Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

PAX Americana

I’m a little bit surprised there hasn’t been an outcry about this. It seems that PAX TV is pulling a Sinclair in the swing states this week-end. They are showing a propaganda hit piece “Unfit For Command” starring Scumbag For Truth John O’Neill at five in the afternoon and 11:30 at night on Saturday and Sunday in various battleground markets, particularly Florida:

“Unfit for Command”: hosted by John E. O’Neill

Hosted by Unfit for Command’s best-selling author, John E. O’Neill, this program picks up where the book leaves off and brings to the screen the faces and real stories of the eyewitnesses that served with John Kerry in Viet Nam, and as a result, strongly oppose him.

Far from the “war hero” image of his carefully crafted public campaign, these men consider him a fraud, a liar, and a coward in battle. In fact, most Americans do not know that three of John Kerry’s fellow officers asked him to leave Viet Nam because they considered him a liability.

Never before has a former member of the Armed Forces been so adamantly opposed by his fellow sailors and officers – Why?

As you probably know, PAX is that nice wholesome Christian network (partly owned by GE/NBC) that set out to counter the hedonistic, immoral mainstream media:

“Sure there are skeptics out of Hollywood and the TV industry: no sex, no violence, no ratings,” Paxson says. “But I have no doubt that mainstream media will recognize that talking about God is a good thing and can make you money.”

And allowing lying scumbags to spew unrebutted character assassination on your network the week-end before an election is sending you straight to hell, “Bud.”

It’s too late to preempt this, but it sure wouldn’t hurt to make these guys pay after the fact. This is another example of a wingnut media mogul using public airwaves to help the Republican party. We are very foolish to let this pass in any instance. They will only take it as encouragement.

Republicans very smartly fight every single time, even if they know they are going to lose. They do it to make us have to fight for everything too. We need to do some of that. These media guys especially have to be schooled hard or by the time anybody really notices, it will be too late.

Update: FYI, with the exception of Pennsylvania, these are all broadcast stations. This isn’t cable.

Morris’s Law

Dick Morris just told John Gibson that bin Laden can’t actually explode a bomb so he’s reduced to sending a tape. This is because Junior has made America safe.

And bin Laden was much harder on Bush than Kerry which means that he favors Kerry. He used the My Pet Goat anecdote which proves that the far left is helping terrorists. Therefore, bin Laden just won the election for Bush.

Morris’ Law states that whatever he says means the opposite is surely true. Therefore, the tape is a scathing indictment of Bush and will help Kerry.

We’ve Heard From Him Now

Q (March 13, 2002): Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that? . . .

Bush: So I don’t know where he is. You know, I just don’t spend that much time on him , Kelly, to be honest with you. . . .

Q: But don’t you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won’t truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?

Bush: Well, as I say, we haven’t heard much from him. And I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don’t know where he is. I — I’ll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.

Maybe if he’d been a little bit more concerned about bin Laden and a little less obsessed with “takin’ out” Saddam, he might not be threatening us still today.

Is there any better reason to fire this asshole than this?

Codpiece Dysfunction

As Bush introduced the mother of a New York Port Authority police officer killed at the World Trade Center, a machine that was to blast confetti into the air at the end of the event went off prematurely with a loud, startling bang.

Bush flinched and paused, then resumed his speech as the confetti fell around him.

Bush had planned to campaign here with Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, a World Series hero with Kerry’s hometown team. Schilling’s presence was canceled at the last minute for what was described as an ankle problem.

Looking like a Loserman more and more each day.

Busted

again

Salon.com interviews a physicist who is an expert on imaging. It’s not good news for the Codpiece.

George W. Bush tried to laugh off the bulge. “I don’t know what that is,” he said on “Good Morning America” on Wednesday, referring to the infamous protrusion beneath his jacket during the presidential debates. “I’m embarrassed to say it’s a poorly tailored shirt.”

Dr. Robert M. Nelson, however, was not laughing. He knew the president was not telling the truth. And Nelson is neither conspiracy theorist nor midnight blogger. He’s a senior research scientist for NASA and for Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and an international authority on image analysis. Currently he’s engrossed in analyzing digital photos of Saturn’s moon Titan, determining its shape, whether it contains craters or canyons.

For the past week, while at home, using his own computers, and off the clock at Caltech and NASA, Nelson has been analyzing images of the president’s back during the debates. A professional physicist and photo analyst for more than 30 years, he speaks earnestly and thoughtfully about his subject. “I am willing to stake my scientific reputation to the statement that Bush was wearing something under his jacket during the debate,” he says. “This is not about a bad suit. And there’s no way the bulge can be described as a wrinkled shirt.”

Being A Republican Means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry

Atrios is mighty angry about this story and so should we all be. As I read it I got more and more enraged and I had toask myself why it was. After all, we’ve been hearing about this nationwide scheme to suppress the vote through dirty tricks and intimidation for the last month. What is it about this particular story that is so inflammatory?

After taking a few deep breaths I think I have figured it out. It’s that the Republican Party’s corruption has extended far into the grassroots. It’s not longer just the Nixonian Roger Stones or the Rovian Nathan Sproul’s, it’s average, everyday, pillars of the community who have joined in doing the sickening dirty work of a party that cannot win a majority legitimately. These weren’t operative sharpies. They were older Republicans willing to do the bidding of their corrupt party and they didn’t seem to care even when confronted with proof that their scheme was entirely unethical.

Of course, this little drama was really republican vs republican. There were decent republicans on the board who were disgusted by this underhanded plot and they did the right thing. But, they were few and far between. The state GOP was only sorry that they hadn’t sent in better lawyers to defend the miscreants.

I suppose that I thought that most average Republican voters were honest citizens with whom I disagree. I’ve always blamed the leadership for the modern party’s Nixonian reliance on dirty tricks and corrupt election practices. Once again I’ve been proven wrong. The sickness has flowed all the way down to the grassroots.

How long can the decent people like those two on the board hold out against a machine like this? I doubt they will. They will either go over to the dark side or leave the party. When average citizens are willing to be fronts for a dirty tricks operation there is no room left for decency.

Oh Ahmad!

We should have known:

Al Qaqaa was on a classified list of Iraqi weapons facilities that the CIA provided to Pentagon and military officials before the invasion, said the U.S. intelligence official.

But when the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command produced their own list of sites that a limited number of U.S. “exploitation teams” should search, priority was given to those identified by exiled Iraqi opposition groups, he said. Al Qaqaa wasn’t one of them.

All roads lead to Chalabi.

Update: Haha. According to Atrios, Fox jumped the gun and aired the video already. And for some bizarre reason the freepers think the scary Halloween terrorist is gay. WTF?

Halloween Terror

How likely is it do you suppose, that FOX will run with the American Al Qaeda boogeyman tape before the week-end is out?

Ross and other ABC staffers say they believe that a Bush administration official leaked the story to Internet gossip Matt Drudge as a way of pressuring the network into airing the tape, which would heighten concerns about terrorism in the final week of the president’s reelection campaign. They note that whoever gave the information to Drudge had a transcript of the tape.

[…]

The debate may not be over. The officials say a source with access to the tape, apparently impatient with ABC, has offered it to another broadcast news organization, which has called the government for guidance.

Drudge said yesterday that a political motivation behind the leak was “possible,” but put the onus on ABC. “They haven’t authenticated previous al Qaeda tapes before airing them,” he said. “Why are they waiting to authenticate this? It’s election week.”

But Isham noted that previous videotapes featured Osama bin Laden or other al Qaeda leaders who could be verified by sight.

“It’s either a well-done hoax or a tremendous news story,” Ross said. “We’re not going to get stampeded.”

I love the fact that Drudge is lecturing the network on journalistic practices.

And, there’s only one network that would “call the government for guidance.”

I’m thinking Sunday morning.

Are They All Corporate Lawyers?

I’ve mentioned this before, but I am still hungering for an explanation. Why is it that when Bush utters the words “tort reform” and “frivolous lawsuits” that the crowd reacts with an orgasmic roar that eclipses even the speaking in tongues they do over “tax cuts.” I’m assuming that this is just some kind of reflexive conditioning, but it consistently seems to get the biggest responses at Bush’s rallies.

Can someone explain to me why average citizens surge to their feet screaming and frothing at the mouth at the words “tort reform?” Is this really a code word for some underground fascist movement? It kind of freaks me out.

Interplanetary Reality

According to Carl Cameron, Kerry is on the run because the Al qaqaa story is hurting him badly. They even found a picture of a truck in the desert that is supposed to prove something, I’m not sure what.

But, back here on planet Earth, MYDD has the full compendium of Bush fuck-ups and nasty surprises — from just this week:

• The doctored photo in the Bush ad is getting press, and will probably get more.
  

• Republicans are on the defensive when it comes to explosion gate.
  

• Eminem’s “Mosh” is the hottest video on MTV.
  

• FBI opens an investigation into Haliburton contracts.
  

• Guliani and others blame troops for failures in Iraq.
  

• The Big Dog rises to fight, draws largest campaign crowd in decades.
  

• Civilian death toll in Iraq is revealed to be over 100,000.
  

• Endorsements up the yin-yang, bucking all historical patterns.
  

• Bush blunders again and again and again.
  

• Red Sox win World Series (OK, I don’t know if this one counts)

It counts.

In other news, FOX is flogging a story about preparation for a “major offensive” in Fallujah. I’m sure the boys are happy to give up their lives (and the lives of many Iraqis) to help their Codpiece in Chief change the story line.