How the Press Play Dumb about Abramoff (GOP Talking Point Edition)

SUPPORT BUZZFLASH

How the Press Played Dumb about Abramoff

Molly Ivans

won't support Hillary Clinton for president, and neither will I!!!!!

Martin Luther King and the NSA

Martin Luther King Day is a time to remember Dr. King's ideas and accomplishments, specifically as embodied within a single social movement that ended decades before Giblets was born which could have no possible relevance to anything happening today.

wiiiaai lol

George Bush, asked by some idiot in Virginia whether the LauraBot would run for the US Senate: “she’s not interested in running for office. She is interested in literacy.” Jeez, George, your example to the contrary, literacy isn’t actually a disqualification for public office.

ORWELLIAN

somebunny Says, FROM THE COMMENTS (#5) TO THIS POOR MAN ARTICLE:

"Who among us can say that his understanding of the “evils” of Soviet-style communism didn’t begin around age 11 with ‘Animal Farm?’ "

This statement itself is a product of the same propaganda it would impale. Consider, the notion that some animals are more equal than others may rightly be said to apply to any corrupt political organization or economic philosophy, not just communism. Truly, it may be said that in fascism, or in any form of totalitarianism, that some animals are more equal is an overt aim of the state.

It is in the uses of Animal Farm and other stories, like 1984 that the propaganda of the right and the left can be seen. This was Orwell's point. It matters not, the political philosophy, or the religion, or the political economy...the issue is the use of fear and intimidation to control others, whatever the semantic construct may label them. Indeed it is always in the definition of the other that any political issue devolves into savagery.

Radiate

no returns after the sale of the public trust

all sales final

good night

Bush's Catastrophic Drug Benefit

Characteristically, the Administration is moving heaven and earth to avoid fessing up to the scale of the catastrophe.

Time for Di Fi to earn her keep

And not just Di Fi, although I have no illusions. For years Arlen Spector has been telling Pennsylvanians that he is pro choice. Now that he is a useless old flail, set to retire in ignomy, he is content to establish his legacy as the Senator who overturned Roe v. Wade. Pathetic, but no where near so as those "liberals" like Di Fi whose entire political careers have been waiting for this moment. Only the Rude Pundit can give this issue the common sense analysis that is required to penetrate the bullshit offered in lieu of meaningful work by the Democratic Senate:

"In the end, if you don't stand up and fight for the one thing you've said you'll throw down on, then you may as well say that you don't actually believe in anything. You gotta be willing to get up out of your seat and tap that asshole on the shoulder and tell him to step outside."

Whatever it is I am against it

Does this wiiiaai blog guy have an amusing perspective on current events, or has someone been passing laughing gas in here?

'George Bush, meanwhile, invited some “victims of Saddam Hussein” to the White House, on the very day a Human Rights Watch report says that the US uses torture as a deliberate policy, and said some ironic things about a tyrant who considered himself above the law and denied people basic human rights.... The event, Bush’s portion anyway, will be broadcast on C-SPAN later, so I can see whether it’s just a transcription error that has him referring to Saddam as “the butcherer,” but it’s kind of too good to check. ...they put right next to Bush a guy who (very sensibly) ran away from Saddam’s Iraq, but who doesn’t seem to have any plans to move back to what Bush calls “a society that is beginning to understand the fruits of democracy and freedom.” Understanding fruit. Whatever.'

Little Ricky Caught in the Muck

Hailing originally from Pennsylvania, I am a tad interested in state politics, and Rick Santorum has always appeared to be a particularly unctuous version of a Quaker State Rethuglican. I am happy to see him get his muckracking comeuppance from Josh Marshall today. Mr. Muck makes Little Ricky see that he can employ revisionist history, but he can't revise Google's Cache concerning Santorum's total immersion in the K Street Project. Try running with that around your neck Ricky.

Illegal Warrantless Searches Conducted without Legal Congressional Oversight

A legal analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service concludes that the Bush administration's limited briefings for Congress on the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping without warrants are "inconsistent with the law."

energy

The forgotten wounded

This is the part [we] never see.

Lineup

The guilty one is just to the left of Kramer in this lineup.

The Liberal Media

Medium is more like it. Let's see there are blogs, and there are....

Atrios at Eschaton has a keen appreciation of unfairness and wobbly balance.

Mr. Muck

It must suck being George W. Bush these days. Surrounded by potential witnesses who could turn state's evidence at the drop of a whim. Deals like this might help avoid the need to disclaim any recollection of Grover. No, not the Sesame Street character. Serious tip of the fedora to Josh Marshall, Mr. Muck.

An invitation to bid on construction work in Iraq

where criminals have “almost free rein”.

Lieberman's Freakout

Hey if he didn't want to fight a primary challenge, he should have acted like a Democrat.

Rank Hypocrisy

For the last four years, this Administration has cynically exploited the September 11 attacks and the supposedly overarching terrorist threat to work unnoticed, wielding the ever-expanding powers of the Federal Government in order to implement a whole slew of moralizing, intrusive measures. In this time of alleged "war," the Administration has devoted substantial resources of the Federal Government -- including the DoJ, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies -- to measures as pressing as waging the war against adult pornography, the war against the morning after pill, and the vicious war against adult gambling.

But when it comes to anti-democratic impulses and rank hypocrisy, none of those things match the Administration’s behavior with regard to Oregon’s assisted suicide law.

Are they just stupid and incompetent, or actually evil?

The president of the United States has to be credible with the American people. I have to be credible with the American people.

Condi Rice to Tim Russert, 6/8/2003, via first draft

Today

So, if we are to naively believe that she forgot about the CIA warnings in the fall of 2002, I suppose we are as likely to believe that this "high level warning" had also conveniently slipped her mind by the time she signed off on the president's State of the Union speech in January 2003. Presumably, one would expect her to have searched her recorded recollection by the time of her 6/8/03 chat with Russert, and accordingly, to have mentioned this earlier "warning" precisely about the subject matter forming the material misrepresentation of the president in his constitutionally mandated address to the Congress and the nation. Given the Secretary of State's great concern with the credibility of the president, one could reasonably have expected this of her by June 2003.

Regardless, even giving the administration the benefit of the doubt as to their claims of regrettable misfeasance, all such protestations go out the proverbial window when viewed from the perspective of the indictment of Scooter Libby. That there was a concerted effort (major malfeasance) to undermine the credibility of the witness/whsitleblower (Joseph Wilson) crying bullshit is, as they say in the police business- and make no mistake about it, this was one of the greatest crimes in recorded history- evidence of consciousness of guilt. Put that issue in front of a jury and say bye bye to all of these lying war criminals.

A heckuva job..

Medicare's new prescription-drug benefit has been hobbled nationwide by a series of computer, phone, data and human errors that have left an estimated 1.28 million of Medicare's most frail beneficiaries unable to get the medications they need.


UPDATED: The Bush administration's answer for everything is

PUBLIC RELATIONS

legal foibles: January 2006

what else are there, but foibles for yours truly? doubtful as I am that anyone will read what I have to say, I have to say it, nevertheless. welcome to the result of my compulsion. "please follow the throbbing yellow line to your seat."