Letters to the Editor
Phoenix Woman
Published Letters: 192 Editor's Choice: 5
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Dr. Laura knows from homewrecking
[Read the article: Dr. Laura to Silda: It's all your fault!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How many of her husbands did she steal from other women? She and Sally Quinn (another homewrecker who wrote a similarly nasty anti-Silda piece the other day: http://firedoglake.com/2008/03/15/shut-yer-piehole-homewrecker/) should get together sometime, eh?
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Did Dr. Laura berate Vitter's or Craig's wives?
[Read the article: Dr. Laura to Silda: It's all your fault!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A quick says "No, she didn't."
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Glenn Greenwald answered this rather nicely
[Read the article: The crazy uncles in Obama's attic]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So I will just refer people to his column: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/03/17/wright/index.html
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The nut grats of Glenn's piece
[Read the article: The worst, sleaziest press corps possible]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Note the sentence construction -- the release of the documents "reminds voters" of Bill's affair with Monica Lewinsky. But who will actually be doing the "reminding"? Not the documents, but rather, the sleazy press corps.
(snark) No! These documents just magically leaped into the reporters' hands! Those poor, innocent reporters! (/snark)
This is the standard media manipulation tactic when they cover petty, vapid gossip and then want to justify it: they assert that "voters" are interested in it and then self-referentially point to the reporters' own fixation with the gossip as proof that people are interested. See, they had no choice but to point this out -- it's not their fault -- because it's newsworthy, since the "the release of the documents reminds voters anew about Bill Clinton's affair."
Is there anyone other than reporters who, when Hillary was being pressured to release her First Lady schedule, thought about the fact that this would finally enable us to know whether she was in the White House and slept with Bill on the days when he had sex with Monica Lewinsky? If journalists want to be bottom-feeding sex voyeurs, can they at least dispense with the ludicrous journalistic justifications?
The thing is, even as bottom-feeding sex voyeurs, they still hypocritically follow the injunctions of their GOP controllers. Just as the Bush DoJ has been far, far nicer to prostitution customer Senator David Vitter (R-LA) than prostitution customer and former governor Eliot Spitzer (D-NY), the media follows the Bush Junta's lead.
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Agaiin I must invoke Upton Sinclair
[Read the article: The media's special relationship with John McCain]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Who said, lo these many years ago:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
The visible portions of the GOP/Media Complex are not paid to tell the truth to us. That's not their job. Their protection of McCain shows this once again.
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@jayackroyd
[Read the article: The media's special relationship with John McCain]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sie haben recht, mein Herr!
This is taking it right to McCain. McCain will not be able to answer these arguments in real time running, because he either does not have the intellectual capacity to do so (and his losing track of the neo-con talking points three times over is a good sign that this may true) or because he won't be able to sustain the bafflegab in the face of an opponent who doesn't see the position of being opposed to the occupation as being inherently "soft."
Yupper. Attack the strength, not the weakness.
Obama gets this. Most Republicans get this. Most Democrats don't.
And all Obama has to do is a) tell the truth about McCain and b) get the media to report it as such. (Part b) is obviously going to be the more difficult part of this task.)
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Personally Identifying Information (PII)
[Read the article: The Obama passport snooping and the unchecked surveillance state]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Feds -- the non-politically-appointed ones, anyway -- are very sensitive to even the appearance of PII abuse. It is one of the few things in the Federal Goverment for which someone can be immediately terminated without appeal rights. It doesn't matter how "innocent" the explanation is; you mess with PII, you're gone. Or should be.
Is "Baggi" still employed with Customs? I should hope not.
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Viveca Novak, Rove's favorite "Fact-Checker"?
[Read the article: FactCheck.org: Obama statement "a little too slick"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Does nobody remember how she intervened in the Plame case, apparently serving as Karl Rove's little helper?
From http://mediamatters.org/items/200512020016 --
Recent revelations in the CIA leak investigation indicate that Time magazine Washington correspondent Viveca Novak may have injected herself in the investigation by alerting a lawyer for White House senior adviser Karl Rove in mid-2004 that her colleague, Time White House correspondent Matthew Cooper, might be forced to disclose to a grand jury what Rove had told him about then-undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. Novak reportedly warned Rove attorney Robert Luskin that Rove could face legal scrutiny over omitting mention of the conversation with Cooper in his own grand jury testimony, thereby providing Luskin with information that might prove crucial to Rove's defense in the case. Novak never disclosed her conversation with Luskin or her knowledge of Rove's conversation with Cooper to special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald or to Time readers, despite working on several articles about the case after her reported conversation with Luskin.
The revelation in a December 2 New York Times article regarding Novak's conversation is significant for at least two reasons. First, Novak, an experienced journalist working for a prestigious publication, disclosed to Rove's lawyer information that she did not give to her readers and that Cooper would zealously try to withhold for more than a year on the basis of the purportedly sacrosanct anonymity agreement between a reporter and a source. Second, Novak may have affirmatively helped Rove -- a source the magazine covers and will continue to cover -- beat a perjury rap, not by exonerating him through a story in the course of her job, but by providing his lawyer with information in a private conversation.
Something we all might want to keep in mind before hugging this tidbit to our bosoms. (Then again, Hillary's now cuddled up to Dickie Scaife, the guy who accused her of murdering her and Bill's best friend Vince Foster -- something I never thought I'd see her do.)
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Speaking of questionable journalism...
[Read the article: FactCheck.org: Obama statement "a little too slick"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hard on the heels of Rove's second-favorite female reporter's (sorry, Viveca Novak, but Judy Miller is still Karl's BFF) "fact-check", we have Elizabeth Edwards getting up from her sickbed to go onto two morning talk-shows (so far) to, among other things, debunk a slander.
Elizabeth Edwards said today, on both the Today show (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/23914511#23914511) and Morning Joe (video not available yet), that the New York article Joan Walsh and others have cited saying that the Edwards weren't endorsing Obama because he "turned them off" is a big fat lie.
Somebody tell Joan Walsh.