Letters to the Editor
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Who's on first?
What?
No.
No?
Know what?
What?
What what?
You know what.
I don't know.
"And we have been responsive to requests in the past. "
Yeah, they responded with a big FU
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Wow...I know some PR workers
who could make a ton of money working for the Mafia. Think of all the villains who would never have been caught, had they had those guys working for them.
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Holy Bull!
Aren't we weary of this, by now? The rhetorical dodges wouldn't work for an eight year old, but they're attempted again by the WH spokesdrones.
1. "Give me a specific e-mail you want, in writing, with details on from and to whom it was, and I will search for it." is similar to the "Governor of Louisiana didn't ask for help in the right way, on the right letterhead, with an official declaration of need for a specific thing."
2. "There is no evidence of what is not there." is the opposite of lines they have taken in the past, when Saddam was to show the absence of weapons of mass destruction or be invaded. Here, it is, "The lack of any e-mails means there is no proof that they were lost."
Even the most dishonest would have trouble believing that the WH simply went 4 mo. with no e-mails being sent. I have a feeling the "big lie" folks aren't even trying any more.
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Classic doubletalk
This excerpt from one of Fratto's "answers" ought to win an award for complete, utter, unbelieveable doubletalk:
"...The question is, have we been able to find a large mass of missing email? No, we have not located somewhere in the system the absence of something. We have not been able to note the absence of anything in our databases."
Uh, WHAT? What the HELL are you actually trying to say?
Could be this: "If something isn't there NOW, and we can find no sign of it NOW, then it must have never existed -- so go away and leave us alone. Move along, nothing to see here. Next question (that I'm also not going to answer)?"
What total B.S. -- how does someone actually spout such nonsense with a straight face? It sure would be interesting to see what happens behind the scenes, after one of these so-called "spokesmen" leaves the podium and returns to a private White House office. I imagine everyone breaks out in raucous laughter, high-fiving each other in glee over reaching new heights of unresponsive bull-shittery.
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Party member? What party member?
No. No. Party Member Boris was not purged. As you can see, comrade, if you check our recently edited photo and transcript archive, there was no such person as Party Member Boris. So, no such party member could be missing. Now, if you can prove such person as Boris exists, we will gladly search our archive for you.
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Which is more appalling?
A quandry: am I more outraged by yesterday's story that the White House was following "standard industry practice" by overwriting email backup tapes and failing to save an archival copy? Or am I more outraged by Fratto's spin that "you can't show me proof that any e-mails whatsoever are missing"?
This first is sheer incompetence. As an IT professional, I can emphatically state this is NOT standard practice. No competent system manager would routinely recycle EVERY backup tape... one saves weekly and monthly tapes at a minimum, recycling the others.
The second is sheer hubris. Denying reality seems to be the ONLY thing in which this White House is competent.
Which is worse? Bumbling incompetence? Or lying about it?
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The Party of Personal Responsibility
Boy, we all saw this endgame, what, last year? The buzz and crackle of demagnetizers in the White House, the formatting of hard drives, the "What? Me Worry?!" casual fascism of the Bush League as they cover up their cover-up. The dog ate their homework, and they get a free pass. Amazing, truly amazing. And horrifying. As I've said before, the Bush Presidential Library is going to be empty. There'll be the flight suit, the "Mission Accomplished" banner, maybe some censorious "national security/executive privilege" black magic markers, some tax loopholes on display, some muddy mementos from New Orleans, and not much else, because the Bush Years are a national black hole that we're going to have to somehow climb out of through hard work and introspection and historical memory. Watching the abomination of this administration, I can see the nihilism of true evil (sorry, but they are fucking evil) -- not twirling mustaches and mad cackles, not even marching jackboots -- just an affable emptiness, a shirking of responsibility and accountability, without apology or shame. The tyranny of ideology forgives all sins, and that's how a republic dies. Nothing grandiose, just a great nothingness, a maleficent void.
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There are things we know.
And there things we don't know.
And there are things we don't know we don't know.
and there are things we know we don't know.
Why are you askin about missing e-mails? What's missing? How can it be missing if we haven't been asked to find it? How can it be found if it's not being looked for to be found in and finding?
Frigging pathetic.
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I think the cookie monster ate them..
but where are the crubs???
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Server?"
Maybe the missing e mails are hung up in a spam catcher. Check with the server.
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Like a snake on a hayfork
I think at this point the increasingly irrelevant administration is merely trying to see just how much bullshit they can get away with in this last twilight year. Their foreign policy is a bust, their domestic policy is a bust, everyone is watching Hillary and Barack and John and another John and Mike and Mitt, nobody is paying attention to Junior. So they're busy deleting e-mails and perhaps even burning stuff that was written down in an old-skool way. And erasing torture tapes. Soon they'll line up and shoot everyone in Gitmo and then shrug their shoulders and say: "What? Gitmo? Where? We had nobody in that place. You can go over there and check the place out, you'll find nothing but some deserted cell blocks and maybe a forgotten mass grave with unidentified half-burned human remains in there. This isn't proof that anything existed! Nothing existed. You do not exist. Go away!"
My only hope is that their pervasive incompetence pervades this e-mail erasing spree as well and they'd miss a few thousand on some server. And then Waxman will find it. And then the new President refuses to hand out pardons. And THEN justice will be served.
I'm an idealist, you see. I have the (snark) audacity of hope. Yeeeahhh.