CLIVE Davis has tapped Denise Rich to help launch the latest all-girl gang of teeny-poppers. The singer/songwriter ex-wife of tax-cheating billionaire Marc Rich will be writing songs for the debut album of Lyric, a triumvirate of hip-hop hotties that is Davis' latest creation for J. Records. Rich told Davis, "I love these girls," after hearing a few of their songs. The self-titled album hits stores in March.
Then, the aggravating:
PRESIDENTIAL adviser Karl Rove and other members of George W. Bush's administration will have to go into heavy spin control when Bob Woodward's muckraking "Bush at War" hits the stores next week. The Washington Post reporter was given unheard-of access to top White House aides for the upcoming Simon & Schuster tome, but loose-lipped insiders may soon regret their candor. Excerpts obtained by the Drudge Report contain some of Woodward's revelations.
The Watergate sleuth accuses Rove of likening the post-Sept. 11 World Series game at Yankee Stadium to a Nazi rally in Hitler's Germany. "The president emerged wearing a . . . Fire Dept. windbreaker," Woodward writes. "He raised his arm and gave a thumbs-up to the crowd on the third base side of the field. Probably 15,000 fans threw their arms in the air imitating the motion.
"He then threw a strike from the rubber, and the stadium erupted. Watching from owner George Steinbrenner's box, Karl Rove thought, it's like being at a Nazi rally."
Rove also thought Secretary of State Colin Powell had too much power. "Rove . . . felt Powell was beyond political control and operating out of a sense of entitlement," Woodward charges. Rove said privately, "It's constantly, you know, 'I'm in charge, and this is all politics and I'm going to win the internecine political game.' "
Woodward also accuses Powell of having a hard time keeping up appearances. "One of Powell's greatest difficulties was that he was more or less supposed to pretend in public that the sharp differences in the war cabinet did not exist. The president would not tolerate public discord. Powell was also held in check by his own code - a soldier obeys." Powell was also "uncomfortable" with some of Bush's Texan ways: "Bush might order, Go get the guns! Get my horses! - all the Texas, Alamo macho that made Powell uncomfortable. But he believed and hoped the president knew better, that he would see the go-it-alone approach did not stand further analysis."
Powell, however, didn't have such high hopes for Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, Woodward claims. "The ghosts in the machine were Rumsfeld and Cheney in Powell's view. Too often they went for the guns and the horses."
Woodward goes on to depict Cheney as obsessed with Saddam Hussein: "Cheney was beyond hell-bent for action against Saddam. It was as if nothing else existed."
White House deputy press secretary Scott McClellan declined to comment on the book, telling PAGE SIX, "We haven't seen it yet." Page Six
Obviously, the Dems are desperate to dig up - or create - dirt wherever they can. President Bush's popularity is really getting their goat (no, I wasn't referring to Hillary).