Is it too much to ask AP to at least get the story right?

AP:

Then, at a news conference last month, he asked Bush how he could work on Social Security and other domestic initiatives with Democrats "who seem to have divorced themselves from reality."

That attracted scrutiny from liberal bloggers, who linked Guckert with online domain addresses suggestive of gay pornography. Guckert resigned from Talon News earlier this month.

Gay pornography? Yes, the blogs have no credibility while august news sources like the Associated Press simply make shit up. For the record, we found his 7 prostitution online profiles, and his entire prostitution Web site, selling himself to other men for $200/hr or $1200/weekend.

It's bad enough AP hasn't even reported this story in any serious manner over the past month, but it's not like they don't have the resources to at least not lie about it. Read the rest of this post...

Say goodnight, Ken

Read the rest of this post...

Your Best Prediction - What Scandal Could the Bush Administration NOT Get Away With?

A reader suggestion. I like it. Have at it. Read the rest of this post...

Jon Stewart's Daily Show to spoof Gannon/Guckert on Thursday

Excellent.

The reporter was fake, using a fake name, spoofing alleged fake White House reporter "Jeff Gannon." But the news conference was real serious.

A "correspondent" from the fake news show, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, was outside City Hall yesterday to get some answers from City Council Speaker Gifford Miller.

Wearing a badly groomed hair piece, a fake mustache and an ugly 1970s tie, Rob Corddry waited patiently until after the real reporters had posed their questions to ask one about about Social Security.

Standing awkwardly with his legs far apart as though he were getting ready to sprint, nodding in agreement to every word spoken by Miller about the West Side Stadium, Corddry finally raised his hand.

"Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker," he shouted, as if in a White House news conference, identifying himself as "Dino Ironbody"

His question: "How do you feel about the president's awesome plan to privatize Social Security?"

(Thanks to CrooksAndLiars.com for spotting this.) Read the rest of this post...

Evening open thread

Chat Read the rest of this post...

Torture: It's The American Way

I've wanted to talk about our country's embrace of torture as A-OK for weeks now. Should I post when the New York Times runs a story on A-11 (deep inside the paper) that casually mentions more cases of torture and then even more casually states that the US has routinely shipped off prisoners to third countries like Saudi Arabia that we know will torture them? How about the fact that virtually the last paragraph even more casually mentions that the President repeatedly insists we never do this, which is known as extraordinary rendition? In other words, the New York Times says the President is lying to the American people but finds this so unremarkable it's barely mentioned in a small story buried in the paper.

Should I bring up torture when the New Yorker runs an exhaustive feature about yet another INNOCENT MAN who was grabbed, bundled off to a third country, brutally tortured and then dumped back into society with no one in government thinking this was unusual or unfortunate?

Bob Herbert of the New York Times finally couldn't wait any longer for outrage to build and asks today if the US has a conscience.

A Kafkaesque country where private citizens are grabbed off the streets and dumped in a hole never to be heard from again. A government that refuses to admit those people have even been detained or confirmed their names. Secret locations where people KNOWN TO BE INNOCENT are beaten, raped, sodomized, tortured, punched in the head and even killed. A leader who believes he is above the rule of law and must answer to no one for his actions. Sycophantic minions who do Orwell proud by insisting they would never torture someone, but simply redefine torture as anything that doesn't lead to organ failure or death. Electric cables attached to your genitals and giving you shocks? Not torture. Punching you in the stomach every day for a year? Not torture. Stripping you naked an d keeping you in a tiny box away from all human contact for six months at a time? Not torture.

This used to describe evil countries like Saudi Arabia, the Soviet Union, China, Iraq, Cambodia under Pol Pot and others. Now it also describes the United States of America. And every day we accept that torture is part of the post 9-11 world, every day we don't write to our elected officials and demand it change (just like we used to write letters for Amnesty International and send them off to OTHER countries), every day we fail to speak out for the innocent people who have been found guilty without a trial or a lawyer or even being told the charges against them, every day that this continues is another day our hands are bloodied and everything we stand for is sullied.

Here's betting this posting doesn't garner more than a handful of comments. Why? This is old news. Read the rest of this post...

Funny

From the SF Chronicle. Read the rest of this post...

Hey Red State Guys (and Jeff Gannon), Bush Admin. is coming for your porn

In keeping with the Bush Administration obsession with sex, the new Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez, has made porn a top priority for the Justice Department according to the Associated Press:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Monday he would move aggressively to prosecute obscenity cases, and he laid out a broader agenda much like that of his predecessor, John Ashcroft.

In his first lengthy address since becoming attorney general in early February, Gonzales said people who distribute obscene materials do not enjoy constitutional guarantees of free speech.

"I am committed to prosecuting these crimes aggressively," he said to a Washington meeting of the California-based Hoover Institution.
The Justice Department is appealing the dismissal of an obscenity case in Pittsburgh in which a federal judge said prosecutors went too far in trying to block the sale of pornographic movies over the Internet and through the mail. The case initially was prosecuted under Ashcroft.

Hmmmm....blocking the sale of porn over the internet. That shouldn't set off any alarm bells in homes across America. All those butch red state guys were thinking that moral issue in the election was whether gays could marry. Wrong. It was really about Bush and company taking their porn away. Be careful fellas, Big Brother Alberto is watching what you watch.

Now, of course, we would love to know what the sanctimonious, anti-smut Mr. Gonzalez thinks of the antics of Mr. Gannon/Guckert. Read the rest of this post...

Bush making AIDS groups pledge to oppose prostitution

Ok, this takes some balls in the middle of GannonGuckertGate. But MESSAGE TO MAINSTREAM MEDIA, Jeff Gannon being a hooker and working in the West Wing, while the White House STILL hasn't condemned him or even spoken out about him, is NOT an even more interesting story in light of the fact that the Bush administration is now publicly taking on hookers. No, no hypocrisy there, nothing to see, move right along.

Or is this the White House's response to Gannon to placate the religious right? I.e., take a swipe at foreign hookers?

From the Kaiser Foundation:

Bush Administration To Require U.S. AIDS Groups Take Pledge Opposing Commercial Sex Work To Gain Funding
[Feb 28, 2005]

The Bush administration is requiring that U.S. HIV/AIDS organizations seeking funding to provide services in other countries make a pledge opposing commercial sex work, and some Republican lawmakers and administration officials are pushing for a similar policy for needle-exchange programs, the Wall Street Journal reports. Under the new policy, even groups whose HIV/AIDS work in other countries has "nothing to do" with commercial sex workers will have to make a written pledge opposing commercial sex work or risk losing federal funding, according to the Journal. In addition, the Bush administration might refuse to fund HIV/AIDS groups that do not accept Bush's "social agenda" on issues such as sexual abstinence and drug use, according to the Journal. The new policy stems from two 2003 laws, one involving HIV/AIDS funding and another regarding sex trafficking (Phillips, Wall Street Journal, 2/28). One measure was included as an amendment, sponsored by Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.), in the legislation (HR 1298) that authorized the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the five-year, $15 billion program that directs funding for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria to 15 focus countries. The measure prohibits funds from going to any group or organization that does not have a policy "explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking" (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 4/3/03). The U.S. Department of Justice initially told the administration that the requirement should be applied to overseas groups only because of constitutional free speech concerns in applying it to U.S. organizations, according to the Journal. However, DOJ in 2004 "reversed itself" and said that the administration could apply the rule to U.S. groups, according to the Journal.

Read the rest of this post...

Anti-gay anti-AARP ad scandal getting coverage

I'm happy to say the media is starting to cover the fact that USA Next appears to have stolen the photo of the gay couple for their anti-AARP ad (I reported on this in a post below). Wonkette covered it, and Congress Daily has a mention of it as well. Read the rest of this post...

White House Correspondents' Association wimps out on GannonGuckertGate

The following statement was just released by the White House Correspondents' Association regarding GannonGuckertGate. The statement was passed to me from a White House correspondent who isn't a hooker, I think:

Since 1914, the White House Correspondents' Association has operated independently of the White House and the White House credentialing process. We intend for the White House Correspondents' Association to remain independent of that process.

Consistent with the First Amendment, the White House Correspondents' Association stands for inclusiveness in the credentialing process so that the White House remains accessible to all journalists. We hope that individual episodes do not obscure the broader principles of a fair and evenhanded credentialing process that serves the goal of free and full exchange of information.

Yes, the White House Correspondents' Association doesn't want to weigh in on the battle of who is and isn't a journalist. Apparently, the First Amendment prohibits journalists from defining what exactly it is they do for a living. Man, if it's unconstitutional to have any requirements for journalism, then I want to be op ed editor of the Washington Post, or I'm gonna sue.

As one White House correspondent told me today:

"The more the White House Correspondents' Association weighs in on this, the more it makes some of us think the association is best left to throwing a dinner and should stay way from any issues of importance. The White House Correspondents' Association over the last couple of years has been a lapdog outfit answering to this administration."

Read the rest of this post...

Lebanese, pro-Syrian government resigns after protests

I tip my hat to the united front that the people of Lebanon put forward to protest against the government. After years of fighting amongst themselves the protestors were from all religious groups, united in their demand from an independent government. What is interesting here is that murdered former PM Hariri was appreciated both in Washington and in Paris and both governments had been strong supporters of a Syrian pullout and Lebanese independence. Read the rest of this post...

More Tom Delay scandals

No, he's not a male hooker. Well, we think. Read the rest of this post...

USA Next accused of stealing photo of gay couple for anti-AARP ad campaign

Thanks to the DailyKos folks for discovering this story. I got in touch with the couple in the photo on Friday and put them in touch with a lawyer (a rather big lawyer at that). I'm now working as their publicist - not that I wouldn't have covered this anyway. Please help spread the word on this, it's outrageous.

Below is the press release we just sent out. And attached here is the letter the couple's lawyer just sent to USA Next.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 28, 2005

Contact: John Aravosis
john@wiredstrategies.com
Spokesman for Richard M. Raymen and Steven P. Hansen

“USA NEXT” MISAPPROPRIATED COUPLES’
IMAGE FOR ANTI-GAY AD CAMPAIGN
Couple: Image Stolen for Campaign Against AARP

WASHINGTON, DC - Conservative front organization USA Next was accused today of illegally using a gay couple’s wedding photo in an anti-gay ad campaign supporting President Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security.

The couple in the photo, Richard M. Raymen and Steven P. Hansen of Portland, Oregon, have come forward through an attorney to demand that USA Next stop using their image, and that the organization publicly apologize for using their image in a homophobic and libelous way. The demand, contained in a letter sent today to USA Next Chairman and CEO Charles Jarvis, references the couples’ right to seek damages for the misappropriation of their image.

In one version of the USA Next advertisement disseminated widely on the Internet last week, and aired repeatedly by television news programs nationwide, the couple’s image, superimposed with a green checkmark, is side-by-side a picture of a US soldier with a red “X” across it. Below the photos is the phrase “The REAL AARP Agenda.”

A copy of the ad can be viewed online here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/21/164929/948

"In 2004, our clients allowed their picture to be taken at their public celebration, as couples getting married do every day,” Christopher Wolf, a partner in the Washington, DC office of the New York-based law firm Proskauer Rose LLP and counsel for Raymen and Hansen. . “They did not volunteer to be models for a 2005 right-wing hate campaign, and never would have consented to having their images plastered in an ad of any kind, much less the one USA Next chose to run. USA Next has violated the law and must take responsibility for the consequences. Tort law is quite clear that USA Next acted illegally.”

“The USA Next ad communicates the false message that gay marriages generally, and our clients specifically, are the antithesis of supporting American troops during wartime,” said Wolf. “Gay marriage, and our clients’ ceremony, have nothing to do with support of the troops. Our clients are patriotic Americans who strongly support our service members.”

USA Next’s ad campaign has generated heated debate about the organization.. Ramen and Hansen have been the subject of hate-filled messages and ridicule as a result of the ad campaign, and have suffered a significant invasion of privacy.

“We never signed up to be Harry and Louise for a hate-mongering group,” Raymen said, referring to the fictional couple used in television commercials to scuttle then-First Lady Hillary Clinton’s health care proposal. “USA Next is illegally using our photo to portray us as a threat to American values. How would any citizen like having their image stolen and broadcast for the purpose of tarring our troops and suggesting that you’re un-American?”

On behalf of Raymen and Hansen, Wolf wrote USA Next today demanding that the organization immediately stop using photos of the couple and that it publicly apologize for the ongoing harm it is causing.

“As our clients contemplate their full legal remedies, we are writing to demand that you immediately cease and desist using any photograph of our clients and that you publicly apologize to them for the use you already have made, and the harm you have already caused,” Wolf wrote to USA Next.

Wolf said his clients seriously are considering filing suit against USA Next but, regardless, use of the photo must stop.

Read the rest of this post...

GREAT Philly Inquirer front page story on Gannon

My God, we may actually have broken through the void - after only one month of this story being out there. This is really a damn good story.

But the Jeff Gannon/James Guckert saga is far from over. It remains unclear how a graduate of a conservative training program, someone with no previous journalism experience, someone whose writings were often lifted directly from White House press releases, still managed to gain access to the White House press room, where he spent two years lobbing gentle questions at the press secretary and the President.

And some political analysts who monitor President Bush's relations with the media insist that Gannon (who, referring to Democrats, recently asked Bush, "How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?") should not be viewed as an isolated case. Rather, they contend that Gannon is symptomatic of a broader White House strategy to undermine the traditional media by disseminating the Bush message in creative new ways.

Read the rest of this post...

Morning open thread

Gonna be a fun day I think. Read the rest of this post...

What he said

Tom Tomorrow weighs in on GannonGuckertGate

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