Fear-Mongering with Mushroom Clouds

Booman goes over Murray Waas' must-read National Journal article on the president's knowledge of those notorious high-strength aluminum tubes and what it has to do with the outing of Valerie Plame. Seems the tubes were more important than the Niger forgeries because there was a clear document trail proving that Il Duce knew well and good the evidence was disputed. (Via C&L.)

More Good News for New Orleans

The day after we find out that the Corpse of Engineers underguesstimated flood protection costs by $6B, there's this from the Christian Science Monitor:

Hurricane Katrina's devastating strike on New Orleans last fall highlighted shortcomings in the city's levee system. It also focused attention another long-term problem: The city and the region around it are sinking.

New research suggests, however, that at least for nearby Michoud, La., the dominant driver pulling the region under may not be among the usual suspects: oil extraction, pumping groundwater to the surface, or diverting the Mississippi for navigation.

Instead, the King of Slump may be a deep fault that cuts across southeastern Louisiana and under Michoud. During the 1970s, the fault appears to have contributed from 50 to 73 percent of the subsidence in this section of Orleans parish, depending on the time period measured. If sustained over a century, that would equate to as much as a six-foot sea-level rise, independent of any increase tied to global warming.

The rest here.

Ripping off Blogs Is Apparently Routine

Seems TPMmuckraker's had the same problems as Raw Story.

UPDATE: A little headway.

Where's the Good News?

I am sickened at the MSM's coverage of everything they deem "newsworthy." Not only do they not report the schools being built in Iraq and the stray dogs being adopted into loving homes, but they also neglect good news stories the world over. Here's a provisional list:

Darfur. Yes, yes, people are being killed, starved, driven from their homes, but lots of them are getting fed by the UN. And the Sudanese government, via their terrorist Janjaweed proxies, are clearing land for Arab settlement and thinning the herd of poor, dark-skinned people. C'mon, MSM, do your job!

Belarus. Oh, sure, the media gloms onto the gloom, telling us how the election was stolen, how anti-government campaigners were arrested, how protest is being suppressed. So dreary. As Barbara Bush told Diane Sawyer in an interview on the eve of Iraq's liberation, "Why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" Where are all the stories of Belarussians picking themselves up by their boot straps and taking positions of authority in the government so they can establish income streams based on their insider position and provide for their families? What about all the good things the government has done, like paying its employees? What about the steadfastness and resolve of Belarus's leader to "stay the course"?

Iran. Our leader, President Bush, has repeatedly stated that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. But the media just spins that to say that Iran is a threat to the United States. Even the normally calm, thoughtful Neil Cavuto recently said on his Fox News show that we may already be at war with Iran. Aren't two wars enough? Please, MSM, why must you force our beleaguered president into another conflict?

New Orleans. Katrina was last August, and yet the media insists on pushing the meme that the city is in danger from a weakened and underdesigned flood-protection system and that most of its homes are unoccupied. What about the miles of functioning city along the river? That's 20% of the city!

The Next Blog You Should Be Reading

Spectral City.

Assrocket's (not so) Strange Aesthetics

Power Line's Assrocket is promoting the spankin' new blog of long-time reader Dafydd ab Hugh, a Star Trek™ novelist. I love hate to pick, but he and quasi-literate Bush beastie Roger Simon raise significant questions about the connection between intelligence and taste. Adding weight to my unfounded evolving hypothesis that low-wattage Bushbots are aesthetically challenged, Assrocket's comment that Dafydd ab Hugh's new blog, Big Lizards (nice homoerotic imagery there), is "one of the most graphically spectacular...sites on the web." Now, given the source, I took that assertion with a mineful of salt. But never did I imagine that Mr. Assrocket's aesthetics could keep pace with his reasoning skills in their sprint to the bottom. I won't add a screenshot. Go look for yourself.

NYT, Better Late than Never Edition

The New York Times finally gets around to reporting on the latest Downing Street Memo widely reported in the UK several weeks ago. Thank you, NYT, for doing your job. We know you're a bit slow, and in the case of the series of earlier Downing Street memoranda, ahem, extra super duper slow, but thank you just the same. (By the way, you might want to check into whether the World Trade Center was demolished with explosives and whether any of those 19 hijackers are still alive. But we don't want to rush you.)

NOTE: As one of our mystery reporters has often said, it's common for stories to be held, pending confirmation(s), analysis, etc. This may be the reason for the NYT delaying the most recent DSM story. Of course, that's no reason for their dearth of coverage of the slew of memos widely unreported in the US last year.

BONUS: In the NYT story, a NSC spokesbot claims that the misAdministration's public and private comments about the then upcoming sequel Gulf II: Invasion were entirely consistent. Today the Finger Puppet* reinforced the meme. But as anyone who recalls the runup to the war knows, it's total bullshit. As late as March 6, 2003, the president asserted that he hadn't made up his mind yet--a bald-faced lie (as if his sudden love for "regime change" in early 2003 didn't amount to "I really want to invade Iraq").

*Disinformation Secretary Scott McClellan

He's Alive

Always nice to know my cousin in Iraq is alive and in one piece, especially after a suicide-bomber attack:

Just wanted to send out this quick e-mail to calm concerns. Yes, the suicide bomber attack did happen where I'm at, but no Americans were hurt. He did it at the front gate, where we were screening potential new army recruits. Yes, I did know several of the casualties.

The AP Rips off Raw Story

If this isn't a breach of journalistic ethics, I don't know what is. You may have noticed the recent AP article on the changes Stephen Hadley made to guidelines for security clearances. The article came out several days after Raw Story's originally researched one. Turns out that GLBT groups brought Raw Story's article and information to the AP and demanded the story be covered. So they plagiarized Raw Story, attributing nothing to them. Larisa Alexandrovna reveals the AP's mindset:

We contacted an AP senior editor and ombudsmen both and both admitted to having had the article passed on to them, and both stated that they viewed us as a blog and because we were a blog, they did not need to credit us.

Funny, because the Associated Press proclaims on their blog website:

...we insist on the highest standards of integrity and ethical behavior when we gather and deliver the news.
...
It means we don't plagiarize.

Except when they do.

Hypocrites.

NOT EXACTLY UPDATE: I meant to add this at posting time but I was trying to get out the door. Anyway: Is the AP ignorant or just full of shit? Anyone who's perused a handful of blogs can tell that Raw Story is as much of a blog as the New York Times or Salon. That's probably why they have a sub-category on the front page called "blogs." If Raw Story's a blog, then so are Debkafile, Buzzflash, Consortium News and Counter Punch. Would the AP plagiarize their original reporting as well?

UPDATE: Larisa has the latest on the AP's antics.

A Free Press: Who Needs It?

The Associated Press fired a long-time Vermont correspondent. Why?

Emerson Lynn, editor and publisher of The St. Albans Messenger, said one clue to Mr. Graff's departure might have been The A.P.'s having told him this month that it was inappropriate for him to have posted a column by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, on the wire.

Mr. Lynn said that for the last two years, The A.P. had prepared a package of articles about Sunshine Week, in which media organizations advocate openness in government. Senator Leahy had written a column highly critical of the Bush administration on the matter for the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

The column said, for example, that "the foundations of our open government are under direct assault from the first White House in modern times that is openly hostile to the public's right to know."

On March 8, Mr. Graff posted Mr. Leahy's column on an advance wire that carries material that can be used at a later date. He had attached an editor's note saying Mr. Leahy "was asked by the American Society of Newspaper Editors for his thoughts on the status of the right to know for use in Sunshine Week, organized by media organizations and other groups to combat government secrecy and bring attention to the public's right to know."

The A.P. removed the column from the advance wire within an hour and advised newspapers not to run it.

Mr. Lynn said Mr. Graff called him and told him he had been criticized for posting a column that The A.P. said had compromised the integrity of the wire service.

Mr. Lynn said Mr. Graff was surprised because he had posted a similar column from Senator Leahy last year during Sunshine Week and had not heard any criticism and because Senator Leahy had held a hearing last year on the matter and Walter Mears, a former A.P. executive editor and vice president, had testified.

The article doesn't mention (and I'm not saying it should, though it would've been nice) that this unforgivable act followed a curiously skewed AP story last month that twisted itself in knots trying to tie Abramoff to Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV).

So what's going on with the AP? Scared shitless, apparently, like the Washington Post.

Let's just get this clear: While the United States has a legally free press, overall the press is far from free. We live in a mediasphere that's a new, improved version of China's. The big difference is that the people who run the country discovered long ago that you don't have to deny freedom of speech and freedom of the press to influence the public's perception of reality. That's why most Americans are severely uninformed and a full one third of voters live in an outright fantasy land.

BONUS: Lest I be accused (not that anyone would bother) of being unfair, it's worth noting that the AP also let the famous "straw man" article, which analyzed Bush's addiction to straw man arguments, go on the wire.

Iraq, Read to George Edition

Anyone who works for the president might want to sit him down and read him Juan Cole's latest article in Salon.

Protect Levees with...Wetlands

Just a little dab'll do ya. (Via PGR.)

Saddam's APB for Zarqawi

Remember how Zarqawi's presence in the part of Iraq Saddam didn't control was supposed to "tie" the Baath regime to Al-Qaeda? No, it didn't make any sense to me either, but now we have this: "Iraqi documents collected by US intelligence during the Iraq war and released by the Bush administration...[include] one the administration said showed that Iraqi intelligence officials suspected al Qaida members were inside Iraq in 2002."

Gotcha, lefties! Oh, wait:

However, one of the documents, a letter from an Iraqi intelligence official, dated August 17, 2002, asked agents in the country to be on the lookout for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and another unnamed man whose picture was attached.

We're sure that's because he was late for a meeting with Saddam or something. Maybe, you know, Zarqawi hadn't called recently and Saddam was getting antsy. "Abu...[wringing hands] Where is my Abu...?"

Juan Cole (our source for this beauty) follows up with this:

The September 29, 2002 Denver Post paraphrased Cheney, "He said the evidence presented against Iraq will be long and persuasive, including more details of a relationship between Hussein's forces and the al-Qaeda terrorist network."

Poem of the Day

the rifle lay between us
i looked at it then
up at him
he looked at it
then up at me
i lunged first
but felt his hand when
mine reached the
rifle
who would be first to pull
the trigger?

Sombody, Stop Me

Your government at work:

The Alabama cow is believed to be at least 10 years old, which would mean it was born before the government's 1997 ban on the gruesome and disease-spreading practice of using the remains of cows as an ingredient in cattle feed. Yet the Food and Drug Administration, after announcing in 2003 that it would ban such practices, still allows cattle blood to be fed to calves and bovine remains to be fed to chickens (after which the leftover feed is scooped off the floor with the chicken manure and added--you guessed it--to cattle feed). Not only does that make a mockery of the ban, it goes against the common sense that a grazing herbivore wasn't meant to be a cannibal.

(Emphasis mine.)

The LA Times article quoted above arrived from LNS with strings of exclamation points and a portion of the text in red. Since this was the only time in years of exchanging email with LNS that anything was so colorfully typed, I assumed it was important. Thanks, USDA*, or should I say Mistuh President? Who's in charge up there, the former lobbyist for the Cattlemen's Feed Association?

NOTE: The article requires registration. To get around it, try bugmenot.com.

UPDATE: Your gov't responds to the recent discovery of a third mad cow by...reducing testing. According to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, that's because testing isn't a food safety measure, it's "for surveillance.... It was to get an idea of the condition of the herd." Ah, okay. So, like, testing random birds for West Nile isn't a public health measure, it's to get an idea of the condition of a flock. That opens up a whole array of legal defenses, come to think of it. If, for example, I fired a shotgun at Mr. Whittington Johanns from 30 yards away, it wouldn't be to kill him, just to find out whether my gun works.

*A previous version of this post listed the FDA, not USDA.

Ah, So...

See those lights in the windows of realitique™ HQ? We weren't burning the mid-morning oil working, no, we were feverishly debating why Il Duce seems so, well, passive. He's the least active president...ever. Yes, we knew he likes to play CEO (a game for the whole family!), but we didn't know he was focusing only on two issues. According to Insight,

President Bush has decided to stay out of the lion's share of decisions made by his administration.

Sources close to the administration said that over the last year, Mr. Bush has chosen to focus on two issues, leaving the rest to be decided by Cabinet members and senior aides. They said the issues are Iraq and the Republican congressional campaign in the 2006 elections.

"Lots of important issues that deal with national security are never brought to the president because he doesn't want to deal with them," a source familiar with the White House said. "In some cases, this has resulted in chaos."

Now I love hate to pick, but what, exactly, is he "doing" about Iraq? From here (deep within the bowels of Sav-A-Center, in our nuke-proof bunker) it sure looks like all da Preznit's doing is talking a lot--and without specifics. He's not doing anything. 87 bodies in Baghdad? Bombing religious shrines? Give a speech. And the 2006 erections? What is Bush doing, crunching numbers? Has he noticed his are falling? Give a speech. If Bush didn't breath recirculated bubble air, he might notice that the speeches aren't working. CEO? Yeah, like Ken Lay.

For more insight into the bungling that was the Dubai debacle, read the rest of the article here.

(Via American Street via Daou.)

BONUS FOR BUSH: He might want to consider that pesky, precipitous not-quite-civil-war here and the latest Abu Ghraib investigation here.

South Dakota's Abortion Application Form

Spittle & Ink's got the goods. (Thanks, Laura.)

A View from Mid-City

Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose on how Mid-City's doing. It's one of those huge parts of town that is pretty much ignored--like so much inconvenient, undramatic information--by your friendly national news media. Rose could collect his post-Katrina columns under "Lamentations." He always makes me cry. (Via Harry Shearer in the HuffPo.)

Feingold Argues for Censuring the President

Here.

Oops: Did Slobie Accidentally Kill Himself?

In a delightfully ironic twist, the Guardian reports that Milosevic may have taken a drug to "negate the effects" of his high-blood-pressure meds, hoping to get sent to Moscow:

Donald Uges, a toxicologist from Groningen University, told Reuters that tests he conducted two weeks ago on Milosevic's blood showed traces of rifampicin, a drug used in treating leprosy and turberculosis that would have made other medicines ineffective.

He suggested Milosevic had taken the drug in the hope the UN war crimes tribunal would agree to his requests to go to Moscow for treatment if his condition did not improve.

"I don't think he took his medicines for suicide - only for his trip to Moscow. When he was in Moscow he would be free. That is where his friends and family are. I think that was his last possibility to escape the Hague," Dr Uges told Reuters.