(no subject)

Had a thoroughly lovely weekend, despite watching War of the Worlds, and even got to be mildly social yet still find time to hermit. Go me!

( First, a brief rant on WotW. )

Anyway, the costume workshop went well despite nobody really showing up and we sold Alyne on dancing to some music from the BSG soundtrack and were mightily pleased with ourselves. Aelf, P-, E-, LA, C- and I then headed for dinner at our favorite Malaysian place (mmm, crack curry!) and stuffed ourselves silly. Yum! Then back to elo_sf's place for some games, I actually won the dog one, then we played a couple of rounds of Eye to Eye and everyone else fell in love with the game as well so I may really have to pick up a copy now. Then over to tersa's for a couple of rounds of LOTR Trivial Pursuit. I always get spanked at TP and sadly this was no exception, though I made a reasonable showing in at least the first game. By the second my brain had shut down and I was finding everything far too funny.

Monday was cleaning day, yay! It started when I went out to get the litter from my car and noted that my neighbors had set out a gorgeous chest of drawers with a little free sign on it. I noted its size, looked at the space in my bedroom and determined it would fit if I got rid of the plastic drawer thingies I had been using. Enlisted Aelf to help me lug it inside and damn it fit perfectly. Re-organized the whole bedroom and fit way more into my new piece of furniture than in the three I was using before. It looks so lovely too, all grown-up and stuff. The plastic units I managed to fit elsewhere and they're now being used for costume stuff and craft supplies. I have craft storage, woo!

Spent the rest of the day cleaning and organizing and my apartment looks so much better I can't even tell you. For the first time I'm quite content with my little place.

(no subject)

Digby on Rove leaking information about Valerie Plame:

The Bush administration lied about its reasons for the war in Iraq. When a critic stepped up to expose one of the lies the Whitehouse blew his wife's identity as an undercover CIA agent. They did this to exact revenge against what they saw as a political enemy and to intimidate those who would further expose the administration, potentially endangering both lives and intelligence operations around the world.
[...]
That's the story. And regardless of what comes out about who leaked what to whom first, the sick fucking thing is Rove has actually already admitted to being the biggest asshole on the planet regardless of his legal culpability. When they are apprised of this, in the context of the Iraq lies, people may not be as amenable to forgive or write off as some think. Even if Karl Rove didn't break the law, here is what we already know he did do:

" President Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, told the FBI in an interview last October that he circulated and discussed damaging information regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame with others in the White House, outside political consultants, and journalists, according to a government official and an attorney familiar with the ongoing special counsel's investigation of the matter.

But Rove also adamantly insisted to the FBI that he was not the administration official who leaked the information that Plame was a covert CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak last July. Rather, Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak's column. He also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Rove and other White House officials described to the FBI what sources characterized as an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife to the press, utilizing proxies such as conservative interest groups and the Republican National Committee to achieve those ends, and distributing talking points to allies of the administration on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Rove is said to have named at least six other administration officials who were involved in the effort to discredit Wilson."

Here's the thing, though. Let's not forget that Wilson was right. There was no yellowcake. Rove and his minions discredited Wilson and destroyed his wife's cover because he was telling the truth.

If Democrats start going on Matthews to talk about this, they need to hammer this point home over and over again. They can debate the Barbizon school of blond former prosecutors all they want, but every single time, their point must be that this was a very serious matter of national security, weapons of mass destruction, lying about war ---- life and death. There was no yellow cake and there were no WMD and Bush and Rove and the rest have been lying their asses off from the beginning. And when anyone in a position to know spoke up, they were subjected to what Karl Rove openly admits to believing is a "legitimate means to counter criticism" --- leaking and disseminating derogatory information about Bush's critics. In common parlance that's called character assasination. And when you do it to discredit someone who is telling the truth it's a cover-up.