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Regular readers of FDL and other outposts in the reality-based community know about the great lengths to which conservatives in and out of the Bush Administration go and have gone to push the bogus notion that encouraging minorities and women to vote is actually “voter fraud”. (The U.S. Attorney purge scandal came about because the attorneys on the list to be purged were the ones who refused to prosecute these nonexistent scandals.)
Now, we get to see the lengths to which Team Bush’s fellow travelers go to obliterate the evidence of their involvement with this discredited notion.
The Brad Blog and Slate and other folks have been following the efforts of someone at Lathrop & Gage, the GOP-affiliated law firm that employs Cheney and Rove buddy Mark F. “Thor” Hearne, to erase all mention of Hearne’s ties to the discredited — and recently shut down — American Center for Voting Rights, a right-wing astroturf group.
If this all reminds you of how Soviet Russia tried to airbrush inconvenient commissars away from Stalin’s side once they’d fallen out of favor, it should.
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coulda woulda shoulda
VERY important story PW!!!! Thank you so much for picking up on it.
GREAT POST
EPU’d from last thread –
Valerie Plame was COVERT and Sandy Berger PLEADED GUILTY AND SHOWED REMORSE
Women and minorities have to take political power. It’s there for the taking.
check out this great snark from Larry johnson
http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/
To me, the real question, as always, is how to get the MSM to report the scandal behind the scandal.
Someone better get the pillow off of Lady Liberty’s face…she’s turning blue.
-GSD
Valley Girl!
Great work.
Thanks for your service to the
FatherlanduhHomelanduhGlorious Investors Republic of the Unified Statesuh…
good people and creatures of the Lake.
Can we go review the missiles now? I get freedom goosebumps just thinking about it.
EPU’d from last thread:
Inspired by LS and hastily composed…alternate ideas gladly accepted and encouraged!
Gimme a….
V for Valerie and a
P for Plame and a
D for diabolical and a
I for indictments and a
C for COVERT and a
K for kick ‘em out and a
C for covert again and a
H for her husband and a
E for exposed and an
N for NOC and an
E for ended career and a
Y for yellow-bellied-traitors and an
S for Scooter and a
U for upholding the law and a
C for covert again! and a
K for keeping secrets and a
S for see ya in prison
This is going to be a good post PW!!! Very interesting!!! BTW…I guess you’ve all heard that Valerie Plame was a Covert CIA agent and that Sandy Berger pleaded guilty. Just checking.
TexB @ 7
Well that would require the MSM to do some actual investigating. At the moment they are on TV working as experts (hahahaha).
OT:
Abu is at it again…
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/….._0614.html
LS @ 11
Okay now LS we have to go to other comment sections – say at WaPo and let them know – Valerie Plame was covert and Sandy Berger pleaded guilty and showed remorse.
Hi, everyone! How goes it this fine toasty-warm evening? Hubby just installed a bike rack and panniers and new tires on my bike, and I used the panniers when I went to pick up some fried velociraptor descendant at KFC.
From my scandals list:
It shows how lame and out of touch with the digital age these guys are. Info on Hearne and the ACVR is out on the web and, sorry guys, but the web remembers. Air brushing history was possible when the state controlled the sources of information. With the web, that is no longer possible, but these guys never, never seem to learn. So they end up looking both stupid and crooked.
Hugh, I’m loving it
welcome to the wayback machine… hee-hee
Hahaha! Fried Velociraptor Descendant! I love it!
Great post PW!! You are one hard working blog master!
I linked this up in an earlier thread but thought it worthy of placement here. Tim the cagey vote grifter Griffin spoke (and at times cried) today at the Clinton school in Little Rock.
At the end of the post a link to a second video clip where he gets into caging.
re hugh @ 16 – i’m gonna share the link.
here’s hugh’s list
“Thor” Hearne?
hardly a match for our own intrepid Norske Flamethrower, I dare say…
Pass the borscht comrade, extra sour cream.
Berger also made the call to notify oversight on his own accord, and according to procedure destroyed copies so nobody else could see the information…
Libby lied about telling others and hid from procedure.
This has been another episode of the truth.
Hugh @ 16: Yupper. These guys existed solely to give a thin veneer of plausibility and respectability to the fake “voter fraud” claims (aka the attempts at minority vote suppression) being pushed by the GOP in general and Team Bush/Cheney/Rove in particular. (Thor Hearne used to be Cheney’s general counsel, and he and Rove are best buds as well.)
Phoenix Woman @ 24
Why am I not surprised? All the biggest slimes in the Bush Administration seem to have come from the same pond.
Hey PW – Don’t know if it’s my memory or my vision, but redfaced apologies – getting the poster wrong is a no-no.
Phoenix Woman, thank you for your work.
(slinks away, blushing)
From the Republican Dictionary:
blue skies = place to spew pollutants
healthy forests = place to steal the nation’s natural resources
guest workers = slaves
voter fraud = voting while not Republican
Hugh @ 25
The pond of the wanna-be Daddy who never had his own son (nevermind Mary, who is now redeemed because she has presented him with a “Cheney” heir).
Phoenix Woman @ 15
***
Nifty, but something tells me that Kentucky Fried V.D. will never catch on with the market… *G*
pwrlght @ 14
Phoenix Woman @ 24
Hi, PW. Regarding Hans von Spakovsky’s nomination as a commissioner at the Federal Election Commission, a commenter at TPM recommended contacting the bar associations (Georgia and Tennessee) where he is registered and asking them to require him to explain his actions.
Is this a plausible strategy?
In the view of the American voter Bush and the congress are in the basement respective of voter sentiment. A recipe for chaos. We are a nation ripe for fascism. The ingredients are present. A small and rich conservative elite. Corporate control of the economy. Reliance on military intervention. A country, the U.S., running out of oil. And nativism.
Hearne’s page on Wiki has disappeared. It redirects to the ACVR page.
Sigh… Still no KO!!! Fitz looked mighty good, walking out of the courtroom this morn!!! Aloha, Firepups!!!
Shuster on Countdown: “Republican Wingnuts”
Bwahahahahaha
Just heard Shuster on Countdown referring to “Republican wingnuts” — love it!
Hugh @ 16
Love it, Hugh, love it! Let’s see, where did that news come from? Is there a comments secton where we can post the quote from Hugh’s list? (with your permission, Hugh, of course)
Cozumel @ 35
Is there another word for them that I’ve forgotten?
Oklahoma kiddo @ 32
Yep, it’s the recipe alright. Was it Sinclair Lewis who said fascism would come to America “wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross?”
sorry, too lazy to google the quote myself. Someone here will know! [g]
“Professional Republicans = Neocons”. They just said that on Countdown!!
what’s the literal signification of “EPUd”?
izzere a faq?
.
LS @ 40
My God! And the word “wingnut” was said, coupled with Republicans? Can it be that the worm turneth?
Note to Senate/House Dems– Countdown is beating all the other political shows– ratings rising higher as KO (and others) get more frank and derisive about the Republi-fascists. Quit thinking doing the right thing is going to hurt you with voters, fer crying out loud!
wgg: tokin lib’rul @ 41
There’s something, I forget what. In brief, “EPU’d” means you’ve posted on a thread that has moved on and nobody is there to read it. Comes from EPU, a poster to whom this kept happening. [g]
i don’t cuss
after all of this bullshit, i’m in a new frame of mind.
i’m in a ‘fuck you’ mood…..the real kind. : )
just said fuck you to a couple of people, said it out loud…well, they aren’t here, but said it out loud to all the furniture…….never did that before………
my dog and cats looked at me funny….i meant it……..who’s to tell me what to think?
who’s to tell me what i should feel? who’s to tell me what i think is right?
fuck you so and so……..
wow…….release.
if not for all the fuck you talk i learned here, i might never have been able to do that.
new beginnings. all because of scooter libby.
new start.
dmac @ 44
Congratulations ?????
tejanarusa @ 37
Why is it so difficult for Americans to come to grips with the idea that our immigration ‘people problems’ stem from the way we treat those problem people’s countries? Perhaps it has something to with our own preferred standard of living entitlement, comfort and greed.
wgg: tokin lib’rul @ 41
The very definition of Evil Parallel Universe!
LS @ 11
But what about the secret neo-con weapons dealing network, run by Doug Feith? Was this covert network uncovered by the covert Plame? Logically, Plame should also have been looking for the source of the forged Niger Yellow Cake documents? More important, which neo-cons kept presenting the Niger documents as genuine? What about Sibel Edmunds? The Libby judge is also the judge for her, correct? It seems Thorn Hearne also is part of this treasonous conspiracy.
Woody,
EPU, the initials of a poster here who had a habit of “killing threads”. Evil Parallel Universe.
Iffy at 31: Hmmm. Run that past Christy and Emptywheel when they’re around. It sounds good to me!
Frank33 @ 49
It just gets worse. An interesting detail I came across in my travels was that Leahy and I think Schumer had sent Ashcroft a letter regarding Edmunds and other issues, one week before the notorious hospital visit. Listening to Comey’s testimony, events correlate with that as well. Obviously, there is tons of stuff we may never know.
Most thread killers I know are really good posts that rest on their own.
Hi ya, Dmac,
Just saw your reply to my comment and thank you very much. Hey, on the telling everyone to F off, I have just the link for you. I choose to post it every time Cheney’s in the news, so here it goes again:
With all due respect…
wangdangdoodle @ 50
Yup. He’d post in a thread just as a new one would be started and everyone would desert the old thread for the new.
Hugh @ 46
Thanks, Hugh. You did a lot of work on that list — definitely a public service.
May I quote your list as by the “poster known at FDL as Hugh?”
in a ‘democracy’, with a ‘free press,’ why might we citizens greet that statement with equanimity?
why IS it that “we may never know”?
strikes me there’s sommat amiss widdat situation.
or?
dmac @ 44
dmac,
I know what you mean. I didn’t cuss for years until you-know-who came to power. And then I tried, really hard, to just yell Spanish cusswords at the TV, but my kids learned them and said them at school so I just said the hell with it.
I actually have a copy of “The Commissar Vanishes,” and it’s a real hoot. Or at least I used to think it was before Bush and Cheney moved to Washington, D.C. Now it look more like a rough primmer on how they figure they’re supposed to act. And, of course, since most of the early neocons were really Trotskyites, maybe it all fits. Anyway, those old time Ruskies would have really liked to have had Photoshop instead of having to make do with razor blades and air brushes.
TexBetsy @ 38
Shuster is a huge FDL fan. I’m sure he was tossing us a bone ; ) Too funny, I’ve never heard that on Tee Vee before
wgg: tokin lib’rul @ 57
Depends on if you’ve heard that Valerie Plame was COVERT at the CIA when she was outed by the Bush Administration, and that Sandy Berger pleaded guilty. If you have not heard that on the MSM, then our press is not free, I guess. :}
tbsa @ 13
Bush is making it impossible for congress not to impeach him.
thanks betsy,
i have a friend leaving for iraq sunday, bringing emotions to the surface…….i so want to do something that helps. yet, i am just swimming in the same emotions everyone else are having.
i need to make more art. my friends and family are on me for not doing art…haven’t felt like it….by the way, i do good art……not bad.
here’s the email i’ve sent to friends.
and bobby is leaving for iraq sunday for a year……i am so pissed…..he thought about taking the mandolin he gave me with him……..i am so pissed he’s going, cannot begin to describe my abhorrence to the whole thing.
made him play guitar for me, and the mandolin….said, cmon i’ll miss it…..he’s been here four times in the last week, saying goodbye…he said my dixon guitar is the best guitar he has ever played, the action on it………many have said that…….my friend annie gave it to me, she is gone, is a tribute to her and her taste in instruments.
i can’t stand that he’s leaving………..don’t know if i mentioned, he’s the brother in law of jorma kaukonen, of jefferson airplane and hot tuna fame…..in the rock n roll hall of fame….look them up……he has a guitar camp down here, has blues concerts……..traditional blues……i had a season ticket last year, one of two……..but this year, not anyone i haven’t seen before or people i could care less about seeing…..so haven’t been there this year……..can find them at furpeaceranch.com.
being stupid pisses me off…….there was a time when you were being stupid and it pissed me off, better we didn’t know eachother after that…….well, bobby is being stupid, and as much as i love him, i want to kill him……..for his stupid choices.
love,
d
Loo Hoo. @ 62
Oh nonsense. Don’t you know it was off the table even before congress was seated?
tejanarusa @ 56
LOL, sure why not, it reminds me of Prince or the rock star formerly known as Prince or the rock star formerly known as the rock star formerly known as Prince. *g*
Loo Hoo. @ 62
Sure seems that way. It’s kind of like impeach me if you dare…if you don’t, I’ll attack Iran and Syria…if you do, I’ll take it to the loaded SCOTUS….Bring it on….
Too bad he doesn’t admit that Valerie Plame was Covert when his minions outed her!!!
kirk murphy @ 26
Heh! I’m in such a whirl that I didn’t even notice, Dr. Kirk. Consider yourself forgiven.
topicality?
CBC’s as it happens just interviewed the daughter of Mohuiddin A.K.M. Ahmed a Bangladeshi man facing immediate deportation, after which he will be executed.
The weeping daughter said she was going for a final visit with her father before Homeland Security sends him off to death.
She said it was a “no contact” visit, so she would not be allowed to hold him.
Those who purport to protect us actually disgrace us.
Homeland Security is merely an occupying force imposing an alien ideology – Authoritarian Federalism.
Our freedom and safety are in far greater danger from the “security services” and their mercenaries than from any Al Queda cell.
Industrialized democracies are in a death struggle for survival.
With their own armed minders.
How do we take back our nation from the domestic terrorists at Blackwater – and their masters at Homeland Security?
PS -
Rep. Jim McDermott and Amnesty International both reject Ahmed’s conviction (for the assassination of the former Bangladeshi president) in one of a series of vendetta trials organized by the slain President’s daughter when she became President.
The US has no extradition treaty with Bagladesh. Canada would take the man and his family. Why does Homeland Security export human beings for execution, rather than emigration?
CD @ 29
Tastes like chicken!
Loo Hoo. @ 62
It is standard operating procedure for this Administration. They will bend and break the law until they are physically stopped. And nothing short of impeachment can do that.
Cozumel @ 60
It would be nice if he’d Delurk and/or comment! I would ask him if he could ’school’ Dobb’s pet, Casey Wians, or even Tucker’s! I can’t seem to recall his name!!! *g*
Frank33 @ 49
Wow, Frank, I hadn’t made the Plame-Feith connection…someday this will make a great movie.
Jeebus, the space shuttle is doing the navigating for the space station because of computer problems. It is possible that they will end up needing to abandon the space station.
My party, the Democratic Party, should be held accountable for it’s actions and inactions. Let the chips fall where they may.
Oklahoma kiddo @ 74
Well said, OK Kid.. we could use a good housecleaning.
In politics nothing is impossible.
margot at 58=
dmac,
“I know what you mean. I didn’t cuss for years until you-know-who came to power. And then I tried, really hard, to just yell Spanish cusswords at the TV, but my kids learned them and said them at school so I just said the hell with it.”
=========
and you’re a buckeye……so you know what i mean…….i was told not to have a ‘marine mouth’ i have pennsylvania dutch heritage. peace.
i found my marine mouth today., at letting one of my closest friends go because he couldn’t find work,he is going to iraq, it is beyond me that this is happening………..he doesn’t even support the war, yet he is going……..i have to say
fuck this bullshit……….what the hell?
i was raised in an upper class world……exposed to other classes through the methodist church…work camps throughout my early teenhood….i worked for the phone company in the worst neighborhoods any of you could imagine. that means i went into their houses and talked to them like human beings…….had to, and it was hard to sleep nights, say prayers for your telephone man, they see it all…….really.
i know what the world is made of, both sides of it. seen it, personally. really. more than i can erase from my brain.
i am totally dismayed and disgusted. our government represents noone that i know.
kirk murphy @ 68 — Bangladesh must be one of the PNAC Platoon’s “allies”.
It’s amazing what kind of crap one can get away with if one is an “ally” of Bush. Just ask Pervez Musharraf, who clamped down on all electronic media without the US press making more than a soft murmur about it. Then again, they were too busy attacking Hugo Chavez for taking over one TV station — the one that was controlled by the rich Bush-aligned oligarchs who tried toppling him five years ago.
kirk murphy @ 68
Why does Homeland Security export human beings for execution, rather than emigration?
DHS is run by the party that is concerned with the right to life, Kirk. Unfortunately, the soon to be victim in this case has already been born into this world, and so they could care less about him.
It’s a fair question for Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn, aka Short Ride Joe, don’t you think?
Uh-oh – Have we discovered what it means to “bust the margins?” Mods?
OT for sure – I’m turning on the tv – TexBetsy, dakine1, anyone I’m forgetting in S.Texs–presume you will watching the Spurs crush the
CavsLeBron James?dmac @ 77,
I’d love to see what kind of art you come up with to describe our country right now. Or your friend’s leaving.
Heck, I might do something myself.
Oklahoma kiddo @ 74
OkK- starting with those whose vote allowed Alito to be confirmed, shall we?
tejanarusa @ 80
Tejanura are you interested in joining us for a picnic in New Breunfelds’ in the next few weeks/month?
LS @ 73
Still no improvement? oh man…
Oklahoma kiddo @ 74
Why do you think Congress’s Approval Rating 23%, is lower than Shrub’s 29%!!! Bwhahaha…!!! *g*
“May you live in interesting times”
Well we do.
Looks, though as if we are goin to see a four corner offense and no 24 second clock. The home team’s just gonna let this one run out- 18 months to go.
There will be no impeachments- I thought that there would be the beginnings of a draw down in Iraq- but Bush is holding the goopers pretty close still- surprising- so who knows.
With a veto in the White House- and lacking a fillibuster proof majority in the Senate- dems are for damn sure not going to inact any legislation that the goopers don’t support.
There will continue to be hearings up the ying yang- but we’ve come to see that no one goes to jail or loses a job just because they’ve broken the law or displayed gross stupidity.
“This is the way the world ends- this is the way the world ends- this is the way the world ends- not with a bang- but a whimper.”
dosido-
thank you, was informative link.
it’s hard to keep up with comments when i make a comment, i’m on dial up………takes too much time out of the thread……so when i do make a comment, i end up reading the thread later, that’s the sacrifice…….so i make sure when i’m making one that it’s worth screwing up the rhythm of reading it in making it……..thanks.
OT –
kirk murphy – if you’re still around… just received this link via pagan cluster listserv:
http://recreate68.org/
“thunder” and PW – thank you. I thought I was going crazy all on my own.
I don’t have words for the transnational judicial and political homicide described below.
from Rep. McDermott’s private members’ bill to spare Ahmed
PS – In my comment above I mistakenly said the assassinated leader was a Presidient, not a PM. My bad.
Hi y’all. I am back from my vacation! Did y’all break the country when I wasn’t looking?
rwcole @ 86
rwcole @ 86
I think I will go open a major artery. What a sad comment. I won’t stop hoping and working and doing everything I can to retain our country and its values.
selise @ 88
and so it begins
Blessings, selise.
Recreate ‘68
We won’t go smiling into those dark camps.
Citizen Jane, Can I post your acrostic poem on my website? I will credit you.
I’m beginning to think that the designation of a target called “Al-Qaeda in Iraq” is really part of a psyops thing in order to try to lure everyone’s attention toward a “common” enemy in order to attempt to diffuse the extent of the civil war ongoing in Iraq.
Margot says:
June 14th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
margot at 81
dmac @ 77,
I’d love to see what kind of art you come up with to describe our country right now. Or your friend’s leaving.
Heck, I might do something myself.
======================
oh, please do make some art margot-i wish i could convey to you how much your comment meant……
i have been stuck…one of my best friends describes me to her friends as a non working artist, that is what i have been for a while, made many wonderful things and stopped for a while./….. thought about my emotional presence as being a venue for that outlet……..thank you.
last summer, for my best friend, who is an art teacher, i drew every morning, an entire bound sketchbook, just for her, just things that came into my head as inspiration. gave her the sketchbook. she said i put her to shame…….and she is quite the artist.
i have had a problem with finding myvoice. i can make art, it gets purchased, and friends-who have been nominated for governors awards push me into it- it doesn’t seem worthy……like it’s not seeing what things are. maybe i can now. i’m pissed enough now.
thank you for seeing that.
If you can, listen to this interview by John McKay and Jason Leopold. McKay is clear what has happened.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061207J.shtml
dmac 95, just go for it. Don’t think about what others think. It is your art, you are free to do whatever you want. It is not at all unusual to go for long periods of non-production of your expression while the materials in your mind and soul boil together and then finally bubble up again. Go for it. Don’t judge.
selise @ 88
Awesome, Selise!!! I would love to spend my Birthday, Aug. 27, in Denver!
Oh. did anyone say there’s a new thread?
kirk murphy @ 92
Amen, Doc, Amen!!!
CTuttle & kirk – it’s not too late, the Ds in congress could take a stand to end the occupation before the DNC next year… but after the last few months, i’m not counting on it.
dmac,
I’m so sorry about your friend going off to war. Do you know what his reasoning is?
TexBetsy @ 83
Oh, yes, ma’am —count me in! Is it still planned for the Gospel weekend in Gruene? It is on a Sunday, right? (I work all day Saturdays).
Here is an interesting report on why Plame was revealed as “covert”..
———————————
Although Grossman “has not been as high profile in the press” FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds cryptically told me the other day, “don’t overlook him – he is very important.”
She was not speaking about the Plame affair, though Grossman did indeed have a key role there, as we will see. According to her, Grossman was one of three officials – the other two, she says, are Richard Perle and Douglas Feith – who had been watched by both Valerie Plame’s Brewster Jennings & Associates CIA team, and by the major FBI investigation of organized crime and governmental corruption on which she herself was working until being terminated in April 2002.
Mods will you please me and tejanarusa each other’s email addresses?
Thanks!
ls at 97 “dmac 95, just go for it. Don’t think about what others think. It is your art, you are free to do whatever you want. It is not at all unusual to go for long periods of non-production of your expression while the materials in your mind and soul boil together and then finally bubble up again. Go for it. Don’t judge.”
well, that is exactly what i have been doing….i once told a friend how dali had to have time to percolate ideas and theories and then, after inspireed by something entirely different, would spit out paintings…
past things don’t measure up, must be doing something, have been in a malaise(sp?)
pottery is my best. have had a line on a wheel, my wheel goes two speeds, too fast and too slow……someone has a wheel for sale with a pedal…..but that’s no excuse, i draw equally as well…….and friends who make a living at art are ‘on my ass’…….they say i see thngs they don’t…….maybe i do, but have felt such a vacuum for a while…….fdl helps, passion in any form is a good thing…….and art is passion.
thanks, you all get me thinking all of the time……
i often wonder, the artist’s brain ya know, if youall realize what thoughts can inspire……..that’s what starts art you know, thoughts.
and art inspires the world.
dmac 95, just go for it. Don’t think about what others think. It is your art, you are free to do whatever you want. It is not at all unusual to go for long periods of non-production of your expression while the materials in your mind and soul boil together and then finally bubble up again. Go for it. Don’t judge.snowbird42 @ 96
I need a shovel to wipe my jaw off the floor.
loohoo at 102
dmac,
I’m so sorry about your friend going off to war. Do you know what his reasoning is?
sorry i missed your comment-
yes, providing for his family.
dmac, i’m so sorry for your friend and all the hurt he is facing – and the hurt you and his family are facing.
hope he comes through safe and well…
and hope your muses visit you often as you desire.
dmac,
If that “not worthy” thought comes to you again, spritz the air with lemon or lavender scented stuff as if you’re chasing away bad smells.
Or stomp your foot like you’re killing ants. That “not worthy” thing is way worse than ants!
—–Your audience who loves art and wants to see some, damn it;)
Margot @ 110
dmac: I also am in need of comfort from art created by someone connected, and FDL is a valued link for all of us here. Is there a way you could share with us – maybe a website? Best wishes to your friend. I respect his choice, but I am sorry that we can’t offer a better and safer way for him to provide for his family.
TexB @ 7
Don’t hold your breath…just as in Stalinist Russia, the MSM is completely owned by and subservient to the ruling clique.
Reading through Trotsky’s book on Stalin and his works on the Russian Revolution,after having read Richard Evans’ works on the Third Reich, it’s almost as if Rove and Company are following their playbook.
Trotsky remarked that Stalinism was just fascism by a different term, but we all know “A rose by any other name…”