Holding Them To Account 12 ; Special Comment On Bush, The War & Golf

Keith Olbermann Special Comment Tonight

There's going to be a Special Comment on Countdown With Keith Olbermann tonight at 8pm Eastern for those of you in the US.

Tell The Truthiness ; No clue at the moment what it will be about, but no doubt a must-see.

Road To Tehran 7 ; Meanwhile, A Well-Timed Confrontation For The Bush Administration

On the eve of President Bush's (do you remember him?) visit to the Middle East, a convenient 'confrontation' that seems eerily familiar to the UK sailor hostage situation is being reported.

Looking for anything that could be used as pretext for a strike on Iran, the story of a confrontation between boats US Navy and Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats, is just what the administration has needed. The suggestions that the administration is not beyond a 'Gulf Of Tonkin' style incident is grounded in truth, with the January 2003 story about shooting down a drone aircraft over Iraq, painted in UN colours, as grounds for invading Iraq, discussed between President Bush and Prime Minister Blair.

Tell The Truthiness ; Remember, Iran does NOT have an active nuclear weapons programme. They shut it down in 2003. So no matter how much they might scratch the varnish on the US Navy's rowing boats, it's not a reason at all for Iraq : 2 - The Bad Sequel. Are you listening George?

Holding Them To Account 5 ; Patriot Act Proviso

That huge lump of legislation that was dumped on the US in late 2001 was initially believed to be for domestic security protection, dig deeper and you'll find concerning aspects.

The Los Angeles Times has found a piece in the PATRIOT Act which allows Alberto Gonzales to decide if the counsel given to death row inmates is appropriate and additional small print is being finalised to give him extra say in these ultimate decisions.

Tell The Truthiness ; Will Alberto be gone before he gets a chance to use these powers for evil?

Queer Eye For The New Guy

With the terribly friendly atmosphere between Prime Minister Gordon Brown and President George Bush threatening to turn into a love fest, we point out the important aspects of the Camp David meeting.

Like the choice of ties with Tony Blair and the new PM in the Commons, as we reported, a similar situation has happened at today's meeting.

Mr Brown was wearing a blue, conservative tie and Mr Bush was wearing a red labour coloured tie.

Tell The Truthiness ; We knew they've said they're still close, but are they dragging their parties in new directions?!

The Real President Of The United States & What He Doesn't Want Us To Know

Dick Cheney has declared his office exempt from a presidential order which allows the public to know how much material is classified and declassified.

As unsurprising as it sounds, the White House has given it's full support to Mr Cheney's Big Brother exemption.

This must be like reason 143 that shows Cheney is more in control of 'command and control' in the White House and federal government than that other guy, the one who stands up and waves on his way to and from the helicopters. That man called President George Bush.

Tell The Truthiness ; Dick Cheney only sleeps during daylight hours, hanging upside down by his feet from a ceiling beam in the White House Messroom.

Don't You Know This Story Repeats Itself?

With Capitol Hill swirling from the gust of scandal after the firing of several US attorneys . We all know the Bush administration's fondness for repetition when wishing to make something true or make other people believe their own self imagined reality. But that solid technique of this government has been spun out. Just one phrase this week has become overused.

'' They serve at the pleasure of the President'', that remark about those now job-seeking attorneys has been cut and pasted from an episode of the West Wing. Unlike Aaron Sorkin's superbly written alternate reality of government, this phrase isn't being uttered by the attorneys themselves, but by their superiors.

Keeping the entertainment theme to the story, perhaps the Bush administration begins every morning with the tagline phrase from that benchmark of horror films, Last House On The Left (the original),

'' Keep repeating; it's only a movie'', its only a government, it's not real.

Well actually Mr Bush, the trail you continue to leave across your country and across the World gets wider and more messy and it is real, all too real for many of us.

The Truthiness Blog Says ; Guess who has to pick up the pieces when you've gone? Anyone got a trash bag?

War On Reality Part 4 ; The Wheels Fall Off The Bush Wagon

With the verdict in the Lewis 'Scooter' Libby trial sinking in to all those in Washington and up on Capitol Hill, other people in the White House, Senate and in the media have begun to talk openly about impeachment of the current administration.



Specifically, talk is rife of George W Bush's impeachement.

Post 9/11 and with the country feeling vunerable, strength and trust in the country's government was all the nation's citizens looked for, as any other country would expect it's elected members to fulfil that wish.

Instead, they played the card of 'we are safe', but then saying 'but we're not safe enough' , coupled with the lowering and quick raising of the terror alert threat, scaring people like shares or oil price changes.

The administration gave the impression of strength, but only achieved a hollow, smug swagger, strutting into Afghanistan then following up with the unconvincing, 'urgently' needed invasion of Iraq.

As for trust, well that vanished on 12th September 2001.

The Truthiness Blog Says ; We Need To Make Them Take Reponsibility For It All, Libby Is A Start.

Pres Bush's Got A List ; He's Checking It Twice

In two stories we're covering today, we can see both of them colliding head on and leaving several newspaper readers dead.

Tonight President Bush's State Of The Union address will be mostly just a list of the candidates who are not running for the 2008 Presidential election.

The Truthiness Blog has been leaked some details of the speech, here's an extract of the list of those not running,

- Jennifer Aniston

- Judi Dench

- Eddie Murphy

- Lou Dobbs (confirmed)

- Martin Sheen (he's busy studying)

- Paris Hilton (for the sake of our union)

- George W Bush

- Barney Bush

- Gerald Ford

- C Montgomery Burns

This list is subject to change, as a result, campaigners for Barney Bush '08 have started making placards.

They claim he can't do any worse than his owner.

Morgan Freeman Steps Down As UN Chief ; Plans To Spend More Time Driving Miss Daisy

In what has been an open secret in the World's of international filmmaking and diplomacy, the head of the UN is finishing his second five year run in the job.

The UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who has held the post for ten years is looking forward to spending more time acting and getting involved in Hollywood fundraisers. For the past decade, the part of Kofi Annan has been played flawlessly by Morgan Freeman who was originally chosen for the role due to his excellent acting technique combined with his uncanny physical similarity to Mr Annan.

After a colourful ten years in the post, Mr Freeman has tangled with George W Bush several times, most famously over the non-existent Weapons Of Mass Destruction and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Mr Annan said he was so pleased that Freeman had been selected to play him, initially Tom Cruise was due to take the part, but once again the obvious flaw of his height and wooden-ness counted against him.

Rumours that former UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix has been played for the past few months by John Aylward, that doctor who pops up every now and then on ER have been denied by show producers.

See Morgan Freeman's farewell to the UN here

And John Aylward, see what happens to those who stand up to the US's fight against those WMDs that just aren't there