Last Friday, I had the opportunity to visit with the staff of my delegation (GA 4th: McKinney, Chambliss, Isakson) and that of OK's Tom Coburn (I'm originally from OK) about funding for the Nat'l Institutes of Health.
Yesterday when I went to vote on the three referendum issues in Dekalb County, I saw an elderly, disabled man turned away, not allowed to vote, because he did not have correct identification. "Your papers are not in order, citizen!" The poll worker told him in a most useful way that he should have done a better job of interpreting the law. Schmuck.
As many of you know, Pat Robertson, former Republican presidential contender, advisor to at least two Republican presidents, and presently a big leader of the Christian Right (ever heard of the 700 Club?), recently proclaimed that Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez was a dictator and that the US military should assassinate him and just take his oil. Given that Hugo has been elected at least once (or more if you include the recall), and through processes that are considered cleaner than what passed in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, it's tough to see how Hugo is a dictator. Maybe Pat needs a dictionary. He really should read some more of the Bible, too. I think killing and stealing are mentioned in it, and not in a positive light.
Here are all the letters to the editor that appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution over yesterday and today discussing the war. There's a couple of significant points. Three out of four disagree strongly with US foreign policy. Remember when LTEs were all war all the time? Also, note that the Downing Street Minutes are getting play. Finally, note that more conservatives are coming out against the war in an informed manner, while the ones that still support it are sounding less and less knowledgeable.
Well, we finally have the official stance of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution NEWS division on their reporting of the Downing Street Minutes. It's laid out in an article by Angela Tuck, the public editor, and it's sad. To say the least, the NEWS division is at odds with the EDITORIAL division. There's an awful lot of mis-direction. Tuck brings up stuff that has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Most egregiously, she continues to conflate the intelligence enterprise, which is open to honest error, with the a priori massaging of the intelligence, which is premeditated deception.
I've been corresponding with Manny Miranda, the guy who heads up Frist's Nuclear Option team and who improperly accessed confidential Democratic computer files.
A couple of readers ask that I post further correspondence, so it's below the fold.
Updated below
Hey, this is great. Manuel Miranda, he who heads the the Nuclear Option team and who was named as the guy who somehow sorta got his hands on confidential Democratic documents is responding to people who are reminding him of his past.
Gotta give the guy credit. You send something to mmiranda@att.net, and by gum, he'll answer it! I guess he's really proud of his "improper, unethical and simply unacceptable breach of confidential files" (can't take credit for that, the Honorable Senator from Utah said it first).
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution published an unascribed editorial (i.e., it represents the overall stance of the Editorial Division, I think) about the Downing Street Minutes. It's a haymaker. Also, it reminds us of an often-forgotten historical factoid: The invasion was timed to affect congressional elections.
Please email the editorial division to thank them and please email the news division to ask them why they STILL are not covering these issues. Contact info and bits of the excellent editorial are below the fold.
This is a second follow-up to the discussion we had over the weekend concerning the admission by Angela Tuck, the Public Editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that it was known that Bush led us to war based on lies, hence making the Downing Street memo [minutes of a Blair meeting] not newsworthy. Those discussions can be found at:
Yesterday I posted a correspondence between Angela Tuck, the Public Editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and a couple of AJC subscribers. The topics were the lack of coverage of the Downing Street Memo and Ms. Tuck's statement that it was known that Bush led us to war based on lies, hence making the memo stale news.
This is from an email correspondence between a friend (Joe Parko)
and the Public Editor of the AJC (Angela Tuck, not to be confused with Cynthia Tucker).
I've tossed in two of my own letters at the bottom just for ego purposes,
but to save you time, in response to Joe asking Tuck why the AJC did not cover the Blair memo,
the money quote from Tuck is:
"Mr. Parko,
I can assure you we are not a mouthpiece for government. It's not news that
Bush lead [sic] us to war based on lies. The administration said long ago that
there were no WMD and we reported that on the front page many times.
Angela Tuck"
This may be minor, but I looked to see if it had been diaried, but didn't see anything.
This morning Carl Castle (sp?) on NPR noted that an emergency spending bill to cover costs in Iraq was just passed by Congress. The tab is $76 billion. He added that this along with current spending brings the cost of funding anti-terrorism efforts to $369 Billion (I could be wrong on this total).
Since when is the war in Iraq part of our anti-terrorism activity?? Why is NPR pushing the administration spin that somehow the Iraq occupation is part of the US anti-terrorism policy??
Maybe I'm picking nits, but this set me off. Or maybe it was the 4 cups of coffee...
Poignant is sitting plump in your den with good music playing with a warm wife over a warm oven making a warm dinner (it's what she likes to do) on a drizzly, dreary day and a chopper goes screaming by overhead at 50 feet because the ceiling is 51 feet and you know you're sitting one mile from the hospital pad and that chopper is doing that because something terrible has happened, so bad that a chopper has to go screaming by at 50 feet and will have to climb to reach the pad because something terrible has happened.
We've all had a good laugh at Mr. Bush's expense based on his repeatedly saying that his position requires hard work. Lots and lots of hard work.
As a poster over at Steve Guilliard's site queried: Is there any evidence that Bush has ever worked hard at the people's business? He (and I) would like to know the data showing the following breakdown for Bush's time in office:
Tom Flocco has an interview with Ms. Edmonds similar to an article that appeared in Salon today on the topic of the administration having fairly specific information on AQ threats leading up to the 9/11/01 attacks. He may have scooped Salon and I should have cited him, too.
Does anyone know Tom Flocco's background? I hadn't heard about him before. His interview provides a bit more information on the source, and a few more comments from Ms. Edmonds.
I had read that Salon was going to publish a small but explosive piece this week. I guess this is it (see link). I've pasted the "money" paragraph right below, but the entire article is quite short a registration for a day pass is free if you sit through a short flash.
