Fitz!

Jane:

Over at Kos, Gryn in comments points out that the Left Coaster has a quote from Dave Sheinin, a sports writer for the Post, saying that Cheney got some of loudest boos he’s ever heard in RFK. I know Dave; he is a straight-shooter. Maybe he can set this straight if people contact him through Post.com.

I can’t believe I did it! Talk about being in the right place at the right time! Just switched on my computer for the nightly firedoglake fiesta.

I’ll give you something to boo: the creeping specter of homophobia in the world of higher education . We are talking about a Southern Baptist school here, but this IS 2006.

Yes.

Jane: “Are they living in some sort of alternate universe?”

You have to ask?
.

I’m definitely no fan of the Cheney Administration, but I have been to a few baseball games, and the politicians almost always get booed because fans are there to watch baseball, and they don’t like the infusion of politics.

Nakamura, you say? Sounds like that boy has a bright future, writing copy at WorldNutDaily!

Are they living in some sort of alternate universe?

No. They’re liars.

It’s really that simple.

Doesn’t Cheney’s pitch to the mound perfectly describe the Bush administration and much of the rest of the Republican Party…low and in the dirt?

I mean, Karl Rove’s mind definitely is “low and in the dirt.”

And weren’t the Swift Boat Liars’ despicable tactics also “low and in the dirt”?

Everything about today’s twisted and warped “culture of corruption” Republican Party, therefore, is “low and in the dirt,” including their use of religion and their trashing of the wall separating church and state.

From Alberto Gonzales and his illegal wiretaps used to push his right-wing religious agenda to Fred Phelps dishonoring our nation’s fallen soldiers at their funerals…”low and in the dirt!!!”

From the right-wing controlled FCC getting all hot and bothered about a nekkid breast being flashed to their caving into Robber Baron media monopolists…”low and in the dirt!!!”

From Republican cooking of the books over Medicare to their cooking of the books in an attempt to destroy Social Security…”low and in the dirt!!!”

From tax cuts for the wealthy while more and more of our nation’s children go to bed hungry each night to even more tax cuts for the wealthy while our soldiers fighting for us overseas end up scrounging for protective materials to keep themselves safe…”low and in the dirt!!!”

From no-bid contracts given to their crony corporate/political pals to the placement of unqualified crony corporate/political pals in critical government positions (both pre-9/11 and pre-Hurricane Katrina) that has actually contributed to the deaths of so many U.S. citizens …”low and in the dirt!!!”

The Republican Party of today is definitely the “low and in the dirt” party.

And apparently, the only thing that may save our democracy from the “low and in the dirt” Republican Party is that, come November, concerned and patriotic U.S. citizens vote the “low and in the dirt” Republicans out of office, and bury the corruption of the current Republican Party six feet under the dirt!!!

Maybe the WaPo is hoping that if they project enough insanity, clothe themselves in an antic disposition thick enough, that like the torturer at the end of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, reality and the Democratic party will give up and walk away, muttering to a technician on the way out, “we lost another one.”

On May 29, 2003, President Bush proudly trumpeted the supposed discovery of mobile bio-weapons labs in Iraq, declaring, “We have found the weapons of mass destruction.” As the Washington Post is now reporting, the President’s claim was not only untrue, but the administration knew it was false at the time Bush uttered it.

For the story, see:
“Trailer Trash: Bush’s Bogus Bio-Weapons Claims.”

Jane: Sorry I even mentioned Left Coaster — “larre” over there is pretty snarky about you missing this one quote from Dave Sheinin. It’s all about you, and not about the Post. Is this friendly rivalry or do we need to call in a counselor?

Burn, motherfucker, burn.

Rich #7: “I have been to a few baseball games, and the politicians almost always get booed because fans are there to watch baseball, and they don’t like the infusion of politics.”

I know nothing about baseball that I don’t remember from being in the little leagues for one summer, and this sounds plausible so I’ll go with it.

But it raises the question: why didn’t the reporters simply say that instead of spewing a mindnumbingly stupid lie like they did?

‘Are they living in some sort of alternate universe?’

They swapped with the Washington Times.

;>)

Fresh from the bottom of the birdcage:

Harry L. Horton, 64, has been attending major-league baseball in the nation’s capital since the days when he was growing up on East Capitol Street and watching the old Washington Senators at Griffith Stadium.
But yesterday was a first for him.
“I have never — ever — heard anyone get booed like that man,” the affable usher and lifelong Democrat said yesterday with a smile.
“That man” was Vice President Dick Cheney, who, two months after shooting a bird-hunting companion in the face, tried his hand at another sporting event — tossing out the first pitch for the Washington Nationals’ home opener at RFK Stadium.
…
(the) vice president, a year older than Mr. Horton, didn’t toe the pitcher’s rubber, 60 feet 6 inches from home plate. Instead, he took a spot in front of the mound, on the infield grass. The boos sustained their deafening pitch in the stadium’s bowl. With a jerky and short windup, the vice president threw the ball toward home plate.
It didn’t quite make it. The ball skipped in the dirt just in front of the plate, but was expertly scooped up by Washington catcher Brian Schneider. The fans booed until Mr. Cheney was back out of sight in the dugout.

“I don’t care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting.”

It’s not an alternative universe – it’s different dimension dementia.

My alternative universe has everybody cheering an appearance by Cheney – in a suit stamped “Sing Sing.”

Looks like Editor and Publisher is piling on as well.

New Yawkers mugged him and kicked him in the nutz on June 29, 2004.

I ve bled pin-stripes all my life, and that may have been my proudest moment.

This is how the times covered it: (via Fromkin)

Tyler Kepner writes in the New York Times that Vice President Cheney visited Yankee Stadium yesterday, and watched the Yankees beat the Red Sox 11-3.

“During the singing of ‘God Bless America’ in the seventh inning, an image of Cheney was shown on the scoreboard. It was greeted with booing, so the Yankees quickly removed the image.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..Jun30.html

The crowd was merciless, they were screaming “go F### yourself !!!”

Can someone research and find how the wires, the NY Daily News, NY Post, and WaPo covered the beating he got in ‘da Bronx

Below thread, harry, 10 had the link to an interesting Murray Waas interview, that goes into the problems of “information control†presented by affording a president unchecked power to classify any information contrary to the political message he wants made, while at the same time declassifying and leaking cherrypicks in support. http://www.democracynow.org/ar…../07/144207

Even in a non-classified information setting, such as the global warming field, we have seen some of the effects of an administration that intimidates and steamrolls any non-complying views, at the cost of American citizens and industry receiving the best and most credible information available and at the further cost of free and open public debate helping to generate better and better information. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories…..5985.shtml
http://dir.salon.com/story/tec…..index.html
http://www.space.com/news/bush_warming_041027.html

In the same thread with the Waas interview, were two examples of the “I’ve Got A Secret†intelligence information turned game show fodder approach taken by the administration. One example involves the administrations efforts to hide the ball and disinform regarding the uranium ‘pursuit’ by Hussein. While a lot of this is “known” more seems to keep oozing out.

In addition to the laser lightup in the Fitzgerald brief, Robert Scheer at truthdig recites parts of his conversation with Colin Powell on Monday. http://www.truthdig.com/report…..by_powell/ Lagging behind his friend Wilkerson, Powell finally lets us in on what was known by him and others, but never released to, and discussed with, the American people who were being admonished to whole heartedly support the Iraq debacle.

“The CIA was pushing the aluminum tube argument heavily and Cheney went with that instead of what our guys wrote,†Powell said. And the Niger reference in Bush’s State of the Union speech? “That was a big mistake,†he said. “It should never have been in the speech. I didn’t need Wilson to tell me that there wasn’t a Niger connection. He didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. I never believed it.â€

Thanks for sharing, now that what’s left is out of date and growing funky green stuff. But more is coming out. Zennurse, 115 below, linking to a diary at Kos (props, Valtin), http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…..3394/28583 highlights another set of information relating to uranium information that was and was not “declassified,†yielding some insight into what is too much of a “threat to national security†for Americans to be told.

There is a ‘made available’ January 24, 2003 memo from Robert Walpole that supports the Presidents SOTUS later that onth. Walpole is the NIO for Strategic and Nuclear Programs during the first Bush term and initailly seems an odd person to have prepared the January 24, 2003 memo, since in a closed Senate hearing in Sept. of 2002, Walpole and Tenet are both expressing doubts about the uranium story.

By October 2002, he is on board with the uranium story though (and is criticized in the later Senate investigation for actively promoting it). When the vigorous pusuit information is published in the October NIE, Walpole is promoting it, while Tenet is, several days later, going through the NSC to warn against the info and the CIA actively works to get the info out of the President’s Cincinnati speech in October.

HOWEVER, by January 24, as the President is preparing for the SOTUS, Walpole provides Hadley and others at the White House with a memo, citing language in the NIE and claiming that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium.
That January 24, 2003 memo was “not part of the White House discovery†when Stephen Hadly took stage to take the blame for the “16 words†but that didn’t keep Judy Miller (writing with David Sanger)from writing about it in a NYT July 23, 2003 piece. http://www.truthout.org/docs_0…..403B.shtml

Three months later, on Jan. 24, another senior C.I.A. official, Robert Walpole, sent Mr. Hadley and other White House officials another memorandum that again said Iraq had sought to obtain the uranium, citing the language in the Oct. 1 intelligence estimate.
That memorandum, which was not part of the White House discovery this weekend, was intended to aid Secretary of State Colin L. Powell . . .

OK, that memo we get to know about and Judy shares it with us (wonder if she discussed it with Libby during one of their talks?). However, at about the same time, another memo was being prepared, per the Kos diary and the Sunday WaPo article, this one by Robert G. Houdek, National Intelligence Officer for Africa. After Tenet and others at the CIA had pushed so hard to get the uranium references deleted from the October Cincinnati speech, but had allowed it in the earlier NIE, the uranium claim reappeared in a December 19 State Dept fact sheet and the Pentagon asked for an authoritative judgment from the National Intelligence Council.

That reply, drafted apparently by Mr. Houdek, who was the then national intelligence officer for Africa, said the story was baseless. And yet, despite the July 2003 reports by Miller of the “exculpatory” Walpole memo, no one seems to have heard anything much about the NIC Houdek memo until this week’s story in the Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..916_2.html

Wonder why? (Aside: Check the NYT story by Judy in 2003 as to poor Stephen Hadley. “The deputy adviser, Stephen J. Hadley,. . . told reporters that while he received the memorandums [advising the uranium claims were not reliable]before the president gave a speech about Iraq in October, he had no memory of the warning three months later when the issue came up again in the State of the Union address. He said the two memorandums had been discovered in the last 72 hours.†Hadley and Libby: Wonder who forgot to remember to forget first?)

Anyway, another example of what happens with selective dissemination comes up later in the thread, with the WaPo Biolabs story (almost like old times reading the Sunday piece and this one). http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..88_pf.html
Based on the inimitable information stylings of Chalabi’s pal, Curveball, Powell was sent off to the UN with a nice story about mobile weapons labs. AH HA! We KNEW they existed. After the invasion, what should show up in short order but a couple of trailers that needed a once over. The “Jefferson Project,” a DIA-led initiative made up of government and civilian technical personnel are sent off and start their work March 25, 2003. “Within the first four hours,” said one team member, who like the others spoke on the condition he not be named, “it was clear to everyone that these were not biological labs.”

However, back home, desperate for some news to bolster the weapons claims, “a CIA analyst had written a draft white paper on the trailers, . . . described the trailers as “the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program.” It also explicitly rejected an explanation by Iraqi officials, . . . that the trailers might be mobile units for producing hydrogen.

Oops. Bc the Jefferson Project was, on May 27, sending back a 3 page field report, followed by a 122 page final report a few weeks later, that transmitted their unanimous findings that the trailers were not mobile weapon labs and were instead likely used for hydrogen production. This report was stamped secret, shelved, and we didn’t hear of it until – about now.

On May 28 the CIA issued its white paper, with the representations that the trailers were, indeed, mobile weapons labs. And on May 29, 2003, the President made an announcement: : Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile “biological laboratories.” He declared, “We have found the weapons of mass destruction.”

Say what? In late June[2003], Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declared that the “confidence level is increasing” that the trailers were intended for biowarfare. In September, Vice President Cheney pronounced the trailers to be “mobile biological facilities,” and said they could have been used to produce anthrax or smallpox.

HUH? Was no one reading the Jefferson Project info? Well, according to a DIA spokesperson, the information was “incorporated in†the findings of the Iraq Survey Group, which issued its own findings over a year later, in September, 2004. However, David Kay, who ran the Iraqi Survey Group, says he was not told about the Jefferson groups investigation and findings until the end of 2003, near the end of his time as leader of the ISG.

So, with the authoritative review safely shelved, the Administration instead releases its white paper and talks about the weapons labs for months and months, (although by April, 2004, Powell was expressing doubts).
When the ISG report does come out in September of 2004, it says the trailers were “impractical” for biological weapons production and were “almost certainly intended” for manufacturing hydrogen for weather balloons

Well, the spinmasters had been scrambling. What about modification to produce weapons? Yeah, that’s the ticket,right? Not so much according the ISG (and their predecessors). The group’s report and members of the technical team also dismissed the notion that the trailers could be easily modified to produce weapons.”It would be easier to start all over with just a bucket,”

So there we have a thread that has a lead theme, on the racist right and how they use code and slanted information to incite and produce non-fact based emotional reactions. Within the thread, a link to an interview about the dangers of a government being allowed to slant information to similar purpose and then two examples, through three sets of links, of how bad information was publicized and good information hidden in the run up to war and the efforts to slant infomration available to the American people so as to skew their decision making based on the misinformation. I thought it was an interesting tapestry.

Yellow journalism that would make even William Randolph Hearst blush.

it has come to this: the washtimes provides a more reliable account of what happened regarding cheney than the washpost did. thanks for the link darkblack (16).
and oracle (10), excellent bit. i’ll associated “low and in the dirt” with this administration until they’re forcibly ejected from the premises.

Finally I have a Washington paper I can turn to for the truth — The Moonie Times!! Yay!

I think it is likely they were booing Cheney for wearing the Nationals jacket. Congress folk might wear team insignia of their constituents, but do (vice) presidents of all the people?

It’s quite possible that both reporters weren’t even in the stands at the time Cheney threw out the pitch. It wouldn’t be the first time reporters filled in the details of a story with comments they heard from others without bothering to completely check the facts.

Can’t forget this:

AP – April 3, 2006
“Bush became the first sitting president to throw a ceremonial pitch in Cincinnati, as the Reds took on the Chicago Cubs. The ball was high and off the plate, but Bush called it “my best pitch, which was kind of a slow ball.
(I thought it was low and in the dirt, silly me)

.. Bush received a loud standing ovation when he took the mound in this Republican-leaning city. He was accompanied by two injured soldiers and a father who lost his son in Afghanistan. (sound familiar?)

.. Little American flags were distributed to the crowd of 42,000 before the game. Audience members waved them excitedly as Bush was introduced and drowned out the few scattered protesters, like the family sitting a few rows behind home plate wearing matching red-and-white T-shirts that said 11-04-08 — the date of the next presidential election.”

Why does someone spin a story that is this simple, straightforward, innocuous — and so refutable? If the Post unabashedly ignores the obvious facts in this area, how can anyone trust them to report the “facts” in any other area? This type of reporting diminishes, and will ultimately destroy, their credibility as a newspaper (assuming there’s any left to destroy). If the editors can’t see this, the shareholders need to rise up and replace them! This is not only bad politics for the Post, it is clearly bad business too.

What’re they doing over at WaPoo running an amatuer hack minor league farm for the wingers? Do editors fact check anymore, or is this the result of editing?

Y’know, all I do is drive a big truck. If I was as innattentive to my job as these clowns, people would die. Oh, right, people are dying. WMD,9/11 linkage, VP swell booed after wussy pitch.

Mornin’ folks. I’ve gotten so far behind in reading comments: has anyone else noticed Cheyney’s flat-not-round torso and wondered if the paranoid goon was wearing a flak jacket? Still, considering what our troops in Iraq would be able to do if they were so lucky as to have them, I don’t think it could possibly account for that little-girl pitch. And I do *not* mean to slight little girls: I was one, once, and produced two; all three of us can throw a baseball properly, however.

Well, you know…if there were 2 Heritage Foundation interns in the stands cheering for him, then it would be biased to describe the reaction as anything other than “a mix of cheers and boos.” And we can’t have that now. It might give Lovey Howell a case of the vapors.

dannyboy, weird for a beautiful spring day that DeadEye has his jacket zipped up tight all the way to his neck isn’t it. I’m surprised he didn’t have a helmet on.

I don’t know how the WaPoo thinks they’ll fool people with this story. It wasn’t a small controlled room with hand picked vetted ass kissing sheeple. Thousands witnessed their own damn booing!

Mornin’, firepups.
What’s this I hear that Iran already has da bomb??

“We are in the nuclear club”

Yeehaw! Shinny yer skinny up to the bar and have a pint, fer chrissakes!!

Oh, and hell, I pitch better than our goddam cheese-butt VeePee, and I throw like a GIRL! I mean, a total GIRLY girl, fag that I am, and i’m damn proud of it :-)

Found on another blog:

The Mets now have one of the best announcers
on TV (longtime radio announcer Gary Cohen), and when Cheney bounced that 40-foot pitch, he said, monotone…

“Cheney’s aim hasn’t been very good this year.”

Not only did they say the boos occurred immediately after the lame throw, but the WaPo also reported that Dick Cheney stayed on the mound, pitched a perfect game, and hit the game-winning home run in the bottom of the 9th.

I’m shocked the rest of the media somehow missed that…thank god for the Post!

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Prosecutor in CIA Leak Case Corrects Part of Court Filing

Wednesday, April 12, 2006; A08

The federal prosecutor overseeing the indictment of Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, yesterday corrected an assertion in an earlier court filing that Libby had misrepresented the significance placed by the CIA on allegations that Iraq attempted to buy uranium from Niger.

Last week, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald wrote that, in conversation with former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Libby described the uranium story as a “key judgment” of the CIA’s 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, a term of art indicating there was consensus within the intelligence community on that issue. In fact, the alleged effort to buy uranium was not among the estimate’s key judgments and was listed further back in the 96-page, classified document.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, Fitzgerald wrote yesterday that he wanted to “correct” the sentence that dealt with the issue in a filing he submitted last Wednesday. That sentence said Libby “was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was ‘vigorously trying to procure’ uranium.”

Instead, the sentence should have conveyed that Libby was to tell Miller some of the key judgments of the NIE “and that the NIE stated that Iraq was ‘vigorously trying to procure’ uranium.”

Libby is not charged with misportraying or leaking classified information. He was indicted last year for allegedly lying to the FBI and a grand jury about what he said to reporters. The indictment came as part of Fitzgerald’s investigation into who leaked to the media the name of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose husband became a public critic of the Bush administration’s case for the Iraq war.

–

OT from a previous post:

1) The confusion between “Arab†and “Muslim†is understandable, but the distinctions must be made clear again and again. Islam began in the Arab world and is based largely on Bedouin Arab culture and language. But many Arabs (not most) are Christian. And most Muslims are not Arab. The largest Muslim country in the world is Indonesia.

2) Muslims are in crisis. A relatively small group of Muslims are (unfortunately) defining the whole. The overwhelming population of Muslims are not suicide bombers, think the suicide bombers are nuts. But they have to speak out more and make this clear.

3) I have been surprised, here in Saudi Arabia, to find myself treated as a rock star because I am an American. The Saudis I meet miss the presence of Americans moving freely through their society. (This was a real surprise to me.)

4) I have had to argue against President Bush to my in-laws, who for the most part thought he was a pretty good guy. (This too was a real surprise to me. I’m not sure that would be true for the whole society.)

5) Having said that, Islam as a whole has a real problem with the emancipation of women. This is particularly acute in Saudi Arabia, and to a lesser extent the other Gulf states. In Saudi, women can’t drive and must be covered up head to toe when out in public. Women are not allowed to drive. This will have to change. I know many Islamic women, both in Saudi and in the States who are working hard to make this happen. But in non-Arab Muslim states, women have been elected leaders, and have led movements of liberation.

6) Islam in the Middle East has changed utterly because of satellite dishes, Al-Jazeera and the internet. Information and culture is pouring in. This does not make my nieces and nephews American or Western, but they easily move back and forth between the two worlds. Many Saudis and other gulf Arabs study in the States and other Western countries.

7) Regarding Muslims in Europe and the (so-called) “clash of civilizations,†what the anti-Muslim bigots/anti-Arab racists don’t understand is that European and American Islam is changing through their contact with the West, at least as much as the face of Europe and America are changing through the presence of large chunks of Muslims from the Middle East and Arabia. The changes to both cultures can be (and I expect will be) a very good thing for both groups.

8) Palestine/Israel remains a significant sticking point. The European Jews, with European and American complicity did take the land from the people who lived there. The 1948 Zionist slogan “a land without people for a people without a land,†is downright offensive to the people who were there already. On the other hand, there has always been a Jewish presence in Palestine, well before 1948. And the horrors of the holocaust must be taken into account. The world owes the Jews something.

9) The essence of Islam is not intolerance or fundamentalism (although both are present), but prayer in the mosque, five times a day. I wake up every day to the sounds of the Muzzein (chanter) calling the faithful to prayer before sunrise. Prayer in the mosque, shoulder to shoulder, is a powerful and lovely thing.

I quite clearly heard cheers – from the luxury boxes.

Could the President fire Patrick Fitzgerald? Could he just pardon Libby right now and say this is a National Security matter and just dismiss the case? Before the next elections he could just pull in the ultimate marker from HIS party. The GOP is not going to let him be impeached so why not cover for him preemptively? The public and the democrats would squeal like stuck pigs and maybe Cheney would resign but the MAN wouldn’t be taken down. Call me looney but loyality to the devil has it’s price. What does Hassert have to lose, he becomes VP or McCain gets picked. I honestly think this is going to get yanked right out from under us and we will, with exception of me, will be saying how could those Fckrs think they can get away with this? Hope I’m wrong but their total disregard for any laws that might affect them is starting to become a universally recogonized modus operandi. We’ll see huh?

“That was the Dangerous Liaisons moment,…
and the Washington Post wants to deny it.”

No wonder these destructive sociopaths are still in the Whitehouse.

As the readers of this blog know, most people would rather believe a lie than look the truth in the eye. Chief among these lies is the notion that Dick Cheney is a human being who thinks and feels. The truth is that Dick Cheney is a sociopath. The only thing that even vaguely stirs him is the prospect of dropping a daisy cutter on some brown people.

Let’s Go Mets!

That pitch went extremely right into the dirt.

No less a worthy source than Fox News… Yes, I said Fox News (sports division) pontificated thusly in its headline:

“Cheney booed loudly at Nats’ home opener”

I want to echo koheleth particularly points 7-9.

As regards point 7 I find talking to young European “Muslims” that they often have very hazy ideas about Islam. This is in my experience particularly the case in France btw but it’s also true of Denmark where I now live and also the UK where I have considerable contact with Muslims from all walks of life and traditions.

Finally I’d like to point that (depending on how you count) Arabs are only about 18-20% of the global Muslim community.

Sorry if this was mentioned before:

Cheney cheated AGAIN – he wasn’t on the mound, he was closer to the plate and still couldn’t make the pitch. Oh what a perfect metaphor for BushCo.

It was a fast-ball, straight down the middle, clocked at over 92 mph–stung the catcher’s hand.

Oh, it wasn’t?

We’re about to attack another oil-soaked, Middle East country and our crusade of the moment is the way they report Cheney throwing out the first pitch?

Does it really matter that he was booed on the way out to the mound?

Who cares? Will making this reporting more accurate stop the impending attack on Iran?

These crazies in the W House are PLANNING ON USING NUKES on Iran. And we’re badgering the Post about this?

Watching DC local television, I just saw an ad by the Washington Post’s utility mailers union, saying that the Post pays its mailers half what other employees get who do the same job at the Post. I’m bad at html tags, but here is the website for information.
http://washingtonpostunfair.com/background.html

I’d like to support them. The Post is bad to its readers AND its employees.

“Cheney’s aim hasn’t been very good this year.â€

CHENEY said that?
So he’s talking about himself in the third person?
How Nixonian.

Mornin’ Firepups,

Francine Busby – 43.92%
Eic Bilbray – 15.15%
per San Diego Union

Francine needed 51% to avoid a run off, but it looks good.

The MSM needs to start to accept that sometimes there ARENT two sides to a story- when facts clearly demonstrate that one side is incontravertable, trying to paint another version as equally plausible is journalistically dishonest.

Today’s WaPo has a story about another Bush lie regarding the evidence for war- those stupid mobile laboratories which weren’t mobile labs- now we know, according to the article, that Bush knew this too, but continued to use it as evidence. And yet, the media is unwilling to use the words “lie”, “deceive”, “mislead” in these articles that demonstrate that Bush did all of the above.

Yet when clinton was in office, they had no problem using “lie” in the same sentence as “Bill Clinton.”

It’s time for someone other than Murray Waas (although thank God for him) to connect the dots and report on the real story- that Bush knowingly lied to Congress and the UN about the case for war. The MSM must stop repeating the faux talking point that this was all a result of “bad intelligence” as I heard Wolf Blitzer repeat last night- their is now evidence showing that the intelligence wasn’t so bad after all- just that Bush ignored it.

Is the Post experimenting with it’s readers? Are they conducting test’s buy lighting obvious swamp rousing lie fires?

They booed so hard Dick leaked…

Coupled with the V.P.’s powers to declassify intelligence comes a gross of Depends with the Presidential Seal sewn on the backside…

oooh and lookee here,

Barbara Ann Radnofsky – captured 61% to face Kay Bailey Hutchison in November.

Texas morning papers characterized it as a long shot, but Barbara is expecting backing and a big push (pig bush?) from DSCC, along with continued erosion of Texas voter trust in the entrenched Hutchison.

The Post, along with the rest of American news agencies, have forgotten that their role is to report the TRUTH. They too have been brainwashed that all reporting must be fair and balanced. There is a reason FOX choose that tag line. Our media has forgotten that their role is to simply report the truth. Free from bias. Neutrality does not mean fair and balanced reporting. It means unbiased, fact based reports on the events and consequences.

OT. from the “so what else is new” category of more lies from Bush:

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile “biological laboratories.” He declared, “We have found the weapons of mass destruction.”
(snip)
A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq — not made public until now — had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president’s statement.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..01888.html
what will the editorial page say “who are you going to believe, Bush or your lying eyes?”

More Joe Klein stupidity. Eric Alterman has a post over at HuffPo that is truly incredible and quotes our “liberal” columnist and talking head, Joe Klein:

“That is right up until the very last moment when, after someone brought up the question of the whether the Democrats will be able to present an effective alternative to Bush in the next election, Joe Klein shouted out, “Well they won’t if their message is that they hate America–which is what has been the message of the liberal wing of the party for the past twenty years.”

Excuse me, but I think this is worth some attention. It’s not about Klein per se, who after all, is best known to most Americans as the guy who lost his job at both Newsweek and CBS News for purposely misleading editors, readers and viewers in order to increase his own personal profit as the allegedly “anonymous” author of “Primary Colors.” (He also [classily] attacked the reputation of the linguist who figured out his identity in New York Magazine.) What is important, however, is the fact that Time is America’s highest circulation newsweekly. And since it fired Margaret Carlson, Joe Klein, believe it or not, is its most liberal columnist. That’s right. The most liberal columnist at the America’s largest weekly newsmagazine pretends that the message of liberals for the past twenty years has been that they “hate America,” just as if he were reading from talking points issued by Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter. (Don’t get me started.)…”

***

What the f*** is Joe Klein up to? Why doesn’t he just come out and admit he’s nothing but a pathetic right wing shill that exists to trash the democrats while pretending to be an objective democrat?

new thread – old errors

Remember, they live in the non-reality world of their own creation that exists because they say it does.

We live in the reality world.

With the dumbing down of schooling and lack of education in critical thinking, the majority of people (who probably live in the reality world) assume that if they keep so it is so, then there must be some truth to it.

It is the same lack of insight that believes fair and balanced mean you just present each side no matter if same weight or intention.

Last night Tweety had Barbara Boxer on from the campus of USC. Boxer used the words “lies” and “lying” several times as she discussed the debacle that is BushCo. I’m not sure it’s the first time I’ve heard a Senator come right out and call these war criminals liars, but I’m having a hard time recalling another instance. Usually they euphemize it to death with “mendacity”, “mislead”, “not forthright”…yada, yada.

She also discussed censure and impeachment as a road that she was reluctant to go down: “I put my hands in my head and thought, here we go again”. She did say that what we need are serious investigations.

I love Barbara Boxer.

Even before the time the “Fairness Doctrine” was eliminated by Reagan, the right wing has using their money to slant everything to the right. They own the media. Media ownership is and continues to be consolidated into fewer and fewer hands. Tax cuts and labor control/union busting are beneficial to them. Laws that allow them to own unlimited swaths of a market are also a great advantage. It is in the interest of the rich and powerful media to pursue the right wing agenda. They are complicit.

That wasn’t a sissy pitch as such. The correct terminology is a pitch that “took 4 deferments” on its way to the plate.

Koheleth

I lived in Saudi (Riyadh) in the 90s. I also lived in Teheran in the 70s. (Iranians HATE being called Arabs because they are not, they are Persian and speak Arabic.) Having been married to a Syrian (muslim) I have traveled widely around the middle east and you make some very very important points, which I agree with.

That said, there is a very very very dark underbelly to much of Saudi society. Saudis are very private (scared? brainwashed? a little of both?) people and do not talk about the negatives. Where there were lots of western ex-pats there working, we knew about it because we encountered it in our daily lives. It is truly a totalitarian place.

That said, my daughter is half-Arabic, and the treatment she has been met with by “some” Americans has been horrifying. Before 9-11, no one “got” her arabic name and she moved through life as a fairly typical Amrican girl and was not well prepared for the racism which she suddenly had to face and navigate. All that changed after 9-11, and she found it very hard to get job interviews, for example.

Thankfully, she has started her own little beusiness, but anti-Arab racism is real. The people who are guilty of it do treat Arabs as if they are a “race” as it is impossible, for instance for people to differentiate between Christian and Muslim Arabs. As any Christian Arab will tell you. Or any New York taxi driver who is either an Arab or is mistaken for one. I heard someone I know slightly once say that he never gets into a cab if the driver is wearing a turban, even though in NYC Sikhs wear turbans and not Muslims.

One Washington Post reporter had a different take. The Reliable Source, the gossip column in the Style section, had this lede:

“Vice President Cheney , tapped to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at yesterday’s Nationals home opener, drew boisterous boos from the moment he stepped on the field until he jogged off. The derisive greeting was surprisingly loud and long, given the bipartisan nature of our national pastime, and drowned out a smattering of applause reported from the upper decks.”

That was some of the funniest footage I’ve seen in a while…Cheney’s plastic smile as he skulked onto, then off of the field, amidst an ocean of booing…nice pitch, sissy

can’t wait to see it “comedified” further on the Daily Show

Just posted this on the WaPo blog:

Simply unbelievable. Now for two days in a row your reporters insist that up is down and black is white. It is obvious to us all that the booing at the VP began the moment he walked onto the field, not after his flubbed pitch – with the obvious implication that the catcalls were aimed at the VP, not as a result of his pitch. Your paper’s repeated characterization otherwise is embarrassingly disingenuous – especially in light of the fact that eyewitnesses and video available widely catch you in your lies.
Your inaccuracies (lies) on this topic are unfathomable, both in that the topic is somewhat (though not entirely) trivial, and that the execution is so transparent and easily refuted. Thus this attains certain features of a pathologic type lying, though clearly also in the service of a right-wing political agenda, a sort of bumbling Orwellianism. Your standards seem to have fallen so far that you’re now not even lying well.
Perhaps, as this sort of dishonesty further marginalizes the Post, and your peper’s effectiveness as a White House mouthpiece be further compromised, there may be hope for the Republic yet.

Howie Kurtz is now lambasting the Generals and high-ranking officials who are now vocally critical of the Iraq gambit, but never said anything when in a position to do anything about it.

Belated and Spineless Critics (like me)

Gee whiz, General Howie, don’t you think that it might something like you soft-pedaling the Post’s journalistic failings (Domenech, Howell-gate, Fred Hiatt) out of concern for keeping your job? Can’t you relate just a little?

Yes this reinforces the notion that he is not a well liked man and the Washington Post has some of it’s own Tenditious editorial influences with regard to reporting the facts. Shouldn’t there be a massive call to everyone’s elected officals to, yes even prematurely,cut off all future spending to the Defense Deptartment, unless massive hearings are held on Iran? The President can’t do a thing if the Congress doesn’t fund it. There really needs to be a new roll call to determine who supports this group and who does not. I did by the way get a letter back from Sen. Sarbanes, himself, regarding the Finegold resoultion. He said he is concerned and will wait to address the issue when and if it comes to the whole senate for discussion. Babs didn’t write back. Anyway, we should use the same “The snake will eventually bite us, so why don’t we kill him now” analogy on the Administration. I’d rather be right and have had said something than right and sat on my hands. Thanks to all.

Oddly enough, the gossip section carries the correct version of events:

“…Cheney , tapped to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at yesterday’s Nationals home opener, drew boisterous boos from the moment he stepped on the field until he jogged off. The derisive greeting was surprisingly loud and long…”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..01921.html

Alan #34 — Nice catch on this one:

“The Mets now have one of the best announcers on TV (longtime radio announcer Gary Cohen), and when Cheney bounced that 40-foot pitch, he said, monotone…

“Cheney’s aim hasn’t been very good this year.â€

Slothrop #63

That wasn’t a sissy pitch as such. The correct terminology is a pitch that “took 4 deferments†on its way to the plate.

Ha! Good one! Make a slight editorial correction – it was FIVE deferments – and send it off to TDS . . .

Er, editorial correction — make that Slothrop #64

Actually, fans spotted a Mexican flag being waved from the cheap seats and they were booing that.

As I just posted over at Gilliard about the same subject, I talked to my son, who was at the game with three friends. They were seated right behind home plate (Andy’s rich father’s season seats).

Andy says that there were just as many cheers as boos then Cheney was announced (Andy didn’t boo, despite being a Bush/Cheney hater because he respects the office, if not the current incumbent!). He did boo at the lousy pitch.

That’s an unbaised account, FWIW.

e&p picked up the story. so the newspaper industry itself knows what the post is up to.

http://www.editorandpublisher……1002315663

FIVE COMPANIES own 80% of our MEDIA.

They know EXACTLY what they are doing. They OWN it. They make big $$$ on war.

These “crooks and liars” have planned this for years. Reagan killed the FAIRNESS DOCTRINE in the 80’s in anticipation of the future NEOCON takeover of our Democracy.

Time, Patriot Americans – to wake up your brothers and sisters. Time to get off the couch, get involved and stop this slide into FASCISM, while we can.

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”: Mussolini

skewering Wapo isn’t even sport anymore – i mean, its like shooting fish in a barrel.

this once proud paper has fully fallen from grace and relevance. they do not adhere to the fundamental journalistic tenet of INDEPENDENCE and continue to prostitute themselves to this administration and the Rovians. perhaps its pressure from woodward to keep the sources of his PR treatises, er – “books” – from closing on him. perhaps its because journalism schools no longer teach ethics and independence as this sin is not only wapo’s to claim.

whatever the cause, this paper and the rest of the so-called media have been revealed to be stenographers at a minimum or cheerleading shills of this single-party dictatorship at worst.

The son of one of my best friends works for the Nats. He’s a college student, very well-mannered and attractive. Since the Nats do not have an owner to do the honors, my friend’s son was assigned the job of escorting Cheney out onto the field. My pal says that Cheney threw a fit, snarled at her son, and insisted that “someone more important” be put on the job. Perfectly in character–or lack of character–for Cheney, wouldn’t you say?

Oh, and one of my kids attended the game, confirming that the booing was “overwhelming.”

I was saying “Boo-urns…”

Is the WaPo living in some sort of alternate universe, you ask?

We know the answer to that one.

As additional evidence (like you really needed more), there’s this morning’s lead editorial.

Its subject is how Bush can rescue what’s left of his term in office. Before getting to the meat of it, the editorial talks about:

the poisonous partisanship in Washington, with Democrats united in their desire to see Mr. Bush fail while his erstwhile Republican allies scurry for cover.

That’s right – the Dems are viciously spouting venom, while the poor, innocent, helpless GOP runs for cover. Alternate universe.

And then the piece discusses what Bush might actually do to save his Presidency. Here’s what they recommend for him:

1. Actually do something about global warming.

2. Get behind “comprehensive, generous” immigration reform.

3. Become a champion of lobbying reform.

4. Do something real about poverty in the U.S..

5. End Iraq/GWoT detainee abuse.

I know you’re ROFL by this point, but no, really – that’s what the WaPo suggested! Serious alternate universe.

They’re saying, in effect, “If Bush wasn’t really Bush, but was instead some completely different person with totally different goals and motivations, he might do one or more of these five things to save what’s left of his Presidency.”

If a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his tail. And if Fred Hiatt had half a clue, the WaPo editorials would remind me a lot less of the paintings of Salvador Dali.

No video of Cheney’s ceremonial pitch at several sites just now have _any_ booing…….
Is this the same media gremlin which is redirecting all 15-or-so hyperlinks to LGF in Sunday’s guest poster Matt O. to
Those links are accessible by keyin in the address bar……..but why bother? …..and why bother looking at any video from MEMRI?