Back again and ranting (as usual)

A couple of other Bloggers (actually prominent bloggers) have been rightfully outraged over the media attention to the kerfluffle (for lack of a better term) over Edwards hiring two bloggers who, in the past, had used foul language in their blog posts, and, one of which, was critical of the Catholic Church and their respective policies on birth control, abortion and condoms.

Keith Olbermann took on a piece of it earlier this week by naming William Donahue as at least the Worser person in the world in his nightly Worse, Worser, Worst Person in the World Segment by noting that Donahue had used similar ...er....intemperate ... (yeah, right) language in describing "Hollywood" in the very recent past.

Digby and Attaturk had riffed on the "double standard" of excoriating Liberal Blogger and columnists while giving Conservative Bloggers and Columnists a pass. I'm going to add to this....

Glenn Greenwald at Unclaimed Territory (which has moved up to Salon) gets into the most egregious example to date. He cites Frank Gaffney's column in today's Washington Times (owned by the Moonies no less)

Frank Gaffney, one of the country's most influential and well-connected neoconservatives, has a column in today's Washington Times in which he argues that the debate taking place in Congress over the war in Iraq constitutes treason. Gaffney specifically argues that the condemnations of Douglas Feith from Sen. Rockefeller "really should be a hanging offense."

Gaffney begins his column by purporting to quote Abraham Lincoln. Gaffney claims that Lincoln said:Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.

But this quote is completely invented. Lincoln never said it. This "quote" was first attributed to Lincoln by J. Michael Waller in Insight Magazine, in a 2003 article revealingly entitled: Democrats Usher in an Age of Treason. But as Waller himself now admits, the quote attributed to Lincoln is completely fraudulent. Waller wrote in an e-mail to FactCheck.org (h/t William Wolfrum):

The supposed quote in question is not a quote at all, and I never intended it to be construed as one. It was my lead sentence in the article that a copy editor mistakenly turned into a quote by incorrectly inserting quotation marks.

Of course, that doesn't stop Gaffney from building an entire column around the quote and using it to suggest that Congressmen who dare debate this issue on the floor of the House of Representatives are guilty of TREASON.
Here's what steams me:

Aside from Glenn's excellent article, nobody else is talking about this, especially in that lofty realm we sometimes refer to as The MainStream Media (MSM).

We don't see Chris Matthews talking about it. We don't see him breathlessly (I think he does everything "breathlessly") pounding on Gaffney saying, "Is DISSENT TREASON? Yes or No?....Yes or No?"

We certainly don't see the Bill O'Reilly (isn't he supposed to be the one "Watching out for you?) wagging his finger or putting Gaffney "on notice" for his anti-American article.

We don't see anybody taking them to task for inventing a quote for Lincoln...

Instead we're letting them get away with fomenting hatred and dissent and galvanizing intolerance for any opinion other than their own.

This is ridiculous...................

And he gets PAID for this????

Media critic Howie Kurtz writes a column for The Washington Post and also hosts CNN's "Reliable Sources" on Sunday morning....but that doesn't make him right, and more to the point, it doesn't give him license to be flat out dishonest.

The subject is the (bogus) flap over "Nancy Pelosi's airplane". The story line leaked from the Pentagon was that Nancy had requested a "large plane" to fly her, "her family, and political associates" between Washington D. C. and her home District in San Francisco. The implication, of course, was that Nancy was demanding was demanding "special treatment" or even perhaps "abusing perks of office".

But as the story started to unfold, the truth seeped out. The truth had a number of elements.

First, since 9/11/01 the military has been providing an airplane for The Speaker of the House for security reasons...because, after all, right after the Vice President, The Speaker of the House is the next in line for the Presidency. So it makes sense.

Second, Nancy didn't request either the airplane nor a "larger" airplane. It was requested by the Sergeant At Arms of the House who MAKES ALL SUCH TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS.

Third, the Sergeant at arms did ask for a larger plane, because the one used by Hastert doesn't have the RANGE from D.C. to San Francisco without making a fuel stop which would compromise security.

Okay. Got it? The story was bogus from the giddy-yup.....The Sergeant at arms said so, Tony Snow said so, the Pentagon (except whoever leaked the bogus story in the first place) said so....

But

More than 24 hours after the story is declared bogus, Howie publishes his column, Media Notes, and guess what...he repeats the bogus story:

Nancy Pelosi asked for a bigger (and far more expensive) plane because the one she was using couldn't make it to the West Coast without a refueling stop. Hastert didn't have that problem getting to Illinois.

Pelosi may be right on the substance, but the symbolism is awful. She insists she didn't ask for the plane, but if a military flight is needed, she wants a nonstop to San Francisco. The average voter will be left wth an image of her flying around on a jumbo jet in the lap of luxury

And of course, Howie had to keep it going with this:

"On the House floor, Republicans managed to take a bill about alternative fuel and turn it into a debate on Pelosi's transportation arrangements, by introducing an amendment that included the word 'aircraft.' That was enough to provide conservative members an opportunity to characterize her as the Leona Helmsley of Capitol Hill."

As slimy, swarmy, partisan, dishonest and just plain wrong as this was, it wasn't his biggest fault. Take a look at this:


Here's some typical blog reaction.
Radiant Times:
"With all the fuss about global warming nowadays, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is complaining that she cannot have a huge jet to traipse across the country with her immediate family and political supporters. Does she realize what a huge government jet would cost the taxpayers? Maybe not, and maybe she does not care - who knows?"
Political Retch:
What has happened to the democrats, now they want Pelosi to be treated like a queen? She and her band of freaks are starting to sound less and less like the peoples' choice to lead the country. If the plane isn't big enough then don't go to California, or better yet pay your own damn fare on a commercial jet. Silly [rhymes with witch]!"

TYPICAL BLOG REACTION? Just who is "Political Retch"?

Thanks to a little detective work by Roger Ailes (the good Roger Ailes) we find this: Thanks to Atrios for the link.

Well, Political Retch is a blog with one -- that's one -- post. The one Kurtz quotes. The blog apparently didn't exist until yesterday morning at 8:38 a.m. If you do a Google search with "Politcal Retch" in quotes, it doesn't even show up. Yet Howie the Putz somehow managed to find the blog and promote it with no trouble whatsoever. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

and while we're at it, just who or what is Radiant Times?

The other blogger, Radiant Times, is "a choral director specializing in working with singers with changing voices" who began blogging on February 1, 2007 and currently has a total of 93 pages visits, 30 of which are from today.

Today is, what? February 9, 2007 and Radiant Times started on February 1, 2007 and they already "hit the bigtime" with a mention in a nationally syndicated column. What luck!

I don't believe in that kind of coincidence, do you? Even if it is a coincidence, how is it that an experienced journalist...a nationally known journalist...a nationally televised journalist...a journalist who reports on "other" journalists....didn't bother to research in the slightest the sources he was quoting....

Oversight? Or flat-ass dishonest?

Okay Howie Kurtz....we'll see you Sunday on Reliable Sources....yeah, RIGHT....

an alternative to Anna Nicole Smith news...

If you're watching CNN, you probably think the untimely death of Anna Nicole is THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT EVENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY....and why wouldn't we when we have such luminaries as Wolf (if I'm breathless, this must be important)Blitzer and LARRY(for the hourrr..) KING to tell us so. Brother Attaturk has a few (ahem)"thoughts" on the matter here. Among the most notable of his observations:

In fact, thanks to CNN, I know that being shocked and dismayed is akin to deep feelings of annoyance. Because during the non-stop coverage of the event I was pretty sure that I was incredibly annoyed throughout. But no, Wolf told me that I was shocked and dismayed. I await Chris Matthews breathless malaprops during the "modest" State Funeral.

But, being the contrarian that I am, I think THESE are important issues today:

Over at TPM, they find an Inspector General's report that shows the OSP (Office of Special Projects) which "stovepiped" raw (pronounced BOGUS) intelligence straight to Cheney and the White House in order to build a case for the war was "INAPPROPRIATE". Ya Think? duhhhhh. Actually the report is much more critical than that and subsequent updates show Feith and a few others backpeddling as fast as they can (Feith ran the office and was branded by General Tommy Frank's as "the dumbest son-of -a-bitch I ever met". ) Here's a flavor of a few of the replies....You can read the actual findings here

Word from the Senate, where Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) has been presiding over a Armed Services Committee hearing on the Inspector General's report.
Levin says that, dividing the work with the Senate intelligence committee, they will seriously pursue the issue and plan to interview members of the administration who received briefings from Doug Feith, including National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and former chief of staff to VP Cheney (and current criminal defendant) Scooter Libby.

and

One of the more interesting assertions in both Douglas Feith's and Eric Edelman's reactions to the IG report on the Office of Special Plans is that the office's activity can't be inappropriate because it was authorized by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, then the secretary and deputy secretary of defense. As Feith puts it:

It is bizarre for the Inspector General to disapprove of policy officials' doing work that they were directed to do by the Secretary or Deputy Secretary of Defense, given that those tasks were lawful and authorized and the Inspector General found nothing at all wrong with the Secretary and Deputy Secretary directing that the work be done.

So that's brewing ...

And while that's going on, Secretary of Defense Gates releases his intel report on IRAN. This report was held up several times and was hyped as the "smoking gun" about Iran's involvement in Iraq. The Administration has backed off that claim and reaction to the report has been an overwhelming "yawn".

SEVILLE, Spain - Serial numbers and markings on explosives used in Iraq provide "pretty good" evidence that Iran is providing either weapons or technology for militants there, Defense Secretary Robert Gates asserted Friday.
Offering some of the first public details of evidence the military has collected, Gates said, "I think there's some serial numbers, there may be some markings on some of the projectile fragments that we found," that point to Iran.
At the same time, however, he said he was somewhat surprised that recent raids by coalition and Iraqi forces in Iraq swept up some Iranians.

Let's see here: The Shiia Militia are allies of Iran. We've effectively made Iraq a client-state of Iran. We support the Shiia-lead Government and we're "surprised" to find Iranians in Iraq?

Has the whole world gone mad?

Over at The Washington Post, a former "contract interrogator" by the name of Eric Fair gets a load off his chest. And I DO MEAN LOAD! Wow.

The lead interrogator at the DIF had given me specific instructions: I was to deprive the detainee of sleep during my 12-hour shift by opening his cell every hour, forcing him to stand in a corner and stripping him of his clothes. Three years later the tables have turned. It is rare that I sleep through the night without a visit from this man. His memory harasses me as I once harassed him.

and,

Despite my best efforts, I cannot ignore the mistakes I made at the interrogation facility in Fallujah. I failed to disobey a meritless order, I failed to protect a prisoner in my custody, and I failed to uphold the standards of human decency. Instead, I intimidated, degraded and humiliated a man who could not defend himself. I compromised my values. I will never forgive myself.

I may be making a mistake here but I am assuming that the Washington Post has vetted this man and his story to determine it's accuracy. There was a time when you didn't have to worry about making such assumptions because the integrity of the press (the much-derided M-S-M (main stream media) ) was beyond reproach. Now even if the news supports your side of the political argument, you still have to wonder....you still have to be careful. For the sake of Eric Fair, if that is his real name, I hope his past is sqeeky clean...his story corraborated by hundreds of others...that all the "i's" are dotted and all the "t's" are crossed...and I hope he's wearing clean underwear because he is about to be assaulted in a way that he could never imagine....We call it "Swiftboating" these days.

And now,

We return you to coverage of the life, death and wake of Anna Nicole Smith.....

snark.

A cross post

Hi, I'm going to cross post from Wood County Dems this morning because it's an important post.

Thanks again to Stephen Day and Last Chance Democracy Cafe for pointing me on the path to this great piece of work (not my post, the speech)

Some choices are obvious....I'll give this snippet of Steve's commentary:

United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson’s famous A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom and Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience. Many other literary works were also promptly approved (with priority, sadly, going almost as much for compactness as quality), especially books on political philosophy, such as Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man and John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty.

A lot of speeches made the cut as well, Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have a Dream,” Robert La Follette, “Free Speech in Wartime,” Eugene Debs, “Statement to the Court Upon Being Convicted of Violating the Sedition Act,” Margaret Chase Smith, “Declaration of Conscience,” Mary Church Terrell, “What It Means to be Colored in the Capital of the U.S.,” Eleanor Roosevelt, “The Struggle for Human Rights” and Hubert H. Humphrey, “1948 Civil Rights Speech.”

Wait a minute.....did you see that? That familiar name to all Wisconsinites?

Robert LaFollette, FREE SPEECH IN WARTIME"

I never read that speech. Hell, I never even knew it existed but thanks to Steve, it was hyper-linked and I took the time to call it up and read the whole thing.....and I admit, I was teary-eyed at the end.

Why?

Because you see, we, as a country have been through all of this before. We've lived through "War Fever" We've survived a "War Party". We have seen the patriotism of those who opposed war questioned and we have seen citizens threatened with bodily harm for their opposition to "war fever". We have seen citizens arrested and held without charge (no habeus corpus?). We have seen rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights ignored, suspended, violated and generally trampled upon.

But there was a man who had the strenght of character to stand up. He stood and he spoke against it.
It was Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin. I encourage you to "click on the link" and read the whole speech but it is worthy of a few snippets:

"Prior to the declaration of war every man who had venture to oppose our entrance into it had been condemned as a coward or worse, and even the President had by no means been immune from these attacks.

Since the declaration of war, the triumphant war press has pursued those Senators and Representative who voted against war with malicious falsehood and recklessly libelous attacks, going to the extreme limit of charging them with treason against their country.

Any of that sound familiar? (Almost all except for the President being excoriated by the press) Remember, this was October 6, 1917!

another snippet:

But, sir, it is not alone Members of Congress that the war party in this country has sought to intimidate. The mandate seems to have gone forth to the sovereign people of this country that they must be silent while those things are being done by their Government which most vitally concern their well-being, their happiness, and their lives. Today, and for weeks past, honest and law-abiding citizens of this country are being terrorized and outraged in their rights by those sworn to uphold the laws and protect the rights of the people. I have in my possession numerous affidavits establishing the fact that people are being unlawfully arrested, thrown into jail, held incommunicado for days, only to be eventually discharged without ever having been taken into court, because they have committed no crime. Private residences are being invaded, loyal citizens of undoubted integrity and probity arrested, cross-examined, and the most sacred constitutional rights guaranteed to every American citizen are being violated.

and then, he speaks the words that were sooooo true then and could have even been spoken with equal confidence in their truth on the floor of the U. S. Senate this week:

More than in times of peace it is necessary that the channels for free public discussion of governmental policies shall be open and unclogged. I believe, Mr. President, that I am now touching upon the most important question in this country today -- and that is the right of the citizens of this country and their representatives in Congress to discuss in an orderly way, frankly and publicly and without fear, from the platform and through the press, every important phase of this war; its causes, and manner in which it should be conducted, and the terms upon which peace should be made.

What does that say about the Republicans who have blocked debate in the Senate? What does that say about the strength of our democracy? Where are the men of integrity and wisdom? Where are the men of moral courage today?

I'm starting to mentally draw some comparisoms between our modern-day Russ Feingold and fightin' Bob but I'm not sure that I should. Perhaps Fightin Bob was in a class by himself as Russ Feingold might indeed be in a class by himself. They are both treasures of our State nevertheless and we need to honor them.

At the moment, I'm just damned proud to be in Wisconsin

ON WISCONSIN!

How many tons of money do you want for that car?

Newest outrage in the Iraq "Fraud and Abuse" hearings is that the Federal Reserve shipped (by air)

363 TONS OF MONEY

To Iraq!

Over on the "other site" I did the math for you and it comes out to 18.15 semi-tractor loads of cash.....

Some convoy huh?

So the "grown-ups" were back in charge?

Courtesy of TPM Muckraker we get a glimpse of the attitude or maybe even mindset of those who seem to have "lost" a little bit of our hard-earned tax dollars...a little bit? How 'bout

$9 BILLION OF OUR DOLLARS?

This is from a recorded interview with David Oliver, the former Director of Management and Budget of the agency(The Coalition Provisional Authority)when he was asked by the BBC about what happened to the money.

"I have no idea, I can't tell you whether or not the money went to the right things or didn't - nor do I actually think it is important," Oliver says on the tape . "Billions of dollars of their money disappeared, yes I understand, I'm saying what difference does it make?"

WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?

You've got to be joking! I've never worked with a single person in government, either elected or appointed, who had such a cavelier attitude about TAXPAYERS MONEY!

This guy should be old-fashioned buggey-whipped....

I can't wait until these hearings continue and expose the gross negligence of the CPA, Rummy and the whole crooked band of neocons.

Does anybody know where I can get a good price on tar and feathers?

I switched to "New Blogger"

I don't know how this is going to work but I got tired of being directed and redirected every time I tried to post.....

so I capitulated to blogger.....