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Bush's White House in Turmoil

By Jeralyn, Section Other Politics
Posted on Sun Oct 30, 2005 at 10:55:15 AM EST
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As Buzzflash writes,

Holy Batman! The Mainstream Press is Even Sounding Grim on the Busheviks, "Dark days: Singed by the special prosecutor and rattled by the Harriet Miers mess, Team Bush is in turmoil."

There is a huge sea change going on in the MSM. Check out Newsweek's Flying Blind and The TimeonLine article Bush Got Whacked. The Washington Post features a similar article and notes that Bush's approval ratings are at the lowest of his presidency.

Michael Isikoff writes in Newsweek (as I speculated most recently yesterday) that Novak's source cooperated with Fitzgerald and got a pass.

One lawyer involved in the case who declined to be identified because of the matter's confidentiality said Novak decided "early on" to cooperate with Fitzgerald's probe and ID his source—whom Fitzgerald never charged, apparently because the mystery leaker told the truth to the grand jury.

Isn't that a fancy way of saying Fitzgerald gave Novak's source immunity from prosecution in exchange for this truthful testimony? Again, when do we find out who else made these deals?

Journalists also are jumping on Cheney and Rove. Andrew Sullivan, writing in the Sunday TimesonLine, says Cheney's not out of the woods.

Nicholas Kristof says Cheney must be candid or resign. Lawrence O'Donnell over at HuffPo calls Rove a cancer on the presidency and writes Rove must resign or Bush's presidency will never get back on track.

[hat tip for to Patriot Daily for many of the news tips.]

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    Bush's White House in Turmoil | 33 comments (33 topical)
    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#1)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:33 PM EST
    Just as long as it's 'oil, they probably don't care.

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#2)
    by jimakaPPJ on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:33 PM EST
    TalkLeft - When you write that someone "cooperates," are you saying that they answered invesitgators/Grand Jury questions truthfully, or are you saying they actively gave information that wasn't asked for? Seems to be a big difference.

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#4)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:33 PM EST
    Yeah, I was just funnin. But I am curious about this statement in Isikoff's article this morning in Newsweek: "But the lawyer said Novak—and several other figures in the probe—may initially have been able to testify undetected because witnesses were allowed to take an underground elevator up to the grand jury, making it less likely they would be spotted by journalists. In the summer of 2004, presiding Judge Thomas Hogan ordered all witnesses to go through the front door. As a result, Rove—who made four grand-jury appearances—didn't get noticed testifying until October 2004. Novak declined to comment to NEWSWEEK." I think Hogan's decision certainly made it easier for the world and bloggers to reverse engineer what was happening in the grand jury, but it seems so weird for a judge to make such an order. What would prompt that? How unusual is such an order?

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#5)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:33 PM EST
    Whoops, response was to be in the Simon and Simon thread, but I am still most curious about Hogan's order.

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#6)
    by profmarcus on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:33 PM EST
    rove gives unethical a bad name... the man has almost single-handedly taken politics in the u.s. to a new low where anything goes... stories can be fabricated and passed along as rumor and innuendo and, as long as they cast some doubt on their target, they've served their purpose - even when they're later debunked... no wonder listening to fitzgerald was such a positive experience... when you've been suffering from a migraine, even an ordinary headache feels like heaven...

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#7)
    by Edger on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:33 PM EST
    Paul in LA: A tsunami of leaks is about to break on Bush's Aceh province. The last levee broken by Katrina?

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#8)
    by jimakaPPJ on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:33 PM EST
    PIL writes:
    How would anyone on the outside know whether they asked and answered, or SANG LIKE A BIRD.
    PIL, please keep up. The question was what TL means when she uses the word "cooperate."

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#9)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:33 PM EST
    "What would prompt that?" A fundamental sense of fairness before the bar? "How unusual is such an order? At all unusual is TOO unusual. The front door, like everybody else uses.

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#10)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:33 PM EST
    Yeah, Jim, and the answer is obviously that no one knows what the full extent of "cooperate" was or will be. That's the funny thing about coercing people into breaking the law. They may consider the prosecutor their confessor. Your 'big difference' may be no difference at all, depending upon the giver.

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#11)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:33 PM EST
    must Read TPM from WAPO Novak source = Ari On July 12, the day Cheney and Libby flew together from Norfolk, the vice president instructed his aide to alert reporters of an attack launched that morning on Wilson's credibility by Fleischer, according to a well-placed source.

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#12)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:33 PM EST
    PIL, please keep up. The question was what TL means when she uses the word "cooperate."
    PPJ, please keep up. TL did not 'write that someone "cooperates" '. The only use of the word "cooperate" in TL's post was in a quote by Michael Isikoff from Newsweek.

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#13)
    by squeaky on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:33 PM EST
    pg-Jane Hamsher takes josh marshal incredible lexix catch and runs with it:
    we know that Ari is now cooperating with Fitzgerald and will be a witness against Scooter if it ever comes to trial. No wonder he has been lying low. He has many, many tales to tell.
    Wonder whose lawyer scrubbed the WaPo text. Jane Hamsher josh marshall

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#14)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:33 PM EST
    The MSM are only NOW turning on Bush!!!??? What is it, feeding time at the zoo!? The MSM will have to do a helluva lot better than they have been to be seen as anything other than the lapdogs that they are. If it wasn't for SP Fitzgerald, would the MSM dare to be as bold as they seemingly have been? Um, no.

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#15)
    by Edger on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:33 PM EST
    Lavocat: If it wasn't for SP Fitzgerald, would the MSM dare..? Maybe he was just the spark they needed. One public figure seen to be standing up to the Bush League who would dispassionately do his job without showing fear or favor, and without spinning it. It has seemed to me that since Katrina people generally have been slowly becoming less and less willing to continue buying into the mindset engendered by the fearmongering of this administration. It seems the MSM has been just a little bit slower than the average person to change. A response to market forces perhaps?

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#16)
    by Che's Lounge on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:33 PM EST
    Lav, Bloggers have been following this for two years. The rest have been following it for two weeks.

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#17)
    by jimakaPPJ on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:33 PM EST
    Cymro - The following is from the post:
    Michael Isikoff writes in Newsweek (as I speculated most recently yesterday) that Novak's source cooperated with Fitzgerald and got a pass.
    Perhaps english is not your first language.
    ... Isikoff writes....(as I speculated...yesterday...).. Novak's source cooperated..
    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#18)
    by jimakaPPJ on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:34 PM EST
    edgey - The so-called MSM has been anti-Bush from day one. Read this and see how Wolf Blitzer does it.
    BLITZER: But even if there were no criminal -- if there was nothing criminal about the release of the Valerie Plame, was it appropriate for senior officials in the Bush -- Bush White House, Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, to be talking about Joe Wilson's wife instead of simply arguing with him over the merits of the case. BAUER: Well, Joe Wilson's wife -- they have their own political agenda, which I think is fairly obvious as we have watched this unfold in recent months... BLITZER: Well, we don't know what her agenda was, if any. We know what Joe Wilson's political views were. He wrote about them in the New York Times. BAUER: But one of the things we may find out, however, as this unfolds and the trial is held and so forth, is what some of the agendas were of everybody involved... BLITZER: But do you feel comfortable, do you feel comfortable with the very narrow issue of -- for example, some people that have problems with you, and they say, well, let's go to his -- let's see what his wife is up to, and we'll try to drag her into this? BAUER: But, Wolf, in this case, his wife allegedly played a role in sending him on a mission that ended up in a very real way being used to undermine the president's desires in foreign policy areas... BLITZER: So you don't have a problem dragging her into this? BAUER: Well, I would have trouble attacking somebody's spouse if that spouse had nothing to do with the controversy. I'm arguing that in fact she did have something to do with the controversy. Look, this is a tough city... BLITZER: I'm going to move on to Harriet Miers...
    And earlier Blitzer got so far out of line even Senator Byrd had to correct him:
    BLITZER: The prosecutor and the special counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, said it wasn't; it was about the simple matter of lying, obstructing justice. REID: No. Wolf, listen. That's not so. The special prosecutor wasn't asked to investigate the war; he was asked to investigate a CIA leak. That's what he did. And he did a good job doing that.


    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#19)
    by jimakaPPJ on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:34 PM EST
    ;-)... Actually that was Reid instead of Byrd..

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#21)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:34 PM EST
    Jim alleges that the "MSM" has been against Bush "from day one", and to prove it, cites a CNN transcript from last week. Brilliant as usual. Bush has had a rough couple of weeks from the press, because the failures of the past year--Social Security, Schiavo, Iraq, Miers, now Plamegate--are too blatant to ignore. But from 9/12/01 to about March of this year, Bush was exempted from scrutiny like no other President in the postwar era. (Imagine, if a Democrat had been President on 9/11/01, how different the treatment would have been.)

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#22)
    by jimakaPPJ on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:34 PM EST
    kth - Snivel if you want, but Blitzer's said what he said. Kind of hard to deny a transcript. Darkly - Since you like interesting things, you should try the cartoon channel, I understand it has super graphics. I'll stick to listening to what the MSM has to say.

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#23)
    by jen on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:34 PM EST
    JimakaPPJ So Blitzer doesn't like that the white house destroyed a CIA agent's career to get back at a critic. And this proves a general media bias?

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#24)
    by Edger on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:34 PM EST
    Matt Drudge published a short article last night in which he says an unnamed governemnt source has told him that Fitgerald plans to call Cheney as a witness in open court in a trial of Libby, and that it could result in "an executive privilege showdown between the White House and Fitzgerald". Are their poll numbers not low enough now? They seem determined to drive the numbers down even further. Cheney would probably come down "against" himself if he took part in an approval poll about himself. ;-)

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#25)
    by Edger on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:34 PM EST
    ...could it be that Cheney figures a showdown with Fitz in the media would be a winner considering that, as Jim claims, the media has been against the administration all along? huh? ...scratching head... ;-)

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#26)
    by jimakaPPJ on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:34 PM EST
    Jen - Blitzer's comments follow a pattern. You know it, I know it. At the very least he could have acknowledged her role.
    If Ms. Plame didn't want her identity out, she shouldn't have gotten her husband a secret mission and then allowed him to wage a public campaign against the president's foreign policy. The leading prevaricator in this case is Mr. Wilson himself. He has accused Mr. Bush of falsely leading America to war. Mr. Bush had claimed "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Mr. Wilson drank tea in Niger for a week and said that Mr. Bush's claim was not true. But even after Mr. Wilson's objection, the July 2004 report by the British government's Butler Commission found that Mr. Bush's comment was "well-founded.
    NY Sun BTW - The suggestion keeps coming up that that Mr. and Mrs. Wilson should sue for damages. If they are serious, it appears that the New York Sun has thrown down the gauntlet.
    The leading prevaricator in this case is Mr. Wilson himself.
    edey - Poll numbers? What you seem unable to grasp is that Bush has never cared about poll numbers, plus he can't run for re-election. BTW - Cheney being forced to testify sounds good, but it will never happen. You heard it here first. BTW - You do remember RatherGate... Don't you? duhhhhhhhh. Some might call that opposition.

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#27)
    by Edger on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:34 PM EST
    Bush has never cared about poll numbers, especially when trying to maintain support for his wars.

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#29)
    by jimakaPPJ on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:36 PM EST
    Darkly - Knowing the public's reactions, and making policy based on that is one thing. Knowing the public's reactions and then doing what you think is right is something else. You know, like a father knowing his son will be unhappy for not being allowed out during school nights, but not allowing him to, anyway. It is an adult thing. Now, go back to your cartoons, Darkly. You'll go gaga over the graphics.

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#30)
    by Edger on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:36 PM EST
    Knowing the public's reactions and then doing what you think is right is something else. And it is the public that will in the end pass judgement on what has been done.

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#31)
    by Edger on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:37 PM EST
    If they question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied. ---Rudyard Kipling
    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#32)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:37 PM EST
    Darkly - Knowing the public's reactions, and making policy based on that is one thing. Knowing the public's reactions and then doing what you think is right is something else.
    Then why bother polling, if Chimpy is so set on 'doing the right thing? Your analogy is weak, as is your logic tonight. Is that due to your medication kicking in? Anyway, thanks for giving ME a case of the giggles tonight from your lame-brained assertions. TTFN, Whizzy.

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#33)
    by jimakaPPJ on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:37 PM EST
    Darkly - Why bless your heart, there is a variety of reasons for wanting to know what the public thinks of an issue that have nothing to do with what your actions will be that. You know that. I know that. Why act like you don't? edgey - Waxing poetic on Halloween?? How perfectly drool. And you mean the public gets to vote???? What a very deep comment.

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#35)
    by Edger on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:37 PM EST
    Before the past two weeks, George W. Bush's Approval Rating had never dipped below 43% in a Rasmussen Reports poll. It fell to 42% for the first time a week ago Friday, to 41% for the first time this past Wednesday, and to 40% for the first time on Friday. --- Clinton's Last Laugh - Final Approval Rating: 70%

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#37)
    by Edger on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:38 PM EST
    DA: I hope this terminally contipates them. :)

    Re: Bush's White House in Turmoil (none / 0) (#38)
    by Edger on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:38 PM EST
    ...CONSTIPATES them...

    Bush's White House in Turmoil | 33 comments (33 topical)