presidential cheeseburger fetcher¹ — is President Bush’s Chief of Staff Andrew Card.

Quotable Card, on selling the war in Iraq: “From a marketing point of view you don’t introduce new products in August.”

Dishing: Writes Billmon, “If Howard Fineman is right, and Andrew Card really is making a move to topple Karl Rove, then this country could be in a heap of trouble. … “I’m not a very smart person,” Card says. “I have to work really hard at remembering things.” … “When I interviewed him, I could tell fairly quickly that [he] definitely wasn’t the sharpest chisel in the White House toolbox.” However, according to Sourcewatch, he’s known as a consensus builder.

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¹From “Ron Suskind’s as-told-to account of former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill’s stormy tenure, The Price of Loyalty, reports Billmon:

“Go get me Andy Card,” Bush said to one of the Secret Service agents. Card, the designee as chief of staff, entered from an adjoining room . . . Bush looked impatiently at Card, hard-eyed. “You’re the chief of staff. You think you’re up to getting us some cheeseburgers?”

Card nodded. No one laughed. He all but raced out of the room.

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Below the fold are profiles of the other ruthless, relentless WHIGs who sold the war: Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, James R. Wilkinson, Nicholas E. Calio, Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley and I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby …

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