No, this isn't a post about Mickey Kaus. I haven't actually watched this show before, despite the fact that I regularly see them filming it around my neighborhood. Tonight's show, so far, is a nice bit of anti-Patriot Act propaganda...
Tony Blair privately admitted that Saddam Hussein could not attack British or United States troops with chemical or biological weapons two weeks before Britain went to war against Iraq, Robin Cook alleges today.
Just a note. I read every email I get but reply to few. So far today I've gotten 84. I'm not complaining, at all, just saying I can't possibly reply to all of them...
...and, uh, journalists? If they're full of it, feel free to out them. There's precedent.
From TERRY CARTER: The Robert Novak sourcing flap might get very interesting. Remember back when Oliver North testified before Congress in the Iran-Contra scandal. He told them, under oath, that the Reagan Administration he worked for was concerned about information being leaked out of that august legislative
body. Ollie gave the members some examples, including the leaked information about the 1985 interception of a plane carrying the the Achille Lauro hijackers. And a Newsweek magazine reporter had a problem with Ollie saying that because it had been the stand-up Oliver North himself who leaked it to Newsweek. After some navel gazing, the errant colonel was outed by Newsweek. Let the games begin.
(from a letter to Medianews)
Well, it looks like little Tommy Friedman has provided his own "shorter Tom Friedman" in the concluding graf of his latest:
That is so wrong. We may not get a better Iraq out of this war, but let's at least make sure we get a better America.
The bulk of the article is about how there should be an increase in the gasoline tax, a proposal with about as much popular support as would one to impose mandatory sterilization of everyone except African-Americans.
Utilizing his massive number of contacts within the Bush administration, the intelligence community, and the FBI, Brian Flemming has managed to put together a timeline of Bush's tireless effort to discover the identity of the person who blew Valerie "Victoria" Plame's* cover.
*How long is it going to take before you fix that, Newsweek? Sheesh...
TCM will be showing "Dr. Strangelove," the biopic of Don Rumsfeld, tonight at 8pm ET. I fortunately own my own copy, thanks to a very generous reader who purchased it through my wish list.
In figuring out what is and isn't appropriate in talking about Rush Limbaugh's latest problems, I use the "What Would Rush Do?" standard. And, yes, I think if some evil liberal were in his position, Rush would gleefully link to this little game.
A half-hour later, back on the bus driving through a cold rain, the students were both energized and weary. A good bit into the trip, O'Day stood and said it was time to choose a winner of the anti-Howard Dean poster contest.
"All in favor of, 'Dean is a Ween, Don't Bring it to My Bush'?"
No applause.
"Dean Can't Measure Up, Four More Years"?
Mild applause.
"Dean's a Queen, Vote Bush"?
Very mild applause.
"I think the queen's got it," O'Day said, delivering the Tommy Thompson book to the young woman in the back of the bus who created the poster. She would not reveal her name.
...just wanted to add that I am watching Cabaret now, and am just about to get to the key moment where the MC finishes his cabaret song "If They Could See Her Through My Eyes," an amusing little number about a man with a Gorilla for a girlfriend, with the line:
If they could see her through my eyes, she wouldn't look Jewish at all
A shocking moment in the film - the instant when the MC has realized which way the winds are blowing and switches from mocking the Nazis to embracing them.
And, there has to be some irony somewhere in the fact that Joel Grey, in the performance of a lifetime, was born Joel Katz but changed his name for obvious reasons...
So I stopped in Tower Records earlier to do a bit of browsing and they had a massive display of librul books, anchored around Franken's latest. I didn't see a similar display for the Other Side.
The truth is available only on AM talk radio these days, and I think a couple of recruits in Arnold's Army did what they had to do. They spotted protest signs in the crowd and goose-stepped over to take care of business.
Not that they could have known, but the signs were carried by two Catholic nuns in their 60s. According to the nuns, their attackers snatched them away.
The silencing of dissent, coming just a day after Arnold denied reports that he once said he admired Hitler, had the nuns trembling.
"A sign was ripped from my hands," said Jo'Ann DeQuattro, a Holy Name sister whose sign said, "Groping Equals Sexual Harassment."
"I was assaulted physically," said Sister Jo'Ann.
She and Sister France White, of the Holy Child order, were headed for the exits when I saw them. Sister France had taped a sign to herself that said "Grope Free Zone." Sister Jo'Ann had her arm around Sister France to protect her.
Sister France said she gave a "groping" protest sign to a man who held a "Recall Arnold" sign, and watched as he was set upon and had the sign ripped away from him.
"People began fighting with him, and he was escorted out," said Sister France.
As for her own sign getting swiped, Sister France said:
"I believe a woman standing behind me grabbed it. A whole group of people were around us saying, 'Go home' and things like 'Get a life.' "
Sister France still had the "Grope Free Zone" sign taped to her when they decided to leave the rally, so Sister Jo'Ann suggested an exit strategy.
"She was afraid there was going to be more of it, so she said, 'We've gotta get out of here,' and walked behind me, real close behind, so Schwarzenegger followers wouldn't be hitting me as we left."
Sounds like the right kind of supporters for a man who once said:
I think we can't live without authority. There's a certain amount of people meant to be leaders, and to control, and another large amount, 95 percent, are followers. We have to tell (them) what to do and how to keep in order, you know?
If you happen to be rich, and you feel like a night's entertainment,
You can pay for a gay escapade.
If you happen to be rich, and alone and you need a companion,
You can ring ting-a-ling for the maid.
If you happen to be rich and you find you are left by your lover,
Tho you moan and you groan quite a lot,
You can take it on the chin,
call a cab and begin to recover on your fourteen carat yacht.
I won't tell you that until just recently my wife was Arnold's press secretary, but I will tell you that it is absolutely horrible that the evil media is treating Republicans so much more harshly for things they've actually done than they ever did Democrats for things they didn't do.
KURTZ: Well, joining us now, Joshua Marshall, Washington Editor of The American Prospect and a write for Slate.com, and Chris Caldwell, senior writer for The Weekly Standard.
Josh Marshall, you don't know the extent of damage or vandalism by departing Clinton White House aides, and neither do I. So, in writing in Slate Magazine that the press wildly overplayed this story, it kind of sounds like you're acting as a knee-jerk Clinton defender. J
JOSHUA MARSHALL, WASHINGTON EDITOR, "THE AMERICAN PROSPECT": Not at all. I think when I looked at that, when I looked at that story for the first few days, the charges escalated and escalated, more and more things, destruction of property, trash everywhere. And at a certain point, journalists started asking for some actual proof, some pictures, someone to go on the record and actually say this happened. And over and over again Ari Fleischer said, "Well, it's, yes it's true, but we're going to rise above it" and so forth. And at some point, you say, when are we going to get some proof that this happened.
KALB: Josh, let me try the question this way. Did the Bush people play the media like a yo-yo?
MARSHALL: I definitely think so.
...
KURTZ: But, Chris Caldwell, do you buy the notion that journalists deliberately pumped-up the story, not just of the pardon, which I think everyone would agree, the Mark Rich pardon, very legitimate news story. But, of the $190,000 in gifts; other presidents took gifts, not at this kind of level, and the story about the prank/destruction of federal property, just because they can't stand Bill and Hillary Clinton and because they wanted to portray them as kind of low-class Arkansas hicks?
CALDWELL: Well, you know, these preconceptions that journalists have are not without a basis in fact. One of my colleagues likes to say ...
KURTZ: So, you're saying they are low-class hicks ...
CALDWELL: Well, yes, one of my colleagues likes to say, "The Golden Rule is that all rumors about the Clintons are true". But I think ...
Please stop framing this story as one of Wilson vs. the White House. At this point, this story has absolutely nothing to do wtih Amb. Wilson. The real story is that a senior administration official has accused two top White House officials of telling at least 6 journalists the identity of an undercover CIA agent. That is the story.
I believe that as this is a story about leaks, and therefore you yourselves are intimately involved with this story, you are trying to deflect the spotlight away from yourselves. Stop pretending you don't have a role.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 3 � Last month the Iraqi Governing Council questioned why the American occupation authority had issued a $20 million contract to buy new revolvers and Kalashnikov rifles for the Iraqi police when the United States military was confiscating tens of thousands of weapons every month from Saddam Hussein's abandoned arsenals.
On Wednesday the Iraqi council, in a testy exchange with the occupation administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, challenged an American decision to spend $1.2 billion to train 35,000 Iraqi police officers in Jordan when such training could be done in Iraq for a fraction of the cost. Germany and France have offered to provide such training free.
These decisions are being questioned by Iraqi officials as Congress is also seeking to examine how the American occupation authority and the military are spending billions of dollars here. Iraqi officials and businessmen charge that millions of dollars in contracts are being awarded without competitive bidding, some of them to former cronies of Mr. Hussein's government.
"There is no transparency," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the Governing Council, "and something has to be done about it.
"There is mismanagement right and left, and I think we have to sit with Congress face to face to discuss this. A lot of American money is being wasted, I think. We are victims and the American taxpayers are victims."
I think folks are off-focus on Novak's latest. Here's the money quote: "CIA people are not supposed to list themselves with fictitious firms if they're under a deep cover -- they're supposed to be real firms, or so I'm told."
Someone told him this. The real story here isn't the end of Novak's career. The story is, who TF would set Novak up for a fall like this? I believe that no DC player, even Rove, would be stupid enough to out a CIA front agency at this point. Someone did this for a reason. But who, and why? I'm stumped. I don't believe Novak's CIA source would out a CIA front agency just to destroy Novak. And this is awul for the White House. Also, I don't believe Novak just invented being told: this is his SOP - some player tells him stuff. But who, and why? This is too f**ing weird. Who told Novak?
I'm going to have to go with the GOP, and someone really, really dumb.
The Washington Post also reports that White House counsel has directed White House employees to collect all records related to Wilson or Plame, the Niger trip and Plame's CIA relationship. Some White House employees complained that this would constitute a heavy burden because of the high volume of contacts they had with Wilson. Vice-President Cheney surely must not be one of those so burdened since he claimed on Meet the Press on Septmeber 14 to have never met Wilson.
The good news is that the other reporters didn't bite. The bad news is that none of them wrote or broadcast stories revealing what was going on. This could have been done without disclosing Wilson's wife's name or the source of the information, assuming the reporters had agreed to ground rules of confidentiality set by the source.
The Post, on principle, won't say whether any of its reporters were among those called. But Executive Editor Leonard Downie says The Post has "told readers everything we know" thus far.
The Justice Department will decide whether a crime has been committed by the leakers. But were the reporters who were called accomplices? No, although, again, they could have written or broadcast stories revealing what was happening. If reporters agree to protect the identity of a source they must do so, even if they don't use the information or if it turns out to be wrong. The press is not an arm of government, Downie said, and an agreement with a source is an obligation that is central to surfacing all kinds of wrongdoing. "One can imagine extreme circumstances where you could ask to be released, but if the source refuses you are bound by the agreement. It's a very important ethic of journalism," he said.
But, let me add, I really don't get this sentence. " If reporters agree to protect the identity of a source they must do so, even if they don't use the information or if it turns out to be wrong." This is bullshit. If a source lies to you (which is slightly different than 'turns out to be wrong') you should have an obligation to inform your readers. Period.
I think the the Post article is a bit too hard him in a way. Once Plame had been outed this was public information, though of course it didn't need to be made obvious. However, on CNN Novak was just making shit up. It's one thing to just make shit up about normal every day stuff, but this was making shit up about something quite important that he was a player in. CNN has to fire this guy, now.
The name of the CIA front company was broadcast yesterday by Novak, the syndicated journalist who originally identified Plame. Novak, highlighting Wilson's ties to Democrats, said on CNN that Wilson's "wife, the CIA employee, gave $1,000 to Gore and she listed herself as an employee of Brewster-Jennings & Associates."
"There is no such firm, I'm convinced," he continued. "CIA people are not supposed to list themselves with fictitious firms if they're under a deep cover -- they're supposed to be real firms, or so I'm told. Sort of adds to the little mystery."
In fact, it appears the firm did exist, at least on paper. The Dun & Bradstreet database of company names lists a firm that is called both Brewster Jennings & Associates and Jennings Brewster & Associates.
..oy, he also put it in his October 4 column. And the newspapers ran it. Jeebus Effing Christ.
But it might. And if the only reason for bringing it up is to let everyone know that Valerie Plame gave money to Al Gore — well, words fail me.
You know, a lot of conservatives are resisting the idea that the Plame affair is for real because it's just so far-fetched. Why would smart people like Karl Rove or Scooter Libby expose a CIA agent over something as trivial as Joe Wilson writing a New York Times op-ed? Especially when doing so didn't really do much to discredit him anyway?
Well, why would anyone feed Robert Novak information about a CIA front company just so that he can make the point on national TV that Valerie Plame is a Democrat? Is it really worth doing that just to add minutely to the Republican meme that this is all a partisan feud rather than a genuine national security matter?
Why indeed. The bottom line, I think, is that these guys just don't care. When it comes to dealing with enemies, they lash out with everything they've got no matter how trivial it is and no matter what collateral damage it might cause. There's just no sense of proportion at all.
"On the basis of technical analysis on the two (trailers) that we have, it is not going to be possible to reach a determination," Kay told reporters Friday.
It was a different-sounding Kay from the one who confidently showed off the trailers to NBC Nightly News in its July 15 broadcast.
At the time, Kay told NBC: "I've already seen enough to convince me."
The original tip on the trailers was provided by a defector working with Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress and now a member of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council in Iraq.
And Schwarzenegger's bouncing around like a Hummer on meth, inflicting that weird maniacal grin and massive blocklike head all over the unsuspecting media, as pretty much the entire population of even slightly aware and intelligent people in California and in fact all over the nation go, oh holy Christ, please dear God no.
Wyethwire is absolutely correct. The Bush administration has already crossed a serious line, and one which caused one of Clinton's deputy secretaries to lose his job. Somebody gave the heads up to Alberto Gonzalez that an investigation was about to begin, and as Nina Totenberg informed us, someone in the JD subsequently agreed to a request to delay for a day a memo forbidding any further scrubbing attempts. Where is the outrage? From NPR:
The White house asked for and got permission earlier this week to wait a day before issuing a directive to preserve all documents and logs which led one seasoned federal prosecutor to wonder why they wanted to wait a day, and who at the justice department told them they could do that, and why?
Anyway, I get all my important Alabama news over at War Liberal. It really is like watching a slow motion train wreck. You may remember that the governor lost a referendum to radically overhaul their tax system, and since it didn't pass the state is basically having to cut everything. They're Grover Norquist wet dream kind of cuts. So, if you want to know what life in Grover Norquist's America might look like, it appears that Alabama will be the prototype.
So, Bush keeps saying that the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq. Well, fine, okay, let's stipulate for sake of argument that it's true. But, that isn't the question - the question is whether or not this was the best use of $150 billion and climbing and more than 300 lives.
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