Sunday, April 09, 2006

Editor & Publisher destroys the Washington Post editorial page


This is good stuff:
No wonder the Post, in today’s editorial, calls Wilson’s trip to Niger “absurdly over-examined.” This is what people say when they want to change the subject instead of having to renew an indefensible position. The Post's editorial page has been wrong from the start on Iraq so we must at least applaud its consistency.
This is but a snippet. Read the entire E&P; piece, it's not just damning, it's destroying. There is simply no excuse for the Washington Post to write an editorial that is a complete and utter fabrication - a fabrication that's exposed on the front page of the same newspaper that same day.

It's one thing for the Post's editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt, to be a Bush sycophant. It's quite another for the Washington Post editorial page to outright lie to its readers about the well-established facts concerning George Bush, Ambassador Wilson, and the Scooter Libby leak. Facts that were detailed in the paper earlier this weekend, and again today.

Then again, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised.

After all, the Washington Post editorial page is using outright lies in order to defend a president for using outright lies. The only problem is that this trick hasn't worked too well for the president, whose popularity is at 33%. It's not working too well either for a newspaper editorial board that has been revealed as little more than a rubber stamp - and a lying one at that - for one of the most failed presidencies in our history.

What's sad is that while the president runs a great country into the ground, Fred Hiatt does the same to a once-great newspaper.

At some point, someone needs to inquire whether Donald Graham, the late Katherine Graham's son, is even aware of the degree to which Hiatt is destroying his mother's legacy, or whether Graham himself is the genesis of the entire problem. Read More......

TIME: Military insider sounds off against the war


From TIME:
From 2000 until October 2002, I was a Marine Corps lieutenant general and director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After 9/11, I was a witness and therefore a party to the actions that led us to the invasion of Iraq--an unnecessary war. Inside the military family, I made no secret of my view that the zealots' rationale for war made no sense. And I think I was outspoken enough to make those senior to me uncomfortable. But I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat--al-Qaeda. I retired from the military four months before the invasion, in part because of my opposition to those who had used 9/11's tragedy to hijack our security policy. Until now, I have resisted speaking out in public. I've been silent long enough.
Read More......

Immigration protests in 100 cities on Monday


Be there or be square. Read More......

Speaking of evolution


Isn't it funny how we never seem to find any new evidence backing up creationism? More from the WSJ. Read More......

Open thread


The Washington Post has lost its mind. I'm gonna blog about it later. But suffice it to say that their lead editorial today is one big lie, and they know it. The Post has now resorted to simply publishing lies in order to defend George Bush.

Very sad what a piece of trash the Post is quickly becoming. It was once my favorite paper. Read More......

Joe Lieberman won't rule out running as an Independent


L-o-s-e-r. Ego, they name is Lieberman. Even if the Democratic voters decide to get rid of him, he's just too important for Connecticut. Right, because Connecticut just can't get enough politicians in Washington who think the Iraq war is going great. Read More......

Bush has caused a worrisome officer shortage in US Army


Tell me again what Army he plans on using to invade Iran?

George Bush's incompetence has run the US military into the ground, he's wasted all of our budget surplus that Bill Clinton left him, and now Bush wants to start yet another war. With what? Spitballs?
The Army expects to be short 2,500 captains and majors this year, with the number rising to 3,300 in 2007. These officers are the Army's seed corn, the people who 10 years from now should be leading battalions and brigades.

"We're ruining an Army that took us 30 years to build," Republican maverick Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., told a group of reporters at a recent conference....

The Army denies the shortage is a crisis, but its top civilian, Francis J. Harvey, acknowledged concerns, telling the Washington Post: "We are worried."
Read More......

Tancredo: The problem with "amnesty" is it sends the wrong message to people who immigrated "the right way"


I'm watching Tancredo, the Republican congressman leading the charge against Latino immigrants, on Face the Nation.

When asked directly, congressman what's wrong with amnesty, Tancredo replied that it sends a "terrible message" to the immigrants who came here legally.

That's the best answer he can give: It might offend some legal immigrants.

Huh?

It doesn't matter to Tancredo if amnesty is a good or a bad idea in terms of its effect on future immigration, on the immigrants themselves, and on America's future overall. No. The best argument the Republicans can come up with to oppose any kind of amnesty is that some current immigrants might be offended and that it would be a "slap in their face."

Okay...

If that's the best the Republicans come up with, that's kind of a lame justification for federal immigration policy. Read More......

Gingrich: Democrats' slogan should simply be "Had Enough?"


And he's right.

Keep is simple, stupids.

"We can do better" is nice (that's the Democrats current slogan), but it's kind of whiny and doesn't really mean anything. And spare us the explanation that while it means nothing it really means EVERYTHING since each Democrat can tailor it to mean whatever he wants. That's tres John Kerry, standing for nothing and everything at the same time.

Newt is right.

I've had enough. Have you? Read More......

DOD employee indicted on child pornography charges


You're doing a heck of a job, Rummy. Read More......

Sunday Talk Shows Open Thread


Interesting mix on the Sunday talk shows -- no overriding theme -- politics, Iraq, Iran, immigration. The line-up via the Washington Post:
FOX NEWS SUNDAY...: Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) and Zalmay Khalilzad , U.S. ambassador to Iraq.

THIS WEEK (ABC, WJLA)...: House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV and actress Bernadette Peters .

FACE THE NATION...: Reps. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) and Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.); Rick Wagoner , chairman and chief executive of General Motors Corp.

MEET THE PRESS...: Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Reps. Henry Bonilla (R-Tex.), Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.), and J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.).

LATE EDITION...: Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.); retired Gen. Anthony C. Zinni , former U.S. Central Command chief; New Yorker magazine reporter Seymour M. Hersh and Khalilzad .
Late Edition with Sy Hersh might be the most newsworthy. Read More......

AP: Bush left the leak details to Cheney


The leaks about the Bush leak are starting. A "knowledgeable" attorney gave AP some insight that tries to paint Bush in the best possible light. But, it doesn't really matter how it happened. The bottom line is that Bush risked national security for pure partisan politics:
President Bush declassified sensitive intelligence in 2003 and authorized its public disclosure to rebut Iraq war critics, but he did not specifically direct that Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, be the one to disseminate the information, an attorney knowledgeable about the case said Saturday.

Bush merely instructed Cheney to "get it out" and left the details to him, said the lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case for the White House. The vice president chose Libby and communicated the president's wishes to his then-top aide, the lawyer said.

It is not known when the conversation between Bush and Cheney took place. The White House has declined to provide the date when the president used his authority to declassify the portions of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, a classified document that detailed the intelligence community's conclusions about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Of course Bush didn't know the specifics. He's clueless.

Spinning this one is tough for the White House. Nothing makes Bush look good here. Read More......

Italy goes to the polls


Decisions, decisions. Maybe Italy will have someone to choose from next time who hasn't been entrenched in politics and mired in scandal for the past million years. (No criticism of the Italian voters because this seems to be a big problem in quite a few countries, including if not especially here in France where the likes of Valerie Giscard d'Estaing continues to play a major role in France as well as the EU.) Read More......

Senior Iraqi official says Iraq already in "undeclared civil war"


So what gave it away? The fact that Shiites and Sunnis are killing each other? What exactly does the Bush administration (and Leiberman) think civil war actually means? Read More......

Scooter Libby: Cheney intentionally peddled lies about Iraq to the public to bolster the case for war


This a rather huge detail, since the White House has denied until now trying to intentionally misinform the American people about the case for war in Iraq:
But according to Libby's grand jury testimony, described for the first time in legal papers filed this week, Cheney "specifically directed" Libby in late June or early July 2003 to pass information to reporters from two classified CIA documents: an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and a March 2002 summary of Wilson's visit to Niger.

One striking feature of that decision -- unremarked until now, in part because Fitzgerald did not mention it -- is that the evidence Cheney and Libby selected to share with reporters had been disproved months before.
Read More......

Open thread


Man, I have logged more hours with my Mac today. Though finally starting to understand how to use GarageBand and iMovie. Stay tuned. Read More......