New Rove Rumor (and rumor only so far)
A Fork In The Rove?
As a string of foes from John McCain to Richard Clarke can attest, Karl Rove has never been shy about using personal attacks for political gain. But as the Valerie Plame scandal rages on, the Bush administration’s in-house bulldog may be forced to endure a taste of his own medicine.
Last Sunday, in a blistering column in the New York Times, Frank Rich charged that around the time the White House was leaking Plame’s undercover CIA status to friendly reporters, Rove’s office was publicly “outing” Jeffrey Kofman after the gay ABC correspondent reported on the flagging morale of American troops in Iraq. Rich angrily charged the Republican rumor-monger with fostering a “pervasive culture of revenge” in Washington. Now, in the same spirit, Rove’s critics are forcing the married pol to fend off a politically motivated campaign that focuses on his own personal life.
For years, political insiders in the Lone Star State have whispered about Rove’s close friendship with lobbyist Karen Johnson, a never-married, forty-something GOP loyalist from Austin, Texas. The two first became close when Johnson sat on the board of then-Governor George W. Bush’s Business Council over a decade ago. Their friendship reportedly deepened after Bush appointed Johnson—a little-known spokesperson for the Texas Good Roads Association—to a seat on his Transportation Department transition team in 2000. The plum appointment enabled Johnson’s lobbying firm, Infrastructure Solutions, to snare such high-paying clients as Aetna and the City of Laredo. Sources say Johnson now frequently travels between Washington D.C. and Austin, where she frequently appears at Rove’s side at parties and unofficial functions.
Although there is no evidence that their relationship is anything but professional, the close association between the married White House aide and the comely lobbyist has long raised eyebrows in conservative Texas circles. Asked about the pair, a prominent political journalist who has written extensively about Rove says, “I’ve heard the stories, but I would never write about Karl and Karen. If you want to keep your job as a reporter in Texas, you make believe you don’t see them together.”
In the post-Lewinsky era, Washington’s press corps has mostly avoided reporting on the private lives of public officials. But as the political climate in the capitol grows more poisonous, Rove’s close friendship with the lobbyist has attracted increased scrutiny from opponents eager to prove that Bush’s dirty trickster is sitting on some dirty laundry of his own.
Asked to comment on Rove’s relationship with Johnson, a White House spokesman firmly declined to discuss the matter, saying that their relationship was “the business of these two individuals who have personal lives…I don’t think that’s something that the White House should comment on.” A new air of civility in Washington? Don’t count on it.
source : http://www.radaronline.com/fresh-intelligence/ 7/26/05
So far just a silly rumor, but watch for more. We really don't know much (enough?) about this Rove guy, just that he can dangerous to your career if he's not paid to be on your side.
Re: New Rove Rumor (and rumor only so far)
as long as we're charting a purely 'speculative' course ...
"July 27, 2005, 7:50 a.m.
Listening In
Secret conversations revealed!
By Rob Long
EDITOR'S NOTE: This piece appears in the August 8, 2005, issue of National Review.
NSA Document Extracts: Telephone Transcripts
First Extract
(Patriot Act roving wiretap authorized)
static
UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE: “Hello?”
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE VOICE: “Joe? This is Judith Miller at the New York Times.”
UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE: “Hey! Judith! How are you? Why so formal?”
JUDITH MILLER: “Sorry, Joe, but I’m working on a story about the Niger trip and the yellowcake thing.”
#AD#JOSEPH WILSON: “Yeah. Crazy stuff, huh? Did you read my op-ed?”
JUDITH MILLER: “Uh huh. And we’re just following up here, trying to get something for the front page, and . . .”
JOSEPH WILSON: “Does the double-breasted make me look fat?”
JUDITH MILLER: “Excuse me?”
JOSEPH WILSON: “Sorry, Jude, I’m doing ‘Hardball’ tonight and you caught me getting a new suit. I’m talking to the guy here.”
UNIDENTIFIED FOREIGN-SOUNDING MALE VOICE: “No, no, Meester Vilson. De jacket, she convey authority an a kind ov secksul energy.”
JOSEPH WILSON: “Fantastic! But I’ll need a new shirt for Stephanopoulos.”
UNIDENTIFIED FOREIGN-SOUNDING MALE VOICE: “Come here to de shirtings area.”
JUDITH MILLER: “Joe?”
JOSEPH WILSON: “Sorry, Jude. I’m listening. What do you need? Not that kind of collar, it makes my face look all poochy. That one. Oh, nice. Does this come in other colors? I think I’m doing Russert on Sunday. Jude, you there?”
JUDITH MILLER: “Joe, should I call you back?”
JOSEPH WILSON: “No, no, this is a great time. I’m getting a facial later and I can’t talk with the goop on my face. Did I look too red last night on Koppel? I thought I looked red.”
UNIDENTIFIED FOREIGN-SOUNDING MALE VOICE: “No, no, Meester Vilson. You look like some kine ov got, some kine of deety.”
JOSEPH WILSON: “Great! Can we look at ties?”
JUDITH MILLER: “Joe, I’m sort of on deadline. Can I just get a couple of questions in?”
JOSEPH WILSON: “Go, go. Yeah. I’m here.”
JUDITH MILLER: “Well, I’m getting a lot of weird signals from some sources I have at Central Intelligence that your report from Niger may not have been so unequivocal . . .”
JOSEPH WILSON: “Solids. The little pattern things look too Hermes-y.”
UNIDENTIFIED FOREIGN-SOUNDING MALE VOICE: “But de contrass will light up your beautiful face.”
JOSEPH WILSON: “True.”
JUDITH MILLER: “Joe?”
JOSEPH WILSON: “Yeah, I heard. The CIA push back? Right. Too pink, I told you I look too red as it is. Right. Can we take the jacket in a little on the chest? I want to look like I’m bursting out of it.”
UNIDENTIFIED FOREIGN-SOUNDING MALE VOICE: “Like as eef you are de supermans?”
JUDITH MILLER: “Joe, c’mon! I need to file.”
JOSEPH WILSON: “What do you want me to say, Judith? Too tight. Push back from the agency is just CYA, okay? That’s how the game is played. I went over there, looked around, brought back some amazing basketwork, by the way, and wrote my report. The agency has egg on its face and it wants to blame me. You want a quote? I’ll give you a quote! My own freakin’ wife is a CIA operative, okay? She told me it was going to be a no-win situation and she’s the one who got me the gig in the first place! Oh, nice. Nice. I need it all by this afternoon, okay?”
UNIDENTIFIED FOREIGN-SOUNDING MALE VOICE: “Bud ov corz, Meester Vilson.”
JOSEPH WILSON: “Um, Jude, that last part was on background, okay? Like, seriously background. Okay?”
JOSEPH WILSON: “Judith?”
JOSEPH WILSON: “Judith, you there?”
JOSEPH WILSON: “Judith?”
UNIDENTIFIED FOREIGN-SOUNDING MALE VOICE: “I need to swipe your card.”..
End Extract . . ."
Re: New Rove Rumor (and rumor only so far)
LOL, that's fiction, not speculation.
National Review can publish all the TOTAL BULLSHIT they want, it won't have any effect on Fitzgerald's investigation....
Re: New Rove Rumor (and rumor only so far)
Of course the New York Times and Radar Online are somehow entitled to have their published bullshit treated as absolute fact until repeatedly disproven by irrefutable evidence to the contrary ? National Review's piece was obvious satire, whereas Radar Online / New York Times actually expect the piece to be taken seriously.
Re: New Rove Rumor (and rumor only so far)
Quote:
Originally Posted by threlayer
...For years, political insiders in the Lone Star State have whispered about Rove’s close friendship with lobbyist Karen Johnson, a never-married, forty-something GOP loyalist from Austin, Texas. The two first became close when Johnson sat on the board of then-Governor George W. Bush’s Business Council over a decade ago...and the comely lobbyist has long raised eyebrows in conservative Texas circles...
You will never see a man talked about like this. So she's a middle-aged career woman that is, "comely". Well obviously she must be fooling around with Rove in order to further her career, right? Please. She must be screwing Rove because being a woman she could not have possibly have been so successful any other way. Most of the shit that's posted in PP doesn't bother me, but this is really offensive.
Re: New Rove Rumor (and rumor only so far)
It's a study in how rumors get started by people OTHER than Rove. LOL IMO, he deserves it.
Re: New Rove Rumor (and rumor only so far)
Re: New Rove Rumor (and rumor only so far)
here's the latest 'rumor' ...
"Bush Bashing Fizzles
By Michael Barone Wed Jul 27, 4:59 PM ET
This summer, one big story is replaced by another--the London bombings July 7, the speculation that Karl Rove illegally named a covert CIA agent, the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, more London bombings last week. But beneath the hubbub, we can see the playing out of another, less reported story: the collapse of the attempts by liberal Democrats and their sympathizers in the mainstream media--the New York Times, etc., etc.--to delegitimize yet another Republican administration.
This project has been ongoing for more than 30 years. Richard Nixon, by obstructing investigation of the Watergate burglary, unwittingly colluded in the successful attempt to besmirch his administration. Less than two years after carrying 49 states, he was compelled to resign. The attempt to delegitimize the Reagan administration seemed at the time reasonably successful. Reagan was widely dismissed as a lightweight ideologue, and the rejection of his nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987 contributed to the impression that his years in office were, to take the title of a book by a first-rate journalist, "the Reagan detour." As time went on, as the Berlin Wall fell and Bill Clinton proclaimed that the era of big government was over, it became clear that Reagan was a successful transformational president--something the mainstream media grudgingly admitted when he died in 2004 after a decade out of public view.
You think they'd learn. But for the past five years, the same folks have been trying to undermine the presidency of George W. Bush. The Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore was denounced as an outrage, and Democrats noted, accurately, that Bush did not win a plurality of the popular vote in 2000. The nation rallied to his support after September 11, but Democrats held up his judicial and other nominations even if they had to violate Senate tradition to do so. Coverage of Bush during the 2004 campaign was heavily negative; for months the mainstream media mostly ignored the swift boat vets' charges against John Kerry and broadcast accusations against Bush based on forged documents eight weeks before the election. News of economic recovery in 2003 and 2004 was pitched far more negatively than it had been when Bill Clinton was president in 1995 and 1996.
Now the unsupported charges that "Bush lied" about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have been rekindled via criticism of Karl Rove. A key witness for the Democrats and mainstream media was former diplomat Joseph Wilson. Unfortunately for his advocates, he turned out to be a liar. A year after his famous article appeared in the New York Times in July 2003 accusing Bush of "twisting" intelligence, the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a bipartisan report, concluded that Wilson lied when he said his wife had nothing to do with his dispatch to Niger and Chairman Pat Roberts said that his report bolstered rather than refuted the case that Saddam Hussein's Iraq sought to buy uranium in Africa. So despite the continuing credulousness of much of the press, it appears inconceivable at this point that Karl Rove will be charged with violating the law prohibiting disclosure of the names of undercover agents. The case against Rove--ballyhooed by recent Time and Newsweek cover stories that paid little heed to the discrediting of Wilson--seems likely to end not with a bang but a whimper.
Court intrigue. So, too, with the political left's determination to defeat Bush's first nominee to the Supreme Court. Democrats, with much help from the press, argued successfully in 1987 that Robert Bork was out of the mainstream and in 1991 brought up spectacular charges that cast a pall on Justice Clarence Thomas. They seem almost certain not to have such success against the obviously highly qualified John Roberts. They may try to argue that Roberts is "out of the mainstream." But the vote on Roberts's nomination to the appeals court was 14 to 3 in the judiciary committee. Who is in the mainstream now?
The bombings and attempted bombings in London have brought home to the American public that we face implacable enemies unwilling to be appeased by even the most emollient diplomacy. Yet, mainstream media coverage of Iraq has been mostly negative. But mainstream media no longer have a monopoly; Americans have other sources in talk radio, Fox News, and the blogosphere. Bush's presidency is still regarded as illegitimate by perhaps 20 percent of the electorate. But among the rest, the attempt to delegitimize him seems to be collapsing."
Re: New Rove Rumor (and rumor only so far)
Quote:
Originally Posted by threlayer
It's a study in how rumors get started by people OTHER than Rove. LOL IMO, he deserves it.
And what about Karen Johnson? Does she deserve it too? Does she deserve to have little-minded ideologues whispering behind her back that she must be screwing Karl Rove to have been so successful? Again, someone show me an example of where a man has received similar treatment.
Re: New Rove Rumor (and rumor only so far)
This is just an op-ed piece. Johnson may well have not touched Rove's johnson, but the innuendos thereby enabled are well-deserved by Rove, not necessarily Johnson.
Again, it isnt the Niger thing, but the felony that may have been possible by Rove's outing of an undercover CIA agent, whomever that might have been and whatever the circumstances of that agent's domestic relationship.