Holy shit, I am loving the new Girl Scotty. As you can see, Girl Scotty is so damn awesome that I have no choice but to post a second Scotty Show in less than 48 hours. And this one is a doublewide edition -- in other words, this Scotty Show spans two separate press briefings.
If you missed any of the previous announcements, make sure that you subscribe to The Cool Kids' Club mailing list by clicking here or sending an email to karateexplosions@gmail.com so that I can keep a rolling file of the faithful for when I take over the world tell you when a new show is posted.
And as always:
Press questions are italicized for EVERYONE'S pleasure.
Dana's bullshit is thick and bold, like in real life.
My comments are in plain text, which probably means something profound.
I have two announcements, and then I'll take questions. It has been 65 days since the President requested emergency funding for our troops. Our military leaders have said they need this funding by mid-April to avoid significant disruptions and hardships. Yet the Senate's Majority Leader insists that they will be fine until June, and yesterday said the urgency is only in the President's head.
Needless to say, the urgency is getting very lonely there.
As the Joint Chiefs of Staff wrote to Congress last week, without approval of the supplemental funds in April the Armed Services will be forced to take increasingly disruptive measures in order to sustain combat operations. The impacts on readiness and quality of life could be profound.
Luckily, Congress has approved the funding, and all the president has to do is sign it. It brings the troops home, which will also have a profound impact on readiness and quality of life.
Has the President directed Secretary Gonzales to comply with the -- or Attorney General Gonzales to comply with the congressional subpoena for more documents, or has he told him to compromise, say no? Where does that stand?
I have not -- I haven't talked to the President about the subpoena issue. I know that the President, early on, at the beginning of this, asked the Justice Department to be fully responsive to the Congress in terms of its specific requests that it had. But as far as yesterday's subpoena, I have not spoken to the President about that.
I do believe the Justice Department has released, I think, 3,400 pages of documents, and that the Justice Department has endeavored to be as helpful as they possibly can. There were some concerns, given privacy issues, with some of the documents that were requested yesterday -- concerns expressed by the Justice Department.
We may have lost a bunch of emails, but let's look on the bright side here... we've suddenly discovered the right to privacy!
Is the White House -- anyone in the White House helping Gonzales prepare for his testimony next week?
Not that I'm aware... Of course, we're in close contact with the Justice Department, but I don't know of any White House official who's been at the Justice Department in preparation for testimony.
Of course, take that with a grain of salt, considering one of the things he'll be testifying about is how he was not aware of any White House involvement in the attorney firings.
There have been all these stories about the so-called "murder boards" that he's undergone in preparation for the testimony --
That's not unusual.
Now if "murder board" was anything like "water board", then the Department of Justice might be living up to its name.
I know, of course not. But has the White House taken no part in this?
I know that we are aware of it. I'm just saying that I don't know of any one person, individually, at the White House who has attended any of those. It's not unusual for an agency to set up sessions like that prior to a hearing. But the White House doesn't always send somebody to handle those. Maybe one thing that you're thinking about is when we're heading for a confirmation for an individual, we often hold those here at the White House in order to prepare, but that's because that person is not yet at an agency where they have a staff.
It's hard work preparing our people to tell the truth. First, we all have to agree upon what our version of the truth is going to be. Then, we have to memorize our version of the truth, and be able to recite it automatically without sounding like we're just reading lines. That's harder than it sounds. Bush has been doing it for a long time, but sometimes he still fucks it up.
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
George W. Bush
So he still has his job?
He certainly does.
Yes, you don't piss off the guy who knows where you buried all the bodies.
Does the President believe that someone of a significant public stature needs to come to this administration to assist in overseeing how the war is managed?
You're referring to a story in The Washington Post that talked about a possible reorganization within the National Security Council. That is something that is under consideration. It would be a little bit like putting the cart before the horse if we were to say that that is a done deal, because no one has been offered the job. We've been consulting widely to find out what people think about the possibility of having somebody of a higher caliber -- I'm sorry, of a higher profile come in and have that position. We are talking to people; there have been no decisions made.
And so I think that now that we're in this implementation phase, after the two major reviews were done for Iraq and Afghanistan -- and led very ably by Meghan O'Sullivan, who has been Deputy National Security Advisor for Stephen Hadley -- that now is an appropriate time, since she has told us that she's going to be moving on, after six years of public service -- that any organization would take a moment to figure out, since Iraq and Afghanistan are such -- is the number one priority for this administration and for this nation, since we have over 150,000 service members over there, that it's an appropriate time to consider whether or not we need to think about restructuring the office and seeing how we can make it be the most effective and efficient.
This is a great idea, actually. When we're in the middle of this so-called War on Terror, and intense fighting continues in both Afghanistan and Iraq, it's important to have one high-profile, centralized person in charge of overseeing things. A commander of all the troops... a "commander-in-chief", if you will. And, as Dana points out, this person will have to be "of a higher caliber" than the one we currently have.
Dana, have people turned down the job?
I am going to decline from here to talk about any personnel actions, whether that be interviews or offers. I can tell you no one has been offered the job.
I believe the specific phrasing from the generals who were approached about it was something to the effect of, "I wouldn't touch that job with Donald-Fucking-RUMSFELD's dick."
Can you talk about whether this job would be in addition to the job that Meghan O'Sullivan is leaving? Would this be an added position that you're thinking about?
That would be possible... there's no decision -- well, it could, or it could not. Because there's been no decisions yet on how the restructuring would be, then I can't give you a concrete answer as to whether or not that person would replace Meghan or whether it would be an additional person.
So here's what we know so far: there may or may not be a job offered to someone who may or may not even want to accept it, which may or may not be a completely new position created specifically for this purpose. Or not.
And why do you want someone higher profile?
Well, again, I'm not saying that we want somebody.
Holy shit, this is getting metaphysical. I think I see Schrödinger's cat in this press briefing with me.
I think that we are considering whether or not that would be a good thing for the office at this time as we implement the policies.
You know what would be a really good thing for the office? Stop implementing the policies!
Dana, if I could follow. Representative Rahm Emanuel has put out a statement about this, saying, "The Washington Post reports that the White House wants to appoint a war czar to run the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they can't find anyone to do it -- someone needs to tell Steve Hadley that position is filled -- it's the Commander-in-Chief, unless the decider has become the delegator." Do you see his point?
Well, I think it's really interesting coming from somebody who works with 217 other members of Congress who think that they are Commanders-in-Chief.
Actually, I think those 217 members of Congress think that they are members of Congress, and that you work with a Commander-in-Chief that thinks he's a generalissimo.
Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the bombing in Algiers. Does this suggest that al Qaeda is resurging?
I have not heard that report. We certainly condemn the attacks in Morocco, and we are working with the Moroccan and Algerian authorities. We stand with them as they try to find out the cause -- or the impetus for the attacks. I haven't heard that it's al Qaeda. I guess it wouldn't surprise me.
It's like the president has been saying all along, "We're fighting them in Iraq and Afghanistan and London and Madrid and Bali and Algiers so that we don't have to fight them here." Al Qaeda is on the run. And wherever they run, the blow things up and kill a lot of people, but I think the important thing to focus on is the running and not so much the death and destruction.
Rutgers University President Richard McCormick, described the Don Imus on-air words as "despicable, unconscionable, and deeply hurtful to the team players, the students and their parents." And my question: Does the President of the United States disagree with the President of Rutgers on this?
The President believes that the comments made by Don Imus were inappropriate. He can understand why people's feelings were hurt. He knows that Don Imus apologized and he thinks that that was the right thing to do.
In fact, he even sent a letter to Don Imus, and THE SCOTTY SHOW has obtained an exclusive copy of it:
Back to the coordinator -- the fact that the administration is considering a coordinator, or czar, or whatever it's going to be called, and the fact that it might augment Meghan O'Sullivan's job, or maybe a higher-profile thing, suggests that there's something broken in the whole system. Is there something broken that you're trying to repair or --
No, I think what's broken is trying to put the cart in front of the horse and try to speculate on a bunch of hypotheticals that I'm not in a position to be able to answer.
"What's broken is trying to put the cart in front of the horse"? What the fuck does that even mean?
I think the thing that's broken is the Girl Scotty. We finally get a brand new Scotty and you fucking press corps break her immediately!
As I said, the priorities of this administration, given the war on terror and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, while we have troops in harm's way, is priority number one.
I'm not an English teacher, but I suspect that if we diagram that sentence, we will learn that the priorities of this administration is priority number one. I would cite that as further evidence that the press has broken our new Girl Scotty, but I actually think that's probably a fairly accurate statement.
On second thought, if she's giving us fairly accurate statements, that's further evidence that the new Girl Scotty IS, in fact, broken, so... damn you, press corps! This is why we can't have nice things!
But I will tell you, I have not heard anybody say that the system is broken, or that Meghan O'Sullivan did not perform with the -- to the best of her abilities.
Is it just me, or is Dana talking about Meghan O'Sullivan like she's the kid in the back of the class eating paste out of the jar?
The CEO of Ford Motors was here at the White House last week, introducing a hybrid car. He made a joke yesterday about the President nearly blowing himself up, and that he saved his life or something. Is there any reaction -- I mean, it was a story that the blogs took seriously for about 24, 48 hours. Any reaction or response from the White House? Has the President or the CEO of Ford reached out to the President to explain himself?
No, I don't know about any sort of outreach to us. I'll just -- the story wasn't accurate, and I'll just decline to comment further.
Are you talking about the guy who can't stay on a bicycle, who manages to topple off a self-righting Segway, and who hits his head choking on a pretzel? I don’t know why anyone would have given credibility to such flights of fancy from the Ford CEO!
Was there any concern at all that that was taken seriously? Because obviously there was a lot of press --
If I was concerned about all the things that were on the blogs every day, I wouldn't get -- I wouldn't do anything else.
Thanks for reading, Dana.
Is there any concern that the loss of White House emails through outside email providers might involve a violation of law?
Well, I think one of the things to step back and take a look at is that we are talking about a very small universe of emails. There are 1,700 employees that work for the Executive Office of the President, 1,000 of those are political employees, like myself, and 22 of them have political email accounts. That's about 2 percent of the people.
Dana, I’m going to do this because I like to take care of new Scottys. So here goes:
Press Secretary Tip #294:
When you’re trying to convey that something is small in quantity, it is not good to characterize it as a "universe".
We have a policy in which any emails that are sent to somebody like myself at an EOP or a White House email address are archived and retained indefinitely, forever, so that we always have those. There are a small slice of people, that 2 percent, that has access to RNC-based emails, based on the fact that at the beginning of the administration we did what previous administrations had done for the past 25 years, which is, if you want to avoid the criminal violations that exist with the Hatch Act, you make sure that you don't use any government equipment in order to do political business.
You gotta love the Hatch Act. Here is a government funded woman who is standing in a government funded room, behind a government funded podium, talking into a government funded microphone to government funded reporters, and it’s nothing BUT partisan political bullshit coming out of her mouth. And she’s going to lecture us about the Hatch Act. Priceless.
There are gray areas. There are White House official business and there's political business, and to make sure that you don't cross that line, people, either out of an abundance of caution, or because of convenience, were, as we went on through the administration, sometimes erring too much on the side of caution. And we have recognized that error. We have changed the White House policy, and we are talking to, in the process -- Counsel's Office is in the process of talking to political employees that have those email accounts to make sure that they are in compliance with both the Hatch Act and also making sure that they are preserving records for the Presidential Records Act.
I like how the Hatch Act gets an "abundance of caution", but the Presidential Records Act can piss up a tree.
Isn't it a given that some were lost, and -- well, just that?
Well, I think that the -- we don't have an idea on the universe of the number of emails that were lost. I went through the small slice of the universe of the emails that could potentially have been there, but truly, we just don't know enough yet. And we will continue to update you as the review goes on, and as we continue to talk with the RNC general counsel's office to understand how those emails were archived, or not.
"I went through the small slice of the universe of the emails that could potentially have been there"? What in the holy name of fuck are you talking about? Goddammit, woman, isn’t there some way to make your lies sound coherent?
But one thing I will mention is that for -- since 2004, for the political employees, those emails that were sent using those RNC-provided accounts, for political employees, have been archived.
Except the ones that Karl Rove tried to delete off the servers.
On March 27th at this podium, you said that there were only a handful of White House aides who had these political RNC accounts. Now you're saying 22. That doesn't sound like a handful.
Well, I didn't know how many there were. And I think that, again, if you look at the number of people that work at the White House, almost 2,000, to have 22 people that -- I mean, that's obviously -- I grant you, it's a very large handful, but it's still a relatively small number. And it's based on the people who have responsibilities, both White House official responsibilities, but that also have responsibilities in their job description to do political activities. And to make sure that they didn't violate the Hatch Act, they had access to this other equipment.
I guess it just depends on how big your hands are, and how small the White House aides are. I mean, think about it. A handful of Easter eggs? One, maybe two. A handful of jelly beans? I don’t think 22 is totally out of the question.
But The L.A. Times today quotes Scott Stanzel as saying that there were about 50 aides.
The 22 is current, current White House employees -- 50 over the course of the administration.
Or, in other terms, two handfuls.
This seems to be -- at least Senator Leahy seems to be suggesting now this is a credibility issue; that the explanations coming out of the White House don't pass some sort of sniff test for him.
I don't know how you could possibly say that when what we have done is endeavor to be very forthcoming and honest in talking about a policy that we've had. Now, it would be different if we hadn't said anything at all. But we didn't. We have come forward. I would prefer to have every single answer available to you, because you have a lot of questions. And as Scott Stanzel said to you this morning, we don't have all the answers yet, but we are working with the committees --
I mean, if you can overlook the fact that we deleted emails that were part of a Congressional investigation for the purposes of obstructing that investigation in a clear case of contempt of Congress, then we have been very forthcoming and honest.
I'm saying this is what Senator Leahy and the folks on the Judiciary Committee are hearing shifting explanations, and wondering what the deal is.
Well, I would be happy to personally speak to them about my reasoning for using the word "handful." But I think the proof is -- the truth is we have 1,700 employees, 1,000 of them are political employees, and 22 of them currently have these accounts. The number 50 is based on the number since the beginning of the administration. That story hasn't changed. I will be happy to explain to them why I used the word "handful," because it was based on my limited understanding of who all in the Political Affairs Office might have used them.
There is a part of me, a very base - primal even - part of me, that knows there’s a very easy sexual joke to be made here and the better angels of my nature are doing everything in their power to keep my fingers from typing that joke right now.
HINT: It has to do with why she uses the word "handful".
How does that square with what Scott Stanzel was saying this morning, where he was saying that staffers could, so-called, double-delete?
That is true. When I say that we're trying to find if there were any potential emails that were not captured in that system, if someone had the capability to -- if they wanted to clean out their inbox -- delete a message, and then when your inbox -- when your deleted box fills up, and you decide that you want to clean that up, if you delete that one, as well, where did those emails go? And that's exactly what we're trying to find out.
It’s exactly what you think, Dana. The emails go to email afterlife - heaven or hell, depending on whether they were good emails or bad emails. But luckily, there are those certain people who can still reach the emails. They are like email mediums or email psychics, if you prefer, all though most people just call them "computer nerds".
A couple minutes ago you were saying that for sure since 2004 it's been archived, though. But I'm trying to understand, with the double-delete, can that override the archiving?
I think that it might be able to. And I can't speak to any individual's personal email habits, but let me -- I'm not a technical expert, so let me make sure we find that.
And here I was, mistaking you for a technical expert, after such informed technical statements as "if you delete emails, where did those emails go?"
Is part of the review to ask these 22 why they chose to use outside email? You've said abundance of caution, perhaps the convenience.
Well, I think the Counsel's Office is certainly talking with everyone, but I think that the reason that they were using outside email is for the very reason I explained, which when you get into the White House and you received the previous policy and the previous manual, you were given one paragraph based on what you should do in terms of your official White House -- conducting official business on a White House account, but you're given extensive explanation, over two pages, over how to avoid the Hatch Act.
Two things. First, "how to avoid the Hatch Act"? Niiice.
Second, I don’t even know if you need a whole paragraph to say, "Don’t delete your fucking email, motherfuckers!" I just said it in six words, and my mother would tell me that two of them were unnecessary and are the mark of a poor vocabulary.
And people were very concerned about making sure that, out of an abundance of caution, and to make sure that -- to avoid any sense of impropriety, that they would use their RNC-provided equipment to avoid that Hatch Act violation.
Well, mission accomplished, dipshits. No appearance of impropriety here.
So you have this new policy and what -- you're going into the seventh year of this administration. Why did it take so long to enact this policy?
Well, I will admit it, we screwed up and we're trying to fix it.
By deleting the evidence.
The policy that existed from the very beginning -- remember, this is before BlackBerrys ever existed. Most people in the White House did not get BlackBerrys until well after September 11th. And that communication has now become ubiquitous. I know you all use it, and we do, too. And so now you're on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it seems that you don't ever have a break. And so technology really moved quickly. And the policy should have evolved with it, and it didn't. But we're trying to fix it now.
What about email? Did email exist in 2001? What about the RNC? Did the RNC exist in 2001? And could somebody please tell me if 2001 comes before or after 1999?
The BlackBerry is a wireless handheld device introduced in 1999 which supports push e-mail, mobile telephone, text messaging, internet faxing, web browsing and other wireless information services.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Does the President have one of these RNC-maintained accounts?
I don't think so, no. The President says he doesn't email.
But he does pull up maps on The Google, so don’t go thinking he’s Luddite or anything.
Dana, just a quick change of subject, if we probably continue on this. We keep on hearing from the administration that attacks like the one at the Iraqi parliament today are to be expected as the security crackdown in Baghdad continues. But if the Green Zone, and the parliament, a very key target in the Green Zone, can't be protected four years into this war, how can we expect that ordinary Iraqis will have faith in U.S. forces to bring security to their neighborhoods?
Well, as I said, we are working with the Iraqis to understand exactly what happened here and to make sure it doesn't happen again. I think what this tells us more than anything is that we are facing an enemy that has -- is filled with such brutality. You can't imagine if that attack would have happened here at home, just up the street. It is just inconceivable how barbaric the enemy we face is, and quite determined.
So if violence in Baghdad declines, then the surge is working. If violence in Baghdad - even the green zone - increases, then the surge is working. What I’m wondering is, can you conceive of a scenario in which the surge might potentially not be working?
And our troops are there to help the Iraqis who are in that parliament have enough space away from the violence in order to work out their political differences and make sure that they can move forward and be a democracy that can, as you've heard the President say, sustain, defend, and govern itself.
Microsoft Word just went apeshit underlining that total clusterfuck of a sentence.
But there was also the destruction of a major bridge today by a suicide bomb. And at what point does the persistence of these kinds of attacks say to the administration that this operation, this security crackdown is not working?
Well, you've heard General David Petraeus say it's going to take a long time to get all that -- all of our people there on the ground, all of our troops there on the ground, and get the violence under control, and working with the Iraqis to make sure that the violence can be curtailed. I don't know if we'll ever see the end of suicide bombings.
Holy shit, did she just say never? As in, "Hey Iraqis, enjoy your never-ending eternity of suicide bombings!"
It is very troubling, and I can only imagine how scared and hurt the families are for the people that were wounded today inside the parliament building. And I -- we really feel for them. We stand with them. And we'll make sure that we find out as much as we can to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Yeah, they lost their legs, so they can’t exactly stand with you per se. Apparently there was some sort of bombing inside the fucking Parliament building inside the fucking Green Zone, which is basically the fucking Disneyland of Iraq.
Senator Leahy said this morning, "They say they haven't been preserved, I on't believe that. You don't erase emails today. They've gone through too many servers. These emails are there, they just don't want to produce them." What does it say about the lack of credibility that the administration has that he would say something like that?
Well, it's troubling. I don't know if Senator Leahy is also an IT expert, but I can assure you that we are working very hard to make sure that we find the emails that were potentially lost and that we are responsive to the requests if there are responses that are provided -- that need providing on the U.S. attorneys matter. We're being very honest and forthcoming, and so I hope that he would understand the spirit in which we have come forward and tried to explain how we screwed up our policy, and how we're working to fix it.
Senator Leahy might not be an IT expert, but I have worked in IT for ten years, and I can tell you that there has never been a company that I have worked for that could not retrieve an email that was accidentally deleted if the email was important enough.
Have you thought about calling in the FBI?
Let me check -- in terms of, like, the forensics -- that's one of my areas of -- I just don't have a clue.
All evidence to the contrary, Girl Scotty.
You can ask me about global warming, I'll know, but IT forensics is not my strong point. But we'll work to get back to you.
Okay, I have a quick question about global warming. Can you estimate roughly how much of a carbon impact you are creating by lying about the deleted RNC emails?
Dana, on the supplemental, on Tuesday the President said that because the Democrats have not gotten this in yet -- "The failure to fund our troops will mean some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines, others could see their loved ones headed back to war sooner." Why did the President mention -- this is a day before his own Pentagon is going to announce that, actually, those loved ones are going to stay in harm's way longer. And he clearly had to know that this policy was going to take place, that the deployments were going to be stretched from 12 months to 15 months. So why did he tell the American Legion that people would be staying in Iraq longer because of the Democrats, when his own Pentagon, 24 hours later, was going to keep people there longer?
Well, one, I don't know if the President knew about the -- the meeting -- remember, yesterday morning is when Secretary Gates came and talked to the President. But also, Secretary Gates was talking about a longer-term policy, to make sure that the dwell times are going to be long enough so that we can keep our troops refreshed and get them time with their family. The long-term goal, ultimate goal is to have for active duty one year deployed with two years off, and then for reservists, one year on and five years off.
We have never said that if we got the money immediately tomorrow, that folks would be able to have just a 12-year deployment and a 12-year dwell time.
Oh, shit - no wonder they need all that money. They want to keep soldiers deployed for 12 YEARS at a time.
But if the President really wants certainty for the families, he had an opportunity before the American Legion, a highly respected veterans organization, to say, you know what, for certainty's sake for these families, tomorrow we're going to announce a pretty big change. They're going to stay in harm's way longer. Why wasn't he straightforward with the American Legion about his own policy?
I think the President was absolutely straightforward. And remember, I don't -- I know that Secretary Gates came and talked to the President yesterday morning, so that speech you're talking about was last Tuesday. We've known for a while that we're going to have to --
Well, your plan ignores the obvious benefit of blaming the Democrats for our failed policies.
And so the President didn't know about his own policy until Wednesday?
I'm not aware that the President knew that there was going to be -- that Secretary Gates had come to any decisions. But we did know that people, one, needed more certainty, because that had been a complaint and that's one that we had heard about; and two, we need to make sure that we can get the money for the troops so that the readiness issue, the training issue -- because if the troops here can't be trained, which is one of the issues that Gates and Pace said is a problem of not having the money now -- if they can't be trained, then you can't get the fresh troops out in the field. And that means that the people who are there have to stay longer.
And so I guess the way I would put it is that it gets better than it would otherwise be if we get the money today, and it gets worse than it would otherwise be if we don't.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret. The president still doesn’t know about his own policy. He’s pretty wrapped up taking the Dallas Cowboys through Franchise Mode in Madden 2007 right now.