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Banned
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In this recent thread,
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=103610
....we have been discussing the promotion of Joel Klaman by the white house. Klaman will assume the title that Karl Rove formerly held, "Chief Domestic Policy Advisor".
With the following report, aired last night on MSNBC TV, it now seems that there is a stronger likelihood that Karl Rove will be indicted. I think that is the reason, since no domestic policy changes, according to the white house, are planned, that Rove is being "positioned" to resign suddenly if he is indicted.
<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,192468,00.html">foxnews' latest poll</a> shows Bush with a 33 percent approval rating, down 3 points from several weeks ago. When Nixon resigned in 1974, he still "enjoyed" a 25 percent approval rating.
With Bush's chief political strategist Rove, distracted by his own, looming legal challenges, are you optimistic that Bush can turn his polling numbers around, especially if Rove is indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice, as VP Cheney's Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby was. last October? What are Bush's options now?
I think that Bush, facing continued abysmal polling numbers, and deprived of Rove's full attention to the challenge of rehabilitating Bush's politcal image, and his legacy as president, has increased incentive to exercise one of the few remaining options to jumpstart his image. With gasoline prices at $3.00, triple where they were five years ago....Bush can reverse prices at the pump by ending uncertainty of whether a war with Iran will interrupt petroleum supplies. Bush can pull the "war president" card, one more time....much sooner than most people think.....waging a risky bet on a presidency that has degraded to the point where he might not think that he has much to lose, if attacking Iran were to backfire......
Quote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12421024/
Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for April 20
Read the transcript to the Thursday show
<a href="http://images1.americanprogress.org/il80web20037/ThinkProgress/2006/shuster1.320.240.mov">Watch the Video</a>
.....First, the pressing domestic news. If, as Jim VandeHei put it in today‘s “Washington Post,” the White House anticipates no major shifts in policy resultant from Karl Rove‘s lateral reassignment, then why the reassignment? Has the prospect of a Rove indictment in Plamegate again reared its chubby head?
Jim VandeHei joins us presently about Mr. Rove.
First, this possibility, that the next person heard screaming in protest at President Bush o the South Lawn could be Mr. Rove.
And news out of Washington about the CIA leak grand jury, courtesy our correspondent on the scandal beat, David Shuster.
David, good evening.
DAVID SHUSTER, MSNBC CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Keith.
OLBERMANN: First off, the baseline here. Has the status of the Fitzgerald grand jury changed? Has the status of Mr. Rove in the investigation process itself changed?
SHUSTER: Well, first, on the investigation, defense lawyers say that the grand jury investigation is active again, and that the panel has been meeting in recent weeks, although prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was not seen at the grand jury this week and hasn‘t been seen there at some—for some time.
Now, regarding Karl Rove, the—according to the latest documents, for the first time, Rove is now described as a subject in the overall case, a subject being a technical term meaning that somebody is under investigation. And the latest prosecution documents also go out of their way to suggest that Rove is not going to be a prosecution witness at the Libby trial, even though Rove is part of the narrative against Scooter Libby.
And the reason that‘s significant is because prosecutors usually don‘t put subjects on the witness stand for tactical reasons if they want to leave open the possibility of later charging that particular subject in a separate case.
The other thing that has long been intriguing about Karl Rove, and that is, we‘ve known for months that in the Scooter Libby indictment, when they referred to official A, <b>official A is Karl Rove.</b> And the indictment against Libby says that official A disclosed to Scooter Libby that he had had a conversation with columnist Robert Novak.
The reason prosecutors describe an official as an official A is when there‘s pejorative information about that person, and the person has not yet been indicted and had a chance to defend themselves. <b>But we‘ve looked at prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald‘s record as far as designating people as official A or official B, and in every single case we have found, Keith, that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, when he designates somebody as official A in an indictment, that person eventually does get indicted themselves.</b>
And that‘s why, I think, with everything coming together, there‘s so much intrigue tonight about Karl Rove.
OLBERMANN: And the juxtaposition of the timing, reassigned yesterday, these developments today, is there anything to connect those dots, or is it just coincidental?
SHUSTER: Well, the only thing that‘s there, and there‘s no indication, at least from the White House, but Karl Rove‘s attorney, Bob Luskin, has been pretty open, and so has Karl Rove, at least with some of his colleagues, as far as his status in the investigation still being open, Karl Rove still being a subject.
So I think it‘s fair to assume that perhaps the new White House chief of staff, Josh Bolten, saw the prospects that Rove could still be in some trouble and decided, You know what? We want him focusing on the elections anyway instead of policy. Let‘s change things around a little bit and lower his profile, given that this is an investigation that a lot of Karl Rove‘s colleagues thought was over, as far as Rove is concerned, once Scooter Libby was indicted.....
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