Hot Potato Mash

HPM MASHUP: GEORGE WILL IS A PROPAGANDIST

JIM CRAMER GOES OFF ON EVERYBODY

Technorati Tags: Jim Cramer

Al-Qaeda Expert Killed AGAIN!

Lori Price at LegitGov.Org points out that Al-Qaeda expert, Abu Khabab al-Masri was killed again by the CIA:

Financial Times (July 30, 2008):

Pakistan intelligence officials yesterday confirmed a key al-Qaeda expert on chemical and biological weapons was killed in an attack by a CIA-operated unpiloted drone, late on Sunday.

ABC News (January 18, 2006):

ABC News has learned that Pakistani officials now believe that al Qaeda's master bomb maker and chemical weapons expert was one of the men killed in last week's US missile attack in eastern Pakistan.

Midhat Mursi, 52, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, was identified by Pakistani authorities as one of four known major al Qaeda leaders present at an apparent terror summit in the village of Damadola early last Friday morning.

ROVE EXPLAINS HIS FAILURE TO ANSWER SUBPOENA IN REMARKABLE CONVERSATION WITH O'REILLY

This is an extraordinary exchange, on many levels, between Bill O'Reilly and Karl Rove. For starters, Bill-o doesn't seem to know or at least pretends not to know, who Don Siegelman is. Introducing the segment, O'Reilly looks down at his notes and struggles to come up with Siegelman's name, and even calls him "Donald" which I have never heard any media personality use to refer to the former Alabama Governor. It would be quite remarkable if O'Reilly was truly unfamiliar with the Siegelman case. More likely O'Reilly was intentionally attempting to minimize the significance of the Siegelman case in an effort to make Rove's failure to appear before the House Judiciary committee appear more reasonable.

Next, O'Reilly clearly doesn't believe in oversight. At least during Republican administrations. House subcommittees are seemingly valueless, according to O'Reilly, since their purpose is merely to be a "dog and pony show" that tries to embarrass witnesses.

Meanwhile, O'Reilly claims that no one in their right mind would want to appear before a House committee. But the fact of the matter is that most witnesses voluntarily testify before House committees because they have information that might be helpful to our government and country. In right wing parlance, one could argue that it is often the patriotic thing to do.

O'Reilly then makes some kind of straw-man argument claiming that "they wouldn't" testify before a House subcommittee without identifying who is the "they" he is referring to. He goes on to say that "they" wouldn't even appear on his show before calling them "pinheads". Maybe O'Reilly is speaking about the TV critics or maybe he has the House committee in mind (Democrats only one supposes). Undoubtedly O'Reilly's audience understands "they" and "pinheads" to be code words for SP's (secular progressives), Democrats and the looney left.

Rove's answer is equally problematic. Note that Rove claims that the White House has invoked executive privilege which prevents him from testifying before the House committee but that he has also indicated "five times" that he would be willing to answer the same questions from House members, either by meeting with them or in writing. Thus, presumably the White House is not worried about Rove answering questions from Congress, but only answering questions under oath. Could anything be more absurd?

The transcript...

Bill O'Reilly: [TV critics] gave you a hard time about not wanting to go testify in front of a House subcommittee about Don, Donald Siegelman (looking at notes), you know. Now who in their right mind, and this is a non-partisan thing, who in their right mind would want to go in to a House committee - which is just a dog and pony show trying to embarrass whoever it is, you, me, whoever has to go - who in their right mind would want to do that? They wouldn't. They won't come on this program most of these pinheads, okay. So they give you a hard time about that and I guess they are giving you a hard time because you worked at the Bush administration and now you work at FNC.

Karl Rove: Yeah, well on the first one you know, well, in a lot of them the questions were polite but they were clearly ill-informed. They said why do you refuse to testify. I said look, I've not invoked any privilege. The White House has invoked an executive privilege - the Constitutional authority of the President not to have his aides drawn up to the Hill for any reason that they want. And I've said but I have been five times offered through my lawyer to meet with Democrat members, Democrat staff, Republican members, Republican staff or answer in writing questions that they may want to submit about this in order to preserve the President's prerogatives - separation of powers - while at the same time giving them information they supposedly want and not foreclosing any option.

O'Reilly: Yeah, but you know they don't want that.

Rove: Sure they don't. They want a circus.

O'Reilly: They want to get you up there and mock you and the TV critics want to see you disparaged.

Rove: Sure. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

O'Reilly: Now why in your opinion - I'm in journalism 35 years, you are in politics, I guess, about the same time - why is the print media particularly so left wing in this country in your opinion?

A Sean Hannity Flip Flop That Is Not To Be Missed!

Sean Hannity: "The news today brings a clear foreign policy victory for the Bush administration. But will the press report it that way?"

John Bolton: "I think it's actually a clear victory for North Korea... demonstrating again that they can out-negotiate the US without raising a sweat."

Sean Hannity: "Boy, I tell you, they've done it time and time again, and I'm sorta perplexed, Mr. Ambassador, to understand why we keep going back to the well knowing that they haven't kept the agreements in the past. Whatever happend to Reagan's trust but verify?"

Fox News, Propaganda, Sean Hannity, John Bolton

BIG BAD JOHN

WOW! Let's take a quick looksie at Senator Big Bad John Cornyn (R-TX). First, did he open up government as the vid claims? Please. Here are some typical Big John votes:

Voted YES on allowing some lobbyist gifts to Congress. (Mar 2006)

Voted NO on establishing the Senate Office of Public Integrity. (Mar 2006)

Big Bad John also opposed an Arlen Specter (R-PA) bill that would get presidential signing statements declared unconstitutional. Said Big Bad John, "I don’t see what the problem is."

What about the second major claim in the vid? Does Big Bad John really support our troops?

Cornyn was one of only 22 Senators to vote against the 2008 GI Bill that would expand the educational benefits for soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan

Voted NO on limiting soldiers' deployment to 12 months

Voted NO on redeploying non-essential US troops out of Iraq in 9 months. (Dec 2007)

Voted NO on investigating contract awards in Iraq & Afghanistan. (Nov 2005)

Voted NO on requiring on-budget funding for Iraq, not emergency funding. (Apr 2005)

Finally, Big Bad John is probably best known for stating that violence against judges is understandable.

Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Big Bad John was also the subject matter of a few emails sent between religious right huckster Ralph Reed and imprisoned lobbyist extraordinaire, Jack Abramoff:

On November 12, 2001, Reed sent Abramoff an e-mail message stating, "get me details so I can alert cornyn and let him know what we are doing to help him" [sic]. Similarly, on November 13, 2001, Reed wrote "I strongly suggest we start doing patch-throughs to perry and cornyn [sic]. We're getting killed on the phone." Also, on January 7, 2002, Reed sent Abramoff an e-mail stating "I think we should budget for an ataboy for cornyn" [sic].

While one can only imagine why these two scum-bags would want to "budget for an ataboy for cornyn" it is a pretty safe assumption that it wasn't for anything good.

The truth is that John Cornyn represents everything that is wrong with our government. He has served corporate America at the expense of his constituents at every turn. And he thus has nothing to run on other than trying to dumb down his Senate race to the pure issueless propaganda seen in the video above. One can only hope that Texans are smart enough to see through the b.s.

BTW, Rick Noriega, a military veteran who really would support our troops, is Big Bad John's opponent. Check out his campaign website.

Propaganda, Senator John Cornyn, Rick Noriega

O'Reilly Attacks Moyers IN BODY LANGUAGE SEGMENT!

By now almost everyone has seen the viral video of Bill Moyers destroying O'Reilly Factor producer, Porter Barry, after being ambushed at the The National Conference for Media Reform. If not, it follows below. But first check out Bill O'Reilly's lame attempt to get back at Moyers via the ridiculous "Body Language" segment.

And the ambush

"Moyers on Democracy" (Bill Moyers)

Bill Moyers, bill o'reilly, Propaganda, Barry Porter

Was Iraq An Intelligence Failure?

Please. Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay explain at McClatchy:

Here's what happened, based entirely on our own reporting and publicly available documents:

* The Bush administration was gunning for Iraq within days of the 9/11 attacks, dispatching a former CIA director, on a flight authorized by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, to find evidence for a bizarre theory that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the first World Trade Center attack in 1993. (Note: See also Richard Clarke and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill on this point).

* Bush decided by February 2002, at the latest, that he was going to remove Saddam by hook or by crook. (Yes, we reported that at the time).

* White House officials, led by Dick Cheney, began making the case for war in August 2002, in speeches and reports that not only were wrong, but also went well beyond what the available intelligence said at that time, and contained outright fantasies and falsehoods. Indeed, some of that material was never vetted with the intelligence agencies before it was peddled to the public.

* Dissenters, or even those who voiced worry about where the policy was going, were ignored, excluded or punished. (Note: See Gen. Eric Shinseki, Paul O'Neill, Joseph Wilson and all of the State Department 's Arab specialists and much of its intelligence bureau).

* The Bush administration didn't even want to produce the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs that's justly received so much criticism since. The White House thought it was unneeded. It actually was demanded by Congress and slapped together in a matter of weeks before the congressional votes to authorize war on Iraq.

* The October 2002 NIE was flawed, no doubt. But it contained dissents questioning the extent of Saddam's WMD programs, dissents that were buried in the report. Doubts and dissents were then stripped from the publicly released, unclassified version of the NIE.

* The core of the administration's case for war was not just that Saddam was developing WMDs, but also that, unchecked, he might give them to terrorists to attack the United States. Remember smoking guns and mushroom clouds? Inconveniently, the CIA had determined just theopposite: Saddam would attack the United States only if he concluded a U.S. attack on him was unavoidable. He'd give WMD to Islamist terrorists only "as a last chance to exact revenge."

* The Bush administration relied heavily on an Iraqi exile, Ahmed Chalabi, who had been found to be untrustworthy by the State Department and the CIA. Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress were given millions, and produced "defectors" whose tales of WMD sites and terrorist training were false, fanciful and bogus. But the information was fed directly to senior officials and included in official White Housedocuments.

* The same INC-supplied "intelligence" used in the White House propaganda effort (you got that bit right, Scott) also was fed to dozens of U.S. and foreign news organizations.

* It all culminated in a speech by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 making the case against Saddam. Virtually every major allegation Powell made turned out later to be wrong. It would have been even worse had not Powell and his team thrown out even more shaky "intelligence" that Cheney's office repeatedly tried to stuff into the speech.

* The Bush administration tried to link Saddam to al Qaida and, by implication, to the 9/11 attacks. Officials repeatedly pushed the CIA for information on such links, and a separate intel shopwas set up under Defense Under Secretary Douglas Feith to find "proof" of such ties. Neither the CIA nor anyone else ever found anything resembling an operational relationship between Saddam and al Qaida.

* An exhaustive review of Saddam Hussein's regime's own documents,released in March 2008, found no operational relationship between Saddam and al Qaida.

* The Bush administration failed to plan for the rebuilding of postwar Iraq, as we were perhaps the first to report. The White House ignored stacks of intelligence reports, some now available in partially unclassified form, warning before the war about the possibilities for insurgency, ethnic warfare, social chaos and the like.

We could go on, but the rest, as they say, is history.

That's what happened.

Read the entire article

bush, George W. Bush, iraq, Propaganda

AOL / REDSTATE.COM BLOGGER PROPAGANDIST MARK IMPOMENI IS TODAY'S WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD!

Mark Impomeni is a blogger/propagandist at AOL's “Political Machine” and at RedState.com. You can read the back story to this video at this post and read my back and forth with Impomeni at this article he wrote about Karl Rove's appearance on This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

The gist of the story is that despite Karl Rove repeatedly refusing to deny involvement in the Don Siegelman prosecution to Stephanopoulos, Impomeni headlined his story about the interview, “Rove Denies Tampering With Investigation”. This is precisely the type of cover Rove was looking for from the media despite his careful language never denying anything.

When confronted with many examples of headlines opposite to his own, Impomeni wrote: “If this were any other figure but Rove, the media would be reporting the comments exactly as I am”. Thus, Impomeni thinks himself the only one with any journalistic integrity. But it gets worse:

“Raw Story, Josh Marshall, The Carpetbagger Report, Mother Jones, Huffington Post, News Corpse, Veracifier, and Crooks and Liars at a minimum are hardly bastions of independent and unbiased journalism. I personally would also question MSNBC and Dan Abrams.”

Hence the video labeling Mark Impomeni “Today's Worst Person In The World”.

Technorati Tags: Don Siegelman, Karl Rove, Mark Impomeni, Political Machine, AOL, RedState.com

L.A. Times Issues Correction But What About AOL?

The L.A. Times did the right thing and corrected its grossly misleading headline in reference to Karl Rove's refusal to deny involvement in the Don Siegelman prosecution. However, Mark Impomeni at AOL News is refusing to correct his similarly misleading headline, "Rove Denies Tampering With Investigation", and even sites the L.A. Times in his defense when I confronted him in comments below the article.

This blog encourages others to further prod Mr. Impomeni to do the right thing, like the L.A. Times, and correct his currently propagandistic headline.

Visit the AOL article

UPDATE: I have unsuccessfully lobbied (see comments section) Mark Impomeni to issue a correction (along with 99) and have now turned to the editors at AOL's "Political Machine" to fix the propaganda:

I have unsuccessfully tried to compel author MARK IMPOMENI to change his false and misleading headline, "Rove Denies Tampering With Investigation", which is pure unadulterated propaganda. The fact -- picked up by the blogospehere, news outlets around the internet and now the mainstream media (MSNBC) -- is that Rove refused to deny involvement in the Siegelman prosecution during an interview with George Stephanopoulos Sunday.

This was evidenced by the three attempts by Stephanopoulos to get Rove to make such a denial. Each time Rove refused and gave an unrelated answer. Stephanopoulos even stated at one point, "But that's not a denial." Stephanopoulos picked up on the obvious, something which Impomeni still has failed to do.

Also troubling was Impomeni's clear bias as evidenced by this line: "But what [Democrats] really want is the headline grabbing subpoena and [Rove's] refusal to testify in public". There are endless reasons for Democrats (and American citizens) to want Rove to testify. Not the least of which was the call from 52 former attorney's general for an investigation and the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals which found "substantial questions of fact and law" in the Siegelman case.

But to Impomeni it is really just a matter of Democrats scoring points!

Finally, in his defense, Impomeni twice sited the L.A. Times which ran a similar headline. And I can't help but agree that the L.A. Times should serve as an example. Today, the L.A. Times recognized its error and rectified the situation by running a correction. I encourage AOL to do the same.

Will AOL do the right thing?

Scandalous L.A. Times Headline Regarding Karl Rove Interview

UPDATED BELOW

Yesterday the blogosphere and many news outlets wrote about Karl Rove's shocking interview with George Stephanopoulos because Rove refused to deny his involvement in the Don Siegelman prosecution. As such, I was more than a bit surprised to read the L.A. Times headline about the interview:

"Karl Rove denies meddling in Siegelman investigation: Bush's former advisor says he didn't even know that the Justice Department had been pursuing the former Alabama governor, a Democrat since convicted for bribery, until he read of it in the paper."

This morning I wrote the following to the author of the piece, Richard B. Schmitt, and will update this if he replies.

Richard,

I am a blogger who has been covering the Siegelman case and the politicization of the Justice Department for some time. As such, I found Karl Rove's interview with George Stephanopoulos yesterday intriguing, as did many bloggers and news outlets, because Rove refused to deny involvement in the Siegelman prosecution.

However, that impression is exactly the opposite of the headline of your article in the L.A. Times. Rove, in fact, never "denie[d] meddling in [the] Siegelman investigation" and only admitted that he learned about the "prosecution" in the newspaper. The fact that Rove was evading this essential question was clear as day which is why Stephanopoulos followed up his question by stating, "But that's not a denial". And once again Rove refused to deny his involvement in the Siegelman prosecution.

Thus, your headline is not only false but extremely prejudicial and beneficial to Rove as it wrongly concludes and disseminates to the public the impression that Rove is answering all the pertinent questions and being straight forward. Will you please elaborate on how the headline was chosen and let me know if you will be issuing a correction.

Thank you,

Alan Breslauer

Read the article at the L.A. Times

UPDATE: Rick Schmitt replies and admits that Rove's answers were not a denial that preclude his potential involvement in the Siegelman case:

"Think he said he learned abt invest + indictment in papers -- which means he could have been involved somehow pre-invest.
Dunno abt headlines. U shd forward to our reader's rep. Tnks r"

I will now follow-up with the "reader's rep" and report back any further correspondence.

UPDATE 2: The L.A. Times Readers' Representative forwards my complaint to the headlines editor:

Dear Sir or Madame:

The headline to the article today about Karl Rove by Richard Schmitt is false and misleading which he has so much as admitted to me in email. Please see our email exchange below and inform me of if and when you plan to run a correction. Thank you, Alan Breslauer

Jamie Gold (L.A. Times):

Thanks, Mr. Breslauer, I'll send this to the editors who write the headlines now for their attention.
Jamie Gold
Readers' Representative

UPDATE 3: The L.A. Times issues a correction! Even though they misquote their own headline in the correction:

Karl Rove: In Section A on Monday, an article about Karl Rove said he brushed off suggestions that he attempted to influence a Justice Department investigation and prosecution of Don Siegelman, former Democratic governor of Alabama. The headline went further than the article by saying, "Rove says he didn't intervene in probe."

OMG! Conservative Radio Host Kevin James EMBARRASSED!

   
Okay 99, maybe Tweety ain't that bad after all!!   

UPDATE: You think Kevin James is bumming?     

My google search traffic is up +602% today (and it's not yet noon) due almost entirely to Kevin James... 

Search for “kevin james” = 196 
Search for “”kevin james“” = 12 
Search for “kevin james conservative” = 9 
Search for “kevin james radio” = 8 
Search for “kevin james embarrassed” = 2     

Ouch! 

UPDATE II: At least Kevin James is becoming a world famous YouTube celebrity... 

Technorati Tags: Chris Matthews, Kevin James, Neville Chamberlain, puppy

MUST WATCH: Glenn Greenwald On Democracy Now

Part 1 (9:53)

Part 2 (8:02)

Democracy Now mashup of ABC debate questions (3:09)

“Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics” (Glenn Greenwald)

Technorati Tags: amy goodman, democracy now, media, Glenn Greenwald

Daily Show: History Of Fox 'News' Journalistic Integrity

In the must see video above, The Daily Show's “John Oliver shoots his own documentary spotlighting FOX 'News' and its history of journalistic integrity”. I only wish Oliver had given me a hat tip or a shout out for covering much of the same in the video mashup below I titled, “Hard Hitting”:

And for even more video mashups and commentary on the absurd Fox “News” Bush special, “Fighting To The Finish”, see my earlier post.

Technorati Tags: bush, foxnews, Propaganda, Fox News

New York Times Jumps The Shark

The NY Times public editor explains why the paper of record failed to cover last month's Winter Soldier hearings:

Dear Reader,

Thank you for writing about the Winter Soldier event in Maryland last month and its lack of coverage by the Times.

My assistant checked with various editors at the Times to see if there was any discussion about covering the Winter Soldier meeting. The editor in the Washington bureau who oversees national security coverage said he had not been aware of the group or its meeting. The Times normally has three Pentagon reporters. The meeting fell within their area of coverage, and one of them probably would have been assigned had editors chosen to staff the event. But one is on book leave, one was traveling with the secretary of defense, and one was in Iraq covering the war. The Times also did not cover an announcement the following day by Vets for Freedom, a group supporting the war and claiming more than 13 times the membership of Iraq Veterans Against the War, the group which organized Winter Soldier.

One group was emphasizing what it charged were war crimes, war profiteering and war mismanagement. The other group was protesting what it charged was the failure of the media to report more fully on signs of progress in Iraq, such as rebuilt schools and infrastructure.

News organizations like the Times, with its own substantial investment in independent reporting from Iraq tend to prefer their own on-scene accounts of the war, rather than relying on charges and counter-charges at home by organizations with strongly held political viewpoints about the war.

Sincerely,
Clark Hoyt

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting covers this unbelievable letter in full but it is worth highlighting the absurdity of the statement that the Times was unaware of the hearings. The Times D.C. bureau received three press releases about Winter Soldier, 150 Times staffers were also sent press releases, Democracy Now covered the hearings in full and the progressive blogosphere devoted much space to the hearings. And we are asked to believe that the Times didn't know about it? Wow!

Clearly the Times would rather the public believe that it is merely inept, grossly uninformed and unprofessional rather than simply doing the bidding for the pro-war political elite.

Below is the Winter Soldier testimony of Jon Michael Turner. See Hot Potato Mash's entire coverage (14 videos) of this heartbreaking event here.

UPDATE: Check out Winter Soldier: Rules of the Game by Bhc for a comprehensive look at Winter Soldier and the corporate media and how they relate to the first rule of fight club.

Technorati Tags: New York Times, Propaganda, Winter Soldier