Laryngitis

Bad timing. oy.

I never get sick.

Lance rocks.

He's going to win again.

BESANCON, France (AP) -- Lance Armstrong capped his most dominant Tour de France with another impressive win in the final time trial Saturday, all but guaranteeing that he will ride into history as the first six-time champion in the race's 101-year history.

Thanks, NTodd.

Boston

The site of yet another American revolution.

``John Edwards and I are determined that we are going to be champions for the middle class, the folks who built this country,'' he told an audience in Sioux City, Iowa, the state whose caucuses put him on the path to the nomination.

``We go to Boston, to the birthplace of the revolution of America and the possibilities of the future. And from there we go to the White House.''

Go, John!

Link.

Open thread

I didn't know I could still do this. Hurray!

That Liberal Media

I hear Richard Shelby smuggled them out in his panty hose...

WASHINGTON — Sen. Richard Shelby (search) is the target of an ongoing Justice Department investigation into the leaking of the contents of classified phone intercepts received the day before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, congressional sources told FOX News.

Justice Department officials briefed members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (search) in closed session Thursday on Capitol Hill, naming the Alabama Republican as the target of the leak probe.

Law enforcement and congressional sources said the purpose of the briefing was to notify Congress of the department's intent to refer information collected to the Senate Select Committee on Ethics (search) for review.

Our press is like so all over this story.

Tucker

From Entertainment Weekly:

Carlson, however, is a different matter. He's a real creep. On the July 5 edition, he inisinuated that John Edwards made his name as a trial lawyer by "specializing in Jacuzzi cases." This was an allusion to the horrific disembowlment of a young girl who'd been sucked into an open swimming-pool drain. When informed of the facts behind his cruel phrasing, he snapped, "Oh, I know. I've heard that," and then pressed the point that Edwards took money for getting the girl a $25 million settlement. Carlson is a quicker debater than any of the Crossfire hosts, and he's a good-looking twerp. But he's got cold, dead eyes that seem to match his heart. He's a prime example of the Triumph of the Telegenic. Recently rewarded with his own show on the now-utterly-soulless PBS, Carlson can spew his bile all over the tube.

"heh."

645 Desertion Warrants

And not one with the name "George W. Bush."

WaPo Losing Readers

I suggest they replace Susan Schmidt and stop burying stories which question Official Bush Administration Rhetoric deep in the paper.

But, actually, it's the last couple of paragraphs which tell some of the real story:

The bottom line—and the share prices—of the Washington Post Company are in quite good shape. The flagship daily newspaper is now only a small division of the Post Company, which reaps its largest profits from other divisions, especially the Kaplan education training group.

If only Kaplan could train newspaper readers.

Kaplan likey the Bush administration. Kaplan makes educational tests. Kaplan makes educational test prep materials. Want your to school to do well? Sign up for the whole package...

Kerry in Philly

Local people can go see Kerry and Hoeffel at the Art Museum on Tuesday.

Judy You Ignorant Slut

Today on Inside Politics. Unbelievable.

WOODRUFF: So, Jamie, to clarify, this indicates that President Bush was present and putting his service while he was in the Air Guard, even though he wasn't flying, am I correct?

Um, no.

Wow

Assuming Wonkette isn't just pulling our legs, this online chat with the twins is absolutely hilarious. There's no way in hell they were actually answering those questions.

Threats

So, according to Kelli Arena on CNN just now, there's a major nonspecific threat of terrorism. In fact, she just told me that the threat is as serious as it was in the summer of 2001!!!

But...but...but... I thought in the summer of 2001 Bush didn't have an inkling that something could happen, and that the optimal response to the information he received was to spend the month of August brushing up on My Pet Goat.

A Bit Confused

I'm really not following the spin on the Bush records release.

The Pentagon on Friday released newly discovered payroll records from President Bush's 1972 service in the Alabama National Guard, though the records shed no new light on the future president's activities during that summer.
A Pentagon official said the earlier contention that the records were destroyed was an "inadvertent oversight."

Like records released earlier by the White House, the newly released computerized payroll records show no indication Bush drilled with the Alabama unit during July, August and September of 1972. Pay records covering all of 1972, released previously, also indicated no guard service for Bush during those three months.

The records do not give any new information toward determining whether Bush kept his National Guard commitments during 1972, when he transferred to the Alabama National Guard unit so he could work on the U.S. Senate campaign of a family friend.

Well, I suppose they don't shed any new light as long as we all agree that he was AWOL for three or more months, technically Desertion, and these records confirm it.

And, while we're on this story, what was the reason we didn't get to the bottom of this 4 years ago.

Oh, and one more thing.

I continued flying with my unit for the next several years [after completing training in June 1970]

claimed Bush in his autobiography A Charge to Keep. That, we've known for years, is bullshit as he stopped flying 22 months later. Tell me again why the liberal media doesn't care that Bush lies about his military service? Tell me again why the military doesn't care that Bush lies about his military service?

Let's Roll

New York Times vs. AP

Times:

Then a passenger yelled, "Roll it!" While earlier accounts reported the phrase as "Let's roll," which was repeated in speeches by President Bush and became the title of a bestseller, some aviation experts have speculated that this was actually a reference to a food cart, being used as a battering ram.

AP:

With the words ``Let's roll,'' passengers rushed down the airliner's narrow aisle to try to overwhelm the hijackers.

Relying on the cockpit recorder and flight data, the commission said terrorist-pilot Ziad Jarrah violently rocked the jet's wings and told another hijacker to block the door. With the sounds of fighting outside the cockpit, Jarrah asked, ``Is that it? Shall we finish it off?''

Another hijacker, who wasn't identified, replied, ``No, not yet. When they all come, we finish it off.''

Jarrah then began pitching the nose of the plane up and down to throw passengers off balance.

Seconds later, a passenger who wasn't identified yelled, ``In the cockpit! If we don't, we die!'' And 16 seconds afterward, another passenger yelled, ``Roll it!'' Investigators previously have said they believe passengers tried to use a food cart to break the cockpit door.

...to be clear, I don't really care if someone said "let's roll a joint" or "roll it" or "it's cold" or all of the above. I'm not trying to take away from the fact that apparently these brave people took action. Just highlighting the contradiction between the two reports...

Documents Show Wolfowitz Didn't Believe Bin Laden Was Threat

From the 9/11 commission report:

Tenet told us that in his world "the system was blinking red." By late July, Tenet said, it could not "get any worse." Not everyone was convinced. Some asked whether all these threats might just be deception. On June 30, the SEIB [Senior Executive Intelligence Brief] contained an article titled "Bin Ladin Threats Are Real." Yet Hadley told Tenet in July that Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz questioned the reporting. Perhaps Bin Ladin was trying to study U.S. reactions. Tenet replied that he had already addressed the Defense Department's questions on this point; the reporting was convincing. To give a sense of his anxiety at the time, one senior official in the Counterterrorist Center told us that he and a colleague were considering resigning in order to go public with their concerns.

Terror in the Skies

Oops:

Undercover federal air marshals on board a June 29 Northwest airlines flight from Detroit to LAX identified themselves after a passenger, “overreacted,” to a group of middle-eastern men on board, federal officials and sources have told KFI NEWS.

The passenger, later identified as Annie Jacobsen, was in danger of panicking other passengers and creating a larger problem on the plane, according to a source close to the secretive federal protective service.

Jacobsen, a self-described freelance writer, has published two stories about her experience at womenswallstreet.com, a business advice web site designed for women.

“The lady was overreacting,” said the source. “A flight attendant was told to tell the passenger to calm down; that there were air marshals on the plane.”

...

The source said the air marshals on the flight were partially concerned Jacobsen’s actions could have been an effort by terrorists or attackers to create a disturbance on the plane to force the agents to identify themselves.

Air marshals’ only tactical advantage on a flight is their anonymity, the source said, and Jacobsen could have put the entire flight in danger.

“They have to be very cognizant of their surroundings,” spokesman Adams confirmed, “to make sure it isn’t a ruse to try and pull them out of their cover.”

Shattered Glass

The movie was showing on a flight I took so I decided to watch it. The movie was quite bizarre, really, in so many ways -- a complete apologia for TNR. No one was responsible for what happened except for Stephen Glass. Michael Kelly was portrayed as a complete saint whose only crime was "standing up for his writers."

The movie just left out all the important context. It was noted that Kelly was brought in along with a very rigid editing and fact-checking process. I'll leave it to the readers to remember why it was thought that TNR needed improved fact-checking (hint: think former editors). We only quietly hear the reason why Kelly was fired - in the movie it's because Peretz thought the magazine had gotten "too nasty," something which was completely at odds with the sweet portrayal of Kelly and the young folk who were working for him, and which made it just seem like Peretz was being a jerk and firing him for no reason. But, more importantly, Kelly's rigid fact-checking system obviously was a joke because Glass's stuff wouldn't have gotten through if they had any real fact-checking going on (the movie tried to tell us that since Glass's only "sources" were his "personal notes" that his pieces could only be checked against them. Wuuuuh?)

Anyway, I'm a bit hazy on my TNRology from the past - there's a lot more to the story than this movie told. But, all in all it was a load of crap.

Failure of Leadership

I know there's something slightly unseemly about jumping on people when they issue a mea culpa. Still, there's something about the partial "it wasn't really my fault and besides it wasn't just me and how can you hold me responsible" mea culpas that just absolutely enrage me. Consider even the liberal Richard Cohen today:

Well, I did. I'm not sure if panic is quite the right word, but it is close enough. Anthrax played a role in my decision to support the Bush administration's desire to take out Saddam Hussein. I linked him to anthrax, which I linked to Sept. 11. I was not going to stand by and simply wait for another attack -- more attacks. I was going to go to the source, Hussein, and get him before he could get us. As time went on, I became more and more questioning, but I had a hard time backing down from my initial whoop and holler for war.

Nations and peoples can lose their heads. The easiest way to explain how Hitler came to power is simply to say that Germany went nuts. That's the most extreme example. But something irrational overcame the United States after World War I and the anti-radical Palmer Raids, or the decision, following Pearl Harbor, to incarcerate Japanese Americans. McCarthyism was another period of collective insanity. I know we are a great and brave country, but sometimes we react to threats by simply going to pieces.

It's great that we have multiple commissions looking into intelligence failures, but none of those commissions will come close to the greatest intelligence failure of all -- our inability to use our heads when we most needed to. The terrorist attacks coupled with the anthrax scare unhinged us a bit -- or maybe more than a bit. We eventually went into a war that now makes little sense and that, without a doubt, was waged for reasons that simply did not exist. We did so, I think, because we were scared. You could say we lacked judgment. Maybe. I would say we lacked leadership.

Okay, kudos to Cohen for a few things. First, it's nice that someone remembers anthrax, which the media have shoved down the memory hole because despite it dominating the news for a couple of months it failed to fit the official narrative which has since developed (the perps are believed to be not-so-swarthy and Bush likes to claim there has been no major terrorist attack since 9/11). And, second, yes, it's nice that someone admits that they were gripped by a wee bit of insanity. But, it's the last few sentences which just make me batshit crazy:

You could say we lacked judgment. Maybe. I would say we lacked leadership.

Yes, we did. We lacked leadership from people in leadership positions like Richard Cohen. Yes, obviously the Bush administration's leadership was horrible for many reasons. But, Richard Cohen writes a column for what is the most influential foreign policy newspaper in the country. He is an opinion leader. He can't just say "if only Daddy had made me feel better and done the right thing" and wash his hands of it.

On November 30, 2001, a mere 50 or so days after 9/11, Richard Cohen wrote a column entitled "...And Now to Iraq."

Those weapons -- plus the ultimate inevitability of nuclear ones -- are precisely why Hussein must go. He is too evil to be allowed to menace us with weapons of mass destruction. He invaded Iran. He invaded Kuwait. He used chemical weapons on Kurdish civilians. He has murdered his critics, his opponents and -- just to keep people off balance -- anyone at random. He has not been linked to the anthrax deaths here, but that's precisely the sort of thing he's capable of doing and what, given enough time, he will do.

Richard Perle, the former Reagan administration official and the Zelig-like character who appears over the shoulder of countless op-ed writers, makes a good point (over my shoulder) when he says that the danger is not merely that Iraq will go nuclear but also that it will hand off the device to some terrorist with a suitcase. Then, as with anthrax, we will not be able to find the source.

Is that likely? I don't know. But I do know that Hussein tried to assassinate George H. W. Bush. I do know that Bush's son is now in the White House. I do know that Hussein is a sociopath -- not irrational but reptilian in both instinct and conscience. We have seen his type before -- Hitler, Stalin and, in his hideously overachieving way, Milosevic -- and always waited almost until it was too late.

We do not have that luxury now. Sept. 11 taught us what terrorists can do. Afghanistan taught us what we can do. In due course, Saddam Hussein must get our message: Uncle Sam Wants You.

Yes, there was a failure of leadership.

Kerry Headquarters Update

When wingnuts attack:

white powder found in a package opened at John Kerry's presidential campaign headquarters Thursday was harmless and could have been garlic powder, authorities said of an apparent hoax that forced police to seal off the building.
"It appears to be some kind of garlic powder, commonly used for seasoning foods," said Alan Etter, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C., Fire Department.

The package, containing two letter-sized envelopes, was turned over to the FBI for further investigation.

I don't worry much about real attacks of this sort, but the fake ones can be disruptive enough.

Lying Tucker

Josh Marshall catches Tucker making stuff up.

tucker.carlson@turner.com


(thanks to pkarchive)

Out and About: I Will Bury You*

Aravosis has the latest fun with anti-gay gay people.

*title refers to this Neal Pollack post.

Convention Blogging

As I've hinted previously, I'll be there. Not sure how interesting it'll be, really, to people who read blogs. For an event like this, the role of the mainstream press is mostly to serve as a filter for people who don't really watch it themselves or who want someone to tell them what they're supposed to think about the whole thing. While bloggers can potentially provide an alternative filter, in this case I'm not sure what additional value it provides. I mean, if you'd prefer hear me announce the basketball game instead of Bob Costas, then you might enjoy it, but I'm not sure what other kind of value added there is.

So, anyway, hopefully it'll be fun for me but I don't know quite how to make it fun for you. I have some ideas, but I won't really know how well they'll play out until I get there.


...I suppose this is one of those "dimishing expectations" posts. I hope I can provide some exciting inside scoop coverage of the convention. I'm glad bloggers are invited, but given the fact that there will be 15,000 media people there, I find the presence of 35 odd bloggers to be not all that much of a story, at least before the event. I tend to ignore a lot of press inquiries -- partially because I'm lazy, partially because I get tired of spending a lot of time answering questions only to find one silly quote popping up in a story, and partially because I don't really feel like "bloggers going to convention" is a particularly interesting story. If bloggers make news while there, it'll be interesting. If not, it won't. Don't get me wrong -- I think Blogging the Phenomenon, and the general netroots movement, is nothing to be sneezed at, but Bloggers at Convention just shouldn't be garnering the attention that it is.

Though, my one thought is that all of the self-righteous articles about bloggers vs. real journalists are motivated by one thing -- we'll be in the media box, too... And, to paraphrase some idiot... We Can Hear You...

Police Seal Kerry Campaign Building

Suspicious letter/package:

WASHINGTON — Police sealed off the office building that houses Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign headquarters on Thursday after finding a suspicious letter, authorities said.

The letter at the downtown office building brought out emergency personnel, said Alan Etter of the District of Columbia Fire and EMS Department. He said he didn't know what made the letter suspicious.

"There's lots of these things every week," said Etter, adding that he expected the scene to be cleared shortly.

An e-mail distributed to Kerry staff said: "There is a suspicious package found on one of the floors of the building. Emergency services, fire, police and hazmat are on site. Please be advised if you leave, you will not be allowed to re-enter until authorities have given the all clear."

Talking Points

From Comedy Central.

Blinking Red

I know we're all supposed to believe that the report is easy on the Bush administration. But, you know, it really isn't. It doesn't come out and say "Bush and Condi really screwed the pooch." But, if you read this chapter, one really comes away thinking "Bush and Condi really screwed the pooch."

Self Fluffery

I listened to a wee bit of the 9/11 commission press conference. Can't these people ever project a wee bit of humility? What was with all the "our report is wonderful because we're wonderful people" nonsense?

Party Hardy

Hey, where's *my* bowling with Ben Affleck invitation...

Women for Hoeffel

Don't forget -- Joe Hoeffel Thursday!

And, if you're local and want to get some fun for your money, there's a fundraiser on Friday.

Bush Supports Tax Increases

Forces Republicans to support them.

Le Boicott Billo

Bill O'Reilly is singlehandedly destroying the French economy. The Paris Business Review has the facts.

(click here for context)

Airborne Wingnuttery

World O'Crap surveys the scene.

Memos

Yea, yea, I was out of town during the big Fox Memo release and never got around to reading them. I love this one:

We should NOT assume that anyone who supported or helped Eric Rudolph is a racist. No one's in favor of murder or bombing of public places. But feelings in North Carolina may just be more complicated than the NY Times can conceive. ...Rudolph is charged with bombing an abortion clinic, not a "health clinic."

Joe Hoeffel Thursday!

Here's Hoeffel on why he was protesting the Sudan embassy:

Why now? The answer is simple. Refugee children are dying of disease and malnutrition. Women are being raped. Men are being murdered. The clock is ticking and every day that passes means the loss of more human life. Americans of all faiths do not want to stand by and simply let this kind of ethnic warfare and humanitarian crisis happen again. I came to the conclusion that simply passing resolutions and sending letters would not do enough to bring about the kind of quick action needed to save lives.

And, what's Hoeffel's opponent been up to lately? Saying things like this (from Roll Call):

To that end, Specter said, Santorum has his vote for any future leadership race — "anything, including president."

President Man-on-Dog? Woof!

Donate to Hoeffel!

Stickin'

Hey, Dems, loyalty goes both ways. Jeebus.

...but, if I were Margaret, and \only 99.9% pissed off instead of 100%, I'd find a candidate or two who would appreciate my efforts and raise obscene amounts of money for them...

Nagourney

I can never decide who is worse at the New York Times - Nagourney or Wilgoren. Wilgoren's more viscerally nasty, but Nagourney is more likely to just kind of make stuff up. Sam Seder was talking about this on the air a little awhile ago. Quoth the Nagourney:

In Iraq, the transfer of sovereignty has led to some reduction in American casualties.

There were more casualties during the month of July thus far than there were in June.

The New York Times - where making shit up is good enough for the editors.

Pot Smoking Nazi Necons

Apparently the managing director of the reformed Committee for the Present Danger was a lobbyist for Jorg Haider. Laura Rozen has a photo of Jorg and one of his buddies in 2002:


And, according to member Ben Wattenberg, "we win in case of a tie." More of that lowering expectations, I guess.

Best Scotty Line Ever

I'm not aware of any one in the White House who is aware of anyone who's aware that the President ever was aware of having made such a comment.

Over on a DKos diary, mitch2k2k notes that a reporter actually asked Scotty about the failure to find more massive mass graves. Obligatory disclaimer: Saddam's a bad guy and failure to find super-massive mass graves does not mean that I think Saddam was a good guy. But, here the issue isn't that the Bush administration believed, or claimed to believe, that there were mass graves in Iraq. The issue is that Bush has claimed that they were found

He said:

Remember we discovered mass graves with hundreds of thousands of men and women and children clutching their little toys, as a result of this person's brutality.

Apparently, we haven't actually discovered them. They may be there, but why is Bush lying about them?


...yes, yes, people, the Scotty line is a joke. Click through the links...

Balle!

Yesterday...

Q If someone was to make that suggestion -- it just occurred to me that somebody might think that, you know, it's the Justice Department that is investigating it, it might have been leaked by the Justice Department to --

MR. McCLELLAN: I haven't heard anyone make such a suggestion. Certainly, the first we became aware of it was upon seeing the media reports.

...and today.

President Bush (news - web sites)'s spokesman, Scott McClellan, disclosed Wednesday that the Justice Department notified the office of White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzalez about the probe before news of it leaked to the media Monday.


"My understanding is that this investigation has been going on for several months and that some officials in our counsel's office were contacted as part of the investigation," McClellan told reporters. "The counsel's office is the one that is coordinating with the Sept. 11 commission the production of documents and since this relates to some documents, the counsel's office was contacted as part of that investigation."

I Take Full Responsibility

Majority Report is #1!

"The Majority Report," the nightly Air America show co-hosted by actress-comedian Janeane Garofalo, was the top-rated AM radio program in New York during the 8-to-11 p.m. time slot.

Congrats to Sam and Janeane!

(via Sisyphus Shrugged)

More Wingnut Tears

Usually it takes a few more hours to debunk the latest round of "WE FOUND THEM! THEY'RE OVER HERE!" No nuclear missiles have been found in Iraq.

More Greenspan

Other interesting things. First, some Congressman whose name I didn't catch said something to the effect that the market should be deciding what the money supply is. Perhaps someone could explain that one to me.

Also, Uncle Alan said that he did not know if increases in expenditures related to terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were, as Bush has asserted, the primary cause of the ballooning deficit. Right.

Greenspan

Interesting. Greenspan just stated that he believes there is "significant residual discrimination" against African-Americans in the labor market.

Vote!

I agree with Jesse that generic GOTV ad campaigns and the like, especially ones directed at young people, are of dubious value. What is valuable, however, is actually spending time and money to register people to vote. While registering to vote is fairly easy in most places, it is an added little extra step that people to a surprising degree fail to do, especially if they're college students or 20somethings who move relatively frequently.

Set up vote registration tables anywhere and everywhere.

Right Wing Squares

This flash from Media Matters is fun.

Selling your Soul

It's no news that "moderate" Arlen Specter has been drifting rightward for years.   And, it should be obvious to all that when (supposedly) pro-choice Specter got Bush and Santorum to support him in his near-losing primary race against wingnut Toomey that Specter had pledged to do whatever he could to get all of Bush's judicial nominees through.   In fact, he said as much.   "Moderate" Arlen Specter just voted to support the nomination of  anti-enviornmental extremist Myers to the bench, who miraculously manage to be blocked by the full Senate.

Support Joe Hoeffel who, along with his wife Francesca, was just arrested protesting at the Sudanese embassy.

Berger

I haven't had a chance to sift through all the minutiae.  Quick impression is that this is not exactly a big deal, though he might find himself in some legal trouble. But, I'm struck once again with how successfully the Republicans can ensure that all of their groundless allegations and ridiculous speculations can magically start coming out of the mouths of the likes of Wolf Blitzer.

Party On

Like Tom Tomorrow, I'm more than happy to be invited to some truly excellent parties.

Casualties

I only had semi-regular brief doses of BBC or CNN International while I was away.  I heard plenty of stories about deaths in Iraq while I was there - car bombs killing civilians and members of the Iraqi security forces, etc...  During that time I'm pretty sure I didn't hear about a single American casualty.  That isn't to say it wasn't reported at all -- it just wasn't reported much.  I was shocked to read in the IHT right before I returned that July has yet again been another bloody month for our troops - 42 US soldiers killed already.  Number 900 just happened.

Open Thread

Party on, night owls ...

Much ado about nothing

If Berger did something so dastardly, then why have the Feds refused to talk to him or his lawyer, Lanny Breuer?

Associates said Berger knew there were copies of the documents and that former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, the after-action report's author, was cooperating with the commission inquiry.

They questioned what motive Berger would have had to take and destroy documents.

Two sources associated with the investigation said Breuer made a detailed statement of Berger's view of the facts at issue several months ago and has offered to talk to the Justice Department about a resolution to the probe.

Breuer has renewed his offer to talk several times since, one of the Berger associates said, but said prosecutors have refused to enter into such discussions.

And what about the alleged sock stuffing?

That latter allegation drew a sharp response from Berger associate and former White House lawyer Lanny Davis, who challenged any unnamed official who makes such an accusation to come forward publicly.

"I suggest that person is lying," he said. "And if that person has the guts, let's see who it is who made the comment that Sandy Berger stuffed something into his socks."

Link.

The 9/11 Commission seems to be doing its darndest to keep their report non-partisan. It's too bad the Bushies can't slither out of the mud for a change and at least pretend they care about the well-being of the country.

Tangled webs and the Bush family

Bush today:

President Bush told Chilean President Ricardo Lagos there would be a "full investigation" into allegations that Riggs Bank helped former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet hide millions of dollars from international prosecutors.

...

"It's important for the facts to be 'en la mesa,' as we say -- on the table -- so that we know what course of action may or may not be needed," said Bush, who added that Lagos brought up the issue with him yesterday. Lagos last week told media in Chile that the government would investigate Pinochet's connection to Riggs with an eye toward finding out the sources of Pinochet's wealth.

Now read this

this,

For two years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, an unlicensed money transmitter in New York City used a New Jersey bank to move $1 billion in and out of foreign accounts, some belonging to black market currency traders. By law, Hudson United Bank was required to tell regulators at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. about such suspicious transactions, but it didn't. Instead, a probe by the New York district attorney finally alerted FDIC officials.

And this

Senate investigators report that Riggs Bank courted business from the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and helped him hide millions of dollars in assets from international prosecutors. Investigators say the top federal bank examiner in charge of supervising the District's largest bank kept details about the relationship hidden and aided Pinochet while he was under house arrest in Britain.

Back in Town

Sort of.  Jetlag and hundreds of unread emails to get through.  If anyone sent me something particularly important over the past few weeks (especially the last week), you may want to send it again...

Fun Hoeffel Fundraiser

Women for Hoeffel.  This Friday.  Check it out if you're in the Philly area.

Our Man In Baghdad

James Conachy discusses Iyad Allawi's alleged summary executions and the lack of interest in the story displayed by our media:
 

In the first three weeks of the interim government, Allawi’s unelected and despised administration has assumed the power to impose martial law, ban demonstrations and monitor citizens’ phones and email. He has declared his intention to recruit the military and intelligence operatives of Hussein’s regime and this week announced the formation of a secret police agency to “annihilate” opposition. He is already being contemptuously referred to in Baghdad as “Saddam without the moustache” or “America’s Saddam”.

Far from denouncing the Bush administration for establishing a US-protected police-state in Iraq, commentary over the past week in the New York Times and the Washington Post has lauded Allawi for his reputation for sadism and ruthlessness. It is part of a shift that is underway: previous claims that the US occupation was to establish democracy are being jettisoned in favor of increasingly open support for the “strongman” Allawi and his methods.

Torture Lou!

I think you will be surprised by the results.
 
GO!

Today on Holden's Obsession with the Gaggle

Little Scottie, seen here collecting his standard $1 per lie fee, is confused:
 

Q Do you think it's appropriate for Halliburton to set up an off shore subsidiary and then have operations in Iran? Do you think that's an appropriate thing for a company to do?

MR. McCLELLAN: Are you asking because the Kerry campaign is making some accusations?

Still More from Seymour Hersh

From Pom D'or, RealMedia of Hersh saying:

He believes (but don't quote him on it) that the Pentagon seems to have lost $1 billion in cash in Iraq - not wasted, *lost*.

Oy.
 
Also, from the Taguba Report, a detainee's eye-witness description of child rape perpetrated by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib, via Boing Boing.
 
Worse than Oy.  Fucking unforgivable.
 
Thanks to Ben R. and M.V.

Annie Gets Her Gun

Kentucky Republican Anne Northup tells Jack Richardson what he can stick on his bumper:

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - A Republican lawmaker says it was inappropriate for a GOP office to display a bumper sticker declaring: "Kerry is bin Laden's Man. Bush is Mine."
Kentucky Rep. Anne Northup said she found out about the stickers over the weekend and doesn't want any more distributed. "What campaigns need to center on, debates need to center on and the party needs to focus on are ideas," she said.

If any of you out there are Anne's constituents, might not be a bad idea to drop her a note saying the party could use more people in it who stand up to bullies.

More Advice for Journalists: Hire a Proofreader

Actual headline from the AP:
 

Guerrilla Mistakens Sonic Booms for Bombs

 
 
Mistakens were made.

UPDATE:  The White House is not immune. 
 
They will probably change it soon, but this is the headline currently on the White House web site regarding an online chat with Treasury Secretary Snow:

Treasury Secretary John Discusses Economy on Ask the White House

 
I wonder if he knows Commerce Secretary Pimp?

Just Say No to Background Briefings

A refreshing tale of how real journalists operate. 
 
Setting - July 9, 2004:  Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz sits down with local reporters after attending a military ceremony and giving a speech in Omaha, Nebraska.
 

Wolfowitz's public affairs officer, Bill Turenne, began by asking that Wolfowitz's comments be attributed to a "senior Defense Department official." The Kansas City Star's [Scott] Canon took immediate issue with these ground rules. "I was less heroic than you might imagine," he says in a telephone interview.

Canon politely explained to Wolfowitz and Turenne that the conversation would be of no professional value to him if he couldn't name Wolfowitz as the source of the remarks. There just wouldn't be much use at his paper for such blind quotery. "My complaint was less about the practice in general than that it would be a waste of [Wolfowitz's] time."

[William Petroski of the Des Moines Register], who wrote a short account of the incident for the Register, told the deputy secretary that going on background was not the way local reporters did their business. Canon advanced the point that no reader was going to be fooled by the protective coloration of "a senior Defense Department official" in a news story. Wolfowitz was easily the only senior Defense Department official in the city, the state, and maybe the region that day.

Hello, Washington Post and New York Times reporters.  Are you taking notes?
 
 

Randi Rhodes

The Palm Beach Post published a nice profile of Randi yesterday, recalling an exchange from her national debut on Air America last March:
 

"Listen, Ralph," she said in her been-around-the-block-a-couple-of-times manner. "Sometimes I look at a really fabulous pair of shoes, but I can't afford them. I can't afford you. I'm not saying you're not fabulous. I can't afford you! Why you don't get this, I don't know."

Within a few seconds, Nader hung up the phone in disgust.

Homework Assignment for Today: Compare/Contrast

Criminal Investigation. Classified information.

Criminal Investigation. Classified information.

Subject for discussion: Role of Clenis in determining amount, emphasis of news coverage.

Today on Holden's Obsession with the Gaggle

Little Scottie tries to explain why we attacked the wrong country:
 

Q I just have one other question about Iran and 9/11. The President said earlier that the government is still investigating whether there is a connection we don't know about between Iran and 9/11. I just want to -- related to that, how you would respond to criticism that will likely come from Democrats and others, who say that your very aggressive posture toward Iraq may have been misplaced, and that given the -- if there was an actual connection, there may have even been influences or a role on the margins of 9/11 by Iran that this administration's posture toward Iraq was, frankly, misdirected in the war on terror?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think what the President said was, he repeated what the Acting Director said yesterday on one of the Sunday shows, when he said that there's no evidence that there was any official involvement between Iran and the September 11th attacks. And the commission will be coming out with their report later this week. Apparently they addressed this issue in the report. We want to see what they know about that issue; apparently it's something that's evolved over time.

[Two paragrphs of Scottie Speech edited for sanity.]

Q I asked you, Scott, whether the President spent too much time, money, effort, political capital confronting Saddam Hussein in Iraq and not enough confronting Iran?

MR. McCLELLAN: Remember, Iraq was a unique situation. We talked about that from early on. Iraq was a country that had invaded its neighbors, had used weapons of mass destruction, had a 12-year history of defying the international community. It was a threat, I think everybody recognized that it was a threat, and we have removed that threat. 

[snip]

Q Okay. The President, today on Iran, talked about a link between Iran and al Qaeda. We now know that there was a connection, at least, between Iran and the 9/11 hijackers. He talked about the fact that they have -- that we think they have weapons of mass destruction, nuclear material. So that sounds eerily similar to Iraq. So why -- can you explain --

MR. McCLELLAN: What was the connection? What was the relationship?

Q Which one?

MR. McCLELLAN: Between Iran and al Qaeda.

Q That they passed through.

MR. McCLELLAN: And there were ties between Iraq and al Qaeda, where they had contacts going back over the last decade.

Q So my question is, many people are asking, why is it that the President did focus on Iraq, and perhaps -- the way he did, and perhaps not on Iran?

MR. McCLELLAN: That wouldn't be an accurate way, I think, to describe it, because he has focused on Iran. It has been a high priority for this administration from very early on. As I said, you confront different threats in different ways. There are different strategies for confronting different threats. But what this President is doing is confronting those threats. We're not letting them build and fully materialize. September 11th taught us that we had to confront those threats before that happens. That's why he's been working with the international community to get Iran to end its pursuit of nuclear weapons and to abide by the international obligations Iran agreed to. That's why we are pressing Iran to turn over those al Qaeda members in their country to their country of origin. That's why we are continuing to urge the unelected few in Iran to heed the aspirations of the Iranian people.

 
 
 

Consistency

Look, wingnuts. Leave the Filipinos alone.

We have spent the past three years running around willy-nilly, pulling out of international treaties, declaring our right to do anything we consider to be in our strategic interest. The Philippine government decided it was no longer in its strategic interest to put its people in harm's way for a country that, it turns out, was about as big a threat to the world as the Republic of Palau. Even if you disagree, you can't argue with their right to do whatever they like with their military, not if you've been shouting about freedom fries and pouring wine down the storm drain since the start of the war.
 
Sheesh.

Greenspan speaks

Will Congress and the financial markets like what he says?

...Politics will likely loom large at Tuesday's hearing and again Wednesday morning before the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services panel.

With the November presidential election campaign in full swing, Democrats and Republicans will try and draw Greenspan into the debate over whether the recovery is too slow to rebuild the labor market or is responding nicely to Bush administration tax cuts.

The economy clearly lost momentum in June -- retail sales fell, industrial production slipped and job creation came in below forecasts -- but there were early signs of improvement in July and policy-makers are confident the elements of lasting expansion are intact.

...

Greenspan may counter lawmakers' efforts to quiz him on big budget deficits -- a hot issue in the election campaign -- by repeating his long-held conviction that Congress needs to impose discipline on government spending.

The Fed chief has emphasized that while he sees deficits as dangerous, spending curbs, not tax increases, are the wisest way to fix them.

Spending curbs? Someone better tell the preznit.

The Arabian Candidate

Krugman.

Last week, Republican officials in Kentucky applauded bumper stickers distributed at G.O.P. offices that read, "Kerry is bin Laden's man/Bush is mine." Administration officials haven't gone that far, but when Tom Ridge offered a specifics-free warning about a terrorist attack timed to "disrupt our democratic process," many people thought he was implying that Al Qaeda wants George Bush to lose. In reality, all infidels probably look alike to the terrorists, but if they do have a preference, nothing in Mr. Bush's record would make them unhappy at the prospect of four more years.

All infidels look alike? Hmmmm. It seems there are a lot of people out there who *look like* terrorists.

I'm a WHAT?!!!

There's something wrong with the current Justice Department. Someone needs to tell these people that their overzealous and exaggerated claims about terrorism are making them look like fools and seriously damaging their credibility.

DES MOINES (AP) - Federal prosecutors claim they built 35 terrorism-related cases in Iowa in the two years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, but most of the defendants have questionable links to violent extremism.

Defendants who could be identified by the Des Moines Register were, in most cases, charged with fraud or theft and served just a few months in jail.

"If there have been terrorism-related arrests in Iowa, I haven't heard about them," said U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt. But Pratt himself presided over courtroom proceedings in at least six of the criminal cases that federal prosecutors had cataloged as terrorist in nature.

...

The Iowa arrests were part of a national compilation of statistics by the U.S. Department of Justice to lobby Congress.

Lumping minor crimes under the terrorism label could wrongly heighten public anxiety and provide a questionable rationale for more anti-terror resources, critics say.

"When people read that they're doctoring the numbers, aren't they going to have less confidence in the Justice Department and the war on terror?" asked U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. "You can't say that somebody's a terrorist when he isn't a terrorist."

Ashcroft sure is doing a great job, isn't he? Link.