Posted 6:10 AM by Scoobie Davis

Post Postponed
Over the weekend, I promised that I would post an exclusive this morning. Due to technical problems, I have to postpone this for a while. Sorry.

Posted 11:31 AM by Scoobie Davis

Richard Clarke
I was very impressed with Richard Clarke's performance with Tim Russert on Meet the Press this morning. Clarke effectively told Russert how important it was to focus on the issues and not on personal attacks and libels. I think it is sad when I check my sitemeter stats and find that many people came to my site based on keyword searches of the words "Richard Clarke" and "lies" or "liar." I am also saddened by the attempt by administration surrogates to try to criminalize dissent with these baseless calls to indict Clarke for perjury. Bill Frist and other congressional Republicans are acting like hired guns, not statesmen.

Posted 5:37 PM by Scoobie Davis

Exclusive:Totally Hilarious Post Forthcoming
First thing Monday morning, I will post a very funny exclusive. Trust me.

Posted 10:31 AM by Scoobie Davis

Bill Frist's Slander Against Dick Clarke
Josh Marshall sums it up well:

A few hours after accusing Clarke of perjury, [Frist] admits that he has no idea -- not just no idea whether he perjured himself, which is a fairly technical question, but no idea whether there were any inconsistencies at all.

Posted 12:33 AM by Scoobie Davis

Hate To Break The News
I just found out from my Sitemeter stats that this site is one of the top sites that pops ups for a Google search of the words "Richard+Clarke+lies." Sorry to break the news to my web-searching friends but Richard Clarke is telling the truth. Dick Clarke is the real deal. However, if you want right-wing talking points on Clarke, go to NewsMax, WorldNutDaily, or listen to Hannity or El Rushbo. . .Quick notes: Didn't you just love it on Hannity & Colmes last night when guest Charlie Rangel said that the difference between Clarke and Condi Rice is that Clarke is willing to speak under oath? Hannity's lame response: "That's a cheap shot.". . .Joe Conason's latest:

Within days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the White House public-relations office began to shroud those events behind personality propaganda, heroic mythology and even religious mysticism. Over the years to come—and until now, perhaps—stirring words and images would serve not only to repackage George W. Bush, but also to obscure the plain facts about his administration’s fateful errors.

The President’s chief political strategist and his National Security Advisor claimed falsely that Al Qaeda had targeted Air Force One on that terrible late-summer morning, thus transforming his prudent flight from Florida to Nebraska into a dramatic escape from peril. The President’s supporters suggested that God had chosen George W. Bush to lead America, in anticipation of national crisis.

During the ensuing year, while the air was filled with such mystifying nonsense, the President and the Vice President warned Congress against an independent investigation of the circumstances leading up to the disaster. After public clamor for an investigation finally prevailed over that intimidation, the White House tried every conceivable tactic to hinder the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, even while claiming to support the commission unreservedly.

Clearly, the President preferred flattering myths to hard facts about 9/11. Now, with the publication of Richard Clarke’s memoir, Against All Enemies, we know why.

Mr. Clarke is a nonpartisan professional who has devoted his life to national security, serving four Presidents of both parties during a distinguished public career that spanned 30 years. Unlike most of those who have rushed to criticize him, he rose to the highest levels of government strictly on merit rather than family or political connections. His devotion to duty and his qualifications in his field may be measured by his role on Sept. 11, 2001. He ran the Situation Room in the hours immediately after the attacks, while the President flew to Offutt Air Force Base and the Vice President sat in a fortified bunker; and when the White House was evacuated in fear of another suicidal crash assault, he stayed there to continue his work.

The rest of Consaon's essay is here.

Posted 6:43 AM by Scoobie Davis

Franken on Letterman
A friend called last night and said that Al Franken was hilarious on The Late Show with David Letterman. I missed it. Could Franken's appearance be the reason Bill O'Reilly was slamming Letterman on his Radio Factor show yesterday? Possibly. O'Reilly is still smarting about Franken (e.g., O'Reilly doesn't call Franken by his name but calls him "Stuart Smalley").

Posted 10:49 AM by Scoobie Davis

Bush Intelligence Failures
Read this.

Posted 9:02 PM by Scoobie Davis

Richard Clarke "Out of the Loop"?
Whiskey Bar has heard this one before. Mark Kleiman has some inside insights on Clarke. Krugman, again, is brilliant.

Posted 1:44 PM by Scoobie Davis

The Latest on Richard Clarke
Click here.

Posted 10:08 AM by Scoobie Davis

Wouldn't Sun Myung Moon Be a Great Topic for Howard Stern?
I think it's great that Howard Stern is out there bashing Bush. Stern would have a field day discussing Bush friend, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the head of the Unification Church (I can only imagine how Stern would broach the topic of "the Holy Handkerchief," the sacred washclothes given to Moon devotees to wipe their genitals after sex). More important is the work that Stern could do to expose the unholy alliance between Unification Church front groups and the Bush administration. One e-mail is all I'm asking: write Howard Stern at sternshow@howardstern.com and tell them to focus on Moon. John Gorenfeld would be a great guest for Stern.

Posted 2:40 PM by Scoobie Davis

Clark on Foreign Policy
Wesley Clark was just on Fox News Live. It was a strong appearance. If anyone has the transcript, please let me know.

Posted 11:07 PM by Scoobie Davis

Check This Out
In the New York Times Magazine, "Al Franken, Seriously" by Russell Shorto.

Posted 4:49 PM by Scoobie Davis

Every Democrat Should Read This
Josh Marshall on fighting the right. Excerpts:

Kerry is now being hit by a barrage of attacks almost all of which, as I've tried to note here, are based on lies and distortions. They're being organized and planned by the president's partner Karl Rove, a man who has specialized for more than thirty years in vicious campaign tactics (remember McCain in South Carolina) and dirty tricks. . .

Kerry is a fighter. I saw it first hand during his 1996 senate race against Bill Weld. But Kerry will never successfully parry these hits by getting tangled and stuck in the molasses of the president's lies and distortions. Getting sidetracked into a discussion of legislative maneuvering isn't the answer to the president's attacks; it's precisely what they're trying to elicit.

The answer is simply to say they're lies (while having surrogates and staffers explain why) and then to go on the attack.

For instance, the Kerry campaign should never have let Bush get the upper hand on the issue of combat pay, health care, and getting things like body-armor to front line troops. One need only be a casual reader of the military press to know that the president is extremely vulnerable on these issues.

Posted 2:43 PM by Scoobie Davis

A Mediocre Performance That Didn't Have To Happen
David Wade was the Kerry spokesman who mentioned Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity as part of the Republican attack machine that John Kerry implicated in his statement about the "crooked. . . lying" group of Republicans. Wade appeared on Hannity's radio program today and his performance was mediocre at best. It's too bad Wade isn't a regular reader of Scoobie Davis Online; he could have shined. What a pity. More on this tonight.

Posted 8:13 AM by Scoobie Davis

Political Jiu-Jitsu
The Gadflyer's Thomas Schaller:

Because having too much money – and spending too much time raising it, rather than governing – makes voters uneasy, Kerry's money disadvantage thus becomes a permanent tool of election-year jiu-jitsu. The senator and his surrogates should repeat endlessly that the other guys are loaded, forcing Republicans to waste money drowning out the discomfiting message that they've got way too much of it.

In the 2004 campaign, resources will matter. But using them smartly will matter more. Getting tough on the campaign trail means being lean, quick and stealthy. It means allowing those best-equipped to handle specialty tasks to do so, and attacking with multiple weapons from different angles.

If Kerry, the Democrats and their friends can move around in the electoral ring with that combination of swift, deft and deadly motion, Bush's well-funded message machine will not be able to save him.

Posted 8:40 PM by Scoobie Davis

Happy St. Patrick's Day
Too much merriment. Will blog tomorrow.

Posted 10:18 AM by Scoobie Davis

Limbaugh's Hate Speech Against Kerry and the Democrats: Quotes Not Taken Out of Context
Just a few minutes ago, Rush Limbaugh on Democrats: “They celebrate in private the attack in Spain.”

Just a few minutes ago on Limbaugh's show:

They aren’t even the Democrats of JFK. They are the Democrats of Timothy Leary. They’re the Democrats of the anti-war movements of the 1960’s. Nobody’s said this, folks, but in John Kerry and Bill Clinton before him, the Democrats have nominated two huge anti-war radicals. Obviously, Clinton was a draft-dodger. Kerry was one of the moist radical and vocal anti-war activists that we’ve had. Clinton did next to nothing about terrorism on his watch; Kerry won’t either. They’re going to bow down to the demands of the European socialists who supported their anti-war activities in the 1960’s. These elitists who have a skepticism of the difference between good and evil.

Later, Limbaugh attacked John Kerry as un-American:

I don’t understand un-Americanism. I don’t understand the Kerrys of the world—and all the Democrats who want us to fail. I don’t understand the people who live—who were born and bred in this country, who grew up in this country—I don’t understand these people who do not believe in the greatness of this country—who think there are greater places in the world than this country. I don’t understand these people who think that we are the original sin of the world. I don’t understand it. Intellectually, I don’t understand. I know who they are; I know what they believe. But I can’t relate. I can’t possibly understand someone who hates this country who was born and raised here. . .I don’t understand what it is about this country that people distrust and do not like--and I'm talking about you liberals and you 60's Democrats in this country.

Posted 8:56 AM by Scoobie Davis

Fun Read
I enjoyed John Gorenfeld's interview with humorist Sandra Tsing Loh over her firing from NPR for using the f-word on the radio (exact quote: "He does play guitar for Bette Midler on her massive new stage show, so I guess I have to fuck him.") Also, check out Gorenfeld's blog which takes on Sun Myung Moon.

Posted 8:15 AM by Scoobie Davis

Smokin'
Matthew Yglesias on George W. Bush's failure in the War on Terror:

The administration's first action on the national security front upon taking office was to downgrade the fight against al-Qaeda from the status it held under Bill Clinton, prioritizing instead the danger of "rogue states" by seeking to construct an unworkable missile defense shield. It's impolite to say so, but if Condoleezza Rice had focused less on abrogating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and more on Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger's advice during the transition to "spend more time during your four years on terrorism generally and al-Qaeda specifically than any other issue," there's at least a chance that September 11 might have been averted altogether.

Once the attacks occurred, Bush began to exercise what the media has universally proclaimed to be "strong leadership" on terrorism. In fact, he did nothing of the sort. Instead, after spending the day flying around the country in an apparent state of confusion, he delivered a widely panned address to the nation in which he falsely claimed that, "Immediately following the first attack, I implemented the government's emergency response plans."

AND

The country, however, is in need of a president who can assemble a competent national security team, not a crack staff of speechwriters. The substantive response to the attacks was the war against the Taliban. I, like the vast majority of Americans, supported this effort. Media mythology has it that the military campaign was a stunning success, due to its short duration and low casualty count. This theory conveniently ignores the fact that the president and his team failed to accomplish the actual goals of the war: Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and other top leadership elements got away, and no stable government was introduced in their stead. To this day, the Taliban is conducting military operations in the southern portion of the country.

Posted 9:16 PM by Scoobie Davis

George W. Bush: Objectively Pro-Al Qaeda?
Paul Krugman has some harsh--but fitting--words for the Bush regime:

After 9/11, terrorism could no longer be ignored, and the military conducted a successful campaign against Al Qaeda's Taliban hosts. But the failure to commit sufficient U.S. forces allowed Osama bin Laden to escape. After that, the administration appeared to lose interest in Al Qaeda; by the summer of 2002, bin Laden's name had disappeared from Mr. Bush's speeches. It was all Saddam, all the time.

This wasn't just a rhetorical switch; crucial resources were pulled off the hunt for Al Qaeda, which had attacked America, to prepare for the overthrow of Saddam, who hadn't. If you want confirmation that this seriously impeded the fight against terror, just look at reports about the all-out effort to capture Osama that started, finally, just a few days ago. Why didn't this happen last year, or the year before? According to The New York Times, last year many of the needed forces were tied up in Iraq.

It's now clear that by shifting his focus to Iraq, Mr. Bush did Al Qaeda a huge favor. The terrorists and their Taliban allies were given time to regroup; the resurgent Taliban once again control almost a third of Afghanistan, and Al Qaeda has regained the ability to carry out large-scale atrocities.

Posted 12:06 PM by Scoobie Davis

The Term of the Day
The Human Reliability Program. This could be big.

Posted 5:03 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Crooked, Lying Group: A Case Study
As I mentioned last week, Sean Hannity has gotten his panties in a bunch because of John Kerry’s “lying, crooked group” statement. Today’s Salon has two examples of the actions of the lying, crooked group. One story discusses how Hannity’s Faux News colleague John Gibson played a little game of cut the guest’s microphone and then accuse her of being an anarchist and a LaRouchie (I suppose that’s the only thing Gibson and people like Senator John Kyl could do because they could not dispute the facts of Karen Kwiatkowski’s analysis of the Bush administration’s duplicity regarding Iraq). Also, Salon has a profile of GOP hitman Alex Castellanos. The article examines not only Castellanos’ misleading political ads but also his part in Republican disinformation campaigns such as the attempt to link Ken Lay to Bill Clinton.

If Hannity wants more examples, I would be glad to provide them to the angry Irish ape-man. The example I found over the weekend has to do with Hannity’s good friend Christopher Ruddy. On Saturday, I was at the Barnes & Noble at the Grove in the Fairfax district and I checked out the print edition of Ruddy’s NewsMax. A story that carried no byline caught my attention; it was titled, “Hillary Praises Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.” I checked and found the story on NewsMax’s website. What was the unnamed NewsMax author’s evidence that Senator Clinton praised the brutal 1979 invasion? The story cited a single sentence from Clinton’s December 15, 2003 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations (the speech was over six thousand words and was not linked to in the NewsMax web article): "One of the reasons why we were able to marshal the Mujaheddin and the warlords against the Soviets is because the Soviets tried to provide more opportunities for women."

REALITY: This quote, by itself, could certainly not be taken as praise for the Soviet invasion and installation of a despotic puppet regime. The Najibullah regime was brutal (a fact that Senator Clinton did not deny), but it accorded women more rights than the Taliban (not a difficult task considering the Taliban’s abysmal record). Senator Clinton was simply pointing out the undisputed fact that one of the reasons that the Mujaheddin hated the Soviet puppet regime was that their secular view of women was anathema to their strict Islamic views. Here’s the quote in context (click here for the full speech):

You know, women have always been at the fulcrum of Afghani politics and reaction. It happened in the early part of the 20th century, when the kings of Afghanistan attempted to modernize Afghanistan and pick as one of the principal objectives the more fully participating role of women. And that caused a backlash, which led to all kinds of reaction in the tribal areas. One of the reasons why we were able to marshal the Mujaheddin and the warlords against the Soviets is because the Soviets tried to provide more opportunities for women.

So women's roles is a critical point as to whether there can be a stable, free, democratic Afghanistan. If we were to focus on improving maternal health, that is an objective that is not in any way contradictory to the concerns of the most traditional, as well as the hopes of the most modern Afghans.

I was told that the hospital in Kabul delivers 200 babies a day. That is an astonishing number. And they do it in very difficult circumstances. We could cut in half the maternal death rate in Afghanistan, which is the highest in the world, with relatively little money.
The next step would be more difficult and expensive, but to clearly send a signal that the United States, President Karzai, all of us around the world wish the people of Afghanistan, particularly the mothers of Afghanistan, well would be a political and strategic statement, as well as a humanitarian one. Afghans need better schools, they need more health clinics, and they're expressing that at the loya jirga.

Is the NewsMax story a hatchet job? I’m reporting; you decide.

Posted 8:56 PM by Scoobie Davis

The Simpsons
I wish I can learn how to record stuff from the TV on my VCR (ever since I got cable, I don't know how). Tonight's The Simpsons was great. First, there was a mind-blowing couch gag. However, I couldn't make out what Bart was writing on the chalkboard before that. John Lovitz played Artie who was on the run from the SEC because of his Enron-like corporate practices (The initial of his corporation was tilted just like Enron's was). I laughed the loudest when one of the Flanders kids showed Homer their church's movie guide titled "What Would Jesus View?" which was written by Michael Medved (at the cineplex were the films, The Fashion of the Christ, You're in the Matrix, Charlie Brown, and The Matrix Christmas. Also, I enjoyed the gag about the 1986 Newsweek with the cover story "Why America Loves Saddam Hussein." Oh, I almost forgot, there was a hot tub scene with Artie, Newt Gingrich, Scottie Pippin, and Janeane Garofalo.

Posted 7:18 AM by Scoobie Davis

Blogs and Election 2004
Yesterday on CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports:

WOLF BLITZER: All right, the Democrats, though, they have some tricks up their sleeves as well.

CARLOS WATSON [CNN POLITICAL ANALYST]: Democrats have a new secret weapon.

For a long time, you have heard Democrats complain that Republicans have conservative talk radio, that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly and others have shaped the agenda and gotten people aroused and excited at the base. And finally, in 2004, Democrats have an answer. The answer is what? It's the blogs, the so-called Web logs, where people go online and write information, write commentary, post news stories.

Very interesting study out of George Washington says about 15 to 20 million people are now actively using the Internet and these Web logs in particular, sites like Daily Kos and Talking Points Memo. And what's significant here is that Democrats are using this to shape the agenda, because, remember, lots of Washington reporters read these. They're using these to excite their own base, just like conservative talk show radio does.

We've already seen that they use the Internet to raise money, but also they may turn out voters using this critical weapon.

BLITZER: So you're thinking the these blogs on the Internet, these are sort of liberal-leaning, as talk radio is conservative- leaning?

SOHN JIE-AE [CNN CORRESPONDENT]: Very much so. The blogs are the Democratic answer to conservative talk radio. They George Washington study says that of the people who they consider online political citizens, not 1 percent, not 2 percent, but 50 percent are considered Democrat. Only 27 percent are considered Republicans.

It doesn't mean that Republicans are not using the Internet. It doesn't mean they are not using blogs, just like there obviously are some liberal talk radio stations. But it means that right now liberals may have found their answer and the answer to conservative talk radio may be these blogs.

Posted 11:38 AM by Scoobie Davis

That Was Quick
Less than a day after the crooked, lying group put out a misleading TV ad, the Kerry people corrected the record with their own TV ad. Susan Estrich isn't running this campaign.
UPDATE: I just found out about this from Salon's War Room, the Kerry campaign has a DBunker blog. I added it to my links.
UPDATE: Josh Marshall has some thoughts about these early ads.

Posted 7:24 AM by Scoobie Davis

Something is Rotten in Coulter-Land
When Ann Coulter's most recent column slammed Muslims for allegedly having poor hygiene, "Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity (as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of 'kill everyone who doesn't smell bad and doesn't answer to the name Mohammed')", it wasn't the first time. I noted what she said on the radio in 2002,:

Now all of this about respect. And we’re always told Muslims feel humiliated—that’s why they slaughter Americans. It really is stunning how the people with the least self-respect are those most obsessed with others paying it to them. What I find is that a little soap and indoor plumbing goes a long way for your sense of self-respect. I would recommend it over flying planes into buildings.

Let's not forget Coulter's charge in her book Treason: “The principal difference between fifth columnists in the cold war versus the war on terrorism is that you could sit next to a communist in a subway without asphyxiating.”

Posted 10:06 AM by Scoobie Davis

Kerry's People Should Engage the Enemy
Yesterday, John Kerry referred to certain Republicans as "the most crooked. . . lying group I've ever seen." No problem there. After Kerry made the comment, a reporter told Sean Hannity that Kerry spokesperson David Wade singled out Hannity and Rush Limbaugh as belonging to this group. Still no problem. Both Hannity and Limbaugh are claiming this is an unfair accusation. This point is where the situation starts to become problematic. The solution: engage both Hannity and Limbaugh. The Kerry campaign has a lot of ammo if they want to back up the charge against those two. Like shooting fish in a barrel.
UPDATE: Hannity just announced on his radio show that a Kerry spokesperson will be on Hannity & Colmes tonight. If the Kerry representative is prepared, he/she will do well. If he/she is not prepared, he/she will not do well. By preparation, I'm referring to whether the person knows Hannity's record. Also, this would entail being able to counter the arguments Hannity is making on his radio show today (e.g., Hannity is calling Democrats dishonest because of Terry MacAuliffe's truthful reference to Bush's AWOL status and Howard Dean's comment that the Bush might had been warned about an eminent terrorist threat prior to 9/11).
UPDATE: Kerry Senior Advisor Michael Meehan appeared on the show. No knockouts but Meehan held his own when Hannity grilled him. When Hannity asked Meehan for examples of members of the Republican attack machine, Meehan did a good job by pointing out that Hannity gave a platform to Ted Sampley; Meehan rightly mentioned that Sampley has made numerous smears not only against John Kerry but also against Senator John McCain. Meehan should have torn into Limbaugh and Hannity when asked about them, but overall it was a strong performance.
Note: Fred Kaplan puts the lie to the charge made by Hannity, Bush, and the crooked, lying GOP attack machine that John Kerry tried to gut US intelligence in the 1990's.

Posted 7:33 PM by Scoobie Davis

I Don't Know How It Happened, But...
I was not responsible for this but I found it very amusing: check out the first web site listed in Yahoo's directory for Ann Coulter. It's even listed before Coulter's personal web site.

Posted 7:19 AM by Scoobie Davis

Hiatus
Thanks for all the emails. I couldn't begin to answer them all individually. I have decided to go on hiatus instead of quitting. Accordingly, for at least the next month or so, posting will be very light. In my last post, I was kind of hard on Democratic officials (another example of deadwood is my congressman, Xavier Becerra; I'm leaving my ballot blank for the Congressional candidates this fall--Becerra is sure to win).

One Democrat who is earning his keep is Robert Wexler (D-Florida). This guy knows what the score is. I was just about to leave the house yesterday when I channel-flipped to Crossfire (here's the transcript) and he brought down the house with comments such as this:

. . .[The] Miami Herald two days ago had John Kerry up seven points in the state of Florida. The state of Florida is going Democratic.

The good news is, it won't even be close this time. We're probably going to win in a landslide. And that's why some of us want to count all the votes in Florida. We're going to court to count the votes. We want a paper trail, because we're not going to allow Jeb Bush and his brother to steal another one.

Those are the kind of things Democratic officials need to be saying.

Posted 11:00 AM by Scoobie Davis

I Quit
I was going to title this post, “Postmortem of Two Squandered Opportunities” but after writing this post, I have decided to make an important announcement (see the postscript). First things first, here are the postmortems:

Postmortem of Two Squandered Opportunities

THE FIRST SQUANDERED OPPORTUNITY: Last Tuesday, I was listening to Sean Hannity’s radio show. Hannity mentioned that the next night (Wednesday), would be his Salt Lake City speaking engagement for his “Hannitization of America 2004 Tour” in which Hannity is promoting his book, Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism. Hannity mentioned that in a recent article in the Salt Lake Tribune, the head of the Utah Democratic Party, Donald Dunn, had referred to Hannity as “divisive” and “a pimp for the GOP.” Hannity then informed his listeners that he had Dunn on the line and the two began to debate. The results were not pretty. Dunn was unprepared for the debate and he fared poorly. He didn’t have anything concrete to support his allegations (which were truthful).

ANALYSIS: Dunn probably had at least a couple hours to prepare for his radio debate with Hannity. Common sense dictates that one of the first things that Hannity would have done was to ask Dunn to back up his allegations (which Hannity did). A quick Google search prior to the debate would have yielded a lot of ammo for Dunn. For instance, there’s a really good article from Spinsanity that takes Hannity to task. Also, a quick Google search would have informed Dunn about how Al Franken took Hannity apart in his latest book, Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them. My recent post on Hannity could have also been used. This isn’t brain surgery; this is debating a right-wing goon who has said and written many indefensible things. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. However, Dunn failed to take these measures. Instead, he winged it and he took a one-way trip to palookaville. Dunn’s comments to the paper were correct; he just didn’t take the time to do the research to back them up.

THE SECOND SQUANDERED OPPORTUNITY: Dunn’s performance was so lackluster that after Hannity got off the phone with Dunn, he said that the offer was still good for a half hour debate with Dunn at his "Hannitization Tour" speaking appearance the next day. When I heard this, I immediately realized what a golden opportunity this would be to pummel this noxious butterball in front of his fans—it would be a forum in which Hannity didn’t have his mute button (Note to readers: Hannity is not a good debater; here’s a transcript; I was also on his show in 2001 in which I really mopped the floor with Hannity; unfortunately, I don’t have the tape handy). I immediately e-mailed Dunn and told him to accept the debate with Hannity. I even emailed a couple of other people in the Utah Democratic Party in case Dunn’s mailbox was full.

Keep in mind: At the time Hannity made the offer, there were thirty hours until the speaking appearance. I was willing to spend the all of that time preparing Dunn for the debate. I was even willing to take a same-day flight to Salt Lake City (with money I didn’t have) and be Dunn’s stand-in in case Dunn didn’t want to debate Hannity. This would have been a perfect forum to mop the floor with Hannity. However, there was only one problem: neither Dunn nor anyone else called me (I left my phone number) or emailed me back. The debate never happened

ANALYSIS: What makes this a particular shame is that it would have been so easy to make a big impact. Because of these two squandered opportunities, Hannity was able to crow on his radio show about how he made mincemeat out of a Democratic Party official. These were two unmitigated disasters that were completely avoidable.

POSTSCRIPT: THE CONSEQUENCES FOR THIS BLOG

If the sad episodes I just described were isolated incidences, it would be one thing. It’s not. Much of the Democratic Party establishment is out-of-touch and has no clue about politics. These people don’t know the score. What is worse is that they are getting paid to be incompetent.

Politics 101: It’s about winning. It’s about stepping up to the plate and doing what needs to be done.

I started this blog because there were too few people who were doing what needed to be done. Let me give some background: When Bill Clinton was took office in 1993, there was an unprecedented defamation campaign by right-wing operatives: 1) Some were motivated by Richard Mellon Scaife’s money: Chris Ruddy, Joseph Farah, the guys at the American Spectator; 2) Some, like Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes, could depend on TV viewers and radio listeners who believed in the magic of Triple Gold Bond powder; 3) Others like Jerry Falwell and Pat Matrisciana, depended on swindling churchgoing people. What resulted were paranoid accusations and an outrageous smear campaign against the Clintons. The smear campaign against Democrats and progressives has been continuous since then.

When these people were smearing the Clintons, I had no voice. Those who had a voice, liberal pundits and Democratic officials, had very little to say. This has enabled these same operatives to be mainstreamed (e.g., sure it’s silly but Ailes can claim to be the head of an objective news organization but he doesn’t face massive ridicule for it by the mainstream media).

In 2001, I had enough. I was in a good-paying administrative position and I threw it away because I held to the novel idea that these people should pay a price. Since then, I’ve been writing this blog and doing flunky jobs to just get by. I did things on this blog—not because I wanted to--but because no one else was doing them. Anyone out there who thinks I don’t have anything better to do than to listen to right-wing talk radio and transcribe the hate speech is mistaken. I do it because--in many cases--if I don’t do it, it doesn’t get done.

It sticks in my craw how I’m scrapping by on nickels and dimes and there are so many in politics are benefiting from treachery (e.g., click here and here) or hackdom (most Democratic officials and most mainstream liberal pundits). Screw that. I thank all of those who have supported this site over the past two years.

I’ve got bills to pay and debts to reconcile. I have decided to look for a real job and no longer devote any more time or energy to politics for the foreseeable future. Adios

Posted 9:18 AM by Scoobie Davis

Rush Limbaugh Accuses 9/11 Widows of Being "Coached"
Today on his radio show, Rush Limbaugh accused widows of 9/11 victims who criticized the new Bush/Cheney ad that included images of the WTC of "sounding like operatives" and said that it was obvious that they were all faxed talking points--supposedly by Democrats. More later.
UPDATE: In the second hour of the show, Limbaugh clearly went from speculation to accusation. Limbaugh said: "It sounds to me, like not only were these women coached, but it sounds to me like somebody fed them to the networks. This just doesn't happen. This is too random. . . It sounds to me like the Democrats have rolled the dice and came up roses that Bush was going to do an ad like this and that they have been planning this in response.
3/12 UPDATE:Read this:

Rush Limbaugh, like the RNC, Wall Street Journal and New York Post, has taken to attacking family members of 9/11 victims for criticizing President Bush for using 9/11 images in his campaign ads. In a radio program this week, Limbaugh said the families were being funded by Teresa Heinz Kerry and berated two family members after playing audio clips of them criticizing Bush: "These people are poisoned. They have literally been poisoned by their hate. They have been poisoned by their rage. It is unbelievable, the depths to which they will sink," Limbaugh said, without identifying the two women.

In an op-ed, Allan P. Duncan does a good job of exposing the conservative conspiracy theory about the 9/11 families. First, Duncan says, the two women Rush attacked but didn't identify were Kristen Breitweiser and Monica Gabrielle, "both members of the Family Steering Committee for the 9-11 Commission, and not members of the group Limbaugh claims received funding from Teresa Heinz Kerry. That group, according to news reports that began hitting the wires on March 6th was September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows."

Also, read this.

Posted 12:11 PM by Scoobie Davis

Christian Publishing House Uncovered as Apologist for Racists and Conspiracy Nuts
Over a year ago, I uncovered how the respected Christian publishing House, Thomas Nelson Publishing, had prostituted its integrity by joining forces with conspiracy nut and hatemonger Joseph Farah and his organization WorldNetDaily. I pointed out that what made this particularly egregious was that one of the first books published by this unholy alliance was Michael Savage’s scurrilous (and barely coherent) book, The Savage Nation (Thomas Nelson and WND recently published Savage’s latest book, The Enemy Within). Unbelievable as it may seem, Thomas Nelson Publishing has outdone itself yet again with its announcement of the publication of Richard Poe’s Hillary's Secret War: The Clinton Conspiracy to Muzzle Internet Journalists which is due out next month (Poe is a former editor of David Horowitz’s FrontPageMagazine). I have only read the forward and description of the book, but based on this limited information, I can conclude that this book is an apologia for smearmongers and racists of the worst kind and one that whitewashes their nefarious activities. Of course, since I haven’t read the book yet, I could be wrong, but I am willing to bet my life that I am giving an accurate description of the book (as George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “You don’t have to eat the whole egg to know that it’s rotten").

Here is part of the book’s description on Amazon.com:

From her own “war room” in the White House, Hillary Clinton commanded a secret police operation dedicated to silencing dissent, muzzling media critics, intimidating political foes, whitewashing Clinton scandals, and obstructing justice. Hillary's operatives infiltrated every level of the news media, federal law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and the federal court system. . .They looked upon the “unregulated” datastream of cyberspace as a threat to their power, potentially devastating in its ability to bypass the controlled, corporate media. For that reason, Hillary's secret police persecuted Internet dissidents with special ferocity. . .Mainstream news media spiked the story of Hillary’s secret war—and of the scandals she sought to conceal. But the courageous new journalists of the Internet underground defied the odds and exposed the shocking truth about history’s most corrupt presidency. This is their story.

Whose story is it? According to the Jim Robinson’s forward (see addendum), it is the story of the “courageous new journalists” Christopher Ruddy, Joseph Farah, Matt Drudge, Judge Jim Johnson, David Horowitz, and Robinson himself. For those of you familiar with this web site, what I’m about to write is old news, but it’s important to go over these matters.

Let’s first discuss Farah, Ruddy, and Horowitz. I wrote a recent post about this trio that comprises the Scaife Internet Network. Please read this post thoroughly and check out the links. To sum up the post, Ruddy and Farah were part of a Scaife-funded incestuous media echo chamber that attempted to give mainstream credibility to Scaife’s paranoid delusions that Bill and Hillary Clinton were responsible not only for the death of Vince Foster, but were responsible for the deaths of dozens of people who were supposedly in the way of the Clintons’ quest for power. It’s a completely loony and vicious urban legend known as the Clinton Body Count.

Next is Judge Jim Johnson. Johnson, a longtime foe of the Clintons, is a deranged and virulent racist who courted the KKK during his gubernatorial campaign. His writings have included comparisons of African-Americans to apes. Johnson was one of the interviewees in the discredited Clinton Chronicles video (more on this later). Conason and Lyons have a good profile of Johnson in their book The Hunting of the President.

Matt Drudge is Matt Drudge. I had the pleasure of personally questioning Drudge about journalistic ethics and truth telling. Click here and here.

Jim Robinson runs the Free Republic web site. The Free Republic is a major repository for these bizarre conspiracy theories--especially the Clinton Body Count. A case in point is Robinson’s absurd forward. Just one example, in the forward, Robinson writes of “journalists getting knocked upside the head in hotels” supposedly by Hillary’s “secret police operation.” Robinson is referring to TNR’s reporter L.J. Davis who was covering Whitewater. The only problem is that it didn’t happen. Limbaugh and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page also spread this canard before it was debunked (no retractions or apologies from either party). Where’s the fucking editor from Thomas Nelson?

This isn’t the first time that Christianity has been evoked to give credence to anti-Clinton smears. Investigative reporter Murray Waas caught the Reverend Jerry Falwell and Patrick Matrisciana using deceptive techniques to bilk Falwell’s flock of their hard-earned money. Thomas Nelson can’t have it both ways: It can’t whitewash these lunatics and scumbags and also claim to be Christian. Click here and contact the people at Thomas Nelson and tell them what they are doing is wrong. It’s important.

Addendum: I have reprinted the entire Jim Robinson forward from Poe’s website, despite Poe’s warning that “[t]his excerpt may not be reproduced or published, on or offline, except by permission of the publisher.” So sue me, Poe. Here are Robinson’s deranged words in their entirety:

HILLARY'S SECRET WAR by Richard Poe is the first book I’ve read that really pulls together the story of the Internet underground during the Clinton years. I was thrilled to read it. This story has never been told before, and I’m proud to say that I was part of it, in my own small way.

We poured a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into building FreeRepublic.com and organizing a cyber-community of tens of thousands of Freeper activists all over the United States. We didn’t do that job to win medals or accolades. We did it because it had to be done, just like we went to Vietnam – those of us who went -- because that job had to be done too.
To tell the truth, I was ready to go to my grave knowing that everything we accomplished at Free Republic might be forgotten. That was OK with me. What mattered was doing the job, not getting credit for it. Still, when I read Richard’s book for the first time, it kind of choked me up a little bit, because I saw that somebody had been paying attention; somebody recognized what we were doing. Somebody knew that the Freepers were fighting for liberty on the Internet, just as we veterans fought for freedom in Vietnam. That made me feel pretty good.

For me, it was fascinating to read about the lives and struggles of others involved in this movement that Richard calls the New Underground—people like Chris Ruddy, Joe Farah, Matt Drudge, David Horowitz, J. J. Johnson, and all the rest. Believe it or not, I don’t really know any of those people. I met Drudge once and J. J. Johnson once. But as for Ruddy and Farah, it’s been an e-mail here, a phone call there. And I don’t think I ever communicated with David Horowitz at all.

Hillary says that we’re a vast right-wing conspiracy, but if there’s a conspiracy going on, they sure never let me in on it. I hear Richard Mellon Scaife has given money to a lot of fine causes and organizations, and good for him, but he sure hasn’t thrown any my way.

When it comes to networking and conspiring, I’m not much good at it. It’s hard enough just trying to get Freepers to work together. How do you get tens of thousands of individualists to cooperate on something, each with his or her own opinion and agenda? Trying to keep the Freepers pulling in the same direction is like trying to herd cats.

I love all the details in Richard’s book about the other Web sites and their owners. Reading their stories was eye opening for me. I was so busy fighting my own skirmishes, I didn’t have much time to survey the battlefield as a whole. Hillary’s Secret War showed me that the persecution we endured at Free Republic was part of a bigger picture.

Of course, I knew about Hillary and her secret police. We all knew that. Way back in the early ’90s on the Prodigy message board, we were already talking about how it seemed that Hillary was pulling all the strings. But her war on media dissidents, both on and off the Internet, really was a secret war, just as Richard says. Most people in America had no idea it was going on.

They didn’t know what kinds of pressures and harassment people faced when they tried to speak out and tell the truth about Clinton corruption. Even many of us who were directly involved in the dissident media didn’t always have the perspective to fit the pieces together—the threats and intimidation, the IRS audits, burglaries, lawsuits, surveillance, infiltration, the smear campaigns, false arrests, journalists getting knocked upside the head in hotels, even a lot of folks mysteriously ending up dead.

Now, I want to make one thing clear. I’m not really big on conspiracy theory. If I’m going to believe something, there’s got to be some meat and potatoes to it. I sincerely doubt that Hillary ever personally ordered anyone killed. I just don’t want to believe that Hillary is that rotten. And I don’t think Richard Poe jumps to that conclusion either.

But there were definitely forces at work in America that killed to protect the Clintons and their secrets. Richard doesn’t pull any punches in writing about that. Whether those forces were Chinese intelligence or Dixie Mafia, or whatever they were, I can only guess. But they were out there. And if Hillary ever said to her subordinates, "Gee, I wish such-and-such person would just go away and disappear," I don’t doubt there were people in the kind of circles she moved in who might take a statement like that seriously and do something about it.

Hillary is the godmother of the Clinton crime family. There is no question about it. That’s why she said we need gatekeepers and editors on the Internet. Hillary has a lot to hide and she knows she can’t control the Internet the way she controls Dan Rather. The invention of the printing press freed the masses from the gatekeepers of old. Now anyone with a computer and Internet connection wields the equivalent of his own printing press, along with a worldwide distribution network.

Web sites such as The DrudgeReport, WorldNetDaily, NewsMax, FrontPageMagazine, Lucianne, FreeRepublic, and countless others have given voice to millions of liberty-minded individuals. Underground pamphleteers ignited the flames of revolution in 1776. Now the Internet is fanning those flames all over again. And that’s bad news for Hillary.
She knows she can’t get back in the White House unless she shuts us down first. The secret war Richard writes about is still going on. It died down a little bit when Bush took office, but it’s just the lull before the storm. We know the storm is coming, and we’re getting ready for it.

Note: I found out about the book from an article in ConWebWatch. UPDATE: ConWebWatch's Terry Krepel has an interesting back-and-forth with Poe.

Posted 9:04 AM by Scoobie Davis

Big Post Later Today
Later today I will do a post on how some unscrupulous individuals are debasing Christianity. No, I'm not referring to The Passion of the Christ.

Posted 9:01 AM by Scoobie Davis

Wish I Wrote It
An anonymous reviewer of John Podhoretz's new book, Bush Country : How Dubya Became a Great President While Driving Liberals Insane:

Looking over this book, I'm reminded of the ballroom scene in the 1967 movie, "The Fearless Vampire Killers". Here, the doofy old professor and his hapless young assistant have infiltrated a fancy dress ball of the vampires--in a mirrored ballroom. Bewigged and clad in 18th century garb like the rest; they continue dancing away, heedless of their reflections in the mirrors. As the music and dancing grind to a halt and everyone glares at them, they finally notice what's wrong. The professor's reaction is to start pirouetting again while edging towards an exit. Then the two break into a run while the horde chases after them.

Given the timing of this preposterous book, Mr. Podhoretz must feel like the professor, as public confidence in our Fearless Leader fall faster than price of Enron stock. The author must feel a certain kinship with George W. Bush, considering that they are both are sons of famous fathers, devoid of any other distinction. Both have spent almost their entire adult lives in sinecure jobs without any real responsibility. (Mr. Bush as an ornament on the boards of Harken Energy and the Texas Rangers baseball team; Mr. Podhoretz grinding out hackwork for first, Sun Myung Moon, and later, Rupert Murdoch.)

But I digress... Now this book would scarcely be worth a second glance except for Mr. Podhoretz's smelly little habit of imputing anti-Semitism to critics of Mr. Bush's splendid little war in Iraq. I have no brief to make for critics such as Michael Lind, who I think is harsh--even unfair--in his criticism of the Sharon government and it's more frantic American boosters. But there is an enormous and unbridgable gulf between offenses such as this, and openly expressed wishes that Israel be wiped off the map, or accusations that all Jews all over the world are conspiring with Israel to control governments everywhere. Considering neoconservatives (Yes, Virginia; there really are such things!) rightly decry critics of affirmative action being painted as racists, one would think that they might be a bit more cautious not to smear others in like manner. But flacking for George W. Bush evidently means abandoning all sense, decency, or dignity.

Perhaps if Mr. Bush wins reelection, Mr. Podhoretz can giggle at the thought that crime does indeed pay, but the long term result will be to make the phrase 'anti-Semitism' as debased as the word 'racism' has already become. This is something genuine anti-Semites (and racists) will exult in.

Posted 7:25 PM by Scoobie Davis

Read This
Sam Parry on Kerry and special interests.

Posted 7:22 PM by Scoobie Davis

Woo Hoo! Part Deux
This site turns up in the top ten sites for a Google search of "Ted+Sampley"
Here is my recent post on Sampley.

Posted 3:07 PM by Scoobie Davis

Woo Hoo!
The Chickster has a new tract: "Apes, Lies, and Ms. Henn" in which Li'l Susy confronts an evolutionist teacher, Ms. Henn who is almost as big of a bully as the professor in "Big Daddy?"

Posted 11:30 AM by Scoobie Davis

Random Notes
I went to see the limos drop off Oscars guests yesterday. It's always fun but a bit of an anti-climax from two years ago. I saw some Edwards and Kucinich people but nobody from the Kerry campaign . . . I'm not into fantasy films or Tolkien so I skipped all three Lord of the Rings films. I just wish that City of God received one Academy Award. See this film. . . Today on the Radio Factor, Bill O'Reilly called for a boycott of Anheuser-Busch because it is using gansta rapper Ludacris as a spokesman for Budweiser. No problem there. Boycotts are as American as apple pie, Ludacris is a misogynistic (and misanthropic) clown (I think I saw him when I crashed the 2 Fast 2 Furious premiere after-party), and Bud beer sucks (I'm a Corona man). . . John Emerson has a good post on Ted Sampley and his phony Vietnam Veterans against Kerry.

Posted 11:55 PM by Scoobie Davis

Am I a Bitch?
Ay Caramba! I saw Michael Savage on television today and he has the worst teeth I have seen in my life! No wonder East Coast Bob called him up and told him about it (Savage's defensive and homophobic reaction to East Coast Bob's crack got him canned from MSNBC). I'm not saying it to be mean. This is what I don't understand: Haven't any of Savage's friends or colleagues taken him aside and told him to see a good dentist?

Look, I could use a visit from the tasteful queer guys from the Bravo network show just as much as the typical straight guy, but there are certain standards I have. These include good grooming and hygiene--including good oral hygiene. A set of veneers would run him a few grand but, hell, the guy is loaded. Am I a bitch for bringing up this(as well as the grooming habits of a Kerry advisor?)

Disclosure: There are many times that I go out dressed like a slob and don't care. Example: The other day I went out in old jeans and a t-shirt, I thought to myself: Hey, I'm getting laid; I don't care what people are thinking.

Posted 7:30 PM by Scoobie Davis

The Passion of Chick
Today is the first day of Lent (no fun--then again, it's not my fun being restricted); it is also the first day of release for Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ which did killer business. I have no interest in seeing the film. I already saw the film version of the Jesus' death done in Jack Chick's inimitable style. The title of this VHS/DVD release is The Light of the World. Man, that film is a trip.

Posted 8:48 AM by Scoobie Davis

Why is Sean Hannity Intellectually Dishonest? Reason Number 578
On yesterday’s radio program, Hannity had this to say: “...You [John Kerry] are a left-wing radical. And that picture with Hanoi Jane—the woman who gave aid and comfort to our enemy—means something to some Americans. It is not questioning your service. We applaud it. I wrote about it in my first book—not even knowing that this would be a big issue. I applaud your service but you were with a woman that [sic] gave aid and comfort to our enemies. That’s what’s so outrageous about this.”

REALITY: Hannity is referring to a 1970 photograph that the hard right is attempting to use against Kerry (and getting nowhere with it—which necessitated the creation of a forged Kerry-Fonda photo). Let me get this straight: Because 1) Kerry and Fonda were in the same audience of a 1970 anti-war rally (Kerry and Fonda were three rows apart); and 2) This rally occurred a full two years before Fonda’s infamous trip to North Vietnam; in Hannity’s mind, this constitutes being “with a woman [who] gave aid and comfort to our enemies.” And it isn’t as if the truth about the photograph hasn’t been pointed out to Hannity in the past: I mentioned in a previous post that Hannity’s television co-host Alan Colmes made these points to Hannity on the show and Hannity had no response. It is only on the radio—where Hannity has no balance—where he can make such an attack again. That's what's so outrageous about this.

Posted 1:34 PM by Scoobie Davis

Hannity on Kerry
Kerry people should listen to Sean Hannity's radio show; it will give them a taste of what they're going to get from the rest of the right later in the year. In the first hour of today's radio show, Hannity shot off several cheap shots. First, he once again accused Kerry of flip-flopping on gay marriage because of a letter he signed two years ago. Hannity's TV co-host Alan Colmes punctured this myth and Hannity was present and didn't respond. Hmmm.

However, Hannityreally sunk low when he tried to link Kerry to Jane Fonda later in the first hour. I'll have the transcript later.

Posted 10:06 AM by Scoobie Davis

Ralph Nader
I'm going to work more about Nader some other time. In the meantime, Ryan Lizza and Ruy Teixeira don't think that Nader is the threat he was in 2000. I generally agree.

Posted 8:46 AM by Scoobie Davis

Happy Mardi Gras
I wish I were in New Orleans passing out beads.

Posted 11:53 PM by Scoobie Davis

First Annual Rent Party
This is the most hits in a day yet--thanks to a link from Atrios. One of the reasons I have written a lot in the past couple weeks is that I am not working now. If you like this blog and you've never contributed, then hit the Amazon Honor System icon on the left (right below the Prank Phone Call List) or click here and help support this site. If just a few people threw me five or ten bucks, it would help out a lot. Thanks in advance because I really need a few contributions to pay the rent--I wasn't being metaphorical.
UPDATE: Thanks to your generous contributions, I erased my rent deficit. Woo Hoo!

Posted 1:40 PM by Scoobie Davis

Bill O'Reilly In LA--The Pasty-Meter Pegs Up
I heard on KABC that Bill O'Reilly would be speaking at the Wadsworth Theater in Brentwood as part of KABC's "2004 All-Star Talk Tour." The announcement said there would be a question and answer period following the talk; I thought this would be the perfect forum to ask a tough but fair question and see how Mr. No Spin would respond.

I thought it was a good omen that the talk would be at the Wadsworth Theater. The Wadsworth Theater gives me a warm feeling every time I pass it--even though I had never been inside of it until I saw O'Reilly speak. The parking lot next to it was the site of three of my most enjoyable party crashing events: the after-parties for the premieres of Spider-Man, xXx, and Terminator 3. It seemed kind of odd that at a place I had so much fun, people would be parking their cars in order to see O'Reilly's lame old-dude-on-a-bar-stool routine.

I thought it would be good to look as clean-cut as possible at the event. I trimmed my sideburns (the latest Playboy advisor said that appropriate sideburn length for the business world is "midear"). I wore a nice pullover, slacks, my new ankle boots, and a varsity jacket. I figured I would pass muster if a line formed to ask O'Reilly questions (For what it's worth, the concession stand lady told me I looked like James Spader).

O'Reilly was scheduled to speak at 7:30 so I arrived at 5:30 to get a good seat. When I got to the theater, I noticed there wasn't a microphone in the audience area--as there usually is for Q & A sessions. I went to the lobby area and there was a sign telling people to fill out cards for questions to ask O'Reilly (it turned out that after O'Reilly gave his talk, KABC radio host Al Rantel had the Q & A with O'Reilly with the cards). I knew that there would be no way they would ask O'Reilly any of the questions I wanted to ask him, so I didn't bother to fill out a card. I asked the guy at the KABC table why they weren't going to have a live Q & A with audience members. He said that it was due to time considerations. I was pissed.

Since I had nothing to do for a couple hours, I decided to take a look at the audience members and see if they were "the working class" people O'Reilly prides himself on representing (I scanned the audience before, during, and after the event). The audience certainly wasn't representative of the working people of the great Los Angeles area. For one thing, this was an audience that was overwhelmingly white; there were about 700 audience members and I counted six whom I could tell were not white (that's less than one percent!) The last time I saw anything as close to this high a percentage of white people at an event in the LA area was a 2000 Nader rally in Long Beach. Let me repeat:

The last time I saw anything as close to this high a percentage of white people at an event in the LA area was a 2000 Nader rally in Long Beach.

I think the last time there was a crowd this pasty was when Dick and Lynne arrived at a Cheney family reunion.

Let's contrast this with the working people of Los Angeles. I live in a working class neighborhood and I commute with working class people on the bus and metro. The people there were not the working classes of LA. What I could tell from the people I saw and the cars they drove, it would be fair to say that the audience was primarily comprised of middle and upper-middle class whitebreads. I thought it was a big contrast with the Brentwood Coffee Bean I visited after O'Reilly's talk; about one third of the customers were nonwhite.

There is no dishonor in this. I have nothing personal against the O'Reilly's audience for being middle and upper-middle class white people (especially the blonde wearing the miniskirt and fuck-me boots). I come from a middle class white background. I honor many of the values of middle class society (e.g., when I have to tell someone to quit talking in the movie theater, it is very rarely a middle class person). I went to a predominantly upper-middle class undergraduate school (and if it were possible to still be there, I would still be there). So my dispute is not with middle class white society, it is with O'Reilly's claim to represent the American working class. He may be their champion, but they weren't the people who showed up to his speech.

My thesis was further supported by audience reaction to O'Reilly's talk. O'Reilly brought down the house when he made the following observations:

"...[E]veryone in California should have a right to carry a concealed weapon."

"He [George W. Bush] did really well [in an interview on the O'Reilly Factor]."

"Stuart Smalley [Al Franken] is the biggest liar in the country!" [O'Reilly didn't elaborate on any of Franken's alleged lies to the audience]

"If the presidential race were held tomorrow, Bush would win. Bush would win." [The applause was very loud after this comment]

"Well-informed people don't listen to Barbra Steisand."

The crowd really ate it up over O'Reilly's most obnoxious comment that night: "If I were gay, I would marry Hillary!"

These comments also don't exactly square with one of O'Reilly's comments in his talk: "I'm not an ideologue. I don't have an agenda. What I want is the best for America--the best for the folks." Is O'Reilly full of it? I'm reporting; you decide.

Addendum: NewsMax sponsors O'Reilly's newsletter: The title the story on O'Reilly's trip to LA this week in his 2/19 No Spin email newsletter was "Bill Survives a Week in California." It also noted that the newsletter was sponsored by Chris Ruddy's NewsMax. Celebrity Boxing? In his talk, O'Reilly made the following comments: "...Snoop Dogg, who, by the way, in a magazine said that he wants to b-slap me [audience laughter] ... I've got a message for Snoop: Hey, Mr. Dogg, you may be sniffing around the wrong guy here. [Audience laughter] ...You lay a finger on me and your rap days may be over fast!" [Audience applause and laughter] One Thing I wanted to ask O'Reilly: I wanted to ask him about the phony quote in Who's Looking Out for You?

Update: Welcome to Atrios readers. If you're unfamiliar with this site, check it out. The front page is here.

Posted 9:29 AM by Scoobie Davis

Oscar Picks
MSN has an article on worst Oscar picks in history. My personal choices: 1) 1964 Best Picture. The winner was My Fair Lady. My Fair Lady was a perfectly fine picture, but it pales in comparison to Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb . 2) 1994 Best Picture. Forest Gump was the winner but Quiz Show, The Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Ed Wood were all better.

Posted 2:41 PM by Scoobie Davis

Big Trouble
Josh Marshall with the latest on the purloined memo scandal.

Posted 12:54 PM by Scoobie Davis

Get Your Lame Ass Out of my Party, Cont'd
The latest target in my series of posts telling bogus Democrats to get their lame asses out of the Democratic Party is Zell Miller. Right now he is on Sean Hannity's radio show. He seems right at home with other Hannity guests such as Ralph Reed and Newt Gingrich. More on this later.

Posted 11:17 AM by Scoobie Davis

Posting Later
I went to Bill O'Reilly's speaking appearance in Brentwood last night and I will have some observations posted either tonight or this weekend. Teaser: The demographics of the audience don't quite jibe with O'Reilly's representation of himself as the champion of the common "working people."

Posted 9:00 AM by Scoobie Davis
Woo Hoo!!!!!!!!
According to Campaigns & Elections magazine's handicapping service, George W. Bush's chances for election in November were recently downgraded from 56.3 percent to 54.3.

Posted 11:26 AM by Scoobie Davis

Mark My Words
Rush Limbaugh is in big trouble with the law. He spent the first 20 minutes of the third hour of his radio show in a long-winded screed about his legal problems. He doth protest too much.
UPDATE: In the third hour of the show, a caller contrasted Limbaugh concerns with the confidentiality of his own medical records with John Ashcroft's decision to subpoena the medical records of women who had abortions. Limbaugh blasted him: "You want to talk about hypocricy. Go talk to your buddies down here in south Florida [the state offical investiaging Limbaugh] who are propelled by hate and rage and no sense of reason, justice, or facts, whatsoever. You people have got to get over with what happened in 2000 down here or you're going to eat yourselves alive with your hate and rage. I'm only trying to help you here."

Posted 9:16 AM by Scoobie Davis

This Month's Playboy
The cover for the latest Playboy has "WWE supervixons Sable and Torrie." I don't follow wrestling so I'm not familiar with them except know that Sable posed for Playboy several months ago (the Sable/Torrie pictorial is nothing to write home about). On page 36, there's a topless photo of Uma Thurman from Dangerous Liaisons. There is a hot Cyber Girl pictorial--Ania Zalewski is looking totally hot. There's a cartoon of two guys sitting at a bar, one says to the other: "I'm a big Bush fan, but I'd like to see a shaved one occasionally." My thoughts exactly.

Posted 8:55 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Full Story
Mark Kleiman gives the full scoop on the Drudge smear here.

Posted 8:53 AM by Scoobie Davis

Observation
Someone taped the Spanish language version of "Hi There!" (it was titled "Hola!") to the front door of my apartment building. JC (Jack Chick, that is) works in mysterious ways.

Posted 9:52 PM by Scoobie Davis

Read This
Sidney Blumenthal on the Drudge Slime Machine:

"Screw journalism! The whole thing's a fraud anyway," Drudge has proclaimed. Though he calls himself an "information anarchist," he is anything but independent. Rather, he is a reliable submissive to his partisan "sources." One independent study of his "exclusive" stories determined that only about one-third were true. His latest "intern" revelation is the sound of his master's voice at the beginning of a campaign Republicans fear losing.

Posted 9:50 PM by Scoobie Davis

This is Funny
The Dolphin Queen on George W. Bush's roots:

Someone said to me: But how can you call him normal when he came from such privilege? Indeed he did. But there's nothing lemonade-on-the-porch-overlooking-the-links-at-the-country-club about Mr. Bush. He isn't smooth. He actually has some of the roughness and the resentments of the self-made man. I think the reason for this is Texas. He grew up in a white T-shirt and jeans playing ball in the street with the other kids in the subdivision. Barbara Bush wasn't exactly fancy. They lived like everyone else. She spoke to me once with great nostalgia of her early days in Texas, when she and her husband and young George slept in the same bed in an apartment in Midland. A prostitute lived in the complex. Barbara Bush just thought she was popular. Then they lived in a series of suburban houses.

George W. Bush didn't grow up at Greenwich Country Day with a car and a driver dropping him off, as his father had. Until he went off to boarding school, he thought he was like everyone else. That's a gift, to think you're just like everyone else in America. It can be the making of you.

UPDATE: In the response section for this article, a reader from Lexington, Kentucky makes the following observation:

George Bush just like everyone else? Unbelievable! Boarding school. Yale. Harvard. Political strings to get in the Guard with a test score in the 25th percentile! Special loans from daddy's friends to buy Ranger's stock. (Self-made indeed.) Alcohol abuse. Normal?

Oh how Ms. Noonan loves "normal." A person graduates from Harvard and uses words like "misunderestimate." That isn't normal. It is stupid.

Posted 9:52 AM by Scoobie Davis

Limbaugh Loses It
I didn't hear Limbaugh's radio show yesterday (I was in Mexico at la dentista's office; don't laugh--I saved a lot of money). A reader emailed me and told me that a caller confronted Pillhead yesterday about his rumormonging regarding Kerry's personal life. Darn, I missed it. Today on Limbaugh's show, Limbaugh continued his conspiratorial thinking (e.g., last week, he thought the Clinton were behind the rumors about John Kerry's sex life). Today, he said that the DNC was behind Howard Dean's implosion.
UPDATE: Just a minute ago, Limbaugh mentioned the caller yesterday who scolded him about his rumormongering. Limbaugh said the Kerry/intern nonstory was still alive because the British tabloid The Sun (Limbaugh referred to it as a "newspaper"; FYI, Nikkala--this week's Page 3 girl for The Sun is looking good) is still treating the nonstory as a story.

Also, Limbaugh revived the conspiracy that "this is all about Hillary in 2008" and that she and her surrogates are putting forth unelectable candidates--Kerry and Edwards--so that Hillary can run in 2008.

Posted 12:00 PM by Scoobie Davis

It's Wrong
I am strongly opposed to looking into the allegations surrounding self-appointed Virtue Czar William Bennett's sex life. I take this position, not out of ethical concerns, because the butterball has it coming. I oppose it for aesthetic reasons: some very unpleasant thought-pictures emerged when I first read about it.

Posted 11:50 AM by Scoobie Davis

On Drudge
All this week, The Howler will discuss Matt Drudge's nonstory about Kerry. Today's installment also mentions how the Fox News crew is whitewashing the Boy King's AWOL status.

Posted 8:51 AM by Scoobie Davis

The New York Times--At Long Last--Gets It
They finally mentioned Katherine Harris' racist voter purge prior to the 2000
(s)election. Danny Schechter has the story on Greg Palast's site.
UPDATE: The Schechter article doesn't link to the Times' editorial "How America Doesn't Vote": here is the link. It's a good read (though about three and-a-half years late). Thanks to Phyllis for pointing this out to me.

Posted 6:30 PM by Scoobie Davis

Kerry Nation? Maybe.
Fred Barnes has a column titled Kerry Nation? Don´t Bet On It (via Calpundit). I remember around May of 1992, Barnes had a cover story for the New Republic titled, Why Clinton Can´t Win.

Posted 12:12 PM by Scoobie Davis

Happy Presidents' Day
I'm not taking the day off--I will post later.

Posted 6:01 PM by Scoobie Davis

Yuck!
I watched Scarborough Country on MSNBC and on the panel they had Mark Mellman, senior advisor to the Kerry campaign. I thought a hedgehog had jumped on his face but then I realized it was his beard. Lose the beard, dude. Trust me.

Posted 11:47 AM by Scoobie Davis

Happy Belated Valentime's [sic] Day
I knew a woman who didn't say "Valentines", she said "Valentime's." Anyway, the Scoobster didn't have to spend any money on gifts because he's unattached. He bought himself a gift though. Remember when I wrote that I couldn't justify spending $65.00 on ankle boots? Well, I still can't. However, at the Two Dollar Clothing store near Pico and Alvarado, I found a new pair of black ankle boots with buckles for $20.00. They are Talent brand which are made in Mexico. I not only saved money but these ankle boot were made out of synthetic materials, not leather. So I got karma-free ankle boots. Sweet!

Posted 10:40 AM by Scoobie Davis

Drat! I Need More Juice Cloths
I experienced juice cloth blowout today. Let me give you the background on my juicer. I have a top of the line juicing apparatus: it's the K & K Grinder and Press. It retails for $1300 new (I bought an old model on Ebay for $230 a few years ago--it doesn't matter because these juicers last forever)--It's just like the $2000 Norwalk Juicer except that the K & K has a manual press that uses a hydraulic jack (the press for the Norwalk is electric).

What makes the K & K and Norwalk juicers superior is that they extract the most juice. It's a two-step process: 1) The grinder turns the fruits and/or vegetables into a puree; 2) The puree is then enclosed in a juice cloth that is pressed into juice. The pulp is left in the juice cloth. They are so efficient at extracting the most juice that the leftover pulp is dry and is like cardboard. The juice is delish.

Well, today I made some apple, orange, beet, carrot juice (sprinkled with barley green and wheatgrass powder). However, the juice cloth developed a hole. I have to get new juice cloths now. Bummer. Until I get my new cloths, I can used the one iwth the hole; I just have to fold it a certain way to get it to work.

Posted 9:51 AM by Scoobie Davis

Stand Up Against Hate
George Must Go is on the warpath against Ann Coulter's smear against former Senator Max Cleland's war record.

Posted 8:59 AM by Scoobie Davis

Yes, Virginia, Alan Colmes Does Have A Sack
I was concerned when I heard that con man Ted Sampley would be on Hannity & Colmes last night. For those of you not familiar with my views on Colmes, to paraphrase the late great Charles Bronson in Mr. Majestyk, Colmes is in the wrong line of work. So I emailed Colmes the recent column by Joe Conason on Sampley the founder of Vietnam Veterans Against Kerry (scroll down to yesterday's post). (At the time, I didn't know about this excerpt from Susan Katz Keating's book, Prisoners of Hope: Exploiting the POW-MIA Myth in America--via Roger Ailes; Sampley is a complete nutcase and a ghoul).

However, last night, Colmes mopped the floor with Sampley. When Sampley called Kerry "a traitor," Colmes' response was to point out that Sampley had also called John McCain a traitor. (To his credit, Hannity also rebuked Sampley for calling Kerry a traitor). Colmes mentioned the loony article by Sampley titled "The Manchurian Candidate" (it's mentioned in the Keating excerpt) in which Sampley portrayed McCain as an undercover KGB spy. Colmes ended the segment by telling Sampley, "You're slurring Kerry just as you slurred McCain a number of years ago."

That same night when the discussion was gay marriage, Hannity tried to portray Kerry as flip-flopping on the issue because of his current opposition to gay marriage and his recent opposition to an anti-gay marriage amendment. Colmes was quick to point out that Kerry was not inconsistent--he opposed the amendment in question because it also restricted civil unions, which Kerry favored--along with Dick Cheney. Also, a couple of nights ago, when Hannity brought up the subject of the photo of Kerry and Jane Fonda in the same audience at a 1970 anti-war rally, Colmes quickly countered that 1) the photo was taken two years before Fonda's infamous trip to Hanoi; and 2) it wasn't a photo of Kerry with Fonda but it just showed them in the same audience.

I was willing to give up all hope for Colmes when recently he told Katherine Harris that they were friends, but he's worth a second look.

Posted 8:13 AM by Scoobie Davis

Yo
I'll have my post on Alan Colmes' exemplary performance with con man Ted Sampley in the next hour.

Posted 9:43 PM by Scoobie Davis

Sweet
Paul Krugman in Friday's New York Times:

But when administration officials are challenged about the blatant deceptions in their budgets — or, for that matter, about the use of prewar intelligence — their response, almost always, is to fall back on the president's character. How dare you question Mr. Bush's honesty, they ask, when he is a man of such unimpeachable integrity? And that leaves critics with no choice: they must point out that the man inside the flight suit bears little resemblance to the official image.

There is, as far as I can tell, no positive evidence that Mr. Bush is a man of exceptional uprightness. When has he even accepted responsibility for something that went wrong? On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that he is willing to cut corners when it's to his personal advantage. His business career was full of questionable deals, and whatever the full truth about his National Guard service, it was certainly not glorious.

Old history, you may say, and irrelevant to the present. And perhaps that would be true if Mr. Bush was prepared to come clean about his past. Instead, he remains evasive. On "Meet the Press" he promised to release all his records — and promptly broke that promise.

I don't know what he's hiding. But I do think he has forfeited any right to cite his character to turn away charges that his administration is lying about its policies. And that is the point: Mr. Bush may not be a particularly bad man, but he isn't the paragon his handlers portray.

Posted 4:52 PM by Scoobie Davis

Does Alan Colmes Have A Sack?
On his radio show, Sean Hannity said that a representative of Vietnam Veteran's Against Kerry will be a guest on Hannity & Colmes tonight. So a couple hours ago, I emailed Colmes and told him about Joe Consaon's article on the group's founder Ted Sampley. Conason's article gives Colmes a lot of ammo; the question is: Will Colmes use it?
UPDATE: Colmes does have a sack; Sampley was the guest on Hannity & Colmes and Colmes was tough with Sampley. More details later.

Posted 12:15 PM by Scoobie Davis

It Doesn't Add Up
I don't know what Wesley Clark said but Drudge claims that "[i]n an off-the-record conversation with a dozen reporters earlier this week, General Wesley Clark plainly stated: "Kerry will implode over an intern issue." [Three reporters in attendance confirm Clark made the startling comments.]" As I write this, Sean Hannity is treating this allegation as an established fact.

If Clark believed that the frontrunner would implode and said this, why did he drop out of the race? Also, why would Clark be planning to endorse Kerry if he thought Kerry was dead meat?

UPDATE: According to Drudge, Clark denied mentioning an intern. He just said it on Hannity's radio show. Hannity suspects that the Clintons are behind the alleged leak. Drudge just claimed that there is a tape of an interview the alleged woman had with a reporter before she allegedly left the country.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: I was right; TNR's Ryan Lizza debunks Drudge's claim about Clark.

Posted 9:24 AM by Scoobie Davis

Let's Remember Who We're Dealing With
I hope my conversation with Drudge will give you an idea about his views on journalistic integrity. I'm hoping that legitimate journalistic outlets will remember Drudge's track record.

Posted 5:12 PM by Scoobie Davis

AWOL Update
Keven Drum spoke with Bill Burkett--developing. Also, read David Corn's take.

Posted 1:04 PM by Scoobie Davis

Memories
According to the Kerry Blog, Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) endorsed John Kerry. Back in 2000, yours truly was a volunteer for Schiff in his successful effort to oust former impeachment manager James Rogan from the House.

Posted 10:12 AM by Scoobie Davis

Jeane Dixon
On today's Radio Factor, Bill O'Reilly patted himself on the back when he pointed to his prediction from a week ago that Wesley Clark--whom O'Reilly referred to as a "pinhead"--would drop of of the presidential race (like, no shit, Dick Tracy). Today, O'Reilly also made a prediction about the Bush AWOL story:

It [the story] disappears in about a week. Kerry himself said today that he's not going to make an issue of it and he's smart to do that. He's smart to do that. It's an ideologically-driven story. The guy, the President, got an honorable discharge--maybe he cut some corners--we all did when we were younger. I see it as not a reflection on who he is today. And Kerry has taken the high road and Kerry is smart.

I'm betting that O'Reilly is wrong. Orcinus has more.

Posted 8:27 AM by Scoobie Davis

Blast From The Past
Now that I'm a Kerry supporter, I thought it would be good to go to the archives of Scoobie Davis Online and link to the hilarious transcript of the caller to Rush Limbaugh's radio show who contrasted John Kerry's service with that of George W. Bush.

Posted 5:39 PM by Scoobie Davis

It's Over For Wesley Clark
I have known this for a while. The Clark Sphere acknowledges it. Accordingly, I am throwing my support to John Kerry.

Posted 2:59 PM by Scoobie Davis

Wow!
Joe Conason has the goods on Ted Sampley, the bottom-feeder behind Vietnam Veterans Against Kerry. Attention bloggers: if you link to this story, please mention Sampley's name and Vietnam Vets Against Kerry so that it increases the likelihood that a site linking to this story pops up when people use a search engine for Sampley's name and organization.

Posted 9:55 AM by Scoobie Davis

The AWOL Issue Isn't Going Anywhere This Time Around
During the 2000 elections, I didn't know the blogosphere existed (did it?). This year, bloggers are on top of the Bush AWOL story and are holding the mainstream media accountable (as they did for Trent Lott's comments on Strom and after the publication of Slander). The big players on this are CalPundit, The Daily Howler, and, of course, Josh Marshall. Expect a major shitstorm soon.

Dishonorable mention on the Bush AWOL story goes to Mr. No Spin himself, Bill O'Reilly. On today's Radio Factor, O"Reilly made the following comments: "It's really a non-issue at this point."

Posted 8:34 AM by Scoobie Davis

Soros is Bad--Compared to Whom?
Right before last Thanksgiving, I asked readers what was wrong with this op-ed criticizing George Soros and his money that was going to Democrats. I received many e-mails regarding the most obvious flaw of the op-ed. I promised to give the answers in a few days but I let it slip my mind. Better late than never: here are the answers:

1. The “newspaper” that printed the op-ed was the Sun Myung Moon-owned Washington Times. The Times has a lot of gall to cast stones regarding the ethics of political sugar daddies. John Gorenfeld has a succinct chart that illustrates the absurdity of this criticism of Soros.

2. Only one person e-mailed me about the gall of the author of the to judge the moral fitness to participate in American politics. Bossie is one of the most repellent characters in American politics. One example: During the 1992 campaign, Brown and Bossie hounded the relatives of a woman who had committed suicide to support a smear that the woman, one of Bill Clinton’s former law students, killed herself after being impregnated by Clinton. Bossie barged into the hospital room of the deceased woman’s mother who was visiting her husband. When CBS’s Erik Engberg reported on Brown and Bossie’s activates, the Bush White House repudiated them, calling them “the lowest forms of life.” Sadly, it didn’t take long for Brown and Bossie to be fully rehabilitated by the American right.

3. Another example: In Brown and Bossie’s hit book, Slick Willie, they include a “special thanks” to virulent racist Jim Johnson (also, in Slick Willie, they present the law student smear as established fact).

4. Bossie is a complete whacko—he peddled wild tales about Vince Foster’s death. It seems odd that he feels that he has room to determine the political hygiene of others.

5. At the end of the op-ed, Bossie is listed as “a former chief investigator for the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight.” This is correct, but I thought it would be something that Bossie would want us to forget. You see, Bossie was unceremoniously fired for doctoring tapes of Web Hubbell for partisan purposes.

The benighted masses that watch Bossie being treated as a legitimate pundit by Fox News’ Greta Von Stretched-Face don’t realize who Bossie really is. Thanks, Greta for the fair and balanced coverage.

Posted 11:52 PM by Scoobie Davis

If You Have an Extra 50 Bucks Lying Around...
Screw George W. Bush using the Freedom of Information Act. I doubt if it will work, but it's a fun read.

Posted 1:36 PM by Scoobie Davis

Sean Hannity's Butchered Quote
Sean Hannity is full of shit. On his radio show, Hannity butchered a quote that John Kerry made in 1971 before a Senate committee that was looking at atrocities committed in Vietnam. Hannity did the same thing the Washington Times' Wes Pruden did earlier (see SemiPundit's analysis). Hannity, like Pruden, deceptively uses ellipses (. . .) in the quote and takes the quote entirely out of context to give a different impression of Kerry's words. Then, Hannity uses the out-of-context quote to launch a vicious attack on Kerry—which Hannity knows not to be true because Hannity saw the original context of the quote. Here is what Hannity—like Pruden--said that Kerry said:

"They ... raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside."

Right after he gave Kerry's out-of-context quote, here is what Hannity said: "That's what John Kerry says he witnessed with his fellow soldiers in Vietnam. John Kerry said that."

Later in the show, Hannity played dumb about the larger context of the quote: [repeating parts of the quote]

...“cut off heads, cut off limbs” Has anyone asked Mr. Kerry if he witnessed this? Has anyone asked Mr. Kerry if he’s ever brought those people to justice—that acted like animals as he’s accusing them of? He says soldiers randomly shot civilians. Did he ever tell the authorities? Has John Kerry ever filed charges against these people? He says his fellow soldiers razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan—that soldiers shot cattle and dogs for fun. These are Americans troops—boys we are talking about. That American soldiers poisoned food stocks and ravaged the countryside. Oh, he witnessed this and he knows who did it or I guess he wouldn’t have said this before Congress. If Vietnam is going to be the issue, let’s ask Senator Kerry, in fact, whether or not he witnessed this, and if, in fact he did, who is responsible for the murder of innocent men, women, and children. Who did he see raping other women in Vietnam? What are their names? Who did he see cutting off ears and heads and limbs in Vietnam? What soldiers did he witness doing this—considering he made the statement back then? He’s using his past service and his medals—was using them then—perhaps to undermine—We have to raise this question. Brave men and women who were still in Vietnam, accusing them of horrible atrocities, accusing his country of widespread murder. I don’t see any evidence to corroborate his charges here and I haven’t seen Tim Russert ask him any questions about these things. That hurt the war effort. That was part of the politics injected in the war—we see what happens. I think an argument can be made that it endangered our soldiers who were out there fighting and dying against an enemy.

REALITY: Hannity knew he was lying through his teeth about whether Kerry witnessed these things personally because he was familiar with what Kerry actually said. Here is the actual quote that Kerry made to the Senate committee without ellipses and in context:

“I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans and say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit - the emotions in the room and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.”

“They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.”

Is Sean Hannity a pathological liar? I’m reporting; you decide.

UPDATE: On Hannity & Colmes tonight, they had a panel discussion with Rich Lowry and Susan Estrich on Kerry's 1971 testimony. To their credit, Colmes and Estrisch did a somewhat adequate job of defending Kerry against Hannity's charges--Colmes brought up the fact that Kerry was reporting what other Vietnam vets had told him, not that he witnessed these events as Hannity dishonestly insinuated; this somewhat squelched Hannity's dishonest line of arguement. Neither Colmes nor Estrich hit any home runs, but keep in mind: this is Fox News.

Posted 1:08 PM by Scoobie Davis

Utterly Despicable
I'll have a post on Sean Hannity later today.

Posted 12:05 PM by Scoobie Davis

There He Goes Again
Pillboy mentioned on his radio show today that he had a 1970 photo that shows John Kerry and Jane Fonda at an anti-war rally(This was a full two years before Fonda made her infamous trip to North Vietnam). He posted it on his web site. This is the kind of things Democrats should expect more of as the campaign progresses--which makes the advice I gave in the previous post all the more relevant.

Posted 10:58 AM by Scoobie Davis

Every Democrat Should Read This Transcript And Take Notes

Here is a partial transcript of The New Republic's Peter Beinart on Hugh Hewitt's radio show on Friday (the guest host was Mark Larson):

LARSON: Let's talk about the Democrats and Terry MacAuliffe and the dancing around on this Bush as AWOL comment. It starts with Michael Moore on something that Wesley Clark couldn't even--

BEINART: It didn't start with Michael Moore. This is the thing. It started with a very, very credible, very strong Boston Globe story in 2000.

LARSON: From Area 51 or where? They haven't found any dirt on this. They haven't been able to connect the dots.

BEINART: That's ridiculous! What they--The evidence clearly points to him skipping the year. The guy who was his supervisor said he never came and they don't have the records that they should have had. What's actually remarkable is how little evidence the Bush administration and its supporters have thrown back to try to suggest that he ever was there.

LARSON: Did you take offense--did the hair on the back of your neck go up when MacAuliffe pretty much implying that if you're in the National Guard, that's not really the military--we have 22,000 of them over there [in Iraq].

BEINART: I can't believe that you're going for this?

LARSON: That I'm going for it?

BEINART: No one is attacking Bush for being in the National Guard. They're attacking him for not going to his National Guard service. You know, if I were in Iraq in the National Guard now, I would be pretty pissed off if someone in the National Guard didn't show up.

LARSON: I don't think you can say "off" on family radio. But that's okay. It seems to me that MacAuliffe is doing a lot of ballroom dancing now to kind of soften that comment and maybe not go the way of Michael Moore. Does that mean they realize they don't have anything?

BEINART: Let me tell you: we have called for Terry MacAuliffe to resign. We are not his fans. I think he's a terrible spokesman for the Democratic Party. The best thing he ever did [was] to throw this story out, because this is an absolutely legitimate story. And you know what? The Republicans need to be told in a very, very explicit way about this election: No more Mister Nice Guy. We are going to be as tough?if not tougher?than you are because we have seen the kind of scorched earth tactics that the Republican Party has used. This is an absolutely legitimate story--no question about it. And what is amazing is Republicans don't go after the substance because they know they don't actually have a strong case and so they try to mau-mau people...[End of Transcript]

We have everything to gain and nothing to lose by being tough. So the right is going to accuse of being tough and unfair? They have doing that to the Democrats even though they, for the most part, have laid down for Bush for the past three years. Despite that, there have been bestsellers published that have argued that the lack of civil political discourse "is all liberals' fault." More incredibly, we had a member of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page make the following observation about Democrats:

The mistake the Democrats made was to allow their antiwar movement to become infused with bitterness and hostility, with a spirit of destructiveness. By the end the animating spirit of the movement looked something like this: We do not love this place; we prefer leaders unsullied by the grubby demands of electoral politics; we are drawn to the ideological purity of Ho, Fidel, Mao. And by the way we're taking over: Oppose our vision and we'll take care of you by revolutionary means. . .That was the ultimate spirit of the movement, and it began to take over your party.

The right will always bad-mouth the Democrats as unfair and rough, no matter how meek they are. We might as well fight.

Posted 9:24 AM by Scoobie Davis

Transcript Soon
I'll have the Peter Beinart transcript I promised soon.

Posted 10:40 AM by Scoobie Davis

I Wasn't Keeping Track, But...
Of the five questions that Joe Conason submitted to Tim Russert to ask George W. Bush on Meet The Press today, the important one that Russert did ask Bush was question one, pertaining to the authorization to release of all of Bush's military records relating to his Nationa Guard service/nonservice. Bush agreed. I have the feeling that this will bite Bush in the butt in the coming months. I enjoyed Bush's OJ defense, arguing that receiving an honorary discharge absolved him of wrongdoing.

Posted 1:05 AM by Scoobie Davis

The LA Comic Book Convention
I had a blast at the LA Comic Book Convention. Yes, I confess that I enjoy comic books (my favorites are by Jack Chick and Batton Lash who does Supernatural Law). As I have mentioned in the past, the LA Comic Con--like all comic cons--has more than its share of fanboys who fit the fanboy stereotype. This one was no exception.

Prior to the panel with artists and writers for The Simpsons and Futurama, there was a Simpsons trivia contest (I made it past the first round and won a comic book). During the Q & A with the panel, I asked about the nude Futurama shirt I had that was drawn by Matt Groening. They told me it was "insider stuff" and that the artists often draw characters from the shows in scenarios that would never be used by the shows. After the panel, they signed stuff (I got my copies of the Futurama comic book signed--issues 1-4).

There was also a panel for the upcoming film Hellboy. It had director Guillermo del Toro and stars Ron Perlman and Doug Jones. I like del Toro; he has attitude. They showed a ten-minute clip that showed scenes from the film as well as cast and crew discussing the film. I want to see this film.

Posted 7:45 AM by Scoobie Davis

How The Democrats Should Act
The New Republic's Peter Beinart was on Hugh Hewitt's radio show yesterday. He was smokin'. I will excerpt his discussion over the weekend.

Posted 1:45 PM by Scoobie Davis

Scooter Libby and John Hannah
Indictments would make my day.

Posted 9:18 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Ethics and Fun of Mocking Street Proselytizers
I have the attitude that anyone who approaches me on the street and wants to convert me to their religion or their political views is fair game for whatever mockery and derision I believe is appropriate for the occasion. It's always fun to mess with the minds of the hapless followers of fringe presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche. One thing I like to do to proselytizers is whenever they talk to me is to only respond with the words "Dude, where's my car?" ("Kenneth, what is the frequency" is so 1980's). And I can't wait for the Green Party people to be out there handing out flyers for the 2004 campaign (In 2000, I deliberately gave up a prime chance to get laid in order to mock a Greenie). I regret that I haven't been approached by charity-scamming Moonies recently (by the way, John Gorenfeld has some good recent posts about Moon and the Unification Church).

I know some of you out there think I'm callous. Quite the opposite--when a person wasting his or her life on a futile or ridiculous cause (e.g., the Green Party, the LaRouchie movement, or the Unification Church), then when these deluded souls meet a proper adult and are ridiculed, then it's one step in the direction of reassessing their lives and then getting real lives. The last thing these people need is an enabler who humors them--they need reality.

My latest tack is to use these people to help practice my Spanish. Last weekend, some Spanish-speaking Jehovah’s Witnesses approached me. I tried telling them in Spanish that I used to live near Jehovah’s Witnesses founder Charles Taze Russell’s hometown Pittsburgh and that Pittsburgh is a party town and that I'm a party animal ("uno fiestero"). It got to the point where the Witnesses used an excuse to get away from me.

Posted 11:42 AM by Scoobie Davis

What Is It Worth Now?
I saw Stalag 17 last night. I love that film. Not to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen this Billy Wilder classic about the goings-on in a World War II Nazi prisoner of war camp, but when William Holden speculated that the wealthy family of the soldier he was helping to escape would probably give him $10,000. I wondered how much that would be in today's money. So I went to this web site and found that $10,000 in the early 1940's was worth about $102,000 in today's money.

Posted 11:03 AM by Scoobie Davis

Oh Well
For those of you who don't know, I endorsed Wesley Clark. The past couple weeks have not been encouraging for his candidacy. Yesterday, he did win Oklahoma, but the Kerry momentum is real and probably unstoppable. I'm disappointed but I believe that Kerry is a nominee who can re-defeat Bush. It won't be easy--the right probably is not going to run against Kerry as much as they're going to run against Massachusetts. However, Kerry is a tough cookie and he has some able people working for him.

Posted 7:38 AM by Scoobie Davis

What To Expect From Talk Radio in the Fall
Yesterday on the Radio Factor's "no-spin zone," Judge Andrew Napolitano was subbing for Bill O'Reilly. The topic was George W. Bush's AWOL status when he was in the champagne division of the Texas Air National Guard (a position he got because of strings pulled by Daddykins so that fighting in Vietnam--an action both the younger and elder Bush supported--could be done by ghetto blacks and working class whites). Napolitano said, against all evidence, that it was "luck of the draw" that Bush was "not on active duty" in Vietnam. Excuse me while I laugh.

If John F. Kerry becomes the nominee, Sean Hannity will attempt to make an issue of Kerry's stance toward the CIA and the intelligence community during the 1980's. The Kerry people should look into this.