GOOD PLAME CATCH

FROM COMMENTER ANTHONY AT ATRIOS

Judith Miller as quoted in Salon, May 27, 2004:

"You know what," she offered angrily. "I was proved fucking right. That's what happened. People who disagreed with me were saying, 'There she goes again.' But I was proved fucking right."

Judith Miller, as quoted in the NY Times, October 16, 2005:

"W.M.D. - I got it totally wrong," she said. "The analysts, the experts and the journalists who covered them - we were all wrong. If your sources are wrong, you are wrong. I did the best job that I could."

GREAT ENTRY ON PLAMEGATE

FireDogLake has been doing some terrific work on this and you can read one of the entries here.

WHY DO FUNDIES HATE YOUNG GIRLS?

Wildmon and the AFA are at it again, this time joined by the Pro-Life Action League, an anti-abortion group. Here are the relevant details:

The Mississippi-based American Family Association, in a campaign launched Wednesday, is urging its members to demand that American Girl halt support for Girls Inc., which it called "a pro-abortion, pro-lesbian advocacy group."

The Pro-Life Action League, a Chicago-based anti-abortion group, also is asking supporters to contact American Girl to express dismay. The league's executive director, Ann Scheidler, said her organization might call for a boycott of American Girl's products and organize picketing at its stores in Chicago and New York if the company doesn't sever ties with Girls Inc.

"Parents need to know that this effort to promote self-esteem among girls is not as innocent as it seems," Scheidler said. "While Girls Inc. has some good programs, they also support abortion, oppose abstinence-only education for girls, and condone lesbianism."

Here's what Girls Inc. promotes:

Will Power/Won’t Power®
For Girls Ages 12–14 In this 10-session program girls learn how to say no to sex as they enter the most pressure-sensitive adolescent years. Interactive sessions center on values; relationships; the reproductive system and female health and hygiene; separating sexual myths from reality; assertiveness and communication skills; identifying and resisting sexual pressures from the media and peers; sexual decision-making and avoiding risky situations; the positive aspects of abstinence, and the power of a positive-sister support system.

Taking Care of Business®
For Girls Ages 15–18 Ten interactive sessions focus on recognizing and moving beyond limiting sex-role stereotypes for women; values as a basis for positive decision-making; assertiveness, refusal and relationship skills; avoiding risky behavior, pregnancy, STDs and HIV through abstinence and smart choices; the facts on contraception and protection; and communication and success skills to achieve career goals.

ANOTHER FUNDIE WITH A TINY SOUL

But that was not enough for activists like Janet LaRue, chief counsel for Concerned Women for America. "Jimmy Carter claims to be an Evangelical," she says, "and I wouldn't want to have him on the Supreme Court."

FEC, HANNITY, PIRRO UPDATE

I spoke with someone at the FEC this A.M. and she advised me to put all 3 (ABC Radio, Hannity & my local station) on the complaint.

MILITARY INVOLVED IN PROPAGANDA?

Atrios points out that it seems likely and NITPICKER has more, including a bit about Fats Limbaugh:

In fact, I was also ordered to stay away from Rush Limbaugh when he made his drive-by lying trip to Afghanistan. I was told by a Major that I couldn't disagree with the Commander-in-Chief on air. I said that the regs say nothing of the sort, but, anyway, I was going to disagree with Limbaugh if given the opportunity, not the president. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was to stay away.

MORE ON HANNITY/PIRRO/FEC

MediaMatters, God bless 'em, has the transcript and the audio clip. Here's the transcript:

From the September 20 broadcast of ABC Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show:

HANNITY: Now let me ask you a question, OK? How much am I allowed to give to your campaign? Because I want to give the maximum.

PIRRO: Awwww. Thank you, Sean. Well, you know, because there's a possible primary, it's $4,200 a person for the, you know, the whole cycle. And that's this year and next year. And certainly, you know, money is what we need to make sure that we can get our message out. I have been all over this state, Sean, and I am greeted with a great deal of enthusiasm, with energy, with people who say, "You know what? We need someone who's going to listen to us!" I'm an upstate New Yorker, you know? When I was a kid, I worked in a dairy. And I really feel for upstate New York. It's been ignored, and New York is not a doormat. It --

HANNITY: -- Well, so's Long Island.

PIRRO: You don't come to New York and use it as a springboard to the presidency.

HANNITY: Not only that. Just don't be a phony about it. If you're gonna run, say, "Yeah, I'm planning on running. I'm thinking of running." But don't play this cat-and-mouse game and not get away with answering the question. Listen, I'm gonna have to run, but I want people to donate to your campaign. I read [New York Post state editor] Fredric Dicker's column, and you gotta, you know -- I'm gonna give you a check for the maximum that I can give, and I really want other people -- where is, how can people get in touch with you?

PIRRO: It's JeaninePirro.com. It's J-E-A-N-I-N-E -- Pirro -- P-I-R-R-O dot-com, and, Sean, thank you so much.

HANNITY: I'll link that to my website, Hannity.com, because I'm gonna tell you right now, it is such a bunch of -- I need people to get to know you. If they know you as well as I do, everybody'll vote for you.

MORE ON THE BUSH PHOTO-OP

The AP is all over this "townhall" session:

"This is an important time," Allison Barber, deputy assistant defense secretary, said, coaching the soldiers before Bush arrived. "The president is looking forward to having just a conversation with you."

"I'm going to ask somebody to grab those two water bottles against the wall and move them out of the camera shot for me," Barber said.

A brief rehearsal ensued.

"OK, so let's just walk through this," Barber said. "Captain Kennedy, you answer the first question and you hand the mike to whom?"
"Captain Smith," Kennedy said.

"Captain. Smith? You take the mike and you hand it to whom?" she asked.
"Captain Kennedy," the soldier replied.

And so it went.

HANNITY, PIRRO, RADIO, FEC VIOLATION

Back on Sept. 19th, I heard Hannity on his radio show openly call for donations to Jeanine Pirro, the Republican candidate who is running against Hillary Clinton in NYS. Deborah of FOX NewsHounds also caught it and made a blog entry.

I sent an e-mail to the FEC the next day and I finally got a response:

Dear Mr. J: This is in response to your recent email to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). As you may know, federal law and Commission regulations prohibit a corporation from making any contribution or expenditure in connection with a federal election (see the Federal Election Campaign Act, or "the Act"- 2 U.S.C. 441b(a). This prohibition includes facilitating the making of a contribution or expenditure through the use of corporate resources or facilities (see Commission regulations at 11 CFR 114.2(f)(1). It would seem possible that using the corporate resources of a commercial radio station to urge that contributions be made to a federal candidate could be considered "facilitating." If you have specific knowledge or information that gives you reason to believe a violation of the Act has occurred, you may wish to file a formal complaint with the Commission.

For more information about this process, please consult our brochure entitled "Filing a Complaint," located on our web site at http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/complain.shtml Hopefully you will find this information helpful. If you have any additional questions or have trouble accessing the information on our web site, please feel free to contact the Information Division at 800-424-9530.

I looked at the brochure and I think we can go after Hannity, ABC Radio and the local stations.

More later.

ANOTHER BUSH PHOTO-OP

The AP pointed it out:

"The exchange was carefully choreographed. Before it began, a Pentagon official coached the troops, telling them the president planned to ask questions on three topics: The overall security in Iraq, how they were preparing for the vote on Saturday and how much progress had been made in the training of Iraqi troops.

Allison Barber, a Pentagon official, said Bush would ask them specifically, "In the last 10 months, what kind of progress have we seen?" She asked who was prepared to answer the question. "Master Sgt. Lombardo," one said. "

http://tinyurl.com/dbhot

PAT ROBERTSON: STILL NUTS

That's not exactly groundbreaking but Pat just can't let go of his delusions about Hugo Chavez and Venezuela:

BLITZER: One final question on an unrelated matter, Hugo Chavez.

You caused a big uproar a few weeks ago when you suggested the U.S. should just simply take him out, should simply kill him. You later said you misspoke a little bit. You apologized.

But clarify briefly for our viewers what you meant and where you stand now.

ROBERTSON: Well, I want to say August is a slow news month, Wolf, and they were looking for a big story and I happened to be it.

But the truth is, this man is setting up a Marxist-type dictatorship in Venezuela. He's trying to spread Marxism throughout South America. He is negotiating with the Iranians to get nuclear material. And he also sent $1.2 million in cash to Osama bin Laden right after 9/11.

He is -- I mean, I've written him. I apologized and I said I'm going to be praying for him. But one day we're going to be staring at nuclear weapons and it won't be Katrina facing New Orleans, it's going to be a Venezuelan nuke.

So my suggestion was: Isn't it a lot cheaper sometimes to deal with these problems before you have to have a big war?

BLITZER: Now, we're out of time. But what did you just say? He sent how much money to Osama bin Laden?

ROBERTSON: I'm told it's either $1 million or $1.2 million in cash.

BLITZER: Where do you get that from?

ROBERTSON: Well, sources that came to me. That's what I was told. And I know he sent a warm, congratulatory letter to Carlos the Jackal. He's a friend of Moammar Gadhafi. He's made common cause with these people who are considered terrorists.

SPONGEDOBSON LIES AGAIN

(Via Crooks & Liars) Liberal Oasis catches the mullah in a lie about confidentiality. Dobson claimed that we was told things on Oct. 3rd about Miers by Karl Rove but he couldn't divulge them. Today, Dobson's been making the wingnut circuit claiming that all he was told, among other things, was that Miers was a evangelical Christian from a conservative church but he couldn't reveal that until he got the OK from Karl.

The problem is Dobson did tell Brit Hume several of these supposedly hush-hush facts about Miers on Oct. 3rd, before he got the OK. Here's an excerpt and you can read more at Liberal Oasis:

HUME: You say she is a conservative Christian. I have heard it said that she is indeed, evangelical Christian, like yourself and like the president. How do you know that?
DOBSON: I know the church that she goes to and I know the people who go to church with her.
HUME: Which church is that? Just for the benefit of the public.
DOBSON: I think that I should let her reveal that.
HUME: I wouldn’t know. I can’t imagine why it would be a secret.
DOBSON: You know, you already quoted Rush Limbaugh and he said that on his show, that she was an evangelical Christian and I know that to be a fact.

CONSEQUENCES

FireDogLake has a good post that deals with an issue almost no one in the mass media has touched on. Below is a brief excerpt and I encourage you to read the whole post.

Imagine that one day you wake up to the incessent ping of your beeper. It is still dark outside your window, and you slide out of bed, pad quietly down the hallway and try not to wake up the wife and kids, as you slip into your home office and place a call on a secure phone. You are told that your cover has been blown, that your family may be at risk. You have to make instant decisions for your own safety, that of your family, and of every asset you have in the field - and to do that, you have to prioritize which assets are more valuable and which you can afford to lose, if necessary. You have to decide then and there which of the people you cultivated, the ones you promised safety in exchange for information and cooperation, which of them may have to die because you may not have time to save them all.

NEW IMPEACHMENT POLL!!!!

AfterDowningStreet reports the results of a poll it commissioned from Ipsos:

The poll found that 50% agreed with the statement:

"If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable by impeaching him."

44% disagreed, and 6% said they didn't know or declined to answer. The poll has a +/- 3.1% margin of error.

Among those who felt strongly either way, 39% strongly agreed, while 30% strongly disagreed.



This is a significant change from the Zogby poll of June 27-29:

	Ipsos 10/8-9	Zogby 6/27-29	Net Change
Support Impeachment	50%	42%	+8%
Oppose Impeachment	44%	50%	-6%
Impeachment Margin	+6%	-8%	+14%

WE NEED OUR OWN "NOISE MACHINE"

The GOP has a vast media infrastructure that makes it easy for them to spread their memes and stir up their base. We don't need liars and fools like Limbaugh and Hannity, but we do need a competitive system.

Just look what DeLay can do:

DeLay appeals to court of public opinion
Oct 11, 10:08 AM EDT

Kathleen Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said DeLay has adopted a standard public relations strategy of proclaiming innocence and shoring up his base.

"If you are Tom DeLay, you don't want your constituency to believe the indictments," Jamieson said. "You are reassuring them that this is bogus and you are innocent and you are being hunted by people with partisan objectives."

She said DeLay is helped in his strategy by the larger presence of conservative talk radio and TV, where listeners are sympathetic. Keeping them from losing faith is critical, she said.

"Historically, when people on your side decide you need to go, you go," Jamieson said. "At that point, you can't argue you are innocent."

EMPTY SUIT, EMPTY MIND

"The first time I met Bush 43, I knew he was different..One, he didn't know very much."

Richard Perle,
quoted in "Bush's Brain Trust" by Sam Tanenhaus, Vanity Fair, July 2003.

Bush "is impatient, quick to anger, sometimes glib, even dogmatic; often uncurious and as a result, ill informed; more conventional in his thinking than a leader should be."

David Frum, former Bush speechwriter,
from his book
The Right Man : The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush
by DAVID FRUM, page 272.

BUSH THE EMPTY SUIT

There's nothing surprising about this if you have been paying attention but it does come from a real insider, the managing director of Carlyle:

Last April 23, Carlyle managing director David Rubenstein spoke quite frankly about the comfy sinecure he provided to George W. Bush more than a decade ago -- and how useless Bush turned out to be. Whether he knew it or not, Rubenstein's remarks to the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association were recorded.

Rubenstein said, "We put [Bush] on the board and [he] spent three years. Came to all the meetings. Told a lot of jokes. Not that many clean ones. And after a while I kind of said to him, after about three years - you know, I'm not sure this is really for you. Maybe you should do something else. Because I don't think you're adding that much value to the board. You don't know that much about the company. “

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3994.htm

WHO COUNTS, WHO DOESN'T, IN BUSHWORLD

Both James Dobson and Richard Land have publicly acknowledged that there were briefed by Karl Rove about Harriet Miers but neither of them is willing to share any of the details. Why do they count more than the rest of us?

Dobson:

"He also confirmed reports that he received a special briefing from Bush's political adviser, Karl Rove, but still will not discuss the talks in detail.
"When you know some of the things I know - that I probably shouldn't know - that take me in this direction, you'll know why I've said with fear and trepidation (that) I believe Harriet Miers will be a good justice," Dobson said in a broadcast with co-host John Fuller. "

Land:

DR. LAND: No. The--and I don't know what Dr. Dobson's talking about. You'd have to ask him that question. When Karl Rove called me on Monday morning, he just told me who it was and told me the president had absolute confidence in her and gave me some of her background and some of the people that I knew in Dallas that knew her and who would vouch for her.

UPDATE:

Two senators on the Judiciary Committee are also interested in what Dobson was told. (Via Americablog):

Specter to Ask Whether Rove Gave Private Assurances on Miers

Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said he wants to know whether presidential adviser Karl Rove privately assured a conservative activist of how Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers would rule on the court.

Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said he will would look into a statement by James Dobson, president of the Colorado Springs, Colorado-based advocacy group Focus on the Family, that Dobson has had ``conversations'' with Rove about the woman nominated to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and knows things about Miers ``that I probably shouldn't know.''

``The Senate Judiciary Committee is entitled to know whatever the White House knew,'' Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said on ABC's ``This Week'' program. ``If Dr. Dobson knows something that he shouldn't know or something that I ought to know, I'm going to find out.''

The senator stopped short of saying he would subpoena Dobson or Rove to appear. Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat and member of the Judiciary panel, said today that Dobson should be called as a witness during hearings on Miers's nomination that are set to begin next month.

JANET PARSHALL == EPISTEMIC CLOSURE

BUSH WHORE VERSUS TRUTH

OR, JEEBUS WITCH VERSUS RANDI RHODES

GANNON & PLAMEGATE

Jeff Gannon, the former WH "reporter" for Talon News who was also a gay prostitute, claimed that he first learned about the State Dept. memo about Valerie Plame from the WSJ. It turns out that he knew BEFORE the WSJ published. Details at Talk Left. (Via Atrios & Americablog)