White House Mafia Blog

Article: They’ll Break the Bad News on 9/11

From the June 24, 2007, New York Times:

They’ll Break the Bad News on 9/11
By FRANK RICH

BY this late date we should know the fix is in when the White House's top factotums fan out on the Sunday morning talk shows singing the same lyrics, often verbatim, from the same hymnal of spin. The pattern was set way back on Sept. 8, 2002, when in simultaneous appearances three cabinet members and the vice president warned darkly of Saddam's aluminum tubes. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," said Condi Rice, in a scripted line. The hard sell of the war in Iraq — the hyping of a (fictional) nuclear threat to America — had officially begun.

MOVIE REVIEW | 'SICKO'

From the June 22, 2007, New York Times:

Open Wide and Say ‘Shame’
By A. O. SCOTT

It has become a journalistic cliché and therefore an inevitable part of the prerelease discussion of “Sicko” to refer to Michael Moore as a controversial, polarizing figure. While that description is not necessarily wrong, it strikes me as self-fulfilling (since the controversy usually originates in media reports on how controversial Mr. Moore is) and trivial. Any filmmaker, politically outspoken or not, whose work is worth discussing will be argued about. But in Mr. Moore’s case the arguments are more often about him than about the subjects of his movies.

Article: This Land Was My Land

"The George W. Bush public lands legacy. If you want to drill, or cut trees, or open a gas line — the place is yours. Most everything else has been trashed or left to bleed to death."

From the June 23, 2007, New York Times:

Guest Columnist
This Land Was My Land
By TIMOTHY EGAN

MOUNT HOOD, Ore. Most Americans don’t own a summer home on Cape Cod, or a McMansion in the Rockies, but they have this birthright: an area more than four times the size of France. If you’re a citizen, you own it — about 565 million acres.

Article and Links - Not Buying It

The New York Times
June 21, 2007
Not Buying It
By STEVEN KURUTZ

ON a Friday evening last month, the day after New York University’s class of 2007 graduated, about 15 men and women assembled in front of Third Avenue North, an N.Y.U. dormitory on Third Avenue and 12th Street. They had come to take advantage of the university’s end-of-the-year move-out, when students’ discarded items are loaded into big green trash bins by the curb.

This Is Crazy

See the following article, which says the U.S. is going to take 70 Iraqi refugees into the country in the next month. The article says the to maximum number that will be accepted to the USA is 7,000. That is out of 4.2 million Iraqis displaced by Bush's war. That's insane. So Bush starts an illegal war, his buddies profit from it, Bush displaces millions of innocent people, accepts a few as refugees, then sends CNN out to do a self-congratulatory piece of propaganda on it. I mean the tiny country of Sweden takes in more Iraqi refugees than a "super power"? Only in Bush's Amerika does that make sense. Click through to read the articles these facts came from.

The LA Times "Scotter - Jail" Article

Libby gets prison, Bush may face dilemma
Ex-Cheney aide gets 21/2-year sentence in probe of a former CIA operative's outing. Pressure for a pardon may hit president soon.
By Richard B. Schmitt
Times Staff Writer

June 6, 2007

WASHINGTON — Former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby faces the prospect of becoming the first high-level White House official to go to prison since the Nixon administration, after a federal judge sentenced him Tuesday to serve 2 1/2 years for perjury and obstruction of justice.

Scooter in Jail... A Good Start

Libby sentenced to 30 months in prison

Story Highlights

• NEW: Cheney says he is "deeply saddened" by conviction
• Judge to rule next week on whether Libby can remain free during appeal
• Lewis Libby sentenced to 30 months in jail, $250,000 fine
• Libby was convicted in March of perjury, obstruction of justice

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was sentenced Tuesday to 30 months in prison for lying to investigators looking into the leak of a CIA operative's identity.

Thank You...

Desperate Suburban Existence

Why?

From the June 2, 2007, Washington Post:

Driven to Extremes
For their commutes of up to four hours a day, the Hierses of West Virginia and Marc Turner of Charlottesville enjoy cheaper housing and better pay. But at what price?

By Michael Leahy
Sunday, June 3, 2007; W18

AT 7:25, ABOUT 15 MINUTES INTO HIS TWO-HOUR-PLUS WEEKNIGHT COMMUTE, Marc Turner reached for his ringing cellphone. On the other end of the line, the younger of his two daughters, 7-year-old Catherine, had a question.