Thursday, November 17, 2005

Bully Boy and Dick sing love duets to each other, Cambodia, Woody charges by the hour

Good evening. Late start because my oldest brother showed up for dinner with a girlfriend we'd never met who it turns out is he just got engaged to.

She seems nice. What doesn't seem "nice" is what my kid sister told me. Primetime on ABC is devoting a show to Anna Nicole Smith and her dead husband. He's been dead for how long now?
And even if it were yesterday, how would it be news?

It's gossip. An hour of old gossip when there are so many important things in the world. Do grown ups put together these shows? It doesn't seem like it. They are paid for this though. Makes you wonder what gets stamped on their passport? Ma said "purveyor of gossip." :D

But there is real news and my bro's wife-to-be scored points with my parents when she brought up Democracy Now!

Bush, Cheney Blast War Critics
Amid mounting Democratic criticism of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have made their strongest responses yet to accusations they misled the country into war. At a press conference in South Korea, Bush said: "I expect there to be criticism, but when Democrats say that I deliberately misled the Congress and the people, that's irresponsible." Meanwhile, Cheney told a Washington gathering of the Frontiers of Freedom Institute: "The suggestion that's been made by some US senators that the president of the United States or any member of this administration purposely misled the American people on pre-war intelligence is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city. What we're hearing now is some politicians contradicting their own statements and making a play for political advantage in the middle of a war." In response, last year’s Democratic presidential hopeful Senator John Kerry said it was difficult to name a government official “with less credibility on Iraq than Vice President Cheney." Weekly Standard editor and Bush administration insider William Kristol commented: "If the American people really come to a settled belief that Bush lied us into war, his presidency will be over."

Sorry to be the one to break it to little Willy, but Bully Boy is toast. He lied us into war and they can try to bully people into silence all they want, they won't change anything. They might be able to silence some of the spineless set but our elected leaders didn't lead on this. They weren't there marching to the chant of "Bush lied, people died!" This came from the people and Bully Boy can't silence the people. The news media can ignore us and act like we don't exist but we do.

They ignored the Downing Street memos and the people got the word out there.

So even if the media plays along, the way they always do, it won't change a thing.

Bully Boy is toast. Slap some jam on him and serve him on a plate.


New Documents Released on Nixon Bombing of Cambodia
And newly-released documents from the National Archives provide fresh insight into the Nixon administration’s efforts to deceive the public over its 1970 attack on Cambodia. The over 50,000 pages of declassified material include records of then-President Richard Nixon meeting with aides at a time Americans were told US forces in Cambodia were there to support South Vietnamese. Nixon told aides: "That is what we will say publicly. But now, let's talk about what we will actually do." Nixon instructed staff to continue the bombing of Cambodia and Vietnam. He also ordered them to extend the attacks to Laos, which had remained neutral. Nixon said: "I want you to put the air in there and not spare the horses. Do not withdraw for domestic reasons but only for military reasons."

Nixon is like Bully Boy with a brain. They're both evil. But Bully Boy doesn't work hard enough so it's all the more obvious when he screws up. Imagine the news we'll learn when Bully Boy's out of office. I know he executive ordered his ass and his father's into safety but an executive order can be overturned and we need to pressure the next president to do so.

Bully Boy doesn't own his papers, the people do. He works for us. He and Nixon both forgot that. The people remembered. Nixon's disgraced as the liar in chief and that's the fate of Bully Boy. All the echo chambers in the world won't be able to turn him into a great leader.

Woah on the Baby Cries a Lot forty years from now who tries to turn over a week's worth of programming to Bully Boy's state funeral. The public won't stand for it. He'll leave the White House disgraced and that disgrace will follow him and hound him until his dying days.

Now a long sample from C.I.'s "Democracy Now: Falluja, white phosphorous, Michael Ratner; topic Woody: 'Dylan,' Danny Schechter, Arianna Huffington, Alexander Cockburn ....:"

Now for the news on Woody. We'll start with the subject of much e-mails, latter day Dylan.Hot on the education beat our latter day Dylan types the following:
By the way, a word on Woodward: Succumbing to the joys of the tribe, liberals are now scoring the scribe as a store-bought, stenographer, Bush Admin lackey. It feels very good to say such things, but we have a somewhat different view -- partly because we actually read Woodward’s last book, Plan of Attack. Yes, there are some silly, Bush-friendly anecdotes in it, several of which we discussed when we did extensive critiques of the book. (The George Tenet "slam dunk" anecdote is the most significant. We even suggested that Woodward must have included it as some sort of quid pro quo for access.) But uh-oh! The book is also full of material which shows the Admin is a very bad light. In substantial detail, Woodward shows Cheney and Bush exceeding the state of the intelligence on Iraq starting in August 2002--and his portrait of Colin Powell preparing his UN report is deeply, deeply embarrassing to Powell. This book is full of material that incriminates the Admin. But few liberals have bothered to say this.But then, you know how we liberals are! As George Bush has said, reading books can be "hard work"--and it seems that few of us bothered with Plan of Attack.
[Bob Somerby's yackety-yack bores the hell out of me so we'll stop his quote and move on to the meat of the entry, C.I.'s commentary.]

What does that have to do with education? Not a damn thing. File it under another broken promise from our latter day Dylan if you'd like.
Did he critique the Tenet statement? Yes, he did. But our latter day Dylan embraced the book some days and derided it at other times. (He also apparently doesn't grasp that what looks like revelations to him produce smiles and comments of "he's so resolute" from Bully Boy's base.) What does any of that mean?
Well obviously it fits in with his principle where he can knock a male one day and then praise him (remember that women are trashed, he can't resist a good trashing, and they never have the option of a "resurrection" -- in his world Tina Turner would never have left the convention circuit). But I will say I am surprised. Woody is discussed. Not addressed, mind you.
He can't really address it because he is as compromised as Bob Woodward. I'm tired of it, latter day Dylan. Supposedly he was moving on to his education beat. But that apparently doesn't bring him enough readers. (And he's unable to make the arcane readable on that topic.) So as the crowds are getting restless he calls out "Blowin' In The Wind" to the band and rushes through a poorly rehearsed song.
Which is it? He's closing shop on other topics and focusing on education or not?
At what point does he explain his own connection to Plamegate? Why he's down played it from the start?
It's getting old, it's getting real damn old.
He was supposed to be a brave voice. Like Woody, people have puzzled over why he trashed the case from day one.
Woody went on Larry King weighing in on a topic, in a dismissive manner not unlike his own, and people wondered. Likewise, many people have wondered about him.
The reality please. The confession.
As for his comments today, reading books can be hard work. Which is why his "books" are the most superficial in the world. Our philosopher king, latter day Dylan, so concerned about education, wastes his time on badly written "books" by Woody. These are "books" only to the people shipping and carrying them.
I wouldn't call George Plimpton's transcription on the life of Edie Sedgwick a "book" and it's debatable how many in their right minds would applaud Woody's similar works as a "book."He lobs one at "liberals" as well. He really enjoys doing that. He's probably regretting that he couldn't also lob another one at The New York Review of Books. The anti-intellectual, latter day Dylan flies without a net and continues to turn out drivel that would make Elisabeth Bumiller, on her worst day, blush.
Who's playing "Hey rube!" here? It seems he is. (Or maybe he's so out of touch that he honestly assumes the nation still carries Woody to the beach each summer.) And on "Hey rube" -- would it kill him to credit? Hunter S. Thompson was using that phrase in the eighties. It popped up, all over the place, when he died. (Including at this site.) He's latched onto it and never noted where it came from.
Leaving latter day Dylan, Woody is a bad writer. I've stated that here many times and it didn't take the latest development for me to state it. Wired is a piece of ____ and for most people it (and the controversy around it) blew the idea that Woody was a "reporter" once and for all. He whined his side of the story to Rolling Stone in real time. That can be boiled down as "I just print the facts . . . as told to me." There's no effort to determine truth. Did someone else say (to him) something similar? Then it's "true!"How damaged was Woody by Wired? It comes out, the film, from a B-studio, with B-talent (apologies to Patti), no name and a "premiere" that was laughable. In our latter day Dylan's world, this is all news to him because if it wasn't written up in the Washington Post or the New York Times (in the national sections only -- of course!) it didn't happen.
I have no idea who the school marm is clucking at today and don't care. This entry is being dictated and I said "stop" at the end of the excerpt (it was being read to me over the phone). I understand he then goes into education. But he leads with Woody. That's where he places his emphasis. As he continues to live out the last act in his self-written Greek tragedy, it's no surprise that he identifies with Woody. Freud wrote of the criminal's compulsion to confess.
And our latter day Dylan can't stop returning to the scene of his own crime, where he blew the trust he has with readers by not disclosing. It's why people scratch their heads wondering why he writes from the angle he does on Plamegate.
We did a piece on him at The Third Estate Sunday Review. I killed the final paragraphs. (Actually, I said pull my name from the piece if the final paragraphs are included.) I think it's fairly obvious what latter day Dylan's problems are in that piece, but the final paragraphs put it in bold print. He needs to explain his connections, he doesn't need them explained for him.
Latter day Dylan should have either not written one word on Plamegate or he should have done a little explaining to his readers. (And that's not a call for more e-mails to either Rebecca or myself.) Latter day Dylan trades in tired lines, so here's one for him, "Loose lips sink ships."
They sunk yours. But only because you allowed yourself to be compromised. If you'd been honest, people would have said, "Oh that's why he dismisses Plamegate!" Instead, for years now, people have wondered and doubted their own better instincts because the "objective" latter day Dylan was offering his "detached" and "uninvolved" criticism. It's all so very Woody, no wonder latter day Dylan can't keep from identifying.
I can bite my tongue on a number of things. Including this summer's high profile firing that the official line plays one way but the unofficial profile screams National Enquirer headline. But latter day Dylan needs to get honest or stop writing about Plamegate.
Walk on, walkon.org.
Now let's switch to the reality-based world and something Zach e-mailed (by a journalist -- actually by two, but the first name is the one that pisses off latter day Dylan), Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's "The Long, Long Fall of Bob Woodward" (CounterPunch):
It's been a devastating fall for what are conventionally regarded as the nation's two premier newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post. The Times's travails and the downfall of its erstwhile star reporter, Judy Miller, have been newsprint's prime soap opera since late spring and now, just when we were taking a breather before the Libby trial, the Washington Post is writhing with embarrassment over the multiple conflicts of interest of its most famous staffer, Bob Woodward, best known to the world as Nixon's nemesis in the Watergate scandal.
On Monday of this week Woodward quietly made his way to the law office of Howard Shapiro, of the firm of Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale and Doar, and gave a two-hour deposition to Plamegate prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, a man he had denounced on tv the night before Scooter Libby's indictment as "a junkyard dog of a prosecutor".
Woodward's deposition had been occasioned by a call to Fitzgerald from a White House official on November 3, a week after Libby had been indicted. The official told Fitzgerald that the prosecutor had been mistaken in claiming in his press conference that Libby had been the first to disclose the fact that Joseph Wilson's wife [ie Valerie Plame] was in the CIA. The official informed Fitzgerald that he himself had divulged Plame's job to Woodward in a mid-June interview, about a week before Libby told Miller the same thing.
Seeing his laborious constructed chronology collapse in ruins, weakening his perjury and obstruction case against Libby, Fitzgerald called Woodward that same day, November 3. Woodward, the Washington Post's assistant managing editor, no doubt found the call an unwelcome one, he had omitted to tell any of his colleegues at the Post that he'd been the first journalist to be on the receiving end of a leak from the White House about Plame. He'd kept his mouth shut while two of his colleagues, Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler had been hauled before Fitzgerald. He only told Post editor Len Downie a few days before Libby was indicted.
Shortly after the call from Fitzgerald. Woodward told Downie that he would have to testify. On Wednesday the Post carried a somewhat acrid news story along with Woodward's account of his testimony. Later in the day Howard Kurtz posted a commentary on the Post's website. It's clear from the news story and Kurtz's piece that his colleagues find Woodward's secretive conduct unbecoming (Downie tamely said it was a "mistake") and somewhat embarassing, given all the huff and puff about Judy "Miss Run Amok" Miller's high-handed ways with her editors.And just as Miller and her editors differed strongly on whether the reporter had told them what she was up to, so too did Woodward's account elicit a strenuous challenge from the Post's long-time national security correspondent, Walter Pincus.
In Woodward's account of his testimony (which he took care to have vetted and later publicly approved by the Post's former editor Ben Bradlee) he wrote that he told Fitzgerald that he had shared this information -- Plame's employment with the CIA -- with Pincus. But Pincus is adamant that Woodward did no such thing. When the Post's reporters preparing Wednesday's story quizzed him about Woodward's version Pincus answered, "Are you kidding? I certainly would have remembered that."

Bob Woodward isn't Robert Redford. Redford's gone down his own road and kept his integrity. Rebecca says if they make a movie of Woodward's current problems that David Spade would play him. :D I laughed hard when I read that but my kid sister printed it up and used a magnet to put it up on the fridge.

Rebecca's "little miss run amuck bob woodward" last night was funny, way funny. here's a slice of that:

in case you missed it, there is a big journalism story today - bob woodward has known of the adminstration's talking about valerie plame since june of 2003. he testified on monday. the world only found today. he's sat on this during a criminal investigation. while he's been sitting on what he was told, he's taken to the tv and radio to explain to every 1 that this isn't a story, that it's just gossip and that america should pay attention to something else.gee bobbo, why might you feel that way?
once upon a time he was played by robert redford. if they made a film of his life today, he'd be played by david spade. which might be insulting david spade.
he's totally useless.
gossip, which is what bobbo calls the outing of valerie plame, is what bobbo's made his business for years now.
he grabs his pad and pen, heads down to the white house and waits for crumbs to be tossed to him. then he pulls it all together in a badly transcript (which reportedly then gets improved slightly but is still a writing mess) and calls it a book.
there is an author in the woodward & bernstein team and his name is carl.carl can write.carl can also do investigative journalism.
bobbo can take dictation.
he took it from felt and he took it every day since. he laid on his reporter's back and took it gladly some might say (if you want to extend the whore motif).
he made his name on access, some even say he got his job on access.
in the years since watergate, he's had no explosive story and a lot of people scratch their heads and wonder why that is?
how could he uncover watergate, they wonder, and not be breaking stories since?
because he was fed a story then and he was paired with a report who was an actual reporter, someone who went after a story with the belief that the press mattered and that the role of the press was to inform the people.

Bob Woodward's a joke.

C.I. had this up and I'll toss it in too because Danny Schechter seems like a smart guy and I do visit News Dissector (though not as much as Dad does)."'All the President's Men' (Ongoing . . .):"

I never trusted Bob Wooodward the former Navy intelligence man who went from a beat reporter on the Washington Post to an editor with ongoing access into the inner sanctum of the Bush Administration. He has admitted in the past holding back news he learned so that he could exploit his findings in a books he could profit from. Many of those used fictional techniques to disguise sources and promote his own aura as the ultimate insider.














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