“A paraplegic man wearing a soiled hospital gown and a broken colostomy bag was found crawling in a gutter in skid row in Los Angeles on Thursday after allegedly being dumped in the street by a Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center van, police said. The incident, witnessed by more than two dozen people, was described by police as a particularly outrageous case of ‘homeless dumping’ that has plagued the downtown area.”
Does Cheney know bombing Iran will backfire?
Bush doesn’t say:
At a farewell reception at Blair House for the retiring chief of protocol, Don Ensenat, who was President Bush’s Yale roommate, the president shook hands with Washington Life Magazine’s Soroush Shehabi. A grandson of one of the late Shah’s ministers, Soroush said, “Mr. President, I simply want to say one U.S. bomb on Iran and the regime will remain in power for another 20 or 30 years and 70 million Iranians will become radicalized.”
“I know,” President Bush answered.
“But does Vice President Cheney know?” asked Soroush.
The president chuckled and walked away.
White House ‘red-faced’ over Rove remark.
Karl Rove was quoted telling a group of conservatives he supports President Bush’s immigration policies because “I don’t want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas.” ABC reports: “The White House does not deny that Rove made the remark but claims it has been taken out of context. … Rove was not insulting those people in those jobs, the White House explained, he was, according to Perino, saying that every parent wants their child to have a high-skilled, high-wage job.”
“Today We Have a Planet That’s Smoking!”
In the House Oversight Committe’s hearing on political intereference with the scientific evidence of climate change, Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) proclaimed in disbelief and frustration that, “Today we have a planet that’s smoking!”
He, like many before him, likened the campaign to cast doubt on global warming with the tobacco industry’s campaign in the 1990s to distort information on the health impacts of smoking cigarettes.
In early 2007, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released a report along those same lines, exposing the disinformation campaign by ExxonMobil which used tobacco industry-like tactics. They also published an online periodical table that serves as an A-Z Guide to Political Interference in Science, which one of the witnesses to the House hearing brought up in her testimony.
And wait, there’s more. The UCS paired up with the Government Accountability Project on a report that describes how the White House silenced scientists on climate change. Some 1,600 scientists were surveyed, but only 279 responded, 150 of which reported that they had experienced interference of some kind.
We have a planet that’s smoking and the White House is filtering. Sounds like oil isn’t our only addiction. Menthol, anyone?
VIDEO: Feith Stands By False Claim That Iraq Had Links To Al Qaeda
In an interview with CNN, former Undersecretary for Defense Doug Feith stood by the now-debunked claim that Iraq had a pre-war relationship with al Qaeda. Feith told Wolf Blitzer that former CIA Director George Tenet’s statement in October 2002 claiming there was a link is still “the best information on the subject.”
Pressed to defend his claim, Feith said, “I’ve not been in the government for the last year and a half — there may be some more intelligence on that subject.” Watch it:
[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/02/Feith_2.320.240.flv]
Feith didn’t need to be in government to know that Tenet’s October 2002 statement has since been discredited. Subsequent analyses have debunked any relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. For example:
Senate Intelligence Committee Report Found No “Material Or Operational Support.” Saddam Hussein “was distrustful of al-Qa’ida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to this regime, refusing all requests from al Qa’ida to provide material or operational support.” [Senate Phase II report, 9/8/06]
9-11 Commission Report Said No “Collaborative Operational Relationship” Existed Between Iraq and Al Qaeda. “We have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.” [9-11 Commission Final Report, 7/22/04]
Senate Intelligence Committee Report Found No “Established, Formal” Relationship Between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report said that there was no “established, formal” relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, nor proof that the two had collaborated in attacks. [Senate Phase I report, 7/9/04]
Full transcript: Read more
MSNBC: ‘Victory was ours.’
MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson show picks up TP’s analysis of the Anna Nicole Smith media frenzy. MSNBC sarcastically declared, “The website ThinkProgress.org kept track of the Anna Nicole Smith coverage, and yes, victory was ours.” Watch it:
[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/02/msnbctp.320.240.flv]
Who You Callin’ Sensitive?
Dana Goldstein on the Playboy issue:
The essay is entertaining reading, but I think it’s obvious why it’s especially appealing to sensitive young men. Zobenica makes them feel like it’s not only okay to read Playboy, but that it’s mature and heck, even feminist. Fundamentally, this is just a rehashing of the infamous male excuse–”Hey, I was reading it for the articles!” I’m not an anti-porn feminist by any stretch of the imagination. But when I pick up Playboy, it’s hard for me to take seriously the “Advisor” column’s advice about sexually respecting your real-life girl when the centerfolds, month after month, have obviously fake gigantic boobs, identically hairless and child-like vaginas (Playboy seems to have a policy to never show women with visible vaginal lips), and completely flat stomachs.
This seems like a good point. In reality, though, the only issue of Playboy I’ve picked up since 1996 or so had an article proclaiming this site the best liberal blog. I only it read it for the egomania! By contrast, back in college I traded some frequent flier miles in for a Maxim subscription. I didn’t renew when I would have had to pay actual money for it, but I won’t deny that I read the issues. So Zobenica’s article was, if anything, shitting all over me (not that I don’t deserve it); I really just thought it was funny. I think that to form a real political opinion about Playboy I would need to read some issues of the magazine, but it seems to me that Dana’s critique doesn’t really undermine Zobenica’s comparative defense of Playboy vis-à-vis the rising tide of laddism.
Never Hire a Blogger
Jon Chait seems right about the semi-perverse consequences of blogger pressure on Edwards to retain his bloggers:
What this episode demonstrated is that, if you’re a candidate, hiring a blogger may or may not win you the loyalty of that blogger’s friends. But firing that blogger will certainly bring their wrath down upon you. But campaigns, of course, fire staffers pretty often. So why would you hire somebody you can’t fire?
That seems right, right? If so, it seems like a price worth paying. Whether or not bloggers get hired by campaigns doesn’t really matter. Whether or not the netroots can influence candidates to show some spine vis-à-vis right-wing pressure pressure groups does matter.
Ah, Civility
Liberal bloggers sure are vile. Contrast their rantings to the civil debate hosted on the front page of RedState here Hilariously, that post actually comes with a specific request to “keep it clean” even though the poster already started it on a non-clean theme. One commenter is outraged about the dirty, dirty liberal bloggers. Then comes this paragon of civility which the proprietor, absurdly, endorses as “clean.”
The 2003 Iranian ‘grand bargain’ offer.
Since Condoleezza Rice and Elliot Abrams have such awful memories of it, here’s a reminder: the original fax of the offer.
