Barney

I didn't even make it halfway through the video.

The President demonstrates yet again how he is inappropriate and tone-deaf.

One month and four days to go.

h/t Jeffrey Feldman at HP.

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Obama: Barbara Walters Interview

Barbara Walters Interview with
President-elect Barack Obama and Mrs. Michelle Obama
November 26, 2008


Part 1 - President-elect Obama


Part 2 - President-elect Obama


Part 3 - President-elect and Mrs. Obama


Part 4 - President-elect and Mrs. Obama


Part 5 - President-elect and Mrs. Obama


Part 6 - President-elect and Mrs. Obama

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Breaking; Tony Snow Has Died

Former White House press secretary Tony Snow, 53, died of cancer.

Snow was first diagnosed with colon cancer in February 2005. His colon was removed, and after six months of treatment, doctors said the cancer was in remission. A recurrence of the illness was diagnosed 11 months after he began the White House media job, and he underwent five weeks of treatment before resuming his daily briefings to the press corps.-- CNN

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Flashback: All Of Iraq's Provinces By November

A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.

To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November. To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs. To empower local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year. And to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation's political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's constitution. -- George W. AWOL Bush Whitehouse.gov January 2007

Phase 3. Profit!

Iraq 2008, Now With More Dead People!!

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White House Aide Resigns

Ben DomenechTimothy Goeglein Resigns

In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben DomenechTimothy Goeglein plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various publications prior to washingtonpost.com the White House contracting with him to write a blog that launched Tuesday some stuff.

An investigation into these allegations was ongoing, and in the interim, Domenech Goeglein has resigned, effective immediately.

When we hired Domenech Goeglein, we were not aware of any allegations that he had plagiarized any of his past writings. In any cases where allegations such as these are made, we will continue to investigate those charges thoroughly in order to maintain our journalisticpolitical integrity.

Plagiarism is perhaps the most serious offense that a writer can commit or be accused of. Washingtonpost.com The White House will do everything in its power to verify that its news and opinion content is sourced completely and accurately at all times.

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Namibia Ghost Town

I saw this picture of a town in NambiaNamibia being take back over by sand. It makes me think of the Whitehouse.


More pictures here.

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Testing...One, Two, Seventeen?

(CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE)

No Dana, The S.A.T.'s are not those nights of the month you go out and do your shitty karaoke...

We here at The Group News Blog like to consider this place a variety of things. Sometimes it is a pulpit from which to rage at injustice, and sometimes it is a contemplative oasis where one can ponder the events of the day. It can also be at its best, a place for learning. A school if you will.

And as recent days have informed us, having an education can save your life—or save you from utter embarrassment.

Take White House Press Secretary Dana Perino for example. Now, I fully admit to being a bit harsh on the daft-assed conserva-spokes-bot White House press secretary, as many others have been. But, I'd like to perhaps make this grand-mal gaffe of hers into a positive thing—a teaching moment. So I conferred with my fellow educators and administrators here at GNBU—The Group News Blog University, (“Collegium Ex Cogit Asellus”) and we have decided to help Dana out, showing her the way through the thicket that is Contemporary American History 101.

But before the teaching can begin, Dana's depth (or shallowness—take your pick) of knowledge of the subject must be plumbed, and the best way to do that is through an evaluatory test. The questions were chosen with great care and sensitivity to Ms. Perino's well-documented gaps in historical expertise, but we believe that they are fair, and should give a clear insight into just how hollow-headedly dumb where she appears to need work.

The questions are as follows, in addition to the actual GNBU test paper available for you the reader to peruse above, after you click to enlarge it.

No...no, Dana, if you click your pen, the test paper will not get bigger—that only works on computers. (BEAT) No dear, if you click a pen, the computer won't get any bigger. Working a mouse makes the computer page bigger. (BEAT) Um...no. If you used a rat the page would not get really, really big, I...you know what? Let me see what you put down for Question #1. Let's see here...(BEAT)

Oh Goddamn...

EXAMINATION IN LATE 20TH CENTURY HISTORY 101

1.) Sputnik is:
a.) A famous Soviet defector
b.) The first man-made satellite put into space
c.) The sound President Bush made when he coughed up that chunk of pretzel.

2.) Which of the following best describes “Brown Vs. Board of Education”?:
a.) Plaintiff and defendant in the landmark school desegregation case
b.) Lawsuit for disability access access to public schools
c.) The two fighters involved n the famed “Thrilla in Manila”

3.) “Houston, we've got a problem” refers to:
a.) CB code for “Bad weather up ahead”
b.) The “mayday” phrase used by Apollo 13 astronauts when a
mechanical failure threatened them in space, and Mission
Control needed notification.
c.) What Whitney's crack dealer said when she came up two dollars short on a buy

4.) Complete the following—“James Earl Ray”...
a.) Assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
b.) Assassinated President John Fitzgerald Kennedy
c.) Was the voice of Darth Vader in “Star Wars“

5.) Saigon is:
a.) The setting for a bad musical about the Vietnam War
b.) The former name of Ho Chi Minh City, and a center
of conflict in the Vietnam War
c.) What Estelle says to anyone who calls looking
for “Sy” after he's left the house.

6.) Which of the following best describes Chappaquiddick?:
a.) The name of a tribe of Native Americans
b.) The location of a scandalous incident involving Sen. Ted Kennedy and a dead female office staffer.
c.) A lip balm used specifically after rigorous oral sex

7.) Complete the following—“The Six-Day War...”
a.) Was a brief, but boundary-changing battle between Israel, Egypt, Syria and Jordan
b.) Took place in the late Spring of 1967
c.) Was just a bit worse than the Five-Day War

8.) The Watergate Crisis was:
a.) A contributing cause of the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon
b.) An early 70's constitution-threatening political scandal involving the President,
many members of his cabinet and their illegal subverting of the law
c.) Really bad, but a couple of cans of Drano™ cleared it right up

9.) Who was Huey P. Newton?
a.) A prominent Reverend in the Civil Rights Movement
b.) The leader of the militant Black Panther Partty
c.) Dewey and Louie Newton's triplet sibling.

10.) “Woodstock” is...
a.) A culture-changing music festival taking place in 1969 in Bethel. New York
b.) A small, yellow bird character from Charles Schulz' reknowned “Peanuts” comic strip
c.) A risky rainforest lumber investment portfolio

A-a-a-annnnnd...PENS DOWN! Pens down, class. Right now. (BEAT) What the? Ohhhh..mannnn...
(Sound of cell phone dialing three numbers)

Hello? 911? Could you send an ambulance, right away? One of our students has stabbed themselves in the leg with a ball-point pen. Yes...her name is Dana. Capital D...a, n, a...

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All You Ever Need To Know

“Those who fail to learn from history are...oooooh! Sparkly things!”

We're big on history around here—be it the history of fashion, or music, computing or pop culture—the lore of American politics or the tales of horror and heroism of war.

History is what informs you. It gives you a context to frame the events of the day and grasp their meaning better than you would were there nothing to compare them against.

Steve was a huge proponent of understanding how the past informs the present. It's what made him so damned incisive in his writing, and it buttressed his truth-telling with a gravitas that few could match.

He wasn't just making shit up and leaving it out there like a Brooks, or a Krauthammer does—expecting us to “La-dee-dah” it like we were a nation of fact and history-challenged Annie Halls out there. But he made the point often that the Bush administration's frightening tendency to utterly ignore history—including recent history was one of their most damnable crimes. Damnable because even though their soul-crushing idiocy insofar as policy-making was already awful to the seventh power, perhaps...someone in there with a grasp of history could at the very least point to a previous moment in time as a teaching moment and say “Hey you know what? Based on this thing that happened before, let's re-think this thing we're about to do.”

They don't do that in this White House. Because every day for them is like the movie “50 First Dates”—you know only what you know and nothing will inform you any further. History never impacts, and every day's a chance to blissfully shit the bed anew.

It was confirmed with this unbearably sad, and frankly scary little piece of “fluff” reported by the Washington Post:

Appearing on national Public Radio's light-hearted quiz show “Wait, Wait . . . Don't Tell Me,” which aired over the weekend, Perino got into the spirit of things and told a story about herself that she had previously shared only in private: During a White House briefing, a reporter referred to the Cuban Missile Crisis -- and she didn't know what it was.

“I was panicked a bit because I really don't know about...the Cuban Missile Crisis,” said Perino, who at 35 was born about a decade after the 1962 U.S.-Soviet nuclear showdown. “It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I'm pretty sure.”

So she consulted her best source. “I came home and I asked my husband,” she recalled. “I said, 'Wasn't that like the Bay of Pigs thing?' And he said, ''Oh, Dana.'”

I believe the correct response should have been “Oh, you fucking Dumb-ass.”

If you ever wanted to get a true understanding about how this crew—“The Bushies”—could be so earth-quakingly inept...so maladroit at the handling of even the most simple elements of governance that they could, as Driftglass says “fuck up a two-car funeral procession”, this little anecdote explains it all.

This bird-brained spokes-bot, one step removed from a “Star Search” quarterfinal with fluttering hands and a presentation model's stance is the supposed spokesperson for “the world's most powerful leader”. How in the Wide World Of What-The-Fuck does a person in that position NOT KNOW about maybe the closest instance our country has ever come to nuclear annihilation? And walk around the White House every damned day and not have so much as a clue that those very rooms and corridors she slinks around probably still reek of sweat and leaked bits of excrement from those fearful two weeks in 1962? I mean...Goddamn, it was only one of the touchstone moments of the last fifty years of American history—effectively defining our relationships with the Soviet Union and Cuba to this very minute!

I'm not feeling the “she's too young to know about it excuse” either. I was born the year after the crisis and somehow managed to hear about it during my “horrible, no-good, fucked-up, inner-city education” in Harlem a decade later.

Hell, my 18-year-old son knows about the damn thing.

How?

Through his fascination with the movie “Scarface”—a seeming requirement for his generation, he came to discover and like the work of Al Pacino. I told him “If you really wanna see Pacino act, dig these.”

They were DVDs of “The Godfather, Parts 1 & 2”

He was captivated by Al's Michael Corleone, and really went for him in the more Pacino-centric Part 2. I explained the irony of “2's” being set in large parts in the Cuba that helped create Pacino's later crime-lord incarnation of Tony Montana. It was a brief explanation that tied the march of Castro into Havana, the ass-covering book-up of Batista, and our government's dismay at the change in leadership and political philosophy. It was a short hop from there to the Soviets stepping into the vacuum we created thanks to our isolation, post-coup, and how that led to “The Crisis” that Dana didn't know jack-doodle-shit about.

A year later, (my son was sixteen when we discussed all of this) it was covered in his high school history class, and he impressed his teacher when during the discussion, he tied the same elements together, citing the facts and noting the movie as a nice piece of source material to check out. His teacher concurred, and enjoying the discussion that had been prompted, then made a deal with the class—saying that he'd let them watch “The Godfather Part 2”, if they'd also watch “The Missiles Of October” to see what the Cuban revolution would lead to. They agreed. The kids saw both movies, and my son did say that it gave him and a few of his friends a better understanding of their old, prurient standby “Scarface”.

Now, maybe it's a bit much to ask, but shouldn't a Presidential Press Secretary at least be as conversant in recent American history as a New Jersey high school history teacher and his students?

Yeah, it's a rhetorical question—I know. Of course she should. But what should really give you pause is Perino's handling of this bit of revealing idiocy. She giggled about her head-banging stupidity as if it were something cute and en-fucking-dearing. Crooks and Liars has the audio that will make you want to chew off your own foot, HERE.

It's all you ever need to know about these people. Idiots. And proud of it. A badge of fucking honor, this glittering stupidity, and the utter lack of a thirst for knowledge. The silly-ass talking point bot waited to get all the way home to ask “Daddy” what the damn thing was? I mean, I know they're all ”let's be careful what we do on our work computers” down at 1600 Scandalvania Avenue, but shitfire...you have heard of “teh” Google, haven't you Dana?!

It's this kind of celebrated dumbfuckery that makes me want to kick Andrew Sullivan and the rest of that pack of “Black folks iz stupidah than da White folkz” believers dead in their Goddamned chests. It's a pathology if some of us get a shitty education and end up not too bright—the race is fucked!—but it's an oh-so-ironic titter-fest when people as prominent as the President of The United States and his press secretary get above-par educations, yet expose themselves as being as dumb as a box of broken hammers in spite of it.

Har-har-har-de-har-har! Forgive me as I laugh my way down the swoopy playground slide of “the Bell Curve”.

I cap this off with my suggestion for a question at the next White House Press Gaggle. A very simple one.

“Thanks very much Dana. One question please—Eh, why in the fuck are we asking your dumb ass any questions?”

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Fucking incredible

Q: Is it ever reasonable to restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism?

MS. PERINO: In our opinion, no.

Dana Perino, Whitehouse Press Secretary on Pakistan.

I just had to post that... cuz... I don't know... Shark, Fonzie, Richie, or something...

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Is Pres. Bush Subject To The Law? Take #2987

Attorney General Nominee Mukasey Was To FIX this Crap!
(I need a beer. And I don't drink.)

What's the scoop?

Are we a Government of Law, or not?

Is the President of the United States subject to the law -- even if he doesn't wanna -- or not?

If you can't answer "YES!", you have NO business being the Attorney General of the United States.

I mean, didn't we just dump that Bush ass-kissing suck-up from Texas for precisely this bullshit? Because he just let President Bush do anything he wanted, no matter what the law was?

The New York Times

AT his confirmation hearings last week, Michael B. Mukasey, President Bush’s nominee for attorney general, was asked whether the president is required to obey federal statutes. Judge Mukasey replied, “That would have to depend on whether what goes outside the statute nonetheless lies within the authority of the president to defend the country.”

According to Judge Mukasey’s statement, as well as other parts of his testimony, the president’s authority “to defend the nation” trumps his obligation to obey the law. Take the federal statute governing military commissions in Guantánamo Bay. No one, including the president’s lawyers, argues that this statute is unconstitutional. The only question is whether the president is required to obey it even if in his judgment the statute is not the best way “to defend the nation.”

If he is not, we no longer live under the government the founders established.

Under the American Constitution, federal statutes, not executive decisions in the name of national security, are “the supreme law of the land.” It’s that simple. So long as a statute is constitutional, it is binding on everyone, including the president.

The president has no supreme, exclusive or trumping authority to “defend the nation.” In fact, the Constitution uses the words “provide for the common defense” in its list of the powers of Congress, not those of the president.

If Judge Mukasey cannot say plainly that the president must obey a valid statute, he ought not to be the nation’s next attorney general.

Enough is enough.

The Senate needs to do it's damn job.

Are we a nation of law? (For certain so far, we've been a Senate of Rabbits.)

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Five Hours

Bush's Betray al-Qaeda Network to Fox Within FIVE HOURS

Remember when the Bush Administration were the "Grown-up Party", the party of National Defense?

Yeah, me neither. Although I remember a lot of bullshit about it during the campaign.

You can't trust the Bush Administration with ANYTHING. Not even secret National Security information in their own intelligent best interest to keep secret. If they're breathing, they're lying... count on it.

Last month, just before the Osama Bin Laden video was released, a small security company specializing in monitoring terrorist groups, got a copy of the video ahead of everyone. They provided a copy to two senior officials at the White House on the condition they not release it ahead of the official al-Qaeda release -- because to do otherwise would blow up the security companies' spy network, a network years in the making.

The White House promised to keep the source secret.

Obviously.

Back doors into al-Qadea simply don't come along every day, and here a private company is handing a back door to the enemy, over to the White House. You'd think the White House and the National Security organizations would be enormously careful to protect such a gift.

You'd think.

And then you remember Valarie Plame.

Of course, that was the Vice President's office (and the Vice President) actively trying to destroy an active CIA undercover agent and her entire CIA undercover organization against WMDs in the middle-east, over ten years in the making, in retribution for her husband's political actions against the Administration.

Here... well, we don't know, do we?

Perhaps this is on purpose, more than mere political showing off. Perhaps someone has a grudge against the private company, maybe those three-letter agencies don't like looking incompetent next to private enterprise (although I thought that was the point of the Republican Party. Maybe this private enterprise wasn't on the list?) or maybe the Administration is simply incompetent. ("Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.")

Regardless, it took all of five hours from promise till Fox News and others had the video and transcript.

Five hours.

Washington Post

The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network.

"Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless," said Rita Katz, the firm's 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from extremist chat rooms and Web sites, while attracting controversy over the secrecy of SITE's methodology. Her firm provides intelligence about terrorist groups to a wide range of paying clients, including private firms and military and intelligence agencies from the United States and several other countries.

She spoke first with White House counsel Fred F. Fielding, whom she had previously met, and then with Joel Bagnal, deputy assistant to the president for homeland security. Both expressed interest in obtaining a copy, and Bagnal suggested that she send a copy to Michael Leiter, who holds the No. 2 job at the National Counterterrorism Center.

Administration and intelligence officials would not comment on whether they had obtained the video separately. Katz said Fielding and Bagnal made it clear to her that the White House did not possess a copy at the time she offered hers.

Around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, Katz sent both Leiter and Fielding an e-mail with a link to a private SITE Web page containing the video and an English transcript. "Please understand the necessity for secrecy," Katz wrote in her e-mail. "We ask you not to distribute . . . [as] it could harm our investigations."

Fielding replied with an e-mail expressing gratitude to Katz. "It is you who deserves the thanks," he wrote, according to a copy of the message. There was no record of a response from Leiter or the national intelligence director's office.

Exactly what happened next is unclear. But within minutes of Katz's e-mail to the White House, government-registered computers began downloading the video from SITE's server, according to a log of file transfers. The records show dozens of downloads over the next three hours from computers with addresses registered to defense and intelligence agencies.

By midafternoon, several television news networks reported obtaining copies of the transcript. A copy posted around 3 p.m. on Fox News's Web site referred to SITE and included page markers identical to those used by the group. "This confirms that the U.S. government was responsible for the leak of this document," Katz wrote in an e-mail to Leiter at 5 p.m.

Al-Qaeda supporters, now alerted to the intrusion into their secret network, put up new obstacles that prevented SITE from gaining the kind of access it had obtained in the past, according to Katz.

Got to hand it to the Bush Administration. It took them over a week to betray Valarie Plame.

They're getting faster.

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Poll: Bush Continues To Suck

67% Of
Americans

Feel President George W. Bush is doing a bad job at running the United States, according to a poll published by Harris Interactive Tuesday.

Well hell...that's the problem right there:

AFP

Two-thirds of Americans feel President George W. Bush is doing a bad job at running the United States, a survey published Tuesday showed.

Houston Chronicle

[Bush's] job-approval rating among Latinos has plummeted to 20 percent from 35 percent since January.

The base assumption of these surveys is wrong.

"Running" the country? He's never run a damn thing in his life.

President Bush "goes running." You know...with alert Secret Service guards wrastling to the ground anyone with t-shirts which say "Bush fucks." Who can blame them?

Bush is obviously a faaabulous bottom.

Bush's polls suck in:

• "Doing a bad job" and
  
• "Job-approval."

Oh hell no. Pay attention.

President Bush doesn't have jobs. He has positions. Purchased by Daddy and Mummy. Other people do the busy work.

George:

• Drinks,
• Swaggers around hosing over the second string; ("Hey Goose, you big stud!...Take me to bed or loose me forever!"),
• Does dope (prescription, if his candy-ass Navy docs won't score him real shit now that Jeff can't come over down under and play)...

And Mr. President fucks the help.

As Tuesday's Harris poll makes clear, we the people aren't confused:

George W. Bush fucks the country as well.

Thanks Mr. President. Was it good for you?

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“The Republicans in Congress lost their way.”

Greenspan Lets It Rip
The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World

Pulling no punches, retired Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in a memoir to be published tomorrow, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, speaks candidly of his time as Fed Chair, the presidents he served with, and lays out his vision for the future. Greenspan, 81, was chairman of the U.S. central bank from August 1987 until January 2006. He was the second-longest serving chairman in the Fed's 93-year history.

Like any memoir, there are attempts to rewrite the past, most notably Greenspan's claim to have preemptively wanted to raise rates in 1997 against a possible future stock-market bubble, instead of having slashed rates and kept them there, thus fueling and being directly responsible for the housing bubble:

W$J

Mr. Greenspan won plaudits for achieving low inflation and unemployment with just two mild recessions during his tenure at the Fed. But more recently his record has taken some knocks. Some critics fault him for not doing more to restrain the stock bubble of the 1990s, and for responding to its eventual bursting with such low interest rates that housing prices subsequently soared.

Mr. Greenspan writes that in early 1997, he told his colleagues the Fed should raise interest rates as a "preemptive" move against a stock-market bubble. But transcripts of Fed meetings from that period do not support his book's version of events: They show Mr. Greenspan argued for a rate increase principally because of inflation.

But this is quibbling.

Many economists including many opposed to Mr. Greenspan, as well as other observers (including myself) believe market forces would have resulted in low interest rates anyway, that Mr. Greenspan was correct to lower rates as inflation was -- and always is -- an enormously greater risk than any bubble in a single sector.

Notes from the Fed as well as what little public record Greenspan left behind -- surprisingly little, actually; the man raised avoiding talking on the record to a fine art, as he put it, “mumbling with great incoherence” -- bear out this view, that Fed Policy in Greenspan's last years was to keep inflation under control now no matter what, and deal with a bubble if and when, later.

Greenspan also begins to come clean about what many of us believe to be one of his most serious errors, interjecting himself into politics with his support of the Bush tax breaks of 2001.

NY Times

Though he does not admit he made a mistake, he shows remorse about how Republicans jumped on his endorsement of the 2001 tax cuts to push through unconditional tax cuts without any safeguards against surprises. He recounts how Mr. Rubin and Senator Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, begged him to hold off on an endorsement because of how it would be perceived.

“It turned out that Conrad and Rubin were right,” he acknowledges glumly. He says Republican leaders in Congress, made a grievous error in spending whatever it took to ensure permanent Republican majority.

Mr. Greenspan has critics as well, and they are likely to weigh in as soon as the book is published. Though he publicly disagreed with Mr. Bush’s supply-side approach to tax cuts, urging Congress to offset the cost with savings elsewhere, he refrained from public criticism that could have shifted the debate. His willingness to criticize now, 18 months after leaving office, may open him to the charge of failing to speak out when it could have affected policy.

Today, Mr. Greenspan is both indignant and chagrined about his role in the Bush tax cuts. “I’d have given the same testimony if Al Gore had been president,” he wrote, complaining that his words had been distorted by supporters and opponents of tax cuts.

And then there's the presidents. Greenspan makes assessments as sharp of presidents as he does of markets.

W$J

From serving under so many presidents, Mr. Greenspan concludes that there's something abnormal about anyone willing to do what it takes to get the job. Mr. Ford, he writes, "was as close to normal as you get in a president, but he was never elected." The Watergate tapes, he says, show Richard Nixon as "an extremely smart man who is sadly paranoid, misanthropic and cynical." He recalls telling someone who had accused Nixon of anti-Semitism that he "wasn't exclusively anti-Semitic. He was anti-Semitic, anti-Italian, anti-Greek, anti-Slovak. I don't know anybody he was pro."

Ronald Reagan's ability to instantly tap one-liners and anecdotes in support of a particular policy represented an "odd form of intelligence." He describes Bill Clinton as "a fellow information hound" with "a consistent, disciplined focus on long-term economic growth" whose relationship with Monica Lewinsky "made me feel disappointed and sad."

CNNMoney.com (Fortune Magazine)

when Greenspan asserts that Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton were "by far" the smartest Presidents he worked with, those two little words say quite a lot about Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and a couple of guys named Bush.

Surprisingly for a self-described "lifelong Republican," Green­span was happiest as Fed chairman when Clinton was in the White House. (He also liked his time running Ford's Council of Economic Advisors, where it was his pleasant responsibility "to shoot down harebrained fiscal policy schemes.")

With the first George Bush, Greenspan had what he calls a "terrible relationship."

He faults the administration of Bush II for a ­decision-making process driven entirely by political calculation.

By comparison, he found the Democratic interregnum sandwiched between two slices of Bush a version of Periclean Athens, where dedicated men (Bob Rubin, Larry Summers, Clinton, himself) made decisions in the nation's long-term interest.

NY Times

He praises President Bush for letting the Federal Reserve stay independent of political pressure, saying he was scrupulous in not trying to interfere with monetary policy — which he contrasts sharply with the pressure exerted by his father, George H. W. Bush, in the early 1990s. For years the first President Bush has blamed Mr. Greenspan for contributing to his defeat in 1992 by failing to prevent a recession by cutting interest rates.

Of the presidents he worked with, Mr. Greenspan reserves his highest praise for Bill Clinton, whom he described in the interview as a sponge for economic data who maintained “a consistent, disciplined focus on long-term economic growth.” It was a presidency marred by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he writes, but he fondly describes his alliance with two of Mr. Clinton’s Treasury secretaries, Robert E. Rubin and Lawrence H. Summers, in battling financial crises in Latin America and then Asia.

By contrast, Mr. Greenspan paints a picture of Mr. Bush as a man driven more by ideology and fulfilling campaign promises made in 2000, incurious about the effects of his own economic policy, and portrays an administration incapable of executing policy. Mr. Greenspan describes the Bush administration as so captive to its own political operation that it paid little attention to fiscal discipline, and he described President Bush’s first two Treasury secretaries, Paul H. O’Neill and John Snow, as essentially powerless.

Mr. Bush, he writes, was never willing to contain spending or veto bills that drove the country into deeper and deeper deficits, as Congress abandoned rules that required that the cost of tax cuts be offset by savings elsewhere. “The Republicans in Congress lost their way,” wrote Mr. Greenspan, a self-described “libertarian Republican.”

“They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose” in the 2006 election, when they lost control of both the House and Senate.

This book has two halves. The first, an engaging two-decade look at his term as Fed Chair. Not to be missed, he lays out with candor and verve, how he used the power of the Federal Reserve, growing stronger and more assured with practice, to lead up to the strongest peace-time expansion of wealth and prosperity the world has ever known. Genuinely fascinating stuff.

The second half (more like a third) of the book, is Greenspan's "foundation on which to erect the conceptual framework for understanding the new economy." Oh yeah baby. Do me. Do me hard. [That was my imitation of Greenspan attempting snark. Um, never mind. The last part's boring as hell unless you're a market nerd, okay?]

Markets trembled when this man sneezed. He's 81 and still can bring heat right over the plate:

"They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose."

*sighs*

Greenspan always did leave people, markets and heads a-spinning. Perhaps that's why he called his book, the The Age of Turbulence?

Serve it up Mr. Greenspan. Take us for a ride. Recommended.

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From a Horsefly On The Shed Wall in Crawford...

Scene from a weekend Texas barbecue—“Hope you don't mind Dick's Teriyaki Baby gettin' on yer Ginger Chicken, 'Berto.”

INT.- GEORGE W. BUSH'S CRAWFORD, TEXAS RANCH HOUSE-DAY

The walls are adorned with old Frederick Remington western prints, a poster for “Shanghai Noon”, and an old chest X-ray of John Wayne's, circa 1965. We hear a doorbell ring—or rather, the “ding” of a service station's customer bell when someone drives over the hose out in front. A staggering LAURA BUSH lurches into view—barely steady on her feet as she goes to the door. She's done up in a 70's-style double-knit western jumpsuit, with piping and fringe on the seams and pockets. She accidentally kicks a stuffed armadillo down the hall as she walks, holding onto the walls.

LAURA: I'm coming. I'm coming! (To herself) Shit! God...make this fucking earthquake stop! Coming!

She opens the door where we see ALBERTO GONZALES standing there holding a plate of wrapped food. A stunned Laura steps backward.

LAURA: Oh Goddamn. How did a fucking wetback get past the Secret Service? (She pounds on the wall intercom) Mayday! Mayday! Valley-Doll One is in distress! Repeat—Valley-Doll One is in distress!

GONZO: Mrs. Bush—Laura! It's me...Al.

She looks on, still wobbly and confused.

GONZO: Gonzales!

LAURA: (Recognizing him) Ohhhhhh! Well Goddamn, Al! Get yourself a... national I.D. card or something so a girl can identify you! (Laughs) Mmmmmm! I see you've brought treats...

GONZO: Tasty fish tacos, ma'am.

Laura clears her throat exaggeratedly—signaling there must be something more.

LAURA: Yes?

GONZO: Oh yes, and this! (From behind his back he produces a pickle jar-sized bottle of pills) A fine bottle of 1974 Seconal. Great vintage.

LAURA: (She sniffs at it.) It's got a lovely bou-quet! And a pre-Elvis bottling. You shouldn't have. (BEAT) But too late, you already did. Thanks!

They start walking through the house towards the back yard.

GONZO: So...where's the boss man? Out by the grill?

LAURA: No...he's hiding. From you.

GONZO: Me?

LAURA: (Sighs) He thinks you have a resignation letter or something for him, and he thinks if you can't actually hand it to him, it doesn't count. (BEAT) You don't, do you?

GONZO: Me? Naaaaaaah! Just brought...a nice plate of fish tacos.

LAURA: (BEAT) Wrapped in DOJ stationery.

GONZO: Yeaaaaaah...was all I could...y'know, get my hands on at...the-uh...time.

LAURA: Y'know, whatever. He's out there—hiding in the hay bales.

GONZO: Hay bales? I don't see any hay bales.

LAURA: (Pointing) Over there. The hay bales.

GONZO: Those aren't hay bales. They're rolls of fiberglass insulation, ma'am.

LAURA: (Chugging pills from the mouth of the jar) Mmmmmf! Hay bales, fiberglass—what's the difference?

GONZO: Well, what do you feed the horses?

LAURA: (Stunned) We have horses?

GONZO: Never mind, ma'am. I'll just find him.

Gonzales goes out the back door, onto the patio, where DICK CHENEY stands at the grill—unsteady, as he's holding a sweating bottle of Rumplemintz in one hand, while poking at charred meat with the other.

CHENEY: Hey, 'Berto. How's it hangin'?

GONZO: To the right, of course, sir.

CHENEY: Heenh-henh. Love that shit. Love it. (He picks up something extra well-done off the grill on a fork, waving it at Gonzo.) Baby?

GONZO: (Wincing at the offer) No. No thanks.

CHENEY: Sure? These are fresh ones—not from frozen embryos.

GONZO: I'll pass.

CHENEY: More for me, then. (He takes a huge swig off the Rumplemintz, dribbling it on his gingham shirt) F' you're lookin' fer Brilliantine, he's hidin' in that stack of insulation, there.

GONZO: (Walking off) Thanks.

CHENEY: (Calling out) Ehhh, I wouldn't take a piece of that and chew on it like he did. It ain't hay. Lips swelled up something awful.

GONZO: Gotcha.

Gonzales walks across the field over to the bales of insulation, which quiver and move as someone (BUSH) is obviously hiding behind them. We can HEAR him furiously scratching back there.

GONZO: Hello, sir. It's me.

BUSH: Don' know who yer talkin' to. There's nobody back here.

GONZO: Sir...I know you're back there. I can see your boot moving.

BUSH: No you don't.

GONZO: It has the Presidential Seal on it. I'm looking at it, now. Kicking.

BUSH: I stashed 'em here yestiddy so's I wouldn't nick 'em up clearin' non-existent brush. Yer lookin' at a boot with no man attached. So...be on yer way. No president back here, and he can't accept yer resignation. No sir!

GONZO: Guess he can't accept this plate of fish tacos I made, either.

BUSH: (Sniffs) Fish tacos?

GONZO: Yep...made with chopped-up Mrs. Paul fish sticks, too. Just the way the president likes 'em.

BUSH: Looka here! Foun' m' boots! (Bush rises from the fiberglass, covered in tufts of it, blotchy-skinned and totally hived-over) Hey, Berto! Let's see them tacos!

GONZO: Here you go, sir.

BUSH: Mmmmmm-mmmmm! Smells great! And ya wrapped it up so nicely, too. In paper?

GONZO: So they uh...steam better on the grill.

BUSH: And you wrote a message on it. Awwwww! (Reading) “Dear George, enjoy these tacos. Love, Fredo. P.S. I fucking...quit?” Grrrrrrrrrrrr! You son-of-a-bitch! You tricked me! (He flings plate of tacos at Gonzo who ducks it.) Fuckin'...Sancho...Villa- mother-fucker!

GONZO: It was the only way, sir. I'm sorry. And I think it's Sancho Panza.

BUSH: Whut-fuckin' ever! You can't resign! Whut about yer legacy? Whut about-about helpin' all the sexed-up children, like Chris Hansen does? Whut about makin' me look like my shit is over?

GONZO: I can't do it anymore sir.The jig is up.

BUSH: Jig? You're part Black? You specifically told me you were Mexican!

GONZO: I mean, it's done. I can't fight 'em off any more. There's nobody left at Justice. I called a meeting last week and got 15 out-of-office replies from people who'd quit. And I'd only sent out 10 messages! That's an omen, sir. Plus, I can't go back to Capitol Hill again to testify.

BUSH: Why not?

GONZO: Because I've officially run out of ways to say “I'm not gonna tell you shit!” I've said “I don't recall” 107 times. I've said “I don't recollect”, another 44 times. Said “Huh?” twenty times. Threw in a few “Duhs”. I'm spent. I'm burnt. They've got me.

BUSH: Well there's always “No habla ingles”, right? I mean, I can't actually habla the ingles real good, but for you, maaaaaan, that excuse fits like a corn husk on a tamale.

GONZO: Sir, they know I speak English.

BUSH: Yeah, but do they know it's not your first language?

GONZO: I dunno. I don't recall.

BUSH: There! See? You don't recall! You can still do this. You've got a few still in ya. C'mon. hang around. Me, Dick, and you?—We can be like the...you know, the stripped down versions of those bands from back in the day! Who fucking needs keyboards, and strings and shit? (Begins air-guitaring furiously as he “mouth-guitars” the opening chords from *Deep Purple's “Smoke On The Water”)

“Dahn-dahn-DAHN! Dahn-dahn-DAHN-dahn! Dahn-dahn-DAHN! Dahn-dahn-DAAAAAAAAHN!” We can do this!

GONZO: I-I'm afraid not, sir.

BUSH: You can be like that weird, little brown dude in The Association! C'mon!

GONZO: Here's my key to the White House washroom. I enjoyed handing towels to you.

BUSH: (exploding) Well fuck you then, Baba Looey! Fuck you sideways! Quick Draw don't need you, anyway! In fact...(Calls out) Laura! Get yer face outta that ditch and call the INS fer me! Seems we got us a non-citizen intruder!

GONZO: Sir, I am a citizen.

BUSH: So was yer boy, Padilla. Ha-hah! Don't mean shit! I don't need you! I don't need Karl! I don't need Condi-

GONZO: She hasn't quit, sir.

BUSH: Whut th-well where the hell has she fucking been? Screw it! I don't need anybody! All I need...(Lifts a clanking, clattering case from behind a roll of insulation) are my friends...fuggin' Moussy and O'Doul (Laughs) Moussy. Henh-henh, Sounds kinda Moo-slim. (Laughs again, then yells) They're all I need!

GONZO: Sir...that's an awful lot of bottles. Did you drink those today?

BUSH: Yes, I. Did! Mother! (BEAT) S' non-alcoholic, stupid! I can have a hundred of these fuckers!

GONZO: Well, that's good.

BUSH: It'd be a problem...if I was brewin' pruno in the well behind the shed, and was dippin' from it every time I went back there t' get baling wire for this... Goddamned, pink fuggin' hay! (Kicks at a roll, nearly falling down) That'd be a problem!

GONZO: Oh, shit. Look sir. I'm uh...I'm gonna go now.

BUSH: Go! Be out! (Throws a Moussy empty at Gonzo who eludes it) I'll ride this bitch out by m' lonesome! (To himself) Don't need no-Goddamn-body...

GONZO (Pointing at Cheney) You've still got Mr. Cheney.

BUSH: (Reeling with surprise) Are you fuckin' kidding me? 7 years in—I still don't know that nother-fucker! Do you see what he's cooking over there? Karl joked about that shit! Dick's fuckin' doin' it! I've still got Cheney? He's got me! Get the fuck outta here! (Throws another bottle at Gonzo, missing again.) Go!

GONZO: Just wanted to say that it was a pleasure to serve under you, sir.

BUSH: Yeah, yeah...serve this, bitch! (Grabs hard at his crotch.) Who needs you?! You were just along fer th' ride! Cha-ching! Hear that? That was me droppin' your token-ass in the slot! Got me a pocket fulla tokens just like ya! So, hah!

GONZO: Good-bye sir. (Walking away)

BUSH: What? No “Adios, amigo?” (Screaming now) Oh, of course! You're too good for that! Amigo would mean “friend”! And friends don't just book up!

GONZO: Enjoy the fish tacos.

BUSH: Slow yer roll there, Speedy. (Waves the bathroom key at Gonzo) You've got a little more than this key, outstanding. Yer gub'mint car? The Escalade? Where's the key fer that?

GONZO: I don't recall.

BUSH: And your cabinet officer's credit card?

GONZO: (Now jogging back to the house) I don't recollect, sir!

BUSH: Wait! Your passkey to the White House gym! Your Blackberry! The escort service discount card? Where the fuck are they?

GONZO: (Sprinting now, past Cheney and into the house, toward the front door.) ¡No habla ingles! ¡No habla ingles!

FADE OUT

*Thanks, Professor Fate!—LM

There's more...

Breaking: Attorney General Gonzales resigns

Department of Don't Let The Door Hit You In The Ass On The Way Out

The New York Times reports Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned Friday, according to a senior administration official who will make the announcement later today.

Can you spell, "T A R G E T o f I N V E S T I G A T I O N ?"

I knew you could.

There's more...

Red Rover Red Rover

Rove leaving, after helping orchestrate the largest election loss for Republicans since 1992. Karl is heading home to spend time eating Christian babies. Wall Street Journal

Question is: Why?

Inside the White House he is much, much more powerful. Karl Rove Deputy White House Chief of Staff is probably the 2 or 3rd most powerful man in America. As ex-deputy he aint got no juice. Why not just ride out the term sitting in the White House?

Why?

There's more...