No doubt

"The President does not know him, nor does the President recall ever meeting him,"

--White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan
regarding admitted felon Jack Abramoff

No one recalls anything. Apparently it's easy to forget a guy who is an elite Pioneer fundraiser for your last campaign a little more than a year ago. Or a guy who was on the transition team for the Department of the Interior and put in all those people to help him on the Indian casino issues. Or the guy you met at the White House numerous times and shook his hand and met his children. The guy who was the lobbyist in D.C. who was flying around the world with the Republican House Majority leader Tom Delay and Rep. Bob Ney, among others, to play golf. The guy who had hired former Delay staffers and funneled millions of dollars to Ralph Reed the boyish looking devil of the religious right. The guy who owned the infamous Signatures restaurant in Washington where the fat cats of the Hill got fatter on Kobe steak for free. The skyboxes at Washington's MCI center used to throw fundraisers while watching basketball. The decades old relationship with Grover Norquist. The guy who gave millions of dollars in "campaign contributions" to Republican Members of Congress. Oh yeah, that guy. But according to the White House, W doesn't know him and doesn't remember him.

Then the photographs of W and Abramoff surfaced. They haven't been published but Time magazine and The Washingtonian have seen them. And what does the White House say now? “He doesn’t have a personal relationship with him,” White House counselor Dan Bartlett said of Bush and Abramoff. Of course I believe the White House since they have been completely reliable in the past.

The weapons of mass destruction were a "slam dunk" in Iraq. Cheney told us "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." What there really is no doubt about is the doubt you should have listening to anything Cheney has no doubt about. (Calling Dr. Seuss?) The war would only cost $1.7 billion and be self-funding with oil profits from Iraq; we would be welcomed as liberators; the looting was just the same vase being stolen 20 times; the insurgency were dead-enders and in its last throes and court approved warrants were required for wiretapping in the U.S. I actually think the "Mission Accomplished" banner had a small asterick with fine print to explain the "catastrophic success." (Mercifully I've left out the phony estimates of the cost of Medicare "reform," troop level pronouncements and voting rights or more accurately non-voting rights policy statements by this gang. I only have so much blog space you know.)

The denial that W didn't know Jack Abramoff and doesn't remember him reminds me of an Eddie Murphy bit explaining how far men will lie to get out from under a bad situation. After being caught in bed in the act with another woman by his girlfriend a man will even say things like "It wasn't me." That's what we can expect next from this world-class bunch of fabricators and liars. The meetings, photos and relationship between W and Abramoff will be explained away by Scott McClellan or Dan Bartlett by telling the world "it wasn't President Bush." Seems as reasonable and reliable as anything else they've told us so far. I have no doubt.