VIDEO: Boehner Admits Obama Is Not A Socialist

By GottaLaff

Initially, when I saw The Boehner say this on the Tee Vee Machine, I was hopping up and down, all a-dither and a-gog at the apparent gotcha:



Of course, all my a-ditherage and a-gogitude was tempered by The Boehner's little tap dancery implication, "Hey, I'm not the one who said it, I won't call him that. I'm simply the bizarrely bronzed, orange-faced good cop, but hey, if Michael Steele wants to lie, it's fine by me."

And then there's this little nugget:

Boehner is lying. He has said that what Obama and Democratic leaders are doing is socialism. From his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference a few months ago:

Well, the stimulus, the omnibus, the budget — it’s all one big down payment on a new American socialist experiment. … All of these bills seek to replace our economic freedom with the whims and mandates of politicians and bureaucrats.

Basically, Boehner admitted today that all he was doing there was fear-mongering and attempting to scare the public for political gain.

Today on CNN’s State of the Union, Obama responded to these charges from conservative leaders, stating, “You know, I’m amused. I can’t tell you how many foreign leaders who are heads of center-right governments say to me, I don’t understand why people would call you socialist, in my country, you’d be considered a conservative.”

Ding!

Did Joe the Mouther admit to planning his outburst?

By GottaLaff

Bad choice of words... or revelatory?

Asked if he regretted his comment, Wilson said, "Oh, yeah I wouldn't do that – I wouldn't have planned it or done it again."

I wouldn't have planned it again or done it again... ? Or: I wouldn't have planned it. Or done it again. Question mark. Just sayin'...

"People know that I am respectful of the president..."

I guess that depends on what the word "president" means. White president named Bush? Sure. Black president named Obama? Not so much.

"...I'm respectful of the office of the presidency."

Whose?

"...But I am just very passionate about the issues that I believe in and I know what was stated was inaccurate."

He knows that. For a fact. Despite this:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Wilson made his comments Thursday evening during an interview with Columbia, South Carolina radio station 560 WVOC-AM.

Keith's Special Comment calling out Joe the Mouther here.

Carl Levin: Cheney's CIA document claims a lie

By GottaLaff

Levin to the Nation of Dick: You are a big fat sucky irrelevant liar:

Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told a Washington audience this week that claims by former Vice President Dick Cheney that classified CIA memos showed that enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding worked were lies.

Levin, speaking at the Foreign Policy Association's annual dinner on Wednesday, said an investigation by his committee into detainee abuse charges over the use of the techniques — now deemed torture by the Obama administration — "gives the lie to Mr. Cheney's claims."

The Michigan Democrat told the crowd that the two CIA documents that Cheney wants released "say nothing about numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of abusive techniques."

"I hope that the documents are declassified, so that people can judge for themselves what is fact, and what is fiction," he added.

All that's missing is a fervent wish to prosecute the big fat sucky irrelevant liar. Someone please make that wish come true. Please? Pretty please? With sugary declassified documents on top?

Cheney defends torture. Daughter defends Cheney (VIDEO)

By GottaLaff



Like father, like daughter (and speaking of daughter, read this in response to the Pincus article she references):

Next Thursday, former Vice President Cheney will give a speech at the American Enterprise Institute making a global case for the Bush administration's use of torture and indefinite detainment of suspected terrorists as core parts of its War on Terror.

Here's AEI's description of the event ... [...]

Amid claims that the interrogation methods amount to torture and that those who approved them should be prosecuted or censured, it is clear that we know surprisingly little about the scope and efficacy of the Bush administration's national security policy. Many questions linger: What type of information did enhanced interrogation methods yield? Were lives saved as a result? Could that intelligence have been effectively collected by other means? How effective was the terrorist surveillance program in detecting the threat of al Qaeda and its operatives in the post-9/11 period? Will inhibiting these procedures cost more American lives?

On May 21, former vice president Dick Cheney will speak at AEI to address these critical issues and provide a blueprint for keeping America safe in the future.

It is absolutely vital that we hang on every word that the Nation of Dick utters, because he will finally provide the long-sought answers we've all been looking for. And who would ever doubt his word? His credibility can only be surpassed by that of... well, Rumsfeld, Bush, Gonzales, Libby, Rove....

Source: Despite Claim, Cheney Didn’t Really Ask CIA To Release Torture Intelligence

Just plain bizarre. Andrea Mitchell reported this earlier too, and she's got the contacts to make it seem true. What is Cheney playing here?

Did Dick Cheney really “formally” ask the CIA to release reams of intelligence allegedly showing that the torture program worked, as Cheney claimed last night on Fox News?

An intelligence source familiar with the situation says the answer is No.

“The agency has received no request from the former Vice President to release this information,” the source told me a few moments ago.

(snip)

According to the source, there are several ways this could happen: Cheney could lodge a Freedom of Information Request (which is hard to imagine a former Veep doing); he could contact CIA officials; or he could submit the request via the White House. Cheney said he’d made the request to the CIA.

The source, however, tells me that the CIA didn’t get any such request from Cheney. So barring the unlikely possibility that Cheney submitted his request to the Obama White House, it seems fair to assume for now that the only target of this request was the Fox News television audience.

Update: A Cheney spokesperson is refusing to say what he meant when he claimed to have made a “formal” request for this info.

ADDED- Greg adds a (hopefully) final update- Cheney made the request to the National Archives at the end of March. The end of March? Before these current memos had been released and not knowing what would be in them? Lots more to this I'm sure.

Cheney Calls for Release of Memos Showing Results of Interrogation Efforts

By GottaLaff

The Nation of Dick will say anything to boost Hannity's ratings:

Now that the memos showing the rulings of interrogation techniques have been released, the Obama administration should release additional documents that show what the interrogations yielded, former Vice President Dick Cheney told FOX News on Monday.

In an interview with FOX News' Sean Hannity to be aired on "Hannity" Monday night, Cheney questioned the point of releasing the legal decisions behind the interrogations but not the outcome of them.

"One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn't put out the memos that showed the success of the effort," Cheney said.

Cheney said he's asked that the documents be declassified because he has remained silent on the confidential information, but he knows how successful the interrogation process was and wants the rest of the country to understand.

How sweet of him! He wants to share! And he wants us to understand. I've never been so touched by anything, ever. What generosity. What heart. What stents.

"I haven't talked about it, but I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw, that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country," Cheney said. "I've now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was."

I'm on the edge of my seat. Baited breath. Counting the minutes... Yada yada yada.

UPDATE, here's the video:

Sarah Palin trying to backtrack from her call for Begich to step down

By GottaLaff

A few days ago, I posted about Sarah Palin's efforts to get Mark Begich to resign after the charges against Ted Stevens were dropped. In her hamster-on-a-wheel mind, she equated Ted Stevens' legal technicality-based freedom with an invalid election, calling loudly and clearly for a super duper ultra cool special election. She did so unequivocally. Unambiguously. Unquestionably.

In an email to POLITICO, Palin spokeswoman Meg Stapleton confirmed the governor’s position. “She absolutely agrees that there should be a special election,” Stapleton wrote. “Stepping down to hold the special election would be the right thing to do.”

Well, today is a brand new day, and you know what that means: Another day, another Shooty McMouthOff pratfall:

However, yesterday in a press conference, Palin tried to backtrack:

“I didn’t call for Begich to step down, either,” Palin said. “I said I absolutely agree that Alaskans deserve a fair, untainted election for the United States senate seat. I’m not splitting hairs on how that happens. I’m saying wonderful, good. I want to see an election that is fair, that isn’t influenced unduly by some announcement that the sitting senator was facing a multi-felony count conviction. That’s what we were told. Now, come to find out, that wasn’t the case.”

However, if Palin supports a new special election, by state law, Begich “would have to step down.” That process would temporarily leave Alaska with just one active senator. Nevertheless, Palin yesterday insisted that she wasn’t “splitting hairs on how a new election should happen.”

Poor Shooty. She really should be accompanied by a stenographer who can read back her own words to her. Or maybe she could just flip on the Tee Vee Machine and watch herself. She probably just doesn't have the time, what with hiring tasteless, controversial, unqualified boors for Attorney General and all. Defending them/watching them defend themselves can be so gosh darned time-consuming. You betcha.

Karl Rove: Joe Biden Is A Liar

This was the first thing I heard when I woke up this morning, and I was going to post about it. Both Oliver and Newshounds did my work for me.

VIDEO: Sarah Palin called me a liar, "bored" and "pathetic"

By GottaLaff

Laffy Note: I've added a video--

Dennis Zaki of The Alaska Report offers this newest interview with the question, “What would you want to tell anonymous bloggers.”

Happier times

Grandma McIncoherent, you don't know me at all, yet you've hypocritically labeled me the way you accuse others of labeling you. I'm a blogger, yet little do you know that I'm rarely bored and I don't lie (Hey, it's not like I haven't tried, I've just failed miserably). But that's okay, you have nothing left in your arsenal. I'm here if you need to vent.

As for pathetic, I can safely and proudly say I've never been called that, but, hmmm, let's think real hard... who has? Oh yes! You! Over and over again:

Sarah Palin fired a new salvo in her war on the media, unloading in a new interview on her home state paper and “bored, anonymous, pathetic bloggers who lie.”

The Alaska governor, who has granted a steady stream of interviews since Election Day, also told an Esquire reporter that she wishes she had told McCain campaign advisors she’d be “callin’ some of the shots.”

"Bored, anonymous, pathetic bloggers who lie annoy me….I'll tell you, yesterday the Anchorage Daily News, they called again to ask — double-, triple-, quadruple-check — who is Trig's real mom,” she said, in an interview to be published in the magazine’s March issue.

“And I said, Come on, are you kidding me? We're gonna answer this? Do you not believe me [Laffy Note: No.] or my doctor? And they said, No, it's been quite cryptic the way that my son's birth has been discussed. And I thought, Okay, more indication of continued problems in the world of journalism."

But Palin said she had adopted a philosophical attitude on the downside of the spotlight. "You have to let it go,” she said. “Even hard news sources, credible news sources — the comment about, you can see Russia from Alaska. You can! You can see Russia from Alaska. Something like that — a factual statement that was taken out of context and mocked — what you have to do is let that go."

Where to begin? First off, if letting go is what one "has to do", McIncoherent may want to take her own advice. The contradictory nature of this interview had me laying my head down, pounding my desk with my fist, and laughing until my eyes welled up with tears.

Next: McIncoherent is revealing her Bush III side once again: blaming the media for her own failures, for starters. But, just as Bush's final press conference did nothing to improve his reputation as someone who has utterly no self-awareness (or awareness of anything around him), neither did Grandma's interview.

Oh, and nobody cared much whether or not Russia was visible from Alaska, although her claim did inspire many an amusing YouTube. No, it was her using that visual to tout her foreign policy experience that widened both Democratic and Republican eyes alike.

I won't go on. It would take more effort and space than she's worth.

One more Bushism from the mental equivalent of our soon-to-be former president [sic]:

Despite a season of barbs aimed at the coastal elites, Palin seemed to offer an olive branch to the Big Apple: "I would think we all tear up during the national anthem at the beginning of a baseball game, don't we? That's an alikeness between Alaskans and New Yorkers," she said.

That last Palinism was a perfect example of an embarrassing alikeness between a dippy Alaskan and a faux Texan.

UPDATE-- Even HuckaScout'sHonor slams Palin:

Mike Huckabee (R), a likely Republican presidential candidate in 2012, took a shot at Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), one of his possible rivals, in an Esquire interview.

Said Huckabee: "Now I must say I did not think that either the Charlie Gibson interview or the Katie Couric interviews were unfair. In fact, if anything, Katie Couric was extraordinarily gentle, even helpful. [Palin] just... I don't know what happened. I can't explain it. It was not a good interview. I'm being charitable."

Apparently, GOP Campaign 2012 is in full swing.

UPDATE #2-- Meghan McCain gets her claws out, too. Suh-nap:

"Sarah Palin is the only part of the campaign that I won't comment on publicly."

-- Meghan McCain, daughter of Sen. John McCain, in an interview with Monday Morning Clacker.