I'M SHOCKED, SHOCKED, I SAY!

Some of you may have been following the growing scandal of the 8 or so Federal Prosecutors who were fired by the Bush Administration...many of them were involved in prosecuting bribery cases and one of them, most notably, the Randy Cunningham scandal....Talking Points Memo and TPM MUCKRAKER have done wonderful work in breaking this story and it lead up to Senate Hearings Yesterday.

Well it turns out that there was Political pressure to fire these Prosecutors!

GASP!

I'M SHOCKED, SHOCKED, I SAY!

Not only did the scandal get into Senate Hearings, it also made the hollowed pages of U.S. NEWS and WORLD REPORT As reported by columnist, Michael Barone:

When a U.S. senator (to wit, Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican) feels free to call a prosecutor at home and hang up on him for resisting political pressure in the course of executing his prosecutorial duties, the line between politics and law enforcement has been so thoroughly violated that it no longer exists.

and the "money line":

What's going on in Washington is not sufficiently removed from the routine doings of a tawdry Third World dictatorship to give any American comfort.

In the first paragraph he mentions the " depth, breadth, and permeation of corruption in the Bush administration. "

You don't suppose the MAIN STREAM MEDIA is catching on do you?

Naaaaaahhhh....(kudos to Josh Micah Marshall of TPM and his crew for riding herd on this story)

Possible explanation?

I wrote in the other post that the Great Right- Wing-Wurlitzer acts very much like a pick-pocket...that is, they distract you with something else while they steal your wallet. The massive amount of right-wing noise that is being played out now about the Libby verdict has me placing my hand squarely over my wallet.

I admitted in my post last night that I really don't know what we're being distracted from here and, if I had taken the time to read all of Scarecrow's post over at firedoglake, I might have let it go at his explanation...in part, it reads:

"Yesterday a jury of 11 of his peers convicted Scooter Libby of four felonies: giving false statements (lying) to the FBI, two counts of perjury (lying) before a federal Grand Jury and obstructing justice in the investigation into who disclosed the identity of a CIA agent. But the unamimous guilty verdicts by the jurors who actually heard the evidence did not matter to the Administration apologists who simply don't care about the evidence. Unlike Iraq, where the Administration apparently has no "Plan B," their supporters were ready with their response to the verdicts: control the media narrative, bury the obvious accountability moment, obscure the "cloud over Cheney," and more important, discredit the legal process and manipulate the eventual outcome. The coverup is in still on." (additional emphasis mine)

Scarecrow points out two of the points I made in this post. That is, the right wing was eminately prepared for this assault, and, they were determined (and successfully executed) control over the media narrative.

Scarecrow goes on to say:

Lies never die with these people. The guilty verdicts changed nothing for them. All of the lies that have been repeatedly discredited are still being told by the Administration's supporters without shame and too often without response. The cover up continues and is in full force. Libby is still the fire wall to protect Cheney and others, and the apologists and neocons are working very hard to make sure he stays the firewall. The strategy now seems to create a dominant view that a pardon is not only fair to poor fallguy Scooter Libby but inevitable. So there's no reason to wait.

I somewhat agree that at least some of the motivation for the noise machine is to protect Cheney...to keep Scooter as the firewall to protect Cheney...but from what?

Cheney is politically and (to some extent) legally insulated from this scandal. He can only be reached through impeachment which the Congress is loathe to even talk about, and he can, if he wishes, obfuscate any supeona with claims of "Executive Privilege" until he runs out the clock on this administration's term. Why the desperation? (note: this is essentially the same question Scarecrow is asking? "Why the rush to pardon Libby?" "Why must (as the right wing pundits insist) the pardon be granted NOW?")

Put your hands over your wallets folks....something is amiss here.

Scarecrow thinks its to protect Cheney.

I think we need to ask WHAT IS IT THAT CHENEY NEEDS PROTECTION FROM?

Stop, Children, What's that sound?

Ev'ry body look what's goin down......

Read this......

There's a REASON for this spin folks....there's a reason....

Round, like a circle, like a wheel within a wheel....

That lyric is from the theme song, Windmills of Your Mind from the original movie The Thomas Crown Affair. It seems appropriate because of the SPIN that is being put out non-stop by the great right-wing wurlitzer....as Dave so rightly mentioned in his comments earlier..... Here's something I cross-posted....



But the spin is making me dizzy....obviously the Republicans were expecting this because their legions were on every talk show spouting the same talking points...busting out the same spin...scarecrow over at firedoglake has a good overview of the spinmeisters at work

.....and worse yet, even the Washington Post is REPEATING the same lies which were debunked years ago about Joe and Valerie (Plame) Wilson. Attaturk does a good job of documenting it here....
That's Valerie and Joe in the picture at the right...
As a side note, I can picture Valerie as a "soccer mom" but the desecription of her being trained to use an AK-47 assault rifle just sort of ....boggles my mind....

update: 9:49AM....Just ran across this article from TPM Cafe by Eric Kleefeld ...about the "experts" that Fox News trotted out to explain the verdict....read the article here

Also....the incomparable James Wolcott had a few words to say about it...

"As Fox News roll out a furry tribe of Defrosted Caveman Lawyers....."

LIBBY GUILTY!!!!

ON 4 OF 5 COUNTS......

MERRY FITZMAS PLAMEOLOGISTS!

FIREDOGLAKE IS DOWN....TOO MUCH TRAFFIC

UPDATE

I posted a similar update here but in case you don't want to click over there, I'll post a version of it here....

remember the Conservative/Republican narrative that depicts Conservative leaders of the macho-ist of macho men? Well, Greenwald had something to say about that too:

"And the ultimate expression of faux, empty, masculine courage and power is, of course, the Commander-in-Chief himself -- the Glorious Leader whom John Podhoretz hailed in the title of his worshippful cult book as The First Great Leader of the 21st Century -- with the ranch hats and brush-clearing pants and flight-suit outfits that would make the Village People seethe with jealousy over his costume choices. Just behold this poster which was a much in-demand item at past CPAC events (h/t Digby), which makes as clear as can be how these Bush followers have tried to idolize their Leader: "

rofl....

Village People INDEED!

And this was too good not to share with you.

Commenter on the Greenwald Blog, El Cid, had this to add:

For Rightwing, Reason & Thought Themselves Are 'Gay'

For the populist right, the idea of slowing down your contrived authoritarian impulses for even one moment to think about an issue, to reason something through, is, in itself, effeminate and probably gay.Why is that? Because it's possible that thinking through an issue carefully and resorting to evidence may, just may, somehow contradict their desired agenda. So the most effective thing to do is discourage thought and reason in itself, so as not to risk your precious lunatic goals.If the American right wing were going to design & build a bridge, there would be no architects with their big pointy heads and all their 'stoppin' and thinkin' about stuff' to hold back the large, fake macho dudes with hammers and nails who are then followed by the loudmouth brigade.No, their chosen lunatic pseudointellectual would claim that he was able to draw out a bridge -- in fact he's got a glorious idea for a brand new bridge design that nobody done never thought none of -- and it wouldn't take him very long.If the bridge collapses because the idiots don't know the first thing about building bridges, well, it's not their fault, some gay foreign terrorist guy must have somehow drove over a truck at the wrong time.

So there's the narrative..........cartoon images of faux masculinity by people who actually don't possess it.

Where's OUR narrative?

I think I've posted before about the love affair liberals have been having with George Lkoff and his concept of "framing". While I think framing issues is important, I think it's only a small (actually very small) part of what we need to do in order to win back the hearts and minds of the overwhelming majority of the American electorate.

In order to do this, I think we need to talk about the "narrative" as opposed to the "frame". Republicans are actually quite good at this and our friend Glenn Greenwald (bio here) has an excellent post on this narrative today presented in the context of the Ann Coulter flap. Here's the link to the article. (you may have to sit through an advertisement but trust me it's well worth it).

Here's a description of Coulter's utility to the Conservative movement and the "narrative" she provides:

And that is where Ann Coulter comes in and plays such a vital -- really indispensible -- role. As a woman who purposely exudes the most exaggerated American feminine stereotypes (the long blond hair, the make-up, the emaciated body), her obsession with emasculating Democratic males -- which, at bottom, is really what she does more than anything else -- energizes and stimulates the right-wing "base" like nothing else can. Just witness the fervor with which they greet her, buy her books, mob her on college campuses. Can anyone deny that she is unleashing what lurks at the very depths of the right-wing psyche? What else explains not just her popularity, but the intense embrace of her by the "base"?

and, more precisely:

Coulter plays a vital and irreplaceable role in this movement. The reason I linked to that Bob Somerby post on Maureen Dowd yesterday is because he makes the critical point -- one which Digby, among others, has been making for a long time, including in a great post last night -- concerning how the right-wing movement conducts itself and the rhetorical tool they use not only to keep themselves in power, but more importantly, to keep their needy, confused, and scared base feeling strong and protected. As Digby put it:

The underlying premise of the modern conservative movement is that the
entire Democratic party consists of a bunch of fags and dykes who are both too
effeminate and too masculine to properly lead the nation. Coulter says it out
loud. Dowd hints at it broadly. And the entire press corps giggles and swoons at
this shallow, sophomoric concept like a bunch of junior high pom pom girls.

What's even worse, as Greenwald points out, not only is the right-wing narrative about liberals effeminate, but the narrative also portrays Conservative (Republican) heros as the "manlyist" of men...cowboys, warriors, war heros, brush clearing studs of epic proportions.....

None of which is true....

Where's our narrative about Conservatives?

What should it be?