White House Correspondents Association tells Rich Little not to make fun of the president, or Iraq

So much for an impartial press. This is actually quite serious. If the White House Correspondents Association is so afraid of doing anything that criticizes the president, even in jest, then how does this affect their reporting? How can these people write fair, accurate and impartial stories about the increasing woes of this administration if they are so fearful of any speech that may upset this administration?

From Attytood:

Little said organizers of the event made it clear they don't want a repeat of last year's controversial appearance by Stephen Colbert, whose searing satire of President Bush and the White House press corps fell flat and apparently touched too many nerves.

"They got a lot of letters," Little said Tuesday. "I won't even mention the word 'Iraq.'"

Little, who hasn't been to the White House since he was a favorite of the Reagan administration, said he'll stick with his usual schtick -- the impersonations of the past six presidents.

"They don't want anyone knocking the president. He's really over the coals right now, and he's worried about his legacy," added Little, a longtime Las Vegas resident.

Poor embattled president. Gosh, someone might tell a joke about him. I mean, sure, he tortures people for a living, throw out habeas corpus, illegally spies on our phone conversations and the US mail, and oh yeah, killed 35,000 civilians in Iraq this past year alone - but having a joke told about him... now that crosses the line.

The White House Correspondents Association is pitiful. You call yourself journalists. And you wonder why we criticize you? You people are pathetic. Journalism isn't about getting people to like you. It's about reporting the news, the facts, the truth, and hopefully making the world a better place while so doing. Read More......

It's hard to be a bigot if you're dead

I just got this email update from our good friends at the religious right wacko group "Focus on the Family":

Evangelicals Wrangle Over Global-Warming Alarmism
from staff reports

Should evangelicals be worried about global warming? Some point to the Christian’s duty to take better care of the world, but others worry the issue could eclipse more basic evangelical values like the right to life and the sanctity of marriage.

Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals told Family News in Focus that global warming deserves attention.

“I’m not saying it’s the pre-eminent issue, the most important issue – no, it’s probably not,” Cizik said. “But does it deserve consideration? Most assuredly.”

But others warn evangelicals to beware of an ulterior motive.

“We’re observing a very strong effort by liberal environmentalists to use that sound motivation as a wedge,” said E. Calvin Beisner of Knox Theological Seminary.

Yes, eclipse would be the right word. It's hard to bash women and gays when the sun has destroyed the entire planet. But hey, at least we could take comfort in the fact that our 6 billion brethren didn't give their lives in vain - at least the gays can't marry. Read More......

"Black people 'should get over' slavery"

Guess the political party of the politician who said this week that black people should get over slavery, and then asked if Jews should apologize for killing Jesus.

You get extra credit if you guess the state he represents.

Answer. Read More......

Concerned parents or irresponsible parents?

You decide.

Four families have sued News Corp. and its MySpace social-networking site after their underage daughters were sexually abused by adults they met on the site, lawyers for the families said Thursday.

Whatever happened to teaching your kids not to accept candy from strangers? I guess it's easier just to sue to assuage your guilty conscience. Read More......

A brief note on language

Dear Pundits, Journalists, and the rest of you who would stop inviting me to your cocktail parties if you knew I was a dirty hippie blogger,

Please stop describing the Bush administration escalation plan as a "Hail Mary." I know that very few of you actually understand -- let alone played or care about -- football, but you're grossly misusing a common sports reference. Unlike most butchered metaphors (yes you, Tom), this one is actually contributing to a public misunderstanding of the situation.

In football, if a team is losing, and the only way they can win is with a long, last-gasp touchdown pass, it sends all its receivers to the end zone, hoping for a miracle. This play is called a Hail Mary because it is, essentially, a prayer. It works infrequently but everybody has one in the playbook in case of emergency.

Here's the key thing about a Hail Mary, however: if a team tries it and it fails, the team is no worse off than before the play. If you're losing, and only a touchdown will do, you throw a Hail Mary knowing that if you complete it, you have a miraculous victory; if not, you simply have the loss that was inevitable before the attempt.

The U.S., Iraq, and, most importantly, tens of thousands of living, breathing people have a lot to lose if escalation fails. This isn't just "let's try it and if it doesn't work we're no worse off than before." Such a formulation is grossly, horrendously callous and represents a fundamental lack of understanding and caring about both national security and human life. Sometimes in warfighting, things go wrong and a mission doesn't accomplish what you expect it to. But that's different than trying a plan that nobody expects to work in the first place. Plans that go wrong should do so because of something unexpected, not because it was a tossup from the beginning.

To call it a "Hail Mary" gives the indication that escalation is the only choice, or that we won't be any worse off if it doesn't go smashingly, both of which are false. The American people understand this, I understand it, and now you do. So enough with that particular analogy, please. This has been a public service announcement.

thanks,
AJ

Update P.S. The reason why the escalation won't work, including some of the potential ways it will make things worse -- hence, not like a Hail Mary -- is explained here. Read More......

Iraqi Prime Minister says Condi giving "moral boost" to terrorists

Wow.

"I wish that we could receive strong messages of support from the US so we don't give some boost to the terrorists and make them feel that they might have achieved success," Mr Maliki told reporters in Baghdad yesterday.

He took issue with comments by the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, that the Iraqi government was living on "borrowed time".

"I believe that such statements give moral boosts to the terrorists and push them towards making an extra effort and making them believe that they have defeated the American administration, but I can tell you that they haven't defeated the Iraqi government."

Read More......

GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine - she's just not Olympia

Who exactly does Susan Collins represent anyway?

The Senate set the stage on Wednesday for a direct clash with President Bush over the war, with two senior Democrats and a prominent Republican introducing a symbolic measure to declare that the administration’s plan to send additional troops to Iraq runs counter to the national interest....

But another Republican senator, Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, quickly got behind the new resolution, and Mr. Hagel predicted that others would as well. “Now is the time for the Congress to make its voice heard on a policy that has such significant implications for the nation, the Middle East and the world,” Ms. Snowe said in a statement.

Other Republicans who have expressed unease about the troop buildup, including Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Norm Coleman of Minnesota, took no immediate stance on the resolution. They expressed some reservations about the tone and scope of the proposal, which refers to escalating the war, which some Republicans believe has become a loaded partisan description.

Susan Collins is scared, and weak, and vacillating. She's just not Olympia. Read More......

MoveOn takes on McCain

Great ad from MoveOn. Iraq was the issue in 2006. It's the issue in 2007. It will be the issue in 2008. McCain and the GOP own Bush's war. They made this war happen. They never challenged Bush. And, McCain owns the escalation issue as MoveOn's Tom Matzzie pointed out in today's Washington Post:

"McCain's been for escalation since before Bush was for escalation," he said.

Political Wire has the report the McCain's support in NH is "tanking." Supporting Bush's war has become a political kiss-of-death. Read More......

Senate Republicans stop ethics reform

Given the damaging role corruption played against the GOP in the 2006 elections, one might think that Republicans would be anxious to get on the right side of ethics reform. One would be wrong. Yesterday, the Senate GOP voted en masse against ending debate on the Senate ethics bill. The GOP's first filibuster stops ethics reform. Nice work - the Washington Post explains:

Senate Republicans scuttled broad legislation last night to curtail lobbyists' influence and tighten congressional ethics rules, refusing to let the bill pass without a vote on an unrelated measure that would give President Bush virtual line-item-veto power.

The bill could be brought back up later this year. Indeed, Democrats will try one last time today to break the impasse. But its unexpected collapse last night infuriated Democrats and the government watchdog groups that had been pushing it since the lobbying scandals that rocked the last Congress. Proponents charged that Republicans had used the spending-control measure as a ruse to thwart ethics rules they dared not defeat in a straight vote.

"It's as obvious as the sun coming up somewhere in this world that they tried to kill this bill," a furious Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said last night in an interview. "And all 21 Republican senators up for reelection are going to have to explain how they brought down the most significant reform ever to come before this Congress. They brought this baby down."

Ethics reform is the first piece of legislation being considered this year for obvious reasons. Corruption matters to voters. It doesn't matter to the Senate Republicans. They've already shown their true colors. Read More......

Attention shoppers: credit card data breach - could be millions of cards

Why do I get the feeling that some of the "privacy and security experts" who tell us that these breaches are rare, over publicized and unimportant are like the anti-global warming people who know it's a lie but are paid handsomely to create uncertainty and doubt? I guess there's nothing to see here, in their opinion.

TJX Cos. said today it discovered the theft of credit-card and debit card information from its systems, a breach that could affect a broad swath of customers of TJ Maxx, Marshalls and other stores.

The Framingham retailer, which has 2,500 outlets, said it doesn't know how much data was compromised by the break-in, though one banking official said potentially millions of cardholders could be affected.

Data breaches are becoming an increasing threat to consumers and payments systems that handle millions of transactions per day. TJX's case is unusual in that many cases tracked by privacy advocates involve data that was inadvertently lost or left unshielded. In contrast, TJX said it had discovered in the middle of December that it "suffered an unauthorized intrusion'' into the parts of its computer system that process and store details of customer purchases.

Read More......

Thursday Morning Open Thread

Bush's plan to escalate the war seems to have finally galvanized the anti-war feelings in the U.S. Instead of focusing on their failed Iraq policy, the White House is launching yet another spin campaign. The arguments appear to be that anyone who opposes the Bush/McCain escalation doctrine is either a) doing it for political reasons or b) willing to send the wrong "message." Ironic since the White House started this war for political reasons and everything about Bush's war sends the wrong message.

Start threading. Read More......

Amazing what happens when there is suddenly democracy in the US

The no-fly list to be check for accuracy and trimmed by the Bush administration. It's just a start but who could have imagined this happening with the rubber stamp GOP Congress? Read More......