Fridays are usually “take out the trash” days at the White House — a phrase I learned from the fictional White House in The West Wing but which is nevertheless true.
Typically, the administration will release information that reflects poorly on the White House on a Friday, with the assumption that no one reads the Saturday papers. A new wrinkle to this administration is the release of “good” or frightening news to cover up something else.
There was a period of time when they used news of bomb threats or they’d raise the terror alert level (and isn’t that phrase telling?). Those no longer work, so they’ve taken to “leaking” news of neutralized threats, crowing that they had stopped something that hadn’t even happened. There’s no way to check to see if these alleged plots were real, if they would have been carried out, or if they were feverish fantasies in either a terrorist’s — or a president’s — mind.
Yesterday’s “good news” was the claim that authorities thwarted a plot to blow up New Jersey-New York tunnels. But again, this is hard to pin down. Different news sources have different stories, with some saying that the intent was to flood New York’s financial district; others say that there is no evidence of this. Regardless, the financial district is above sea level and wouldn’t flood if you blew up a tunnel.
I started to look around to see what this story was sent out to obscure — because if it wasn’t to divert our attention, why else would they release such administration-boosting news on a Friday, when they wouldn’t be able to take advantage of those weekday news cycles?
Well, let’s see what I found.
Lobbyist Jack Abramoff had a half-dozen White House appointments in the early months of the Bush administration, according to logs released [Friday] by the U.S. Secret Service.
The appointments included a meeting with a domestic policy aide to Vice President Cheney and a meeting in the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives attended by about 40 people. The logs also reflect that Abramoff attended one or more social events, as well as a gathering of Indian tribal officials and state legislators at which President Bush appeared.
The lobbyist, once one of the most powerful Republicans on K Street, pleaded guilty earlier this year to conspiracy and fraud. He is a cooperating witness in the Justice Department’s wide-ranging investigation of corruption in Congress and the executive branch.
The Secret Service released the White House visit data yesterday in response to Freedom of Information Act requests and a lawsuit filed by the government watchdog group Judicial Watch.
I wonder if Abramoff will have a sudden, fatal heart attack soon?
Oh, also on Friday, oil hit a new, all-time record high at $75.78 a barrel.
And, again on Friday:
President Bush on Friday defended his administration’s policies on North Korea, questioning claims that the communist country had grown into a greater threat since he entered the White House, even before it test-fired seven missiles this week.
Bush said he still did not know whether one of the rockets, a long-range intercontinental missile, had been aimed at the United States or if it could have traveled that far. But he said the controversial U.S. missile defense system had offered a “reasonable” chance of shooting the missile out of the sky had it become necessary.
Still, the president grew testy when he was asked why, if his policies were working, North Korea appeared to be enhancing its nuclear capabilities and growing more aggressive over time.
“These problems didn’t arise overnight, and they don’t get solved overnight. It takes a while,” Bush said, offering the most adamant defense of his policies since North Korea escalated the confrontation this week.
Well, he’s had plenty of time since ignoring the most heavily armed and dangerous border in the world and invading a country that posed no real threat to us instead. In other words, he’s a bully — invade the backwards desert country that can’t fight back (hubris that led us to the Vietnam debacle) and stay far away from the one that has a huge army and potentially nuclear weapons. I’m not saying that we should invade North Korea, far from it — but what a huge waste of lives and resources to go into Iraq.
Sorry, I’m rambling this morning. Trying to put off doing this work that’s got a Sunday night deadline.
