December 2007 - Posts
Keith will be in for a special Countdown tonight at 8p ET. We'll be all over the developements in Pakistan, Washington and beyond in the wake of the Benazir Bhutto assassination. Please join us.
***Alison Stewart in for Keith tonight***
House of Scandal: Our fifth story on the Countdown: the search for "true facts" uncovers a doozy: The New York Times reporting that Harriet Miers wasn't the only White House lawyer who discussed the handling of those tapes before they were erased. There were at least three others, including Alberto Gonzales.
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Lost in the Supermarket: The good news for the fine citizens of the Hawkeye State tonight: Only Sixteen days to go until the 2008 Iowa Caucuses. The even better news for value shoppers in Des Moines: A three for one special at the Hivee supermarket this morning! A Clinton sandwich special...made with Magic! In our fifth story on the Countdown: Not even Magic Johnson was a big enough star to keep former President Clinton from stealing the spotlight from the lady running for his old job.
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***Alison Stewart in for Keith tonight***
Endorsement '08: In a fast food nation where burger eaters like to have it their way and caffeine addicts get to make about five different decisions every time they step up to the counter for a grande skim macciato (but make that a half caff... and hold the foam...), the ritual of settling on just one individual, the choice of a presidential candidate might seem to be a bit out of place. It's endorsement time in the race for president! Any American who likes to be told how to vote, now has a wealth of opinions from which to draw. Politicians, the wives of politicians, newspaper editorial boards, anybody who has decided on a candidate, is now sharing that choice with anyone who will listen.
Countdown to Iowa: President Bush, defended by a G-O-P candidate. While man's best friend is not getting any love from certain red staters running for President.
ODDBALL: Scuffles in the South Korean legislature and a loose bird near our own.
Eavesdroppings: An historic fight began in the Senate today over whether you have the right to sue phone companies for eavesdropping on you. President Bush is pushing to give blanket immunity to any phone company that agreed to let the government listen in on phone and track email traffic passing through its lines without going through the special, top-secret courts known as FISA courts. Tonight, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid unable to move a bill that gave telecom companies immunity forward, pulled it from consideration for now. The fight will start up again next month, just one month before the current FISA law expires.
Keeping Tabs: Michael Jackson seems to have his holidays mixed up. Halloween is in October silly!
Diva Drama: "Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the biggest diva trainwreck of them all?" It does seem that as the year ends, there's competition for the title, between Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. On this particular day, call it a toss-up. But since her disastrous performance and questionable costume choice at the Video Music Awards, Ms. Spears has found a way to look good on stage.The magic of video!
How Rudolph Saved...Rudolph?: With 20 days until the Iowa Caucuses, to pick up the fallen gauntlet from one of our strike-bound friends at Comedy Central, tonight's word is...tested. Not testy or testes, tested. And, in our fifth story on the Countdown, it is in use tonight by the Republican and the Democrat who a month ago seemed to be sailing towards their respective nominations on a shimmering, window-pane sea of inevitability. We begin tonight with Rudy Giuliani. CONTINUED >>
Naming Names:
Baseball. Tonight, a sport not of home runs and strikeouts... but rather of asterisks and question marks...Tonight, a sport not of elements called grace and power... but rather of drugs called "Winstrol" and "Human Growth Hormone." Our fifth story on the Countdown: former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell's 20-month long investigation into the use of illegal performance-enhancing substances is out, and it calls to mind the observation of 37 years ago by player-turned-author Jim Bouton. Namely that if there existed a pill that would guarantee a pitcher 20 victories in a season and he knew it would shorten his life by five years... he'd take it anyway. Senator Mitchell essentially accused Roger Clemens of doing just that. CONTINUED >>
More Spies Lies & Videotape: The essence of Obstruction of Justice...The definition of when destroying tapes showing the CIA torturing an Al-Qaeda minion on a water-board is a George Tenet-style slam-dunk crime...Is whether the materials destroyed, were relevant to an on-going legal case. Thus our fifth story on the Countdown is unusually clear for this nearly seven-year "Fog of Bush": the revelation that not one but two US District Judges issued orders in June and July of 2005 that the government had to not destroy any evidence relating to just the mistreatment of detainees at Gitmo...And the C-I-A destroyed some of that evidence in November of 2005. The inevitable loophole in this Presidency of Loopholes? The detainees were not yet at Gitmo when they were tortured, and videotaped.
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Overlooking Oversight: The same CIA officer who, last night, confirmed that under his team's interrogation, al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded... Who said he has no doubts that waterboarding is torture. Today -- in our fifth story on the Countdown -- completing the picture, saying that the decision to torture... was made by the White House.
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Spies Lies and Videotape: The White House has had its Press Secretary symbolically button-up her lip again. It will say nothing about the CIA's destruction of its Torture tapes...Even though we are told to believe the President did not even know there had been until last Thursday morning. Our fifth story on the Countdown: breaking on top of that logical disconnect, a resounding refutation of CIA Director Hayden's stated rationale for erasing the tapes. The agent who ledd the team that interrogated Abu Zubaydah... going public tonight -- and calling that interrogation "torture" -- even though General Hayden had insisted the tapes were destroyed to prevent public identification of, and possible reprisals against... that agent, and his colleagues.
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The one and only I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has dropped his appeal in the CIA leak case. Here's a blurb from the AP:
"We remain firmly convinced of Mr. Libby's innocence," attorney Theodore Wells said. "However, the realities were, that after five years of government service by Mr. Libby and several years of defending against this case, the burden on Mr. Libby and his young family of continuing to pursue his complete vindication are too great to ask them to bear."
Surely with no further legal proceedings President Bush will be able to comment on the Plame leak case now...right?
Also, tonight we'll be all over the latest on the destruction of those CIA torture tapes, the latest on Rudy Giuliani's meat grinder interview with Tim Russert yesterday, and the latest on the Oprah/Obama tour that may be causing big waves on the campaign trail.
Spies Lies & Videotape: It was Richard Nixon's profound -- and prophetic -- observation. It's not the crime that brings you down, it's the cover-up. He left out the corollary... or... maybe... both. Our fifth story on the Countdown: in a page out of Watergate... it now turns out not only were there tapes in "Water-Boarding-Gate"... but just like the 18-and-a-half minute gap from 1973... the tapes were erased. The CIA destroyed at least two video recordings... showing Al Qaeda suspects being subjected to waterboarding and other interrogation techniques... allegedly because of concerns the interrogators could be facing legal consequences for their actions. And the news breaking tonight on this: at least somebody in the White House reportedly knew about the destruction of evidence... in advance.
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The Incredibles, Part 2: Revelation of the Bush Administration's deceit about Iraq came too late. Too late to save a nation from the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Too late to save thousands of its sons and daughters, from death on a useless battlefield. But in our fifth story on the Countdown: revelation of the Bush Administration's deceit about Iran may have come just in time. And its loss of skill in wriggling out of perfidy never more evident than today... As a third attempt to explain the discrepancies about Irahn... managing only to entangle the president -- and top officials -- even further.
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Full text of Keith's Special Comment after the jump.
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Tonight at 8p ET tune in to Countdown for one of Keith's Special comments regarding the revelation that the President knew about the possible suspension of an Iranian nuclear program in August.
***********UPDATE*********
Excerpt after the jump.
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Late last night came the revelation from WH press secretary Dana Perino that the President knew the Iranian Nuclear Program "May be suspended" in August. The statement released last night reads as follows, in part:
"Director McConnell said that the new information might cause the intelligence community to change its assessment of Iran's covert nuclear program, but the intelligence community was not prepared to draw any conclusions at that point in time, and it wouldn't be right to speculate until they had time to examine and analyze the new data,"
That means the President knew two months before his "world war III" comments. You can imagine the fireworks this set off at the Perino briefing this morning...We'll have all of that, plus we'll be all over today's Romney big religion speech during which he said "Freedom requires religion".
Faith Based Intelligence: We will go to Omaha and the nightmare of at least nine dead, in a mall shooting rampage, in the middle of the holiday shopping season, presently. But in our fifth story on the Countdown: Having Yesterday rejected any "Psychology 101" mumbo jumbo at a news conference dominated by the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran... Today, when threatening Iran directly, Mr. Bush became a case study for the basic principle taught in every introductory psychology course: projection. That is, attributing your worst faults onto others.
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Faith-Based Intelligence.: If there were not already enough proof that facts and evidence are of no consequence to this White House, that the Bush administration appears determined for a military confrontation with Iran before it leaves office, and that President Bush seems to think himself a genius because he knows where Iran is: Today, came conclusive evidence of all three. Mr. Bush, at a morning news conference, argued that Iran is every bit the threat it once was, despite a damning new intelligence report which concludes the Iranian regime halted its nuclear weapons program more than four years ago. CONTINUED >>
Redo or Die: In our fifth story on the Countdown: Imagine if President Bush kept giving the same speech again and again. His regular attacks on Congress for failing to rubber-stamp his agenda, strangely similar.
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Sex on the City: : Our fifth story on the Countdown Sex On The City. The good news: a long-time friend, a man once seen as joined to Rudy Giuliani's hip, has rushed to Giuliani's aide. The bad news: the long-time friend is disgraced and 16-times-indighted ex-New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. Then again, if the subject is using public facilities to enable elicit liaisons with mistresses on the taxpayer's dime... Mr. Kerik knows his subject matter.
War Mangling: Did Jack Murtha say "The Surge is working.” Finis. End Communication? Or did he say "The surge is working militarily, but not politically, and the Iraqis have to do it for themselves"? The lunatic fringe gets into another lather, hearing only what it wants to hear.
ODDBALL: Some pimped out bikes, remember when people just used to put baseball cards in the spokes? A boy and his pet Alligator, and you thought the tree was nice you should see the holiday hairdos.
Truthless People: From the president who promised to restore honor and dignity to the White House today we get not one, not two, but three examples of current and former top officials trafficking in dishonesty in some cases, rewarding it, and treating it, literally, like a joke. In our third story tonight, lies and consequences.
Tabs: Julia Roberts goes after the paparazzi, and farewell to Robert "Evel" Knievel.
WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD: Billo, Fox Business anonymous spokesperson, Steven Galson and Santa all battle for Worst Person Honors.
Bill O'Reilly's very useful advice for young people:Our number one story on the Countdown: when the Village Voice printed two pages worth of "Bill O'Reilly's very useful advice for young people, as channeled by vile left-wing smear merchant Tom Tomorrow.” We thought you kiddies at home might enjoy it if Billo himself read you about half of it.
