NY Times columnist denied White House Press Pass

"I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the 'Barberini Faun' is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second term by mining homophobia and preaching family values?"

Feb 17th 2005 NYTIMES

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times

Jeff Gannon=Bush Whore & internet whore

I know,the real issue is about Jeff Gannon's propaganda operation. It is very amusing that he's a whore for the Bush team and a $200 an hour gay whore. I guess its a short trip to Karl Rove's office once you've hustled your ass on the internet? Sad that the media are not focusing much on either story.

The side-show about all these gay operatives for the RNC is unusual though. Why so many?

I'd love to interview one of these gay Republicans. I don't get it. Why align yourself with the party that essentially rejects you, finds you morally inferior and reminds you marriage is only for "straight" people, and that we must protect the sanctity of America's 50% marriage failure rate?

Some of these guys, for example-

Ken Mehlman, new Republican Chair-
Ken Mehlman info

Armstrong Williams, sold out to the Bush team for $240,000
Armstrong Williams kisses up

Dan Gurley, National Field Director.
Dan Gurley Gay.Com profile
More on Gurley

You guys are all perfectly welcome over on our side! No need to hide behind the anti-gay agenda.
(I believe Gurley was even involved with the Red State scare tactic mass mailings on gay marriage.)

NY Times on Bush propaganda tools & gay operative

NY TIMES Feb 20th 2005

FRANK RICH
The White House Stages Its 'Daily Show'
Published: February 20, 2005
(Excerpts)

By my count, "Jeff Gannon" is now at least the sixth "journalist" (four of whom have been unmasked so far this year) to have been a propagandist on the payroll of either the Bush administration or a barely arms-length ally like Talon News while simultaneously appearing in print or broadcast forums that purport to be real news. Of these six, two have been syndicated newspaper columnists paid by the Department of Health and Human Services to promote the administration's "marriage" initiatives. The other four have played real newsmen on TV. Before Mr. Guckert and Armstrong Williams, the talking head paid $240,000 by the Department of Education, there were Karen Ryan and Alberto Garcia. Let us not forget these pioneers - the Woodward and Bernstein of fake news. They starred in bogus reports ("In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting," went the script) pretending to "sort through the details" of the administration's Medicare prescription-drug plan in 2004. Such "reports," some of which found their way into news packages distributed to local stations by CNN, appeared in more than 50 news broadcasts around the country and have now been deemed illegal "covert propaganda" by the Government Accountability Office.


How this happened is a mystery that has yet to be solved. "Jeff" has now quit Talon News not because he and it have been exposed as fakes but because of other embarrassing blogosphere revelations linking him to sites like hotmilitarystud.com and to an apparently promising career as an X-rated $200-per-hour "escort." If Mr. Guckert, the author of Talon News exclusives like "Kerry Could Become First Gay President," is yet another link in the boundless network of homophobic Republican closet cases, that's not without interest.

Are you living TV's harmonious interracial utopia?

The perfect interracial world exisits in America, on your TV.

According to Charles Gallagher, a sociologist at Georgia State University, television advertising is creating a "carefully manufactured racial utopia, a narrative of colorblindness"

Only about 7 percent of all marriages are interracial, according to Census data. About 80 percent of whites live in neighborhoods in which more than 95 percent of their neighbors also are white, and data show that most Americans have few close friends of another race, Gallagher said.

"The lens through which people learn about other races is absolutely through TV, not through human interaction and contact," he said. "Here, we're getting a lens of racial interaction that is far afield from reality." Ads make it seem that race doesn't matter, when real life would tell you something different, he added.

msnbc article on multiracial ads

Black People Love Us! Is a brilliant, clever website some people take a little too seriously. Come meet "Sally" and "Johnny" your clueless white-bread hosts.

Is Michael Crichton full of shit?

If you are a fan of Michael Crichton (Who isn't!?) perhaps you'll be interested in his latest controversy, State of Fear.

In State of Fear he reverses field and uses the incorrectly perceived threats of environmental disaster as the underlying impetus for a novel. In Crichton's view, the whole global warming argument is false. His view is that environmentalism has degenerated into a quasi religious system devoid of scientific veracity. Thus, the proponents of the global warming hysteria are pushing faith over fact, many of them have lost their moorings and the inevitable result is a grand conspiracy.

Some interesting topics at the Michael Crichton message board site. Join in the debate!
Topics:
The Science - CO2 & Global Warming
The Science - Battle of the Scientific Studies

Michael Crichton message board

Iraq votes in Islamic based government with ties to Iran

As predicted by me in December 2002! I hate to say "I told you so", but- I told you so. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Enjoy the crow all you Republicans. No StarBucks and McValue meals just yet for Iraq. No need to look out for the mini-mall complex on the corner of St 47, Mahallat 102 in Baghdad featuring a BlockBuster video, Noah's Bagels and a Baja Fresh.

Robin Wright of the Washington Post points out that an electoral victory of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Dawa Party, both of them close to Tehran, is not what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Neoconservatives had been going for with this Iraq adventure. The United Iraqi Alliance is led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a Shiite cleric who lived over 2 decades in exile in Iran. I point out that the likely coalition partner of the United Iraqi Alliance is the Kurdistan Alliance, led by Jalal Talabani, who is himself very close to Tehran. So there are likely to be warm Baghdad-Tehran relations.

Likewise, it is worth pointing out that the new Shiite government in Baghdad will support the Lebanese Shiites, including Hezbollah.

The United Iraqi Alliance is backed by the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most powerful Shiite figure in Iraq. Sistani carries an Iranian passport and has never spoken directly to the coalition government or any U.S. representative. The ayatollah also has insisted that Iraq's new constitution must be in line with Islamic principles, and recognize Islam as the nation's religion. Iraq's women are encouraged to vote as they want but, under Sistani's teachings, they won't be able to shake the hand of any man other than a father, brother or husband. Sistani also forbids music for entertainment, dancing and playing chess.

Yes, he's powerful," says one U.S. official. "But he won't meet face to face." No American official has ever been able to see Sistani, whose aides say he thinks such a meeting would justify the U.S. occupation.


One of the Neoconservatives' goals had been the installation of a pro-Israel government in Baghdad. But at Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution rallies and Friday prayers services, crowds have been known to chant "Death to Israel!"

Washington Post Feb 13th 2005

MSNBC reports on Sistani

The New York Times

Wednesday 16 February

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The race for the top job in Iraq's new government narrowed Tuesday to two leaders in the Shiite alliance, with Ibrahim Jafari of the Dawa Party squaring off against Ahmad Chalabi, who was mounting a last-minute stand against his rival.

(Yes, the same disgraced Ahmad Chalabi who was the darling of the neocons until it was reported that he was passing secrets to the Iranians)

Dr. Jafari, a physician who spent more than 20 years in exile and is now a deputy president in the interim government, improved his chances on Tuesday when he persuaded another rival, Adil Abdul Mahdi, to withdraw from the race.

Dr. Jafari's party, Dawa, and Mr. Mahdi's, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, known as Sciri, are the two largest groups in the Shiite alliance, which captured a slim majority of the votes in the election on Jan. 30.

Brit Hume, lying machine for Fox News

Brit Hume is a LIAR. See Media Matters Link

Also covered by Al Franken on Air America


Media Matters noticed: here’s Brit Hume, the Fox News Channel’s top news anchor, on February 3: 

In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, quote, “Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age,” adding that government funding, quote, “ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.


Hume’s claim is that FDR wanted to replace Social Security with private accounts. Hume is lying. Here’s the FDR statement that Hume is misquoting:

In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, non-contributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps thirty years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.


So, FDR was proposing three things: a temporary “old-age pension,” for seniors who wouldn’t have time to pay into the Social Security system; a compulsory-contribution annuity--meaning, Social Security as we know it today--which would become a “self-supporting system,” and, third, voluntary individual accounts. Ultimately, the old-age pensions would be supplanted by the self-supporting annuity system (meaning, Social Security.)


Hume turns this completely on its head. He pulls two unrelated bits out of the FDR quote, and adds the wrods “government funding” between them. Because it’s so carefully done, it’s clear that it’s deliberate. And it’s a nasty form of dishonesty. Hume is manipulating Americans’ trust of FDR in order to build support for dismantling FDR’s legacy.

CNN's Nuke Plant Photos Identical for Both Iran and N. Korea

(from bradblog.com)


CNN's Nuke Plant Photos Identical for Both Iran and N. Korea!
Who's the source for the photos?!

And are there any responsible corporate media outlets left in America?!

Two stories posted in the last week on the CNN website, one on nukes in Iran last Wednesday, and another on nukes in North Korea on Saturday, both use the same aerial photograph of the same purported nuclear power plant!

But one is supposed to be in Iran and the other is supposed to be in North Korea!

A story posted Saturday to CNN's website suggesting that North Korea is rallying behind their leader Kim Jong Il in his latest nuclear saber-rattling makes use of a satellite photo described in the caption as "An aerial photo of North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear plant outside of Pyongyang".

The photo is the third in a "slide show" at this CNN page. Hit 'Next' two times in the "slide show" and the following photo with caption will appear:
this CNN page. Hit 'Next' two times in the "slide show" and the following photo with caption will appear:

Oddly enough, last Wednesday the CNN website ran a story on nuclear weapons in Iran with an image captioned "Satellite image of a suspected Iranian nuclear-related facility".

That CNN page is here. The photo from that story is below:
Oddly enough, last Wednesday the CNN website ran a story on nuclear weapons in Iran with an image captioned "Satellite image of a suspected Iranian nuclear-related facility".

That CNN page is here. The photo from that story is below:

Look familiar? Look very closely at both pictures if it doesn't.

In truth, if this wasn't so sad (and actually somewhat frightening) the irony of the sub-title for CNN's Iran story -- "Former weapons inspector: 'It's déjà vu all over again'" -- might be somewhat amusing. In the piece, U.S. chief weapons inspector David Kay is quoted urging the U.S. "not to make the same mistakes with Iran that he said it made with Iraq".

Déjà vu, indeed.

All of which begs at least these questions:

Who is the source for these photos? Was it the same person in both instances? Were they supplied by someone who may have an interest in ginning-up fears over the two so-far unconquered players in Bush's "Axis of Evil"?