More Press Briefings...
This is becoming
GREAT reading. Helen Thomas just lights into Scott McClellan.... :
Q (Helen Thomas) The other day -- in fact, this week, you said that we, the United States, is in Afghanistan and Iraq by invitation. Would you like to correct that incredible distortion of American history --
MR. McCLELLAN: No, we are -- that's where we currently --
Q -- in view of your credibility is already mired? How can you say that?
MR. McCLELLAN: Helen, I think everyone in this room knows that you're taking that comment out of context. There are two democratically-elected governments in Iraq and --
Q We're we invited into Iraq?
MR. McCLELLAN: There are two democratically-elected governments now in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we are there at their invitation. They are sovereign governments, and we are there today --
Q You mean if they had asked us out, that we would have left?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, Helen, I'm talking about today. We are there at their invitation. They are sovereign governments --
Q I'm talking about today, too.
MR. McCLELLAN: -- and we are doing all we can to train and equip their security forces so that they can provide for their own security as they move forward on a free and democratic future.
Q Did we invade those countries?
I think I got a copy of that invitation.. It read:
Dear USA,
Please come into our country and kill thousands of innocent civilians so that you may rid us of those Weapons of Mass Destruction
Regards,
Iraq
More jokes
Courtesy of
Late-Night Political Jokes:"
Condoleezza Rice made a surprise trip to Iraq on Sunday. Also surprised to be in Iraq on Sunday: thousands of U.S. troops who were supposed to be home by Christmas." --Amy Poehler
"Earlier today Photos appeared on the cover of two newspapers of
Saddam Hussein in his underwear... People were very upset. Here's the cover of the
New York Post. And then I noticed something very odd... zoom in on the photo (clip: written on underwear-- "Weapon of Mass Destruction") --Conan O'Brien
"The big rumor in Washington,
Dick Cheney may run for president. Let's hope that's just a
Newsweek story. Cheney says he wants to run because there is still a lot of unfinished business. Like, did you know there are still a lot of countries that don't hate us?" --Jay Leno
"To show that his energy bill is about more than drilling for oil in Alaska. This week President Bush visited a plant in Virginia that turned soy beans into a clean burning diesel fuel. Which the president hopes one day will be used to fuel oil drilling machines in Alaska " --Tina Fey
"President Bush says he is still angry at
Newsweek magazine.
Newsweek is angry as well, and wants to know who read the story to President Bush." --Conan O'Brien
Tina Fey cracks me up
"California Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger's popularity has been slipping in recent months as residents slowly begin to realize they elected Arnold Schwarzenegger to be their governor." --Tina Fey
I got this from about.com's
Late Night Political jokes site. Other recent ones that jump out:
"The big non-story this week was the plane that came near the White House and did nothing. But when
President Bush heard there was a plane nearing an important building, he was immediately rushed to a middle school so he could sit there
like a lump." --Bill Maher
"A cable access show has a character called 'Dick Smart' and it was a talking penis, trying to tell kids about contraception. A court of appeals has laid down the law that you cannot have a talking penis on the TV.
Fox News has reacted immediately and fired Sean Hannity." --Bill Maher
"President Bush was spotted carrying around a book and he told reporters he started reading the book four months ago. Apparently he still hasn't found Waldo." --Conan O'Brien
"Congress was evacuated and it caused a 15-minute interruption of getting absolutely nothing accomplished." --David Letterman
"
President Bush was in Russia all this week. Today he was in the Republic of Georgia and he told the Georgian people he feels very close to them because once, during the Vietnam War, he served in Alabama." --Jay Leno
"With respect, who made you the editor of Newsweek?"
You gotta love the press. Scott McClellan was doing his usual whoring for Bush today when he was asked a
few pointed questions. My favorite:
"With respect, who made you the editor of Newsweek? Do you think it's appropriate for you, at that podium, speaking with the authority of the President of the United States, to tell an American magazine what they should print? "
White House bashes Newsweek report on Koran
Does anyone else see the hypocrisy in this... "The
White House said on Monday that a Newsweek report based on an anonymous source had damaged the U.S. image overseas by alleging that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay."
I think if Newsweek got this wrong someone should be fired. But let's see, what else has damaged the U.S. image overseas? Perhaps false claims of WMD's that were used to justify war in Iraq? I think that may have damaged the US image overseas...
The quote that really cracks me up is this:
"It's puzzling that while Newsweek now acknowledges that they got the facts wrong, they refused to retract the story," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "I think there's a certain journalistic standard that should be met and in this instance it was not."
Has anyone ever heard the White House admit they got the facts wrong and retract their story?
Bush and Title IX
Somehow I missed this when it first hit the news... from the
savetitleix website:
"Without any notice or public input, the Department of Education recently issued a new Title IX policy under the guise of a "Clarification" that threatens to reverse the decades of progress women and girls have made in sports. Schools can now claim they are providing women and girls with equal opportunities to play sports based only on results from an e-mail survey of female students' interests in sports.
Under this new policy, all a school has to do to show they are providing their female students with equal opportunities to play sports is to send each female student an email survey asking whether she has the interest and ability to play additional sports. If for any reason the student does not reply, the school may interpret this as lack of interest. Given the notoriously low response rates to surveys in general and this era of excessive e-mail spam, the Department's new policy undermines the law and its intent to provide more opportunities for women and girls.
Before this policy "clarification," schools had to make a serious effort to gauge interest, including by talking to coaches and students and surveying women's sports offered by high schools or other colleges in the region. Schools also had to examine whether their lack of recruitment effort dampened real interest in sports opportunities by potential female athletes. Now schools can simply say they've met their obligation by sending students mass emails."
Find out what you can do to save Title IX.
Have I mentioned that Bush is a pig?
Bush lags on privacy rights
According to
this article, "The White House has been slow to establish an oversight board charged with ensuring that the government's campaign against terrorism does not erode privacy and civil rights, a bipartisan group of senators said."
"Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the White House's lack of action reflects a resistance to aggressive monitoring of civil liberties in the face of public concern about the government's use of data mining, toughened immigration controls, expanded surveillance powers and a host of other counterterrorism measures."
Of course, none of this is surprising... what is surprising is the public's continued lack of concern. I wish Bush respected the
4th amendment as much as he does the
2nd.
How stupid is Wal-Mart?
This stupid. They ran a newspaper advertisement that equated a proposed Arizona zoning ordinance with Nazi book-burning. This is part of their questionable strategy to get involved in local politics and bully communities into allowing them to expand.
Finger follow-up
It turns out that the infamous Wendy's finger belongs to a friend of the husband of the woman who cried "finger!". Read all about it
here.
Smoking gun....
According to this
report "Eight months before the invasion of Iraq, the head of British foreign intelligence reported to Prime Minister Tony Blair that President Bush wanted to topple Saddam Hussein by military action and warned that U.S. intelligence was "being fixed around" that goal, according to notes of a 2002 meeting with Blair at No. 10 Downing Street."
The most telling line from this is, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and (weapons of mass destruction). But the
intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
The guy should be impeached...
Probe to look into why Bush not advised of plane alert
A follow-up to the post below... The White House
launched an investigation Thursday into the 47- minute delay in notifying President Bush about the intrusion of a single- engine aircraft into restricted airspace over the nation's capital that provoked emergency evacuations.
Now if they'd just follow that up with a probe of why
Bush continued reading "My Pet Goat" to a Florida classroom after being told the United States was under attack.
The Daily Briefing
I wish I would have seen this, apparently reporters wanted to know from WH Press Secretary Scott McClellan why the President wasn't notified that the WH was being evacuated. You can read the transcript
here.
A really stupid woman
A middle school marching band was told not to perform "Louie Louie." Benton Harbor Superintendent Paula Dawning cited the song's allegedly raunchy lyrics in
ordering the McCord Middle School band not to perform "Louie Louie" in Saturday's Grand Floral Parade, held as part of the Blossomtime Festival.
Before making that really stupid decision, she apparently hadn't read the
FBI's report on that song when it was controversial, oh about 40 years ago.
Luckily, someone pointed out to her that she was a moron (at least I'm guessing that's what happened) because the board
reversed that decision.
Wild Wild West
Mayor James E. West, a Republican foe of gay rights, was caught trying to court what he thought was an 18 year old man on the web site Gay.com. You can read the story of yet another hypocrite
here.
