HOT KARL

Blumenthal in an op-ed over at Salon:

The sound and fury of Rove’s defenders will soon subside. The last word, the only word that matters, will belong to the prosecutor. So far, he has said very, very little. Unlike the unprofessional, inexperienced and weak Ken Starr, he does not leak illegally to the press. But he has commented publicly on his understanding of the case. “This case,” he said, “is not about a whistle-blower. It’s about a potential retaliation against a whistle-blower.”

If you’re in a lurch about what happened and when, he paints a detailed-enough picture. Whether or not Rove is fucked remains to be seen — but this thing is getting legs.
What’s curious is the press suddenly seems to be doing their job because, you know, THEY were lied to. Forget lying to the American public. Doesn’t matter. The almightly White House press corp has suddenly been personally dishonored — and, by golly, they’re not gonna stand for it! This says a lot about our press. Remember the epic Clenis epidemic of the 90’s had the same MO. Nary of any interest until “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Fucking prima-donnas…

Senior Journalistologist

bahahahahahahhahahaha… last night’s Daily Show:

Well, Bush has a real problem on his hands here, John. What honor should he bestow on Karl Rove?
George ‘Slam Dunk’ Tenet got us into Iraq on mistaken intel, he got the medal of freedom.
Condi Rice sees a memo warning Bin Laden determined to attack the United States, ignores it — BOOM — gets kicked upstairs to Secretary of State.
For a bungle this bad, I think we might be looking at Chief Justice Karl Rove.

I’m gonna miss Ted Hitler, er, Stephen Colbert…

Jail Bird

I’ve struggled with this over the past few weeks, weighing my loathsome distaste for Miller and her WMD-baiting and the whole journalistic protection thing, but I think Will Bunch nails it here:

That is why the ability of reporters to keep the identity of their true sources confidential is protected by shield laws in 31 states and the District of Columbia (although not in federal courts). Without such protections, the government official would not be able to report the wrongdoing of a president (remember “Deep Throat,” the ultimate confidential source?), nor would the corporate executive feel free to rat out a crooked CEO. The comfortable and corrupt could not be afflicted.
But the Times’ Judy Miller has not been afflicting the comfortable. She has been protecting them, advancing their objectives, and helping them to mislead a now very afflicted American public. In fact, thinking again about Watergate and Deep Throat is a good way to understand why Judy Miller should not be protected today. Because in Watergate, a reporter acting like Miller would not be meeting the FBI’s Mark Felt in an underground parking garage. She would be obsessively on the phone with H.R. Haldeman or John Dean, listening to bad gossip about Carl Bernstein or their plans to make Judge Sirica look bad.
In the run-up to the Iraq war, Miller — working with her “sources” inside the Bush administration and their friends in the Iraqi exile community like the discredited Ahmed Chalabi — wrote a number of stories that now seem meant to dupe the American people into to thinking Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were a threat.
Turns out, as you know, there weren’t any. When the Times looked back on the fiasco, it found that Miller wrote or co-wrote nine of the “problematic stories” on the topic.

And if Martha did it, why can’t Judy? Coming this fall, a new reality show: Judith “The Queen of All Iraq” Miller Felates LIVE with guest stars Ahmed Chalabi, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, and W himself for a full hour!

Bomb’s Away

Click here.

FNC

Worth repeating, even though I’m not worried about the actual story:

….the problem with Fox News is not that it’s conservative, it’s that its essentially a mouthpiece of the God’s Own Party. I can’t think of any other media outlet, except maybe Rush Limbaugh, which so perfectly functions as an RNC puke funnel…

Look, this needs to stop. We need to stop accepting that “this” exists and “we” have to live with it… there is a response; let’s grow a fucking spine already.

Justice Sunday!*

*for white judges only
Link:

Senate majority leader Bill Frist appeared through a telecast as a speaker at “Justice Sunday,” at the invitation of the event’s main sponsor, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins. “Justice Sunday” was promoted as a rally to portray Democrats as being “against people of faith.” Many of the speakers compared the plight of conservative Christians to the civil rights movement. But in sharing the stage with Perkins, who introduced him to the rally, Frist was associating himself with someone who has longstanding ties to racist organizations.
Four years ago, Perkins addressed the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), America’s premier white supremacist organization, the successor to the White Citizens Councils, which battled integration in the South. In 1996 Perkins paid former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke $82,000 for his mailing list. At the time, Perkins was the campaign manager for a right-wing Republican candidate for the US Senate in Louisiana. The Federal Election Commission fined the campaign Perkins ran $3,000 for attempting to hide the money paid to Duke.
As the emcee of Justice Sunday, Tony Perkins positioned himself beside a black preacher and a Catholic “civil rights” activist as he rattled off the phone numbers of senators wavering on President Bush’s judicial nominees. The evening’s speakers studiously couched their appeals on behalf of Bush’s stalled judges in the vocabulary of victimhood, accusing Democratic senators of “filibustering people of faith.”
James Dobson, who founded the Family Research Council as the Washington lobbying arm of his Focus on the Family, invoked the Christian right’s persecution complex. On an evening when Jews were celebrating the second night of Passover, Dobson claimed, “The biggest Holocaust in world history came out of the Supreme Court” with the Roe v. Wade decision. On his syndicated radio show nearly two weeks earlier, on April 11, Dobson compared the “black robed men” on the Supreme Court to “the men in white robes, the Ku Klux Klan.” By his logic, the burden of oppression had passed from religious and racial minorities to unborn children and pure-hearted heterosexuals engaged in “traditional marriage.”

All your Weather are Belong to Us

So sayeth Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum.
More Santorum fun. Oldie, but a goodie.

Internets

Worst use of these here Internets:
The enduring wisdom of Pat Sajak protecting that poor victimized man of the people, Tom “I AM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT!” DeLay. (The original story referred to DeLay as “Senate Majority Whip,” proving my aunt was right all along: Vanna’s the one with the brains over there at WoF.)
Best use:
Protecting our children from the evils of penetration. In particular, the butt buggery section has very instructive pictures.

Wal-Mart Hearts the Caucasianally-Challenged

Wal-Mart’s race-baiting:

“Wal-Mart is working for everyone,” read the newspaper ad, which ran in January in more than 100 newspapers nationwide, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. “Some of our critics are working only for themselves.” The same day, the company launched walmartfacts.com, a website to counter criticism of the kind you may have read in this magazine. Along with some misleading information intended to make Wal-Mart’s wages and benefits sound much better than they are, the new campaign materials feature many smiling African-American faces; the website explains, accurately, that Wal-Mart is a “leading employer” of Hispanics and African-Americans.
As Jesse Jackson and other black leaders have pointed out in response to this boast, the slave plantation was once a “leading employer” of African-Americans as well. But this ad campaign was only the latest salvo in Wal-Mart’s fervent battle for the goodwill of black America, inspired by the difficulties the company is having as it tries to move into urban areas.
Wal-Mart spent more than $1 million on a PR campaign backing a voter referendum to build a Supercenter in Inglewood, California, where the majority of voters are people of color, and was decisively defeated last year. The company faces continued resistance in Chicago as well, where it has been trying to open stores in black neighborhoods. A Wal-Mart on that city’s West Side is scheduled to open by next February–to the frustration of those who opposed it–while plans for a South Side store have been scuttled. Controversy continues to rage about a Wal-Mart project in New Orleans, and in late February plans for a New York City Wal-Mart were scrapped in the wake of protests by labor, small business and neighborhood groups. Much of the opposition to the retailer has been led by activists of color. And, of course, since many people of color are poor, Wal-Mart depends on them as shoppers and as workers. It’s no surprise, then, that the company would be eager to appeal to racial minorities.

Fucking wonderful. Despite the “urban fear” of crime, drugs, and violence perpetuated by the Colorado Springs of the country, this is a fine example of how these communities refuse to be cowed by their labels and are coming together to protect their own. God bless ’em.