Huckabee blasts Rove, 'elitist' GOP establishment.

It really does seem as if the Tea Party movement could tear the Republican Party apart.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee today broadened the assault on the Republican Party establishment — and former Bush adviser Karl Rove in particular — levied recently by Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, blasting the "elitism" and "country club attitude exhibited by Rove and others who dismissed Delaware Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell.

"I was very disappointed in some, particularly Karl and others, who were so dismissive of Christine O'Donnell," Huckabee told Aaron Klein on the latter's WABC radio show Sunday. "Unfortunately, there is an elitism within the Republican establishment," Huckabee told Klein. "And it's one of the reasons the Republicans have not been able to solidify not only the tea party movement but solidify conservatives across America."

"It's about, again, to be blunt, the kind of country club attitude that we're not sure there are certain people we really want as members of the club and we're not going to vote them in. And we don't mind showing up to events to put up signs and making phone calls and going door to door making those pesky little trips that we don't like to do, but we really don't want them dining with us in the main dining room," he said.

And there's a delicious irony in seeing the Republican Party being accused of the kind of elitism which they usually love to level at the Democrats.

The Republican Party use the term elitist as a way of avoiding discussion of just how barren their ideas are. It's a curious form of anti-intellectualism which allows George W. Bush to run for the presidency and makes it, somehow, bad form to question his lack of intellectual curiosity.

Some in that party are now turning the charge on each other.

Of course, the Republicans are right to question the suitability of Christine O'Donnell to stand as their party's representative. But - and the irony here is dripping in huge drops - they should have expected that someone like Huckabee might take the lessons learned at their own knee and accuse them of the very crimes which they are so fond of accusing others of when they question whether or not a candidate is suitable for high office.

Those people living in glass houses are now watching their own side throw stones at them. It really couldn't happen to more deserving people.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Huckabee, Christine O'Donnell, Karl Rove

Rove: O'Donnell should explain 'dabbling' in witchcraft.

The infighting in the Republican party continues. Watch how some right wingers have now turned on Rove:

The usual DC dirtbags aren't going to direct the path for the GOP in the immediate future, not if there's going to be a future for the party. Now, Rove is nothing more than a DC talking head few people give a damn about.

The base of the party are with the Tea Party nut cases and suddenly they think Rove is "a DC talking head". It's a further example of how these right wingers simply deny all that they previously believed in.

I don't think the bulk of today's Republican base gives a damn what Karl Rove thinks.

The lunatics have taken over the asylum. And the Republicans deserve this. They tried to ride on the back of this Tea Party tiger and it ate them.

Tags: Karl Rove, O'Donnell, mid terms 2010

O'Reilly says Rove has a duty to be "honest" on Fox; Perino responds by touting $50M Rove raised for Republicans.

Perino avoids saying that she would feel comfortable campaigning for O'Donnell whilst reminding Fox viewers that Karl Rove has raised over $50 million for the Republican cause.

The tensions which the Tea Party movement is causing within Republican ranks is starting to creak it's way into the open.

Tags: O'Donnell, Rove, Perino, Bill O'Reilly

Right-wing media turn on Rove for "trashing" O'Donnell.

I said yesterday that I was struck by the fact that Rove and Hannity were on opposite sides of the fence when it came to O'Donnell's victory. Now, the right wing have turned on Rove - never thought I'd live to see the day that this happened - and are dubbing him "an effete sore loser".

Malkin: "Rove came across as an effete sore loser." In a September 14 post, Malkin wrote that Rove "trash[ed]" O'Donnell during the Hannity segment and he "[m]ight as well have been [Keith] Olbermann on MSNBC." Malkin later wrote that "Rove came across as an effete sore loser instead of the supposedly brilliant and grounded GOP strategist that he's supposed to be." Malkin, citing The Freedomist blog, also wrote that "Rove had met with Delaware 9/12-ers and Tea Party folks to try and convince them to back the 'more electable' candidate."

Warner Todd Huston: "The Veracity of Karl Rove's Political Analysis is Suddenly Suspect." In a September 14 Gateway Pundit post titled, "The Veracity of Karl Rove's Political Analysis is Suddenly Suspect," Huston cited the Freedomist post and wrote: "Rove is certainly entitled to his opinion and if he truly believes that O'Donnell cannot win in the general, then he should feel free to say so and we should accept it as such. But in this case we have a problem believing that Rove's analysis is simply his honest opinion when we find out from The Freedomist that Rove was trying to cut a pre-primary deal to help Mike Castle to win the primary." Huston further wrote that "Fox News should require Rove to answer to this charge":

Fox News should require Rove to answer to this charge. If he really did act as a helpmate for Rep. Mike Castle this damages Rove's veracity as an analyst. He has just made himself suspect. You can't be both a political player and an autonomous, disinterested analyst. Will Fox suspend Rove over this? They certainly should if he really did work to help Castle, in any case.

Dan Riehl: "Fox Should Suspend Rove And Investigate." In a September 14 post on his blog, Dan Riehl called Rove's comments "disgraceful" and also cited the Freedomist post to claim that "Fox should suspend him and investigate" and that "it seems impossible to trust Rove as an objective analyst." From Riehl's post:

Michelle Malkin has a very solid reaction to Karl Rove's disgraceful behavior on Fox News tonight. That is not why Fox should suspend him and investigate. According to this report, Rove was working behind the scenes on behalf of the Castle campaign to negotiate a deal that would have led to some Delaware Tea Party groups not supporting Christine O'Donnell, while giving Mike Castle a pass.

Especially given his comments on Fox News tonight, until this is resolved, it seems impossible to trust Rove as an objective analyst. In terms of the conservative movement, we should not simply ignore him, but proactively work to undermine Rove in whatever ways we can, given his obvious willingness to undermine us.

And I really love the notion that Rove's impartiality is "suddenly suspect". On what planet was he ever suspected of impartiality in the first place?

Tags: Karl Rove, Sean Hannity, Fox News, Tea party

Karl Rove's Idiocy.

From Karl Rove's Wall Street Journal column today:

Before his health-care bill passed, Mr. Obama sent a tough letter to health-insurance CEOs and then castigated them 22 times in a follow-up prime-time televised speech.

This is behavior worthy of a Third World dictator - not the head of a vibrant democracy.

The picture above shows what happens when an actual dictator is in power.

Mugabe must have sent that man some bloody letter for it to do that to him.

Tags: Karl Rove, Mugabe, Obama, dictators

Planet Rove.

It really does seem as if Karl Rove lives on another planet where the truth is what he states it is.

ROVE: No, no. Tom with all due respect that was not the policy of our government that we were going to go into Iraq and take their resources in order to pay for the cost of the war. … [T]he suggestion that somehow or another the administration had as its policy, “We’re going to go in to Iraq and take their resource and pay for the war” is not accurate.

But, prior to the war, that was exactly the point which Paul Wolfowitz was making.

"The oil revenue of that country could bring between 50 and 100 billion dollars over the course of the next two or three years. We're dealing with a country that could really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."

Nor was he alone in making this sort of claim.

Richard Perle:

"Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can finance, largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will."

Ari Fleischer:

"Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction."

Donald Rumsfeld:

"When it comes to reconstruction, before we turn to the American taxpayer, we will turn first to the resources of the Iraqi government and the international community."

So what Rove is now stating is frankly wrong. Although, I note that Rove constantly widens the charge against the administration - that Iraq was to pay for "the war" rather than for it's own reconstruction - in order to be able to issue this denial.

Tags: Karl Rove, Iraq war

David Corn Bets Brad Blakeman $1000 He's Wrong on Iraq Weapons Inspectors.

Karl Rove is trying to rewrite history with his latest book, and the lengths that the Republicans will go to in order to assist him is best illustrated by the kind of nonsense being spoken here by Brad Blakeman.

Blakeman now claims that the Bush administration did not go to war because of WMD, rather they went to war because Saddam would not allow weapons inspectors into Iraq.

Blakeman: President Bush did not bring us into this war because of WMD. He brought us into the war...

Corn: What!?

Blakeman: ...because Saddam Hussein failed...

Corn: What!?

Blakeman: ...to allow inspections of the sites the U.N. demanded be inspected.

Corn: Brad you're absolutely wrong.

Blakeman: I'm right.

Corn: The inspectors were in. They were for months before the war.

Blakeman: Come on David.

Corn: I'll bet you $1000 right now! $1000 the inspectors were there.

The Republicans are now having to invent their own facts in order to defend what they have done. The fact that the weapons inspectors were inside Iraq is simply undeniable. We all remember Blix's visits to the UN to report on what they were failing to find and how Republicans at the time argued that the fact that they were finding nothing was only further proof of how untrustworthy Saddam was.

And we know that Blix certainly told Tony Blair that Iraq might not have WMD.

The inspectors visited many sites said by intelligence services in the UK, the US and elsewhere to contain WMDs, but had only ever found conventional weapons, documents or nothing at all, he said.

''I think this was one of the most significant things of the whole story,'' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

''We got tips not only from the UK but from other intelligence, the US as well, so perhaps some 100 all in all.

''We had time to go to about three dozen of these sites and in no case did we find any weapons of mass destruction.''

He added: ''We said if this is the best (intelligence), then what is the rest? Doubts arose from that.''

But to claim now, as Blakeman is doing, that the reason the US went to war was because Saddam refused to allow the inspectors into Iraq is just patently false. The cleverest thing Blakeman does in the whole interview is to decline to take Corn's $1,000 bet that he is wrong. Because that's a bet which he would lose hands down.

Tags: Brad Blakeman, David Corn, Iraq war, weapons inspectors, WMD

Rove Thinks Underwear Bomber Should Be Put "Back in the System to be Squeezed".

I find the mindset of these two utterly appalling. O'Reilly is stating that it will only take "one more" terrorist attack for Americans to decide that Obama can't keep them safe, because he has apparently set his stall too far from the stall set out by Bush and Cheney.

O'REILLY: But President Obama now finds himself in a very, very tough position. I said earlier, and I don't know whether you saw it, but earlier this week, one more terrorist attack, one more...

ROVE: Right.

O'REILLY: ...but it has to be one of magnitude. You'd have to have dead American bodies on display. One more, he's done, I think, in my opinion, because it just -- he staked territory so far away from Bush- Cheney. And the Bush-Cheney policies did protect us. They did work. But he staked territory so far away from that, that people aren't going to forget that. And the perception is going to be he can't keep us safe.

Rove responds by stating that Obama ought to "squeeze" the Christmas Day underwear bomber.

Do you see what they are saying? Another terrorist attack would not have been deemed enough to convince Americans that Bush and Cheney couldn't keep them safe, because Bush and Cheney - according to this logic - were prepared to do whatever it took.

Obama, according to these guys has one major flaw; he's not prepared to torture or to "squeeze" terrorist suspects.

I've said this before but this is one of the reasons why I thought the Obama administration should bring charges against the torturers. This is now being portrayed as a policy difference, rather than as a war crime.

The Republicans are now openly embracing war crimes as proof that they are prepared to do whatever it takes to keep Americans safe.

Speaking from the other side of the pond, this kind of rhetoric simply appalls me.

UPDATE:



O'Reilly then invites on Bob Barr and makes it very clear that the area where he feels Obama has displayed his greatest weakness is when it comes to "coerced interrogation".

O'REILLY: You don't think a ban on coerced interrogation where they broke guys like Ramsey bin Al Shib and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and they rounded up hundreds of al Qaeda and stopped plots as big, you don't think that's big?

BARR: Do I think a ban on torture that's already illegal under U.S. law is bad? No, it's not bad. It's the law of this country.

O'REILLY: It's coerced interrogation. And it was ruled that it was all right in some forums. The Justice Department said it was okay.

It really does come down to whether or not one is prepared to torture. It astounds me that the current right wing position is to openly argue for the committing of war crimes on national TV, but that is now their position.

Tags: Bill O'Reilly, Christmas Bomber, Karl Rove, Terrorism, Torture

Rove hypocrisy: Doesn't "understand" why Obama was "off the stage" for four days after attempted attack.

It really doesn't surprise me that Karl Rove pops up on Fox spouting this kind of crap:

HANNITY: Well, what do you make of the handling of the whole situation -- you know, "the system worked," Janet Napolitano tells us. The president -- you know, when we finally got a remark out of him, he says it's an isolated extremist, which we don't know to be the fact, but he said that. And then he talks about a systemic failure days later, but only because of press criticism.

ROVE: Yeah.

HANNITY: When you look at the entire incident in total, what does it tell you?

ROVE: Well, it tells me that we got the gang that's not got its act together. First of all, I think it was a mistake for the president to have the incident happen on Christmas and for him not to be heard from for four days. The White House sent out its people to spin the press in that they were trying to reassure the American people. Well, I don't understand why keeping the president off the stage and then not having him explain it for four days is supposed to reassure us.

As I've pointed out before Bush took SIX DAYS before making any comment on the Richard Reid attempted terrorist attack.

Obviously, a news channel as biased as Fox are going to transmit this kind of nonsense, but it's so blatantly hypocritical that one would expect other news channels to pick up on it and mercilessly mock him for it.

He sounds like he's from another planet.

Bizarro world.

Only a hack like Hannity could listen to this nonsense with a straight face.

Tags: Rove, Hannity, Obama, Bush, terrorist attack

Karl Rove: Obama took 80 days deciding, it only 'took us 50-some-odd days to remove the Taliban from power'.

Listen to these two tossers bloviating. O'Reilly is upset that Obama didn't "define evil" or "get emotional". He complains that Obama is almost too intellectual. He is actually making the argument that Obama is too clever and doesn't rely on his instincts enough.

What he utterly ignores is that it was Bush - who he supported - working from that infamous "gut" instinct of his who got the US into this shithole in the first place.

But listen to Rove prattle on:

It took him 80-some-odd days to do this, it took us 50-some-odd days to remove the Taliban from power after 9/11, and it took him some 80-odd days to say, 'I'm gonna give McChrystal three-quarters of what he requested in order to get done the job I told him to do on March 27.'

50 days to remove the Taliban from power and yet, eight years later, they are still an influence in Afghanistan because Bush took a sidestep into Iraq, which had bugger all to do with 9-11, terrorism or anything else.

The very fact that the people who rushed the US into two disastrous conflicts can now berate Obama for being too reflective is simply breathtaking.

These guys simply - even now - don't get just how badly they f@cked it up.

Tags: O'Reilly, Rove, Afghanistan, Obama

Rove accuses White House of keeping enemies list.

The hypocrisy of Karl Rove knows no bounds. He's now accusing the Obama White House of having a Nixon style "enemies list" for daring to identify Fox News as a hostile news organisation.

This from a member of the administration who outed Valerie Plame because her husband told the truth about Bush's lies concerning Niger. And he wants to talk about "enemies lists"? Please...

No-one, other than the most deranged right winger, would dare to argue that Fox is not the most biased and right wing of all the channels. There was a reason why the Bush administration were most often interviewed by Fox, it was because they would always be guaranteed help getting their message across on that channel.

But I am quite sure that this fake outrage is fooling no-one.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

Tags: Karl Rove, Fox News, Obama, Nixon

Obama hires back one of the U.S. attorneys fired by Bush and Rove.

Good on Obama.

He is starting to correct some of the wrongs which took place under the Bush administration:

From Murray Waas:

In an appointment that senior Justice Department officials say demonstrates the Obama administration’s commitment to reversing the Bush administration’s politicization of the Department, a U.S. attorney fired by President Bush was reappointed to his old job on Friday.

Daniel Bogden, who was fired in the fall of 2006 by the Bush administration as the U.S. attorney in Nevada, was offered his old job back by President Obama, and was formally nominated on Friday.

Bogden’s confirmation by the Senate is all but assured: He has spent his entire adult life in government service, and as a former U.S. attorney was confirmed by the Senate previously. He was also thoroughly vetted for his new position by the White House Counsel’s office prior to his most recent nomination, even though he was vetted during his first appointment as U.S. attorney by the Bush administration. Moreover, he has the backing of both his home-state senators: Harry Reid, a Democrat, and John Ensign, a Republican. That Reid is a Senate Majority Leader, and that Reid personally suggested to the President that Bogden get his old job back probably, won’t hurt matters.

Ironically, Bogden’s formal reappointment as U.S. attorney comes exactly one day after former Bush political adviser Karl Rove gave sworn testimony before the House Judiciary Committee regarding the firings of Bogden and eight other U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration. A federal grand jury is currently investigating whether Bush administration officials and members of Congress obstructed justice in pressing for one or more of the firings, and also, whether they misled Congress as to why the prosecutors were fired.

Investigators managed to find out why most of the Attorney's were fired, and who did the firing, but not in the case of Bogden.

An entire chapter of the report was devoted to his firing, but it concluded only that investigators “could not determine who was responsible for Bogden’s name being placed on the U.S. Attorney removal list.” His firing, if the accounts of senior DOJ officials responsible for terminating him are to be believed, was one of Immaculate Conception.

At the time of the firings, Alberto Gonzalez was attorney general. His chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, was in charge of compiling the list of names of U.S. attorneys to be fired – allegedly for poor performance (though those involved later admitted the firings were in fact made for political reasons). In interviews with investigators, according to the Justice Department report, Sampson “acknowledged that he must have physically placed Bogden’s name on the list.” But Sampson “denied that he made the decision to add Bogden to the list,” and asserted that “he did not remember who made the recommendation.”

Deputy attorney general Paul McNulty, who was the second highest-ranking official in the Department at the time, told investigators that he too "did not know why Bogden’s name was on the list of U.S. Attorneys to be removed.”

And Gonzales himself, who resigned in disgrace in large part over his role in the firings, denied to investigators that he had even wanted Bogden fired. Gonzales told federal investigators that he “did not have an independent basis for understanding why Bogden was to be removed.”

There is the distinct feeling that a wrong is being corrected here. The very fact that both Nevada Democratic Senator Harry Reid and Republican John Ensign have both suggested that he be reinstated tells it's own story.

This man had worked his entire life in public service and was fired without anyone ever being able to give a good reason as to why this was taking place. But we were all left with the distinct impression that the Attorney's were being fired because they were not right wing enough for the Bush administration's tastes.

And there's a wonderful irony in the fact that Bogden gets his job back exactly at the same moment that Karl Rove finally faces questions about this disgraceful affair. One of the things which most pleases me about the Obama administration is when it sets about correcting the shit of the last eight years. And the firing of those US Attorney's was one of their shittiest acts.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

Tags: bush, Harry Reid, House Judiciary Committee, John Ensign, Karl Rove, Politicization, President Bush, U.S. Attorneys

Rove says Bush admin had "no" responsibility for the deficit.

The truth is that the economy collapsed on Bush's watch. That's simply a fact. And yet Rove says that the Bush administration accept no responsibility for the deficit. None.

Astonishing.

Tags: Karl Rove, Bush, deficit, responsibility

Karl Rove: We Saw A Dangerous Pre-911 Mentality Tonight!

Hannity and Rove discuss Obama's press conference.

Rove, the man who worked for the man who dismissed warnings of bin Laden's intention to attack within the US with the words, "All right. You've covered your ass, now", has the gall to tell us that he detected a "pre-9-11 mentality" in Obama's refusal to engage in torture.

What's extraordinary is the way in which the right wing in America have come to hold torture up as one of their bravest values, and one which Obama is apparently too cowardly to embrace.

They used to argue that they did not torture, now they have traveled 180 degrees on this subject and are publicly arguing that to refuse to torture is to display, "a pre-9-11 mentality".

Torture is now a virtue according to the Republicans and refusal to engage in it is a failing.

It is the logical place for them to now find themselves. They have, after all, run out of all alternative arguments. And their immorality is clear for all to see, even as they have the gall to attempt to sell this as a virtue.

It's no wonder that they are racing towards political oblivion.

Tags: Rove, Hannity, Torture

Rove Decides "War Crimes" are "Policy Disagreements."

You've got to love the Republicans and their euphemisms. First they turned torture into "enhanced interrogation techniques", and now they have decided that "war crimes" are "policy disagreements".

Rove: Sure, as long as they've released the limits to which America will go to extract this information, let's share the information that was extracted, and saved America from further attacks. We know, for example -- it's already a part of the public record -- that the interrogation of these high-value targets kept them from being able to attack Los Angeles by flying airplanes into the Liberty tower, the tallest building in Los Angeles, which was one of their plans.

But look, let's step back for a minute. What the Obama administration has done in the last several days is very dangerous. What they've essentially said is, If we have policy disagreements with our predecessors, what we're going to do is we're going to turn ourselves into the moral equivalent of a Latin American country run colonels in mirrored sunglasses. And what we're going to do is prosecute, systematically, the previous administration, or threaten prosecutions against the previous administration, based on policy differences.

Is that what we've come to in this country? That if we have a change in administration from one party to another, that we then use the tools of the government to go systematically after the policy disagreements that we have with the previous administration? Now that may be fine in some little Latin American country that's run by, you know, the latest junta. It may be the way that they do things in Chicago. But that's not the way we do things here in America.

First of all, Chicago is in America, moron.

And secondly, could Rove get it any more wrong? It is actually in Latin American country's run by colonels in mirrored sunglasses that administrations are able to torture without fear of prosecution. In democratic country's, such things are recognised as war crimes and investigations and prosecutions are launched.

And there is nothing partisan about the law. So, if Rove and the others didn't break it, then they have nothing to fear.

But you can't break the laws to which the US has agreed to be bound by - under binding international treaties - and then write the crime off as "policy disagreements".

But it's clear that Rove is getting riled here. He knows what they did. And he knows that if they were prosecuted that many of them would go down.

For years, as they listened in on Americans illegally, they would dismiss civil rights objections with the phrase, "If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear".

Same rule applies here, Karl.

The big difference is that Rove and his cronies have much to fear.

Tags: Karl Rove, Hannity, Dick Cheney, Bill O'Reilly, Obama

Now All These (Torture) Techniques Are Ruined! Karl Rove.

Sorry to harp on about the torture memos release, but it really does seem to be the only thing to talk about this morning.

Here O'Reilly does the expected: he defends the use of "rough stuff".

This is where the American right now find themselves in the wake of the Bush administration. They are actually publicly arguing for the right to torture, whilst still insisting that what they are talking about is not torture as such. O'Reilly here argues that what we are witnessing is a "falsehood" sold to the public by "the left wing media".

He also wonders whether Obama's anti-terror policy will be as effective as Bush's, clearly making the argument that any future attack on American soil will be Obama's fault for being too pussy to continue Bush's programme.

Karl Rove pops up to state that the only thing which might concern the US public upon reading the memos is that perhaps the US did not go far enough. And Rove again argues that the fact that medical staff were present proves that torture was not taking place.

This turns logic on it's head. The fact that what was being done to these people required the attendance of medical staff is actually the clearest signal of all that torture was taking place. The medical staff were there to ensure that the prisoners did not die, and that valuable information was not lost. They were not there to ensure that the prisoners were not being tortured. Quite the opposite. Indeed, I wonder if Rove is aware that the Nazis also had doctors present when they carried out some of their worst atrocities.

But Obama's release of these memos has done a quite startling thing. It has forced people like Rove to take to the airwaves and defend what was done. To hear Rove speak of forced nudity, diet management, sleep deprivation and waterboarding is to hear a torturer attempt to defend his own inhumanity.

Aided by O'Reilly, Rove is actually on the record defending torture. Whether or not the right wing ever accept this, the actions they are describing are regarded as torture under international law. Obama is giving them rope and they are wrapping it around their own necks on national television.

Listening to what Rove is saying here is astonishing. If they played this tape in any international court of law there would be no argument as to his guilt, as he is practically confessing to the crime, whilst insisting that the actions which he is describing are not crimes at all.

O'Reilly laments the huge discrepancy between "the far left media, the Obama administration and the Bush administration". And he's right. There is a huge discrepancy between us.

We believe in the law, they believe in anything goes.

Rove thinks that "most Americans" will agree with what they have done and that they will see "the lunacy of the left" when they object to such actions.

I honestly don't know where the average American goes when he hears of such behaviour. I only know that I personally am appalled and outraged that people like Rove and O'Reilly can unashamedly argue the case for torture on American national television.

Rove: You can only use the back of your hand and you have to splay your fingers when you slap them in the gut. On the face you have to use your fingers splayed and you have to do it between here and here... This is the kind of depth they went into.

He then laments that "all of these techniques have now been ruined."

But the American right wing are now publicly exposed as the agents of torture which some of us always argued that they were.

And, as expected, they are utterly beyond shame.

Tags: Rove, O'Reilly, torture

The British and the American Press.

Every so often an incident occurs which highlights the stark difference in the way politics are conducted here in the UK as opposed to in the States.

Take the case of Damian McBride. He sent an email suggesting that certain smears be published on a pro-Labour website which told utterly made up stories about certain Tory MP's:

The government has defended its response to the e-mails scandal, saying the prime minister had "taken action".

Mr McBride stood down on Saturday, after it was revealed that he had sent e-mails in January to former government spin doctor Derek Draper, containing allegations about Mr Cameron, shadow chancellor George Osborne and Tory MP Nadine Dorries among others.

It was suggested the smears be published in a proposed Labour-backing, gossip-led website called Red Rag. The idea was later abandoned.

So, over here, the fact that McBride could even suggest doing something that underhand has resulted in his resignation and - even now - the Tories insist that Brown must apologise for something which they know he never did.

Again, and I emphasise this, these stories - disgraceful as they were - were never actually published, but the mere fact that such dishonest tactics could be ruminated upon resulted in McBride's dismissal.

Contrast that with Karl Rove actually setting out the rumour that John McCain had an illegitimate black child.

Eight years ago this month, John McCain took the New Hampshire primary and was favored to win in South Carolina. Had he succeeded, he would likely have thwarted the presidential aspirations of George W. Bush and become the Republican nominee. But Bush strategist Karl Rove came to the rescue with a vicious smear tactic.

Rove invented a uniquely injurious fiction for his operatives to circulate via a phony poll. Voters were asked, "Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain...if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" This was no random slur. McCain was at the time campaigning with his dark-skinned daughter, Bridget, adopted from Bangladesh.

It worked. Owing largely to the Rove-orchestrated whispering campaign, Bush prevailed in South Carolina and secured the Republican nomination. The rest is history--specifically the tragic and blighted history of our young century. It worked in another way as well. Too shaken to defend himself, McCain emerged from the bruising episode less maverick reformer and more Manchurian candidate.

So, yes, McBride's proposal was distasteful and outrageous, but these weren't smears which were ever carried out. And yet McBride was forced to fall on his sword.

Rove actually carried out his distasteful and outrageous smear and faced no calls for his resignation, instead he earned himself the nickname "Bush's Brain"; which is an oxymoron, I know.

Rove's behaviour was in many ways secretly admired, or at least taken as proof that he would go as far as was needed to win, a quality which Republicans always applaud.

There are some things, which in the British system are considered utterly unacceptable, which we all accept that the Republicans do as a matter of course.

Even the Tories would feel shame behaving like the Republicans do, but in the US the media never seem to hold the Republicans to the same level of scrutiny that our press do to our politicians. By which I mean, Rove's action elicited little revulsion, and a fair bit of Republican admiration.

The British press wouldn't allow either political party to indulge in such underhand tactics, either Tory or Labour, and over here the very fact that McBride even suggested what he did has dominated the press for the past few days.

Until the American press employ something approaching that British sense of fair play, then the Republicans will continue to behave like the immoral monsters that they are.

In the last election McCain and Palin were allowed to tell outrageous lies for weeks, before the sheer scale of their mendacity became impossible to ignore.

No British party - on either side of the aisle - would ever be allowed that much rope before they hung themselves.

The difference between the US and the British media is highlighted by the case of McBride and contrasting that with Rove's behaviour.

Over here it spelt McBride's ruin. In the US Rove's ruthlessness won him grudging respect.

That's wrong. (And it favours the Republicans.)

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Tags: McBride, Brown, Rove, Cameron

Countdown: When Turdblossoms Attack.

Imagine being called a liar by Karl Rove? Could a more ridiculous situation exist? It's like being called shallow by Paris Hilton.

Tags: Rove, Biden, liar

Rove Criticizes Obama for Deficit Spending.

You actually have to laugh at the sheer effrontery of the man. As Obama tries to kick start the economy, which utterly collapsed during Bush and Rove's time in office, Karl Rove tries to attack Obama for increasing the deficit.

The chutzpah is simply breathtaking.

Bush is the man who went from Clinton's high to record breaking lows.



And Rove has the nerve to sit there and act like he's a fiscal conservative. I've come to the conclusion that the Republicans think people are stupid. There is no other reason for them to behave in this way.

Or maybe they think that all Americans have some sort of instant amnesia, for Rove's behaviour is very hard to explain otherwise.

Tags: Rove, Obama, deficit spending

Rove: "I think every day about what Libby has had to go through."

Karl Rove has taken to the airwaves today to reassure us that the story of "a contentious relationship" between the president and the vice president, over the fact that Bush declined to pardon "Scooter" Libby, is simply tabloid exaggeration.

He also reminds us that "Scooter" Libby is "a wonderful, wonderful person" and that Rove thinks every day "about what he's had to go through".

It's a further example of how the law applies so differently when dealing with ordinary Americans than it does when dealing with the country's political class.

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.

The United States comes in first, too, on a more meaningful list from the prison studies center, the one ranked in order of the incarceration rates. It has 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. (If you count only adults, one in 100 Americans is locked up.)

The only other major industrialized nation that even comes close is Russia, with 627 prisoners for every 100,000 people. The others have much lower rates. England’s rate is 151; Germany’s is 88; and Japan’s is 63.

The median among all nations is about 125, roughly a sixth of the American rate.

The GOP is normally keen to see criminals put behind bars, but it makes a sharp distinction when the person that a court has found guilty and wants to jail is one of their own. At that point all the rules change and one is asked to sympathize for what poor "Scooter" has "had to go through".

Forget the fact that "Scooter" Libby was found guilty of the exact same charge which the Republicans had insisted made Clinton unfit for office; when done by one of their own perjury became something slight and almost whimsical. Indeed, the very fact that he had been prosecuted was used as an example of how "partisan" and "political" the entire prosecution must have been:

The Plame investigation was urged by the Bush CIA and commenced by the Bush DOJ, Libby's conviction pursued by a Bush-appointed federal prosecutor, his jail sentence imposed by a Bush-appointed "tough-on-crime" federal judge, all pursuant to harsh and merciless criminal laws urged on by the "tough-on-crime/no-mercy" GOP. Lewis Libby was sent to prison by the system constructed and desired by the very Republican movement protesting his plight.

But our political discourse and media institutions are so broken and corrupt that Bush followers (and their media enablers) feel free to make the completely-backwards and fact-free claim that the Libby prosecution was driven by "partisan" and "political" motives -- as though it was a mirror image of the Clinton persecution driven by Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and a purely partisan Republican prosecutor -- because they know that there is no such thing as a claim too false to be passed on without real objection by our vapid, drooling press corps.

It is for this reason that Barack Obama is reticent to pursue Bush, Cheney and others for war crimes. Because the GOP - backed by large numbers of the American press corps - really do believe that they are, and should be, above the law.

That is why both the president and the vice president could both appear on national television and so casually admit to war crimes. They do not believe for a moment that the law should apply to themselves.

And that is what Rove is lamenting when he talks of what poor "Scooter" has been through. He thinks it a partisan injustice that Libby was ever even accused of a crime, never mind convicted. For the law, in Rove's mind, should not apply to people like himself.

Tags: Karl Rove, "Scooter" Libby, Bush, Cheney, war crimes