Turd Blossom's Greatest Hits

Why, I, I…I’m just in shock!

How could it be that the “boy genius” of Bushco is departing? Just when we need him the most (for scorn and ridicule, that is)?

The “architect” of the political divisiveness so essential for this criminal regime to operate like the self-congratulatory, clueless machine of utter political and human destruction that it is has decided to, as Atrios put it, pick up his marbles and go home?

As georgia 10 supposes here, you don’t think it has anything to do with, among other things, the ongoing investigation into whether or not he broke federal laws by making political presentations to government employees encouraging them to find ways to support Republican candidates, do you?

Or Rove’s first-denied role in the U.S. Attorneys scandal, in which those who were wrongly let go chose not to issue politically motivated charges aimed at Democratic candidates in an effort to make them look bad on the eve of an election, only to have the charges withdrawn after Election Day (here)?

And pursuant to that, his decision to ignore a subpoena to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee?

I’d better stop for a minute, because I’m starting to get a bit choked up. OK Babs, start with the ooo-oooos…

Memories,
Like the corners of my mind
Misty water-colored memories
Of the way we were

In the 2000 Republican presidential primary, a push poll was conducted in South Carolina in which prospective voters were asked if they would choose John McCain, the leader of the Republican field at that time, if they thought that McCain's Bangladeshi born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. Though Rove denied all involvement in the push poll, the authors of the book and subsequent film Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential allege that Rove was involved.

Scattered pictures,
Of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were

In June 2001, Rove met with two pharmaceutical industry lobbyists. At the time, Rove held almost $250,000 in drug industry stocks. On June 30, 2001, Rove divested his stocks in 23 companies, which included more than $100,000 in each of Enron, Boeing, General Electric, and Pfizer. The same day, the White House confirmed reports that Rove had been involved in administration energy policy meetings while at the same time holding stock in energy companies including Enron. (from Wikipedia)

Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Or has time re-written every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we? could we?

In 2002 and 2003 Rove chaired meetings of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a secretive internal White House working group established by August 2002, eight months prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. According to CNN and Newsweek, WHIG was charged with developing a strategy for publicizing the White House's assertion that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States.[33] WHIG's existence and membership was first identified in a Washington Post article by Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus on August 10, 2003; members of WHIG included Bush’s Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Rice, her deputy Stephen Hadley, Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby, legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio, and communication strategists Mary Matalin, Karen Hughes, and James R. Wilkinson.

Quoting one of WHIG's members without identifying him or her by name, the Washington Post explained that the task force's mission was to “educate the public” about the threat posed by Saddam and (in the reporters' words) “to set strategy for each stage of the confrontation with Baghdad.” Rove's "strategic communications" task force within WHIG helped write and coordinate speeches by senior Bush administration officials, emphasizing in September 2002 the theme of Iraq's purported nuclear threat.[34]

The White House Iraq Group was “little known” until a subpoena for its notes, email, and attendance records was issued by CIA leak investigator Patrick Fitzgerald in January 2004, a legal move first reported in the press and acknowledged by the White House on March 5, 2004.[33][35] (from Wikipedia)

Memories, may be beautiful and yet
What’s too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget

At a fund-raiser in New York City for the Conservative Party of New York State in June 2005, Rove said, "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." Democrats demanded Rove's resignation or an apology, and pointed out that every Democrat in the Senate voted for military force against Al-Qaeda in retaliation for the September 11 attacks in the United States; however they got neither (also from Wikipedia - more here).

So it’s the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember...
The way we were...
The way we were...

On July 10, 2005, Newsweek posted a story from its July 18 print edition which quoted one of the e-mails written by Time reporter Matthew Cooper in the days following the publication of (Joe) Wilson's op-ed piece (in the New York Times, refuting the charge that Saddam Hussein purchased uranium from Niger).[51] Writing to TIME bureau chief Michael Duffy on July 11, 2003, three days before (Bob) Novak's column was published, Cooper recounted a two-minute conversation with Karl Rove "on double super secret background" in which Rove said that Wilson's wife (Valerie Plame) was a CIA employee: "it was, KR [Karl Rove] said, Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on WMD issues who authorized the trip". In a TIME article released July 17, 2005, Cooper says Rove ended his conversation by saying "I've already said too much." (also from Wikipedia)

And of course, even as Rove spoke to Cooper, he was pretending to reveal some supposedly new information on Wilson’s authorization, when Rove was in fact trying to implicate Wilson’s wife to cover up any possible involvement from Dick Cheney (Wilson, as noted, denied that Cheney was involved anyway).

(By the way, the trail of Rove's evil work stretches waaay beyond anything I could ever hope to capture in this post, but I think this is an appropriate sampling.)

And you know Rove will be back to spread more slime before the 2008 election after he writes what promises to be a propaganda-filled book. Of course, if an intervening congressional investigation leads to new housing for Karl at a federal facility where he will be issued an orange jumpsuit, that would be an appropriate and long-overdue comeuppance for this piece of human refuse whose middle name, ironically, is Christian.

Update: Sorry, Karl, but Sen. Patrick Leahy could care less about your "up close and personal" moment today.

Update 8/15: Yep, Rove sure is as right about this pronouncement on the people who don't like his former boss as he was about prediciting which party would control Congress after last year's election, wasn't he?

Oh, and I think he slammed Hillary Clinton or something today, which means that CNN automatically put it in a headline on the front page of the site.

Update Again 8/15: Take it away, Hunter...

Update 8/21: A fitting summation from Frank Rich of the New York Times...