The Supine Corporate Media

Go watch this clip from BBC Question Time and tell me if we will ever get intelligent television like this on US media. (Via Brilliant at Breakfast, via Hoffmania) Watching John Bolton taken to task is such a pleasant way to start the day.

On American TV, instead, we get Chris Matthews and other mouth-breathing circus clowns laughing about Bush's crimes, or Katie Couric pummeling Elizabeth and John Edwards for continuing the campaign in the face of her cancer (conveniently, Katie forgets that she herself worked throughout her husband's fight with cancer. Do as I say, not as I do.) Couric phrased most of her interrogatory questions with the preface "Some say", then proceeded to spew right wing talking points.

Democrats must bring back the Fairness Doctrine, or our media will continue to be dominated by right wing, completely wrong perspectives.

Football Round-Up

BBC: Liverpool 3-0 Bolton: The hosts take the lead on the hour when Jermaine Pennant's cross is turned in by Peter Crouch
A report in London's Evening Standard says that Fulham, who have already tendered an offer to American Clint Dempsey, are also going to sign Oguchi Onyewu from Standard Liege for a transfer fee of 1 million pounds. The best thing that can come from those signings is the chance for those two great young Americans to learn from the workhorse of the US National Team, Brian McBride. McBride is never the fastest or the most skilled player on the field, but he works the hardest. If Dempsey and Gooch can learn to Be Like Brian, this will be a match made in footie heaven. (via DuNord, football365 readers have ranked BMB the '4th most underrated player' in English football. Some good end-of-year soccer lists are linked on DuNord, too. It's the best football site out there.)

Stevie G. an MBE. Soon enough we'll be calling him 'sir'. About time -- he should have gotten it after the Champions League win in 2005, but we'll take it for the FA Cup heroics.

Crouchie (pictured above) had another bicycle goal on Sunday against Bolton. How can Rafa sell him? Plus, it would break Coach Mom's heart. Even before we met him in the elevator in Chicago, she's been a big fan.

I guess Britain has its own version of "Punked", with Rio Ferdinand as Aston Kutcher. Who Ate All The Pies has a segment where he messes with Shaun Wright-Phillips (aided and abetted by John Terry).

Farewell The Mustache

WaPo: John Bolton Resigns as U.S. Ambassador to U.N.

Why? Because Harry Reid announced he would keep the Senate in session with no more than one week off. Bush wasn't going to be able to sneak another recess appointment through. Go Harry!

Maybe This Is Why Judith, Patron Saint of Corporate Journalists, Wanted to Limit Her Testimony

Phone Call With Source and Deal Led Reporter to Testify

Mr. Abrams said that she provided the grand jury with an edited version of her notes.

"The notes were redacted to omit everything but the notes taken concerning discussions with Libby about Plame," Mr. Abrams said.

Maybe Judy went to jail to protect something else from discovery. Like whatever else she discussed with Scooter that day. Iraq? Chalabi? Their mutual good friend John Bolton? I'd love to see those notes....

SCOTUS Nomination is Payback for Florida 2000

Roberts had larger 2000 recount role
The role of U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts in the 2000 election aftermath in Florida was larger than has been reported. Roberts helped prepare the Supreme Court case.

TALLAHASSEE - U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts played a broader behind-the-scenes role for the Republican camp in the aftermath of the 2000 election than previously reported -- as legal consultant, lawsuit editor and prep coach for arguments before the nation's highest court, according to the man who drafted him for the job.

Ted Cruz, a domestic policy advisor for President Bush and who is now Texas' solicitor general, said Roberts was one of the first names he thought of while he and another attorney drafted the Republican legal dream team of litigation ''lions'' and ''800-pound gorillas,'' which ultimately consisted of 400 attorneys in Florida.

Until now, Gov. Jeb Bush and others involved in the election dispute could recall almost nothing of Roberts' role, except for a half-hour meeting the governor had with Roberts. Cruz said Roberts was in Tallahassee helping the Bush camp for ''a week to 10 days,'' and that his help was important, though Cruz said it is difficult to remember specifics five years after the sleep-depriving frenetic pace of the 2000 recount.

Steal me the Presidency, win a prize! I still will give anyone who can produce a picture of John Bolton & John Roberts together in Florida a handsome reward. Except for the poor grooming and bad mustache, they're the same guy. Right Wing Nutjobs 'R Us.

Bush Taps White Man

So it's John Roberts for the SCOTUS job. James Dobson of Focus on the Family is happy, so we know he's baaaaaaaad. (Steve Gilliard calls Dobson "Focus on the Fuhrer", hehehe)

One Partisan Hack for Another tells us that Roberts worked for the RNC on the 2000 Florida recount (makes him a friend of John Bolton), was one of Ken Starr's deputies under HWBush, and was one of Reagan's White House counsels.

The New York Times, Scrutinizing John Roberts, says we don't know enough about the guy & the Senate must question him closely. Hah, good joke, as that's snowball in hell unlikely. Who on the Judiciary Committee will do the questioning? Those jamokes couldn't cross-examine a mynah bird that could only say yes.


And, obviously, the timing of the nomination is meant to take the heat off Traitor Karl Rove. Looks like Karl could be looking at his own Camp Cupcake as it appears he lied to FBI investigators when he was first interviewed:

An Unlikely Story
Karl Rove's alibi would be easier to believe if he hadn't hidden it from FBI investigators in 2003.

White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove did not disclose that he had ever discussed CIA officer Valerie Plame with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper during Rove’s first interview with the FBI, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The omission by Rove created doubt for federal investigators, almost from the inception of their criminal probe into who leaked Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak, as to whether Rove was withholding crucial information from them, and perhaps even misleading or lying to them, the sources said.

Also leading to the early skepticism of Rove's accounts was the claim that although he first heard that Plame worked for the CIA from a journalist, he said could not recall the name of the journalist. Later, the sources said, Rove wavered even further, saying he was not sure at all where he first heard the information.

How many crimes does Traitor Karl have to commit for Commander Codpiece to fire him? Let's see, treason and lying to federal investigators seem serious enough to me.

Rove must go.

Oh What A Tangled Web We Weave

when first we practice to deceive. {always thought this was Shakespeare, but the internets reveal it to be Sir Walter Scott (Marmion, 1808)}


Who Told Rove?

One of Digby's commenters points the finger at John Bolton:

As long as we're enjoying ourselves speculating about frog marching and the like, here's an interesting theory from super-smart commenter Sara:

Has anyone here carefully read Joe Wilson's Book?

He provides plenty of carefully crafted information -- for example see p. 443-445.

Wilson indicates that the work up on him beginning March, 2003, turned up the information on Valerie -- which was then shared with Karl Rove who then circulated it through Administration and neo-Conservative circles. He cites conservative journalists who claimed to have had the information before the Novak column.

So the question is -- in the work-up process beginning about March 2003, who had the information re: Plame?

I think it was John Bolton. At the time he was State Department Deputy Secretary with the portfolio in WMD and Nuclear Proliferation. Assuming that Valerie Plame's identity was that of a NOC (No Official Cover) the information about her would have been highly classified, compartmentalized, and only those with a need to know would know. Bolton's Job probably gave him that status. However to receive it he would have to sign off on the classification -- that is he would have to agree to retain the security the CIA had established.

At the time, Bolton had two assistants who also worked in the White House in Cheney's office, David Wurmser and John Hannah. Their names have been around as the potential leakers -- Hannah if you remember is the guy who kept putting the Yellow Cake back in Bush's speeches even though Tenet had demanded it be removed.

So -- I think we have a game of catch going on here -- or maybe some version of baseball, and the scoring is Bolton to Wurmser and Hannah, to Cheney (and/or Libby) to Rove.

I suspect getting Rove on Perjury is more or less step one in walking back the path of the ball.

Lest there be any doubt about Bolton's true calling, remember, he was king of the Florida Recount.

Stay tuned, folks, it's going to be quite the ride.

Conyers Response to Milbank

Conyers to Milbank

John Conyers has already responded to Milbank's smear of an article. Click on the link above to see photographs of the event (which show how ridiculous Milbank's article really is).

June 17, 2005
Mr. Michael Abramowitz, National Editor
Mr. Michael Getler, Ombudsman
Mr. Dana Milbank
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20071


Dear Sirs:

I write to express my profound disappointment with Dana Milbank's June 17 report, "Democrats Play House to Rally Against the War," which purports to describe a Democratic hearing I chaired in the Capitol yesterday. In sum, the piece cherry-picks some facts, manufactures others out of whole cloth, and does a disservice to some 30 members of Congress who persevered under difficult circumstances, not of our own making, to examine a very serious subject: whether the American people were deliberately misled in the lead up to war. The fact that this was the Post's only coverage of this event makes the journalistic shortcomings in this piece even more egregious.

In an inaccurate piece of reporting that typifies the article, Milbank implies that one of the obstacles the Members in the meeting have is that "only one" member has mentioned the Downing Street Minutes on the floor of either the House or Senate. This is not only incorrect but misleading. In fact, just yesterday, the Senate Democratic Leader, Harry Reid, mentioned it on the Senate floor. Senator Boxer talked at some length about it at the recent confirmation hearing for the Ambassador to Iraq. The House Democratic Leader, Nancy Pelosi, recently signed on to my letter, along with 121 other Democrats asking for answers about the memo. This information is not difficult to find either. For example, the Reid speech was the subject of an AP wire service report posted on the Washington Post website with the headline "Democrats Cite Downing Street Memo in Bolton Fight". Other similar mistakes, mischaracterizations and cheap shots are littered throughout the article.

The article begins with an especially mean and nasty tone, claiming that House Democrats "pretended" a small conference was the Judiciary Committee hearing room and deriding the decor of the room. Milbank fails to share with his readers one essential fact: the reason the hearing was held in that room, an important piece of context. Despite the fact that a number of other suitable rooms were available in the Capitol and House office buildings, Republicans declined my request for each and every one of them. Milbank could have written about the perseverance of many of my colleagues in the face of such adverse circumstances, but declined to do so. Milbank also ignores the critical fact picked up by the AP, CNN and other newsletters that at the very moment the hearing was scheduled to begin, the Republican Leadership scheduled an almost unprecedented number of 11 consecutive floor votes, making it next to impossible for most Members to participate in the first hour and one half of the hearing.

In what can only be described as a deliberate effort to discredit the entire hearing, Milbank quotes one of the witnesses as making an anti-semitic assertion and further describes anti-semitic literature that was being handed out in the overflow room for the event. First, let me be clear: I consider myself to be friend and supporter of Israel and there were a number of other staunchly pro-Israel members who were in attendance at the hearing. I do not agree with, support, or condone any comments asserting Israeli control over U.S. policy, and I find any allegation that Israel is trying to dominate the world or had anything to do with the September 11 tragedy disgusting and offensive.

That said, to give such emphasis to 100 seconds of a 3 hour and five minute hearing that included the powerful and sad testimony (hardly mentioned by Milbank) of a woman who lost her son in the Iraq war and now feels lied to as a result of the Downing Street Minutes, is incredibly misleading. Many, many different pamphlets were being passed out at the overflow room, including pamphlets about getting out of the Iraq war and anti-Central American Free Trade Agreement, and it is puzzling why Milbank saw fit to only mention the one he did.

In a typically derisive and uninformed passage, Milbank makes much of other lawmakers calling me "Mr. Chairman" and says I liked it so much that I used "chairmanly phrases." Milbank may not know that I was the Chairman of the House Government Operations Committee from 1988 to 1994. By protocol and tradition in the House, once you have been a Chairman you are always referred to as such. Thus, there was nothing unusual about my being referred to as Mr. Chairman.

To administer his coup-de-grace, Milbank literally makes up another cheap shot that I "was having so much fun that [I] ignored aides' entreaties to end the session." This did not occur. None of my aides offered entreaties to end the session and I have no idea where Milbank gets that information. The hearing certainly ran longer than expected, but that was because so many Members of Congress persevered under very difficult circumstances to attend, and I thought - given that - the least I could do was allow them to say their piece. That is called courtesy, not "fun."

By the way, the "Downing Street Memo" is actually the minutes of a British cabinet meeting. In the meeting, British officials - having just met with their American counterparts - describe their discussions with such counterparts. I mention this because that basic piece of context, a simple description of the memo, is found nowhere in Milbank's article.

The fact that I and my fellow Democrats had to stuff a hearing into a room the size of a large closet to hold a hearing on an important issue shouldn't make us the object of ridicule. In my opinion, the ridicule should be placed in two places: first, at the feet of Republicans who are so afraid to discuss ideas and facts that they try to sabotage our efforts to do so; and second, on Dana Milbank and the Washington Post, who do not feel the need to give serious coverage on a serious hearing about a serious matter-whether more than 1700 Americans have died because of a deliberate lie. Milbank may disagree, but the Post certainly owed its readers some coverage of that viewpoint.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr.

Since I Been Gone

We gotta a Pope who can be called "Joey Ratz", a former member of the Hitler Youth.

The Bible thumpers are after judges, most of whom are quite conservative.

John Bolton, a man who chases people who don't agree with him up & down the hallways of hotels in foreign countries, has been nominated to be our head diplomat at the UN.

The Secret Service has released records that show that the Presstitute didn't sign out of the White House, more than a dozen times. Which leads us to question, who was the Presstitute schtupping??? My money's on Scottie.

It was a good three weeks to be semi-conscious.