Wednesday’s Mini-Report

February 28, 2007

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* Dick Cheney finally agreed to speak to the pool of reporters who followed him through seven countries, but as Dan Froomkin explained, he insisted on one thing: “The reporters would have to agree not to tell anyone that the person they talked to was him. Cheney’s insistence on being identified as a ‘senior administration official’ — even when the transcript shows he spoke in the first person — is in some ways laughably trivial. But in other ways, the vice president’s decision to extort reporters into a ridiculous agreement reflects the contempt Cheney has for the press corps.”

* As for what Dick “senior administration official” Cheney actually said to the reporters, it was largely the same old arguments we’ve been hearing, but Glenn Greenwald waded through the nonsense.

* Mega-GOP-donor Sam Fox had to endure an awkward Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing yesterday, as lawmakers considered his nomination to be ambassador to Belgium. In 2004, Fox contributed $50,000 to the Swiftboat liars, which was of particular interest yesterday — because John Kerry is on the committee.

* Reports last week indicated that Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari, currently facing charges as an alleged terrorist financier, gave $15,000 to Republican campaign committees in recent cycles. We now know that’s incorrect — he gave $35,000.

* Reader R.M. alerted me to a chilling story out of Egypt, where blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman was sentenced to four years in prison, convicted on charges of “inciting hatred of Islam” and insulting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on his blog.

* Speaking of chilling, the WaPo reports, “Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday. A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him. If his mother had been insured. If his family had not lost its Medicaid. If Medicaid dentists weren’t so hard to find.”

* Last week, freshman Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) claimed to know about a secret plan to partition Iraq and give much of the country to Iran. Apparently, a local newspaper has the audacity to suggest that Bachmann “needs to fully explain either how she knows of a plan to split Iraq in half, or if she was talking over her head — way over her head — in making that statement.”

* National Review’s Andrew Stuttaford, in a pleasant surprise, wrote something I agree with: “Who is losing Afghanistan? George W. Bush, that’s who. His watch. His administration. His incompetence. His arrogance. His failure to learn from failure.”

* Tom Schaller notes in his Baltimore Sun column today that the 110th Congress is the most pro-choice Congress ever.

* Shockingly, Joe Lieberman criticized Bush today. Seriously. “For four years running now, this administration has proposed cuts for first responders,” Lieberman said. “For three years, even though Congress has restored some of those proposed cuts, first responder funding has decreased. This is effectively like under funding or cutting support for front line troops for a war.”

* Thieves broke into the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s headquarters over the weekend. Kathy Sullivan, the chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, said, “Some things were taken, but I don’t really want to get into that right now.” It’s unclear if political motivations were involved.

* CanWest, the Canadian media conglomerate that bought The New Republic, will be the 100% owner, and will keep (for now) Marty Peretz as the editor-in-chief. As for the company itself, SKNM alerted me to this interesting piece on CanWest political background.

* That Ashcroft pizza party I mentioned yesterday has been cancelled.

* Bush’s new GOP appointee to the Election Assistance Commission has never worked in election administration a day in his life — but he used to be a top lawyer for the Republican National Committee.

* And, finaly, here’s Jay Leno on yesterday’s stock market plunge: “Actually, the drop started after the attempted assassination on Vice President Dick Cheney. See, that’s when investors realized if anything happened to him, President Bush would be in charge.”

If none of these items are of interest, consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

“CanWest, the Canadian media conglomerate that bought The New Republic, will be the 100% owner, and will keep (for now) Marty Peretz as the editor-in-chief. As for the company itself, SKNM alerted me to this interesting piece on CanWest political background.”

Yup folks, you shouldn’t be surprised as Canadian media types have been meddling in US affairs for a long time. Like the soon to be on trial for fraud Conrad Black, who helped fund many of the neoboob think tanks. It’s the damned Aspers turn. Le sigh.

The effect that CanWest might have might be limited as they’ve been taking miserable losses from their newspaper division.

  • Speaking of chilling, the WaPo reports, “Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday. A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him. If his mother had been insured. If his family had not lost its Medicaid. If Medicaid dentists weren’t so hard to find.”

    For want of an $80 extraction – after the family were removed from Medicaid because the verification was sent to an address at which they no longer lived (a homeless shelter) – we the taxpayers of America ultimately paid $250,000 for a boy to die in agony for the crime of being poor.

    I am sure glad I hadn’t read this before my own experience of trying to get such an odd thing from the medical bureaucracy as people actually doing their fucking job right. Had I read this before that, I might have done more in that office full of dunces than stand there shrieking until they finally scurried around and got me what they had been saying they would send me for six fucking months!!!!

    There’s a lot good to be said in favor of “going postal” on these tenth-rate pissants.

  • Dick Cheney finally agreed to speak to the pool of reporters who followed him through seven countries, but as Dan Froomkin explained, he insisted on one thing: “The reporters would have to agree not to tell anyone that the person they talked to was him…’

    what the fucking fuck? is this a first? my outrage meter is zooming up again; i’m so glad i’m not fixated on politics anymore.

  • And, finaly, here’s Jay Leno on yesterday’s stock market plunge: “Actually, the drop started after the attempted assassination on Vice President Dick Cheney. See, that’s when investors realized if anything happened to him, President Bush would be in charge.”

    *wipes tears of laughter and frustration*

    ‘s funny cause it’s true *in a Homer voice*

  • Say it ain’t so Joe … how dare you break Ronnie’s eleventh commandment and criticize the prez.

    Bummer about cancellation of Ashcroft’s innocent little pizza party to lobby his former staff. Guess he’ll have to call the pizzeria to cancel all the pies with pepperoni, sausage and $100 bills on top.

    “His failure to learn from failure.” Even W’s flaws are getting more esoteric.

  • Former Dan alludes to Conrad Black and the Hollinger Media chain deal with CanWest. There’s lots of nefarious doings there!

    Damn if I have enough time to share the dealings! Bottom line: the New Republic benefited from a neocon bailout.

  • The story of the boy dying over a toothache sickened me. This should be headlined across the front pages of all the newspapers in America. But it won’t be. If you read the story, you learn the mother was more concerned over the brother who had six rotten teeth that needed extracting, so though this boy complained of pain and a headache he was given sinus medication by the doctor. It makes you want to cry. This is America folks.

    I would love to see one of the Democratic candidates take up what happened to this boy and hammer it home. Healthcare has got to be dismantled and fixed.

    Frankly, is there anything the Bush administration has done since taking office that has improved the lives of anyone? Um, that’s besides Paris Hilton and the uber-rich, that is.

  • “…the vice president’s decision to extort reporters into a ridiculous agreement reflects the contempt Cheney has for the press corps.”

    Actually I think it reflects Cheney’s continuing decent into paranoia and madness. This fixation with secrecy over even the most trivial matters is already way beyond dementia and in any civilized society he would have been quietly shunted off to a posh care facility for treatment.

    The problem is that, as Jay Leno said so well, that if Cheney left the scene then George Bush really *would* be in charge and we all know how well that would work out.

  • Any minute now, Cheney will burst into flames and disintegrate into a smoking heap of ash….well, I can hope, can’t I?

  • Israel’s Surge of Despair
    Gregory Levey — Salon
    http://www.salon.com/n ews/feature/2007/02/15/israel_despair/index_np.html
    … And this sense of depression is not only permeating the Israeli public. A series of recent interviews with current and former Israeli government officials revealed a level of pessimism across the Israeli government that is unprecedented in recent decades. Several senior officials acknowledged unequivocally that Israel lost the war against Hezbollah, and confirmed that this is a widely held view inside the Israeli government — despite many public pronouncements to the contrary by Israeli leaders … The level of gloom inside the Israeli government is accompanied by a creeping sense of paralysis — one that could be dangerous not just for Israel, but for U.S. interests in the region, and for the Middle East as a whole.

  • “Cheney’s insistence on being identified as a ’senior administration official’ — even when the transcript shows he spoke in the first person — is in some ways laughably trivial. But in other ways, the vice president’s decision to extort reporters into a ridiculous agreement reflects the contempt Cheney has for the press corps”

    This is hardly a new tactic. Oddly enough, it was done before in Afghanistan, as reported by Jonathan Kwitny in a book called Endless Enemies. To quote:

    “What is being talked bout here is the use of this confidentiality by government officials to mislead the public. The officials involved are not blowing the whistle on wrongdoing by the system; the dont need confidentiality to protect themselves. Rather, these officials are speaking FOR the system, but saying things the system doesn’t want to be responsible for, possibly because they will turn out not to be true.”

    “While such officials routinely ask reporters to pledge not to identify them as sources, they turn around and argue in court, sometimes successfully, that reporters should be jailed for keeping just such confidences with regar to OTHER persons who have provided information CONTRARY to the official line.”

  • Whitey dead-heads against handing their country, Rhodesia, over to Blacks. American Whites are no smarter since they are progressively doing the same thing. Note the rock-and-roll drums so loved by white American youth. Blacks, who never think beyond their genetils and belly’s, fail to realize that when the White farmer goes, so does his food supply. At least that will put an end to the Zimbabwean “we feed, they breed” insanity. Blacks are never grateful — only demanding. As we knew as kids — give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. Note that the Black Marxist tyrant Robert Mugabe is a protégé of Tony Blair as is the criminal Nelson Mandela. Did you ever wonder WHO is really on your White side? It ain’t the Christian church, baby.

  • Re: #13…. WTF?

    CB, looks like you’ve got some cleaning to do again; feel free to delete this comment if/when you take care of I HATE Broccoli…

  • For the love of gawd … #13 must be one of the commenters over at the WaPo who are convinced the young boy who died from lack of dental deserved it because he was poor. Seriously … read the comments over there. I almost puked.

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