QUESTION: You're in a bad spot here, Scott -- because after the investigation began -- after the criminal investigation was under way -- you said, October 10th, 2003, "I spoke with those individuals, Rove, Abrams and Libby. As I pointed out, those individuals assured me they were not involved in this," from that podium. That's after the criminal investigation began.
Now that Rove has essentially been caught red-handed peddling this information, all of a sudden you have respect for the sanctity of the criminal investigation. [...]
QUESTION: So you're now saying that after you cleared Rove and the others from that podium, then the prosecutors asked you not to speak anymore and since then you haven't. [...] When did they ask you to stop commenting on it, Scott? Can you pin down a date?
MCCLELLAN: Back in that time period.
QUESTION: Well, then the president commented on it nine months later. So was he not following the White House plan?
MCCLELLAN: I appreciate your questions. You can keep asking them, but you have my response.
QUESTION: Well, we are going to keep asking them.
When did the president learn that Karl Rove had had a conversation with a news reporter about the involvement of Joseph Wilson's wife in the decision to send him to Africa?
MCCLELLAN: I've responded to the questions.
And This Modern World has a handy digest of past statements on this topic.
Somewhere, a pretty white girl is going to be kidnapped to bail out the news channels once again.
... As I read this I realize that I heard an Amber Alert via the Emergency Alert System not 10 minutes ago. Coincidence?
On an unrelated note, why can't I use OpenID to comment on this post? Does disabling anonymous comments also block that?
Yes, it does.
-<lj user="ext_124">
< threadjack >
Could someone please explain to me how relying on a third, completely unrelated party to do authentication is in any way useful? You know, like at all??
< / threadjack >
It's not useful, it's completely useless. I have no idea why you would ever use any OpenID server _except one that you run yourself_. Does that answer your question? :-)
Beyond that, it's basically the choice of who you want your third party to be... single sign-on, but you at least get to _choose_ your trusted authority and still have interop (rather than forcing you to trust, say, Microsoft).
It won't be untrusted if you trust it.
That's the reason the administration is so anti-stem cells. See, it has taken 4.5 years of growing them all new ones.
*snork*
oh man, the video is fantastic:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/07/11.html#a3868
A friend of mine watched that and just said, "R. Budd McClellan."
I hope the video is better resolution this time.
Dude, the White House press conferences have been my beacon of hope for the past few weeks now. Every time McClellan squirms, I feel a little safer.
the only thing he actually says, is a rehash of the same tired talking points.
And the president talked about our global war on terrorism. He talked about our strategy for taking the fight to the enemy, staying on the offensive, and working to spread freedom and democracy to defeat the ideology of hatred that terrorists espouse.
[...]
Freedom is a powerful force for defeating an ideology such as the one that the terrorists espouse. And that's why it's so important to continue working to advance freedom and democracy in the broader Middle East. And that's what we will continue to do.
the part that baffles me, is aside from "get your military out of Arab land", I can't recall ever seeing any examples of the "ideology the terrorists espouse". I mean really, have there been actual statements of ideology made?
That bit's largely about Christian out-of-context readings of the Koran.
(It's okay to kill a very specific group of people if they're attacking you, and Allah has approved a war against them. Roughly.)
Uh, actually yes. Bin Laden has called the US to embrace Islam and
"reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest". He has also said that the U.S. is the "worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind", because it supports the separation of Church and State, "permits acts of immorality" and allows women to work, among other things.
So Bin Laden is a member of the 700 Club, The American Family Ass. and sees eye to eye with Santorum and Ashcroft?
Hey, why do you think they call them the "american taliban"?
Remember, kids: if you sympathize with Bin Laden, you are really sympathizing with Pat Robertson.
Now that the administration is definitely going to take a hit, from somebody else, the press feels bold enough to question the contradictions in some statements from several years ago. The galaxy is saved.
If the administration is "going to take a hit" it's going to require that the press speak about it eventually.
What we have right now is the Press actually willing to make Scott McClellan and by extension the White House look bad. It was a ridiculous and foolish era of this country when the Press Corps was unwilling to do that. It's a positive turn of events that that idiocy is over... or at the very least suspended.
You're forgetting the last time the White House press got just as uppity, over Bush's military records. See this Daily Show segment.
Note the similarities. Someone else did all the work of building up the case and presenting it to the public. The story had moral scandal potential. (Billions of dollars embezzled from Iraq is not a television-friendly scandal.) And the press is angry, but not at anyone's behaviour! They're angry because a simple yes or no, either way, will give them a great headline, and McClellan is ducking the entire question.
With the exception of Fox, the mainstream press is a business and doesn't act for reasons of ideology. Cheap patriotism or cheap scandal headlines; whatever sells the most ads this week.
With the exception of Fox?
What makes you think Fox isn't purposefully hitting its fiscally identified market segment squarely on the nose? You think it's just a coincidence that from a business point of view it's doing so well?
Lesson I've learned: We don't have a 'liberal media', we have a 'shark media'... once the blood's in the water, all the sharks attack.
AND IT'S ABOUT TIME FOR ROVE.
The trouble, of course, is the politicians that haven't got any blood left.
An interesting counterpoint to the ire at Karl Rove.