Typo Mary. Give Me the Hatchet.

Throughout the Memogate scandal, when Bummer got to meet 100,000 new friends who visited his little blog, Bummer was careful not to personally attack the folks who were busy committing various felonies in pushing the bogus TANG forgeries.

And I still won't do that.

But this Mapes chica - "Typo Mary" - she's a piece of work, exempt from my courtesy, since she wouldn't just disappear to the cracks of the shack. Suffice it to say, she lacks the IQ to be taken for anything other than a bitter, histrionic malcontent who channels her own rage against the most daunting semblance of Power in her personal life, which seems to have manifested itself as being male, Texan, rich, powerful, connected, right-of-center, and -- did I mention -- male. The "penis" kind of male. Like Bush.

***

Mapes says:

"If I was an idiot..."

Mary, there's no "if". You are an idiot. Worse, a significant majority, bordering on a supermajority, of the United States teenage and adult population, believes you are an idiot.

"If" is not part of the equation.

***

You might see who O.J. Simpson uses for a booking agent. That might work out well for you.

***

Typo Mary must have had her heart broken by some Texas lad, while watching too much Dallas or Dynasty back in the 80's. What a wreck.

Good riddance.

CBS..Sloppy Seconds.....

This simply cannot be true....can it?

"CBSNEWS Chief White House correspondent John Roberts described the President's selection of Judge Samuel Alito as "sloppy seconds"during today's press gaggle with White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.

"John Roberts: 'So, Scott, you said that -- or the President said, repeatedly, that Harriet Miers was the best person for the job. So does that mean that Alito is sloppy seconds, or what? ' "

***
Let's see how new CBS News management handles this. Anyone willing to speculate that John Roberts will be fired before the week is over?

UPDATE: Roberts apologizes for the usage. Of course, if a Rightwing reporter had used the term, NOW and every other Leftist Feminist organization would be on the warpath:

“At the morning White House gaggle, I used an unfortunate choice of words in a question to Scott McClellan. Please be assured that there was no perjorative intent to my question. I was merely attempting to reconcile past statements about Harriet Miers with the President's new nominee for the Supreme Court.... I apologize to anyone who took offense to my poor choice of words. I can assure you I meant none."

***

What uproar in the MSM, if a FOX news reporter were to ask Nancy Pelosi the following, at a new conference in San Francisco:

FOX: "So Represenative Pelosi, you have opposed any appointment to this department of anyone other than a member of the gay or lesbian community. Is this a new de jure fag quota that you propose be adopted as law, or just your discretionary preference as committee chair?"

____
* - Some of the 23 may be of an older generation that may not know what the term used here means. "Sloppy seconds" is very common American slang among the Baby Boomers through Gen-X, and is used as slang for "Second F*ck." It is used in many contexts. In every context, the usage relies upon the objectification of a woman to be limited to that of an object good for sex, and nothing more. (A "f*uck toy".) It is NOT a phrase you would use in a mixed group, or a group that you did not know each member well, any more than you would employ any other sexual epithet, such as the word "faggot" or "dick smoker."

For example, in a gang bang (more than one guy having sex with one woman), anyone other than the first guy to have sex with the woman gets "sloppy seconds" ("I'm going first, you get the sloppy seconds.")

It also can mean that you won't date/sleep with a woman, if you are friends with, or otherwise know, her previous boyfriend. ("I won't have sex with her, because I won't take Ted's sloppy seconds").

The word "sloppy" refers to a woman and her sex organ(s) that are already flush and lubricated from just-completed sex. You can visualize whatever details are appropriate.

When the Left comes out and claims that this is not what "sloppy seconds" means...they are simply lying.

Inscript This on Our Coins

Victor D. Hanson - a modern cairn, like the initials hidden on the 1909 Lincoln penny - should have his words inscribed on our coins - or at least on a blog.

VDH has had enough of this effete tiptoeing around the big issues. Time to bring on the fight.

VDH writes:

"[T]he U.S. Marine Corps has done more for global freedom and social justice in two years than has every U.N. peacekeeping mission since the inception of that now-corrupt organization.

"...Forget acrimony over weapons of mass destruction, platitudes about abstract democracy, and arguments over U.S. security strategies. Instead bluntly explain to the world how at this time and at this moment the U. S. is trying to bring equality and freedom to the unfree, in a manner rare in the history of civilization.

"...[T]he American people need to be reminded there was no oil, no hegemony, no money, no Israel, and no profit involved in this effort, but something far greater and more lasting. And so it no accident that the Iraqis are the only people in the Arab world voting in free elections and dying as they fight in the war against terror.

"...The American people, both pro and con, are more than ready for a great debate to settle these issues one way or another."

WilsonGate

Bummer is a lawyer. Bummer prefers primary documents, because they often contradict the spin that the MSM puts on any given matter.

Here is the indictment of Lewis Libby. It's very thorough. Libby is charged with:

- Obstruction of Justice.
- False Statement.
- Perjury.

Do you know what Libby is NOT charged with? Outting a CIA Operative.

***

Bummer's wish may come true. If Fitzgerald is indicting for False Statement and Perjury, then Joseph Wilson may get indicted.

11th Circuit: Non-Votes Must Count ... as Votes for Democrats?

Let's get this right: The requirement that you present a photo ID is unconstitutional, because it imposes a burden that is too close to the unconstitutional poll tax?

Court Voids Georgia ID for Voters

"AP - ATLANTA — A federal appeals court refused Thursday to let Georgia demand photo identification from all voters at the polls. Last week, a federal judge barred the state from enforcing the new photo ID law during local elections next month, saying it amounted to an unconstitutional poll tax that could prevent poor people, blacks and the elderly from voting. The state asked the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to lift the stay, but it declined.

"Under the law, voters would have to show either a driver's license or a state-issued photo ID, which can cost as much as $35."

So, next year's decision?: "The burden of having to register to vote, and the burden of having to take a couple hours to go to the polling place, is just too heavy. It's like a poll tax. Therefore, the registration and voting requirements are hereby struck down, as bearing too many marks of a poll tax, which disenfranchises black voters. Henceforth, there shall be entered onto each election tally, one Democratic vote for every African-American that the Census indicates is living in the district... ."

The Next Nominee Is...

Bummer won't tell you about his source(s) (because Bummer likes to pretend he is a thug with immunity).

But without telling you outright the name of the next Supreme Court nominee, here's a BummerHint: Her initials are E.B.C.

Now, when this nomination goes forward, remember this little tip. Good thing Elliot Spitzer has no jurisdiction over judicial nomination insider information....

When Thugs Believe Privilege Means Immunity

Terrorist conspirator-lawyer Lynne Stewart, who facilitated islamofascist terror plans by abusing jailhouse privileges accorded to attorneys under the "attorney-client privilege," will rot in jail, an appeals court decides.

Stewart was convicted in an islamofascist murder conspiracy. (Remember the videos of heads being sawed off?) She was also convicted of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

Good decison, and good riddance. Rot in hell, Lynne Stewart.

MemoGate Honcho Gets Canned

CBS News President Andrew Heyward, the captain of the CBS News crew that, after 3 days of wrenching examination, decided they might get away with broadcasting an anti-Bush attack piece based upon 4 memos they knew were forged, all in conjunction with a DNC anti-Bush campaign, has been put to pasture.

The CBS News team consisted of committed leftist partisans and, in the most charitable version of events, allowed a powerful cognitive dissonance of their personal "hate Bush" and "pro-Kerry" attitudes to overrule basic journalism. Bit by bit, the CBS News team transformed an ostensible "hard news division" into a partisan propaganda production company. In the month preceding the fake Memogate story, CBS producers co-ordinated their forgery and the anti-Bush attack piece they built around it, with senior executives of the Kerry campaign, the DNC, and grass-roots leftwing Democratic activists.

In the less charitable version, the CBS team knowingly forged documents and committed a series of felonies in connection with tampering with a wartime election.

In either version, though, they ended up getting busted, hard. Many were fired, including Dan Rather.

Heyward is the last to go in the housecleaning.

Good riddance.

***

I'd assumed the NYTimes, as a privately-held company, could simply ride out the adverse effect that scandals may have on its earnings, without public investor blowback. (Rich ideologues would rather lose money than lose a bad partisanship.) Alas, an astute reader informs that NYTimes is public company, symbol NYT. Thanks, C-Nut.

Bummer might go buy 100 shares and start a little shareholder rebellion at the next NYT shareholders' meeting.....

Miers Drops Out

Told you so, 2 weeks ago, but you doubted Bummer..

A nice person, no doubt. But not cut out for Supreme Court Justice duty.

Was Wilson Lying When He Said This?

Tidbit from a July 14, 2005 CNN transcript of a Wolf Blitzer story on Wilsongate. (The Senate Intelligence Committee had the week earlier released its report, pointing out that Wilson was a liar):

"WILSON: My wife was not a clandestine officer the day* that Bob Novak blew her identity.

"BLITZER: But she hadn't been a clandestine officer for some time before that?

"WILSON: That's not anything that I can talk about."

___
* - The day was July 14, 2003.

Indict Joseph Wilson IV....Please

Yeah, it's a pipe dream.

But, take a look at 18 USC 1001 - the federal law against "lying to agents of the federal government":

§ 1001. Statements or entries generally

(a) ...whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully...—

(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation;...

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.

Joseph Wilson lied to the Senate Intelligence Committee. It is likely that he also lied to the CIA. Both come within the coverage of 18 USC 1001, above. Special prosecutor Fitzgerald should indict Wilson under 18 USC 1001.

Joseph Wilson also lied in his NYTimes piece, and in his interviews with reporters. The First Amendment allows him to lie in those instances, without criminal jeopardy.

The Media Focus on Truth-Challenged Wilson

Finally, some media corners are beginning to recover from the thrashing red-herring delivered by the NYTimes, by noting that Joseph Wilson is a liar.

From today's Daily Standard:

"ON JUNE12, 2003, when he first published a story about the matter, Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus became the second journalist to have been used by Ambassador Joseph Wilson to peddle bogus information about his February 2002 trip to Niger. Wilson told Pincus that he had debunked Bush administration claims that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger. He was specific and apparently seemed credible. And Pincus bought it all.

"...There is one problem with this: It's wrong. Wilson lied and lied repeatedly. His central contention--that he had seen documents about the alleged sale and determined that they were forgeries--was a fabrication. We know this because
Wilson took his trip in February 2002 and the U.S. government did not receive those documents until October 2002. It could not have happened the way Wilson described it to Pincus.

"Wilson was later confronted about his misrepresentations. He told investigators from the Senate Intelligence Committee that he may have "misspoken." CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked Wilson specifically about these obvious discrepancies, citing Pincus's June 12, 2003, Washington Post story. Wilson decided to share the blame. He [blamed Pincus.]

"The following day, Wilson was confronted again, this time by CNN's Paula Zahn. This time he played dumb before once again blamed the reporters who retold his phony story.

"...All of which brings us to the very bizarre story in today's Washington Post. The article is a rather transparent attempt to rehabilitate Joseph Wilson, casting the current debate about his credibility as a battle between Wilson's antiwar supporters and his pro-war critics. It fails. It fails because outside of the pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times, there is no real debate over Joseph Wilson's credibility. He doesn't have any."

A Second Wapo Kudo

Another nod to the Washington Post, for not killing this Op/Ed that continues to peel at the onion layers surrounding the MSM Red Herring on PlameGate, which should properly be called WilsonGate:

It Wasn't Just Miller's Story

By Robert Kagan
Tuesday, October 25, 2005; A21

The Judith Miller-Valerie Plame-Scooter Libby imbroglio is being reduced to a simple narrative about the origins of the Iraq war. Miller, the story goes, was an anti-Saddam Hussein, weapons-of-mass-destruction-hunting zealot and was either an eager participant or an unwitting dupe in a campaign by Bush administration officials and Iraqi exiles to justify the invasion. The New York Times now characterizes the affair as "just one skirmish in the continuing battle over the Bush administration's justification for the war in Iraq." Miller may be "best known for her role in a series of Times articles in 2002 and 2003 that strongly suggested Saddam Hussein already had or was acquiring an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction." According to the Times's critique, she credulously reported information passed on by "a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on 'regime change' in Iraq," which was then "eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq." Many critics outside the Times suggest that Miller's eagerness to publish the Bush administration's line was the primary reason Americans went to war. The Times itself is edging closer to this version of events.

There is a big problem with this simple narrative. It is that the Times, along with The Post and other news organizations, ran many alarming stories about Iraq's weapons programs before the election of George W. Bush. A quick search through the Times archives before 2001 produces such headlines as:

"Iraq Has Network of Outside Help on Arms, Experts Say"(November 1998);
"U.S. Says Iraq Aided Production of Chemical Weapons in Sudan"(August 1998);
"Iraq Suspected of Secret Germ War Effort" (February 2000);
"Signs of Iraqi Arms Buildup Bedevil U.S. Administration" (February 2000);
"Flight Tests Show Iraq Has Resumed a Missile Program" (July 2000).

(A somewhat shorter list can be compiled from The Post's archives, including a September 1998 headline: "Iraqi Work Toward A-Bomb Reported.") The Times stories were written by Barbara Crossette, Tim Weiner and Steven Lee Myers; Miller shared a byline on one.

Many such stories appeared before and after the Clinton administration bombed Iraq for four days in late 1998 in what it insisted was an effort to degrade Iraqi weapons programs. Philip Shenon reported official concerns that Iraq would be "capable within months -- and possibly just weeks or days -- of threatening its neighbors with an arsenal of chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons." He reported that Iraq was thought to be "still hiding tons of nerve gas" and was "seeking to obtain uranium from a rogue nation or terrorist groups to complete as many as four nuclear warheads." Tim Weiner and Steven Erlanger reported that Hussein was closer than ever "to what he wants most: keeping a secret cache of biological and chemical weapons." "To maintain his chemical and biological weapons -- and the ability to build more," they reported, Hussein had sacrificed over $120 billion in oil revenue and "devoted his intelligence service to an endless game of cat and mouse to hide his suspected weapons caches from United Nations inspections."

In 1999 Weiner reported that "Iraq's chances of rebuilding a secret arsenal look good." Hussein was "scouring the world for tools to build new weapons." He might "be as close to building a nuclear weapon -- perhaps closer -- than he was in 1991." In 2000 Myers reported that Iraq had rebuilt 12 "missile factories or industrial sites" thought to be "involved in Iraq's efforts to produce weapons of mass destruction" and had "continued its pursuit of biological and chemical weapons."

The Times's sources were "administration officials," "intelligence officials," "U.N. weapons inspectors" and "international analysts." The "administration officials" were, of course, Clinton officials. A number of stories were based not on off-the-record conversations but on public statements and documentation by U.N. inspectors.

From 1998 through 2000, the Times editorial page warned that "without further outside intervention, Iraq should be able to rebuild weapons and missile plants within a year" and that "future military attacks may be required to diminish the arsenal again." Otherwise, Iraq could "restore its ability to deliver biological and chemical weapons against potential targets in the Middle East." "The world," it said, "cannot leave Mr. Hussein free to manufacture horrific germs and nerve gases and use them to terrorize neighboring countries."

Times editorials insisted the danger from Iraq was imminent. When the Clinton administration attempted to negotiate, they warned against letting "diplomacy drift into dangerous delay. Even a few more weeks free of inspections might allow Mr. Hussein to revive construction of a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon." They also argued that it was "hard to negotiate with a tyrant who has no intention of honoring his commitments and who sees nuclear, chemical and biological weapons as his country's salvation." "As Washington contemplates an extended war against terrorism," a Times editorial insisted, "it cannot give in to a man who specializes in the unthinkable."

Another Times editorial warned that containment of Hussein was eroding. "The Security Council is wobbly, with Russia and France eager to ease inspections and sanctions." Any approach "that depends on Security Council unity is destined to be weak." "Mr. [Kofi] Annan's resolve seems in doubt." When Hans Blix was appointed to head the U.N. inspectors, the editors criticized him for "a decade-long failure to detect Iraq's secret nuclear weapons program before the gulf war" and for a "tendency to credit official assurances from rulers like Mr. Hussein." His selection was "a disturbing sign that the international community lacks the determination to rebuild an effective arms inspection system." The "further the world gets from the gulf war, the more it seems willing to let Mr. Hussein revive his deadly weapons projects." Even "[m]any Americans question the need to maintain pressure on Baghdad and would oppose the use of force. But the threat is too great to give ground to Mr. Hussein. The cost to the world and to the United States of dealing with a belligerent Iraq armed with biological weapons would be far greater than the cost of preventing Baghdad from rearming."

The Times was not alone, of course. On Jan. 29, 2001, The Post editorialized that "of all the booby traps left behind by the Clinton administration, none is more dangerous -- or more urgent -- than the situation in Iraq. Over the last year, Mr. Clinton and his team quietly avoided dealing with, or calling attention to, the almost complete unraveling of a decade's efforts to isolate the regime of Saddam Hussein and prevent it from rebuilding its weapons of mass destruction. That leaves President Bush to confront a dismaying panorama in the Persian Gulf," including "intelligence photos that show the reconstruction of factories long suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons."

This was the consensus before Bush took office, before Scooter Libby assumed his post and before Judith Miller did most of the reporting for which she is now, uniquely, criticized. It was based on reporting by a large of number of journalists who in turn based their stories on the judgments of international intelligence analysts, Clinton officials and weapons inspectors. As we wage what the Times now calls "the continuing battle over the Bush administration's justification for the war in Iraq," we will have to grapple with the stubborn fact that the underlying rationale for the war was already in place when this administration arrived.

Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, writes a monthly column for The Post.

WAPO Distinguishes Itself...Almost

I typically toss the Washington Post in with the other MSM. I have given Wapo some kudos, though. Today, WaPo again shows that although it may be left-leaning MSM, it still can report and analyze the news, regardless of whose ox gets gored. Kudos, again, the Wapo.

Wapo, you see, again points out that Joseph Wilson just might not be the whistleblower that the Leftist MSM has portrayed. Wapo is still of Left bent - it doesn't nail Wilson (as it did in a prior article) nor address the untidy fact of Wilson obtaining direct evidence on his Niger trip that islamists had sought 400 tons of yellow cake from the Niger government (officially or under the table), and were apparently prevented from achieving their objective only by a regime change a few weeks later in Niger.

Wapo:

Husband Is Conspicuous in Leak Case - Wilson's Credibility Debated as Charges In Probe Considered

"Wilson's publicity efforts -- and his work for Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign -- have complicated his efforts to portray himself as a whistle-blower and a husband angry about the treatment of his wife.

"...The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial page, defending the administration, wrote yesterday that, "Mr. Wilson became an antiwar celebrity who joined the Kerry for president campaign." Discussing his trip to Niger, the Journal judged: "Mr. Wilson's original claims about what he found on a CIA trip to Africa, what he told the CIA about it, and even why he was sent on the mission have since been discredited."

"...Wilson has also armed his critics by misstating some aspects of the Niger affair. For example, Wilson told The Washington Post anonymously in June 2003 that he had concluded that the intelligence about the Niger uranium was based on forged documents because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." The Senate intelligence committee [pointed out that Wilson was lying - ed], which examined pre-Iraq war intelligence, reported that Wilson "had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports." Wilson had to admit he had misspoken.

"...Wilson has maintained that Plame was merely "a conduit," telling CNN last year that "her supervisors asked her to contact me." But the Senate committee found that "interviews and documents provided to the committee indicate that his wife . . . suggested his name for the trip." The committee also noted a memorandum from Plame saying Wilson "has good relations" with Niger officials who "could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." In addition, notes on a State Department document surmised that Plame "had the idea to dispatch him" to Niger.

The article is woefully inadequate, but at least one MSM outlet has cracked the door about Wilson.

Maybe, just maybe - Wapo thinks that Wilson might be a target of the prosecutor? And Wapo wants to be the only outlet that raised questions about Wilson? I hope I hope I hope... .

Wilson is partisan liar who tried to affect the wartime 2004 election by false statements under the guise of being a government whistleblower. That's criminal, in my book.

The MSM Wins by Default

It's become a cacophony, all the self-serving crap being tossed about by the NYTimes, Judith Miller, Left-Wing moonies like Maureen Dowd, etc. And the MSM wins big, because the real stories get lost. The Bush Republicans are simply LAME in letting this become the story. (Bummer won't let it go, though.)

2004 - The Year of the Fake Whistleblower (aka DNC Operative)

The 2004 election was a referendum on the Iraq War. The leading Democrats voted for the war. Then Howard Dean decided to become the anti-War candidate. By late 2003, early 2004, there were 2 factions of the Democrats-vs.-Bush.

Out of this, two actors* emerged with quasi "whistleblower" capes around them. Each was a career Democrat and anti-Bush operative. Richard Clarke, and Joseph Wilson. Both told untruths during the election campaign, carefully orchestrated to avoid outright perjury. (Note that both were done, whistele-blower style, via the Left MSM. Perjury laws do not apply to op/ed columns in the NYTimes. Neither Clarke nor Wilson would have to testify as to their spun tales, until long past the 2004 election, after they had presumably achieved their objective of electing a Democrat and getting themselves jobs in the process.)

Richard Clarke was the first actor who played the part of the career terror officer, who had been privy to the inside of government. He was assigned the objective of turning 7 months into 8 years - that is, to pin blame for 9/11 on the Bush, who had been in office just over 7 months when 9/11 hit. Clarke claimed that "Bush ignored the al qaeda warnings we left him." There was one problem with this - the Millenium Bomber after-action report, written a year before 9/11, which critiqued the shortcomings of the 8-year Clinton team. In short, this report was a candid assessment of the government's failings re: al qaeda and terrorism. Since Clinton has been in office for almost 8 years, there are few persons to blame, other than the Democratic administration. How could the Democrats carry the claim that "Bush was responsible for 9/11," with the after-action report written by Democrats, rebutting the claim? (Remember, the report was written pre-9/11; only after 9/11 did the routine failure analysis take on political ramifications).

Clarke was dispatched to obfuscate the after-action reports. By loudly blaming Condi Rice for failing to take al qaeda seriously, the Bushies were put on the defensive. The after-action report, of course, would rebut Clarke's charge; in fact, they might even put him at risk for perjury, if he were to testify as to certain topics. (But, did the MSM ever run a story about that?)

But in planning the caper, the Dems tried to cover their bases. Alas, convicted felon Sandy Berger stepped up, and just in advance of Clarke's anti-Bush campaign in the fall of 2003, Berger cleansed the files at the National Archives of the after-action report drafts and margin notes that would have exposed Clarke for the spin-meister he is. Query: How many MSM articles have you read, whereby the contents of the after-action report drafts scrubbed by Berger (a final version, though, was summarized in the 9/11 Commission Report) were compared with the anti-Bush propaganda of Richard Clarke? Umm....let's see...that might be.....zero.

Clarke claimed the form of a whistleblower, to bolster the Dems -- both the anti-War Dems, and the Dems who voted for the war. The MSM simply will not acknowledge this, and the Republicans (by which I mean Bush) are village idiots for not pointing it out. The MSM won that round.

The second person, aka DNC Operative, adopting the fake whistleblower motif was Joseph Wilson. His early 2003 trip to Niger was to investigate 3 questions respecting the sale of uranium nuke nuggets to islamo fascists, particularly Iraq:
(1) Had Niger been approached?
(2) Had Niger conducted any discussions? and/or
(3) Had Niger entered into agreements?, respecting nuke nuggets?

Wilson was unemployed, and his Niger gig was arranged by his wife. The US invaded Iraq in March 2003. Before the war, in late 2002/early 2003, Wilson went to Niger, he came back, he reported to the CIA. Then, in July 2003, he wrote a NYTimes op/ed entitled, "What I didn't find in Africa."**

In the op/ed, Wilson adopted the whistleblower angle, to wit: "Bush told us in his State of the Union address about Iraqi efforts to obtain African nuke nuggets. He lied, because I'm the guy Cheney sent to investigate. I went, and came back and told the CIA my opinion. It's all fake."

Problems arose. First, Wilson wasn't Cheney's guy. Instead, he was put up to the gig by his wife, a CIA staffer. The entire "who exposed Victoria Plame" non-scandal stems from Wilson trying to adopt the whistleblower angle, implying that he was somehow Cheney's Philip Habib. This is an MSM-driven scandal - smoke to cover up what Wilson was doing.

Second, Wilson discovered that a Niger minister had been in active discussions a few years earlier with islamic agents seeking 400 tons of nuke nuggets. 400 tons! The talks ended when that clique was tossed out of office. Wilson surmised that the islamists simply lost interest, when in fact a CIA analyst might conclude that the islamists simply lost their best contact...for the time being. Wislon further reasoned that since the sale of Niger nuke nuggets was nefarious - illegal - then of course it would be unlikely to happen. (!!!). Finally, Wilson after-the-fact argued that some incriminating paperwork was faulty, but Wilson had no such access when he was in Niger.

The unanimous, bi-partisan Senate Intelligence Committee more-or-less called Wilson a liar one year after his op-ed, in its July 2004 Report. Other than the Washington Post, no MSM outlet has bothered to connect the dots on Wilson. His Niger analysis was simply flawed - how do you overlook or discount that islamic agents were seeking 400 tons of nuke nuggets, right up until a ruling clique was tossed out of office? Or that illegal sales don't occur, because they would be -- illegal?

Joseph Wilson is a liar, and the Senate Intelligence Committee busted him. The MSM has successfully obfuscated this, by making the story to read, "Who outted Vic Plame?"

The MSM won the Wilson game, too.

For the record, I belive it was the sworn duty of the Administration to expose the lies of Wilson. On that account, they did it so poorly, they malpracticed.

___
* - Note, I omit the RatherGate affair from this, as I limit my focus to actors in the prior Clinton administration.

** -

Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq? Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat. ...Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me.

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials [his wife - ed] asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office. [Note the first twist - Wilson strongly implies that the CIA, and Dick Cheney, had picked Wilson. In fact, Wilson's wife selected Wilson. - ed.]

... The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. [It might not have been top secret, but it was a CIA-backed fact-finding trip. "By no means secret?" - ed]

...I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy... I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.... In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired. [Is he kidding? Fifth-world Africa, and his reasoning is that uranium sales could not have occured, because ... they are illegal? - ed]

(As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors — they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government — and were probably forged. [Note the second slippery lie: Wilson implies that he had this information during his trip. The Senate Intelligence Committee calls Wilson a liar on this point. When he was in Niger, he had no such information, and no access to this information. - ed]

... In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. [Note: Based upon Wilson's data, the CIA arrived at a difference
conclusion than Wilson. - ed]

...There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report [unless you think that islamic agents seeking 400 tons of nuke nuggets from Niger might be 'earth shattering' - ed.]#

... Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. [Note the third, critical "whistleblower" lie here: another direct implication that Wilson was "Cheney's guy." He wasn't. He was his wife's guy. - ed] I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government. "

# - Note that, Wilson had sat with Niger's former Prime Minister, and a Minister of Energy and Mines. They confirmed to Wilson that, in fact, both Iranian and Iraqi delegations met with the Nigerians in 1998-1999. The Iranian delegation in 1998 explicitly sought 400 tons of uranium ore, but no deal was ever completed.Then, in June 1999, some businessmen asked the Prime Minister to meet with an Iraqi delegation for the purpose of "expanding commercial relations" between the countries. (Remember, Iraq is under international embargo at this time.)The CIA intelligence report on the matter states that the Prime Minister thought that "expanding commercial relations" meant that Iraq wanted to discuss yellowcake. The Senate Report states that Wilson said the Prime Minister met with the Iraqi delegation, but that the Prime Minister told Wilson that nothing happened because the Minister "let the matter drop due to the UN sanctions on Iraq."

Irony-Free Zone and Thugs' Contradictions

The generally conservative New York Sun gets on the BummerBandwagon, re: Plame and Miller. Next chapter, perhaps they'll take a hard look at Joseph the Liar (that is, Joseph Wilson):

Autophagy of the Times

New York Sun Editorial
October 24, 2005

"[Witness] ...the New York Times, whose own reporters and columnists are writing in the paper to attack one another and, most of all, Judith Miller. While she was in jail, the Times ran editorial after editorial defending her. Now, only days after she emerged, her colleagues have tried to transform her from First Amendment hero to "Miss Run Amok," not even fit to work at the paper. Suddenly the newspaper that was denouncing the special prosecutor for being overly aggressive against Ms. Miller is now hanging on every detail of his investigation in the hope he will use the same kind of aggression against aides to Vice President Cheney and President Bush.

"...[S]ince the Times had run Joseph Wilson's original essay, "it had an obligation to explore any allegation that undercut his credibility." For instance, the allegation that his wife worked for the CIA, an agency that was trying to deflect blame to the neoconservatives for whatever its own faults were on Iraq.

"Mr. Wilson's claims about Iraq's innocence with respect to Niger and Uranium have in any event since been undercut by both the British Butler commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee. There are some of us who remember the days when there was a New York Times that would not have sat for the CIA trying to overturn decisions of a democratically elected American government, whatever political party was involved.

"...[I]f Ms. Miller is to be run out of the Times in favor of ... those who believe, falsely, that the Iraq war was all just an elaborate con job ... well, then the Times is in even worse straits than we thought."

So it goes....

Other Media Recognize the Contradictions of Thuggery

Bummer foretold of this:

George Galloway, the British MP, was last night accused of lying by a US Congressional committee when he testified earlier this year that he had not received any United Nation food-for-oil allocations from the deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

...months ago:

Nothing pisses off government people - and particularly Republicans - more than lying to them, under oath. Ask Clinton how that worked out for him.The issue is whether Galloway received payments, directly or indirectly, from Iraq, through any type of Oil-for-Food vouchers. The allegation against Galloway is precisely that these were given as bribes, and not in the ordinary course of the oil trade. (Ipso facto, if Galloway was a professional oil trader, then his receipt of oil vouchers wouldn't be bribes.)In Clintonian style, never once does Galloway deny receiving money from Iraq. Instead, he denies the obvious. It fools idiots, but not lawyers.

Thugs Are Now..."Victims" of Their Sources

Poor old NYTimes. Its arrogant thuggery, borne of a sense of immunity and "the rules don't apply to us" attitude, now whines that it has been victimized by... sources that grant waivers!

-- Text of an e-mail sent to the staff of The New York Times by Bill Keller, the paper's executive editor:
___
A Message from Bill Keller:

Colleagues,
As you can imagine, I've done a lot of thinking _ and a lot of listening _ on the subject of what I should have done differently in handling our reporter's entanglement in the White House leak investigation. Jill and John and I have talked a great deal among ourselves and with many of you, and while this is a discussion that will continue, we thought it would be worth taking a first cut at the lessons we have learned.
Aside from a number of occasions when I wish I had chosen my words more carefully, we've come up with a few points at which we wish we had made different decisions. These are instances, when viewed with the clarity of hindsight, where the mistakes carry lessons beyond the peculiar circumstances of this case.
I wish we had dealt with the controversy over our coverage of WMD as soon as I became executive editor. At the time, we thought we had compelling reasons for kicking the issue down the road. The paper had just been through a major trauma, the Jayson Blair episode, and needed to regain its equilibrium. It felt somehow unsavory to begin a tenure by attacking our predecessors. I was trying to get my arms around a huge new job, appoint my team, get the paper fully back to normal, and I feared the WMD issue could become a crippling distraction.
So it was a year before we got around to really dealing with the controversy. At that point, we published a long editors' note acknowledging the prewar journalistic lapses, and _ to my mind, at least as important _ we intensified aggressive reporting aimed at exposing the way bad or manipulated intelligence had fed the drive to war. (I'm thinking of our excellent investigation of those infamous aluminum tubes, the report on how the Iraqi National Congress recruited exiles to promote Saddam's WMD threat, our close look at the military's war-planning intelligence, and the dissection, one year later, of Colin Powell's U.N. case for the war, among other examples. The fact is sometimes overlooked that a lot of the best reporting on how this intel fiasco came about appeared in the NYT.)
By waiting a year to own up to our mistakes, we allowed the anger inside and outside the paper to fester. Worse, we fear, we fostered an impression that The Times put a higher premium on protecting its reporters than on coming clean with its readers. If we had lanced the WMD boil earlier, we might have damped any suspicion that THIS time, the paper was putting the defense of a reporter above the duty to its readers.
I wish that when I learned Judy Miller had been subpoenaed as a witness in the leak investigation, I had sat her down for a thorough debriefing, and followed up with some reporting of my own. It is a natural and proper instinct to defend reporters when the government seeks to interfere in our work. And under other circumstances it might have been fine to entrust the details _ the substance of the confidential interviews, the notes _ to lawyers who would be handling the case. But in this case I missed what should have been significant alarm bells. Until Fitzgerald came after her, I didn't know that Judy had been one of the reporters on the receiving end of the anti-Wilson whisper campaign. I should have wondered why I was learning this from the special counsel, a year after the fact. (In November of 2003 Phil Taubman tried to ascertain whether any of our correspondents had been offered similar leaks. As we reported last Sunday, Judy seems to have misled Phil Taubman about the extent of her involvement.) This alone should have been enough to make me probe deeper.
In the end, I'm pretty sure I would have concluded that we had to fight this case in court. For one thing, we were facing an insidious new menace in these blanket waivers, ostensibly voluntary, that Administration officials had been compelled to sign. But if I had known the details of Judy's entanglement with Libby, I'd have been more careful in how the paper articulated its defense, and perhaps more willing than I had been to support efforts aimed at exploring compromises.
Dick Stevenson has expressed the larger lesson here in an e-mail that strikes me as just right: "I think there is, or should be, a contract between the paper and its reporters. The contract holds that the paper will go to the mat to back them up institutionally _ but only to the degree that the reporter has lived up to his or her end of the bargain, specifically to have conducted him or herself in a way consistent with our legal, ethical and journalistic standards, to have been open and candid with the paper about sources, mistakes, conflicts and the like, and generally to deserve having the reputations of all of us put behind him or her. In that way, everybody knows going into a battle exactly what the situation is, what we're fighting for, the degree to which the facts might counsel compromise or not, and the degree to which our collective credibility should be put on the line."
I've heard similar sentiments from a number of reporters in the aftermath of this case.
There is another important issue surfaced by this case: how we deal with the inherent conflict of writing about ourselves. This paper (and, indeed, this business) has had way too much experience of that over the past few years. Almost everyone we've heard from on the staff appreciates that once we had agreed as an institution to defend Judy's source, it would have been wrong to expose her source in the paper. Even if our reporters had learned that information through their own enterprise, our publication of it would have been seen by many readers as authoritative _ as outing Judy's source in a backhanded way. Yet it is excruciating to withhold information of value to our readers, especially when rival publications are unconstrained. I don't yet see a clear-cut answer to this dilemma, but we've received some thoughtful suggestions from the staff, and it's one of the problems that we'll be wrestling with in the coming weeks.
Best, Bill

So the Word Is...

... that some Plame indictments may issue? I'll be the only person in print, pre-indictment, to have offered up that Joseph Wilson should be the target of the indictment. Sounds instead like it will be Rove and Libby. They must have worked one helluva stupid campaign to try to blunt Wilson's partisan lying about his Niger trip. I'll be quite surprised if Wilson walks free.

But hey, Mapes, Burkett et al walked from Rathergate, scot-free. Why should I be surprised?

Thugs with immunity.

Illegal Immigration Movement

Bummer has railed (e.g., here) about the malfeasance of both political parties re: illegal immigration.

Apparently, someone at the White House did some polling. Today's Homeland Security announcement:

"Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department aims without exception to expel all those who enter the United States illegally. 'Our goal at DHS is to completely eliminate the 'catch and release' enforcement problem, and return every single illegal entrant, no exceptions. ' "

But even the AP headline editor gets confused. Chertoff is not proposing to expel the 15 million illegal immigrants already here. Instead, all he said is, "Future illegals will not be caught and released here."

I think the White House needs to do some more polling.

Bummer: Spot On With MSM Thug Miller

Let's see, it's October, and Howard Kurtz via the Washington Post - finally - starts reporting some disconnections in the MSM's version of the Plame Affair:

Reporter, Times Are Criticized for Missteps

Media Analysts Question Decisions by Miller, Newspaper's Editors Regarding Leak
By Howard Kurtz

"Media analysts assailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller and her editors yesterday for what they called a series of missteps and questionable decisions revealed in two lengthy articles about the problems of covering the CIA leak investigation while defending the embattled journalist."

The MSM for over a year has deep-sixed the fact that a unanimous Senate Intelligence Committee determined that Joseph Wilson lied about numerous things, to numerous entities.

Did the MSM thus move to the next logical step ("Gosh, why is this career Democrat, claiming to be "Cheney's guy," telling falsehoods against Bush in the middle of a war and the middle of an election?")?

(He wasn't Cheney's guy - he was given the gig, crony-style, via his wife in the CIA. And his report in fact specifically determined that islamic agents had contacted Niger to obtain nefarious nuke nuggets. But Wilson tried to morph his story into a "Bush lied" election smear, with active assistance from the MSM).

Did the MSM move to the next logical step? Of course not. Instead, the MSM tried the red herring - "someone outted a CIA agent."

It continues to unravel, nicely, on the MSM. Might journalists get indicted? More Kurtz:

"Critics inside and outside the paper said they were amazed that Miller would not answer questions about her dealings with editors or show her notes to colleagues investigating the matter. ...

"Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism professor, said Miller's limited cooperation was "unforgivable" and provided "dead giveaways of someone who's hiding the truth."

No single facet of yesterday's Times account drew more condemnation than Miller saying she cannot recall the name of another source who told her about "Valerie Flame," as she recorded the name in her notebook. ... "It's hard for anyone to imagine that Judy either didn't know who provided that information or, if it was clearly someone else, why she did not make that available," [former Times reporter Alex] Jones, said.

Bloggers were much blunter. "This is as believable as Woodward and Bernstein not recalling who Deep Throat was," wrote columnist Arianna Huffington. Magazine writer Andrew Sullivan accused Miller of "pulling a Clinton." And Editor & Publisher columnist Greg Mitchell said Miller "should be promptly dismissed for crimes against journalism."

Gosh. Shocker. MSM hiding the truth?
_____
* - Note my earlier kudos to the WaPo, alone among the MSM for its noting that Joseph Wilson was called a liar by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The MSM Spins the Iraq Constitution Approval

Huge victory - Iraq Constitution is approved.

Yet on this historic day, can the MSM - here, the AP- possibly write an article with more negative spin? Take a look at the sheer volume of negative words employed by the AP:

"Sunnis Appear to Fall Short in Iraq Vote

"Iraq's landmark constitution seemed assured of passage Sunday after initial results showed minority Sunni Arabs had fallen short in an effort to veto it at the polls. The apparent acceptance was a major step in the attempt to establish a democratic government that could lead to the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

"Opponents failed to secure the necessary two-thirds "no" vote in any three of Iraqi's 18 provinces, according to counts that local officials provided to The Associated Press. In the crucial central provinces with mixed ethnic and religious populations, enough Shiites and Kurds voted to stymie the Sunni bid to reject the constitution. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani issued a decree setting Dec. 15 for Iraqis to vote again, this time to elect a new parliament.

"If the constitution indeed passed, the first full-term parliament since Saddam Hussein's fall in 2003 will install a new government by Dec. 31. If the charter has failed, the parliament will be temporary, tasked with drawing up a new draft on which to vote. But the outcome could further divide the nation, with many Sunnis fearing the new decentralized government will deprive them of their fair share in the country's vast oil wealth. Large numbers of Sunnis voted "no," and some of their leaders were already rejecting the apparent result. While a strong Sunni turnout in Saturday's referendum suggested a desire among many to participate in Iraq's new political system, there were fears that anger at being ruled under a constitution they oppose could push some into supporting the Sunni-led insurgency.

"If the constitution was passed, the attacks will definitely rise against the occupation forces, and the security situation is going to be worse," said Sheik Abdul-Salam al-Kubaisi, a prominent cleric with the influential Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, which government officials accuse of links to the insurgency.

"In a sign of the relentless danger, five U.S. soldiers were killed Saturday by a bomb in Ramadi, a hotbed of militants west of Baghdad, the military announced. It was the deadliest attack on U.S. troops since a Sept. 29 bomb blast in the same town also killed five soldiers. A Marine was also killed by a bomb Saturday in the town of Saqlawiyah, the military said.

"The most recent deaths brought to at least 1,976 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the war began in 2003, according to an AP count."

I've given up on the useful idiots of the MSM.

More on WilsonGate

Bummer sees this one clearly - serial liar and Kerry election agent Joseph Wilson got caught in lies (not unlike the fake RatherGate memos, but not as obvious). Pure BummerSpeculation, but as with the DNC coordination with the fake TANG memos in RatherGate, there may well have been MSM swarming to inflate the Joseph Wilson propaganda, initially printed in the NYTimes.

The Senate Intelligence Committee outted Wilson as a liar. (Let me publish it succinctly, so Google picks it up and Wilson's defamation counsel can contemplate a lawsuit against Bummer in which they will be ruthlessly pummelled [truth being a complete defense to defamation]: Joseph Wilson is a Liar.)

The MSM kicked into gear to obfuscate the facts that Joseph Wilson is a liar.

The MSM ramps up a misdirection play on the "Wilson lied" story and pressed the angle of, "The Administration outted a CIA agent to suppress this whistleblower."

The Weekly Standard sums it up quite well, via Stephen Hayes. (A day later than Bummer, but hey, Bummer is often out ahead.) Read it all, here. A+ stuff.

***
The Leftists have relied upon false documents and/or cleansed files for the past 18 months. Now they are getting busted. CBS (along with the DNC) got caught with forgery in Memogate. Convicted felon Sandy Berger got busted in Sock-a-Quiddick ClintonQaeda evidence destruction, itself a form of tampering and forgery. EasonQuiddick, the same, not only for anti-American lies but in document tampering (causing the video of his lies to be deep-sixed). John Kerry was less-than-honorably discharged from the Navy, lied about it, then went silent and and relied upon a cleansed file to bolster the fake history. The MSM, with the Wilson/Plame scandal, deep-sixes the unanimous, bi-partisan Senate Intelligence Report that debunks Wilson, and thinking the record has been cleansed, continues to push a "Rove punished an honest whistleblower" fairy tale.

***
Bummer has had it. Reminds me of the weeks after 9/11, when I was discussing the airline bailout with a smart libertarian. His point: Let them all fail; they are corrupted, bankrupt organizations that need a fresh re-alignment. I protested. He countered: "Name one decent experience you have had in the past 5 years, everytime you have handed the airlines between $300 and $2000 for a couple hours....."

I was convinced. I believed by experience, not the rhetoric. The airlines, and certainly the service staff, were disfunctional. Let them fail; reshuffle the deck. That is the essence of capitalism - let the market solve the problem of bad companies.

I've come to the same conclusion with the MSM. Let them fail, even though the burn-down will be painful for a lot of old-guard workers there. But the institutions have - by and large - become so corrupted, the deck needs reshuffling.

When is the last time the NYTimes identified Joseph Wilson as, "former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was found to be lying about every material underlying fact by the unanimous determination of a bi-partisan Senate committee of 18..."?

It's broken, folks. The MSM, that is. We shouldn't pretend otherwise.

Good News Coming? Pre-Announce How Bad the Good News Is

The MSM is in denial.

It runs its anti-Bush, anti-Iraq stories at a fever pitch. Check the front page of the NYTimes, past 7 days. LA Times, too.

Leftist editorials gleefully declare that the Right-of-Center is finished.

There, in the room, sits a large 900-pounder, in a pink tutu. And the Left MSM won't acknowledge it, other than a reference to "admission policies" of the room.

***

The Iraqi election occurs in 36 hours. Once completed, the jihadist insurgency in Iraq has nowhere to hide - it will be self-evident to all, what the jihadist movement is.

Because the average guy in Iraq - or in any Muslim country - will know that millions, maybe 10 million - voted for a democratic structure, with all its flaws and warts. They'll know. No fatwa or al jeezera broadcast can change that. Albanians receiving Italian TV signals. [read this link - ed]

The MSM cannot focus on the fact that the elections are going to occur. The successful January 2005 election - with the purple fingers - was a widespread wake-up call to the MSM. They won't let a good message result, again.

So...the bad news cycle begins:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Electricity went out for hours across the greater Baghdad area Friday evening, and Sunni insurgents launched five attacks on the largest Sunni Arab political party, all on the eve of Iraq's vote on whether to approve a new constitution.

Insurgents bombed and burned the party's offices and the home of one of its leaders in retaliation after the group dropped its opposition to the draft constitution.

The MSM hopes the "chaos" message will obfuscate what is really happening.

The Wolfowitz Plan, that is. Believe it!

Rove and Plame

The Leftist MSM is in a fever pitch over the Rove connection to the Plame Affair.

Worst case for Rove (as far as I can tell, assuming all facts against Rove) is that Rove and others decided to counter the 2004 campaign-related falsehoods being trumpeted by serial liar Joseph Wilson (remember, the unanimous Senate Intelligence Committee Report determined that Wilson had lied to the CIA, lied to the Senate Committee, and lied to the newspaper in writing his article).

Remember also, that other supposed "insiders" - Richard Clarke, apologist for Clinton's appeasement of al qaeda - had come out, or were doing so, to create a campaign against Bush.

Remember also, that convicted felon Sandy Burglar/Berger, cleansed the National Archives files of memos that would rebut the Democrats' campaign charges against Bush.

In this environment, assume that Rove and others were of the intention to discredit Wilson. Wilson claimed to be "Cheney's guy" who had "debunked the yellow cake story." (We know now that the yellow cake story was true --contrary to the report that Wilson gave - and that he was not "Cheney's guy." He was his wife's guy.)

When a reporter asked Rove about Wilson, Rove pointed out that he was not Cheney's guy, but rather had been put into the job by his CIA wife. Assume for purposes of argument that Rove used the Plame name, and directly said, "She is a CIA operative."

No crime. Read the statute.

My guess is that everyone shaded their initial testimony to the prosecutor. The most likely outcome is, "no charges." If not, then an 18 USC 1001 charge against one or more persons, for misstatements to a federal officer (sort of a mini-perjury charge).

***

My secret dream outcome: Joe Wilson gets indicted on a perjury or mini-perjury charge for his lies, and that the prosecutor uncovers a coordinated plan involving the MSM reporters to "get Bush" in connection with the Wilson article (again, which we now know was based upon falsehoods).

Sound like a wild, conspiratorial fantasy?

Remember Memogate? Remember the DNC and its Favorite Son campaign, all launched simultaneously with the bogus 60 Minutes II report using fake TANG memos?

Bummer's fantasies are all that far-fetched.

Joke Circulating on the Net

Dear Abby:

My husband is a liar and a cheat. He has cheated on me from the beginning, andwhen I confront him, he denies everything. What's worse, everyone knows he cheats on me. It is so humiliating.

Also, since he lost his job four years ago he hasn't even looked for a new one. All he does is buy big cigars and cruise around and shoot the bull with his pals, while I have to work to pay the bills.

Since our daughter went away to college he doesn't even pretend to like me and hints that I am a lesbian.

What should I do?

Signed, Cueless

***

Clueless:

Grow up and dump him. For Pete's sake, you're a United States Senator. Act like it.

-Abby

Miers: Thumbs Down

Bummer has sat on the fence on the Miers nomination. This BummerThought came today:

If a President nominated a nice and wonderful "soccer mom" to be the UN Ambassador, you might conclude that there was nothing wrong with her. Lots of good attributes. But you would then realize that, she lacked the minimum 'professional' qualifications for the post, albeit she was a nice, responsible person.

Bummer would vote against the soccer mom, not because there was anything wrong with her, but because of her lack of any relevant, notable qualifications.

Harriet Miers falls into that category. Thumbs down. Nothing wrong with her, per se. But, I find nothing - zip - that would make her resume jump out of a stack of 100 resumes submitted for review. She wouldn't even get an interview, much less the job offer.

Unfortunately, our negative political process - driven by abortion zealots on both fringes - turns the foregoing into nasty, personal attacks.

Zawahiri-Zarqawi Intercepted Letter

If you bother to read the entire text of the intercepted letter from al Zawahiri (al Qaeda's number two leader), to al Zarqawi (al Qaeda's military leader in Iraq), you cannot help but conclude that civil war between the fundamentalist sunni muslims, and the shi'ites, is an almost certainty. At least it is, to the radical sunnis.

So maybe this will cause the talking heads to realize that the Wolfowitz Plan is working. The Iraq War had several objectives, but a 'unifed Iraq' was never a primary objective, although the U.S. gave it lip service.

Bluntly stated, the U.S. objectives in the global terror war are satisfied completely, in the event of sectarian violence and civil war among the Muslims. Long before this strategic Z ->Z letter came out, Bummer wrote:

"A unified Iraq is not a primary goal [of the United States]. So if we’re going to get all practical, let’s be practical. A unified Iraq is a four-run homer, accelerating the Mideast peace process by years. But a one-run homer is all we need, and perhaps all we can afford. To wit: A balkanized Iraq with two working democratic zones, territories or countries (Kurdistan; Shia’stan) satisfies the basic strategic objectives of the [Wolfowitz] Plan.

"The second non-PC yet satisfactory outcome recognizes this: Regional Mideast Civil wars, involving democracy movements, are an improvement over the status quo and a likely step in the generational struggle that awaits the Mideast."

The Wolfowitz Plan delivered to the Mideast what the jihadist fascists cannot destroy: The permanent installation of Local Freedom Zones, embodying Western commerce, Western freedoms, and above all, physical safety from medieval jihadist idiots, enforced by Western military might.

The Local Freedom Zones will prevail, in the medium and long term. The attempt to turn the entire country into one big Zone was ambitious, and may likely fail. But 80%, maybe 90%, of the former Iraq territory is now, and will end up as, Local Freedom Zones.

The already-commenced war between the fundamentalist jihadist/fascist factions, and the various modern factions, will continue through our lifetime. Get used to it. As those wars rage, the relative attractiveness of the Local Freedom Zones will increase. Every day that passes, the demand for such Zones will expand. People will move there.* The demand for the Chaos zones will decrease; people will leave those zones. This was the fundamental promise of the Wolfowitz Plan. It is working, and civil war in Iraq actually proves the efficacy of the Plan, SO LONG AS the U.S. commits adequate military assets for a time to allow the Zones to become self-sustaining, going-concern polities - i.e., viable Local Freedom Zones. I think 3 to 8 years is the "training wheels" period during which these Zones will need the U.S. military back-up.

___
* - Cf., the dark ages and medieval times. People sought the Zones of the castle.

Cf., Cold War Europe. The Soviets had to build a Wall to stop the flight of people away from the totalitarian zone, to the Freedom Zone. The Wall lasted only 41 years, and it had nukes backing it up.

Eliminate Them, and Any Offspring 3 or Older

IslamoFascism.

Like a cancer. Eradicate it, and any infected cells next to it.

Harsh, you say. Yes, perhaps it is. But death by cancer is worse.

***
Regardless of what naive peaceniks believe, many of the militants are not completely brainwashed. They are behaving in a volitional manner. They...like it. Thrills and all that.

Of course, the same can be said about our soldiers. They...like it.

So it gets down to, who is right, and who is wrong.

***

If you cannot decide that fundamental question -- who is right, who is wrong? -- in this context, then Bummer has no use for you. You are a fool, whose presence shall not soil the good world.

Dan Rather: Doubting Now, Doubting Then, Lying Always?

Dan Rather - a secret doubter and a public liar:

"The night before last fall’s controversial National Guard piece aired, Rather called 60 Minutes Wednesday executive producer Josh Howard from the anchor desk to find out why he wasn’t running promos for the story. When Howard told him he couldn’t promote it—CBS News president Andrew Heyward hadn’t seen it yet, nor had the lawyers, and they hadn’t even contacted the White House for comment—Rather threatened to take the story to the Times that night.

"...According to the book, on the night before his on-air apology, Rather confessed to Howard that he’d had doubts about the veracity of the memos all along. “I knew when I did the [document consultant Marcel] Matley interview that something wasn’t right with all this,” Rather confessed to Howard, belying his stalwart public position....'

Oh, don't forget that he is also an Election Fraud Agent and Enemy of Democracy.

Gag Order Issued re US Campus Bombings?

Where the frack is Homeland Security? There have been 3 campus bombings/attempted bombings in 2 days.

What is going on?

Read it: Oklahoma, Georgia Tech and UCLA.

David Frost and the Venona Project

Senator Joseph McCarthy was proven correct by the release of the Venona decryptions. There were many high-level Soviet agents in the US government, media and elsewhere.

Shocking ... leftist pansies in fact were 'useful idiots' in the employ of the enemy of the US.

It's politically incorrect to mention Venona today, or the fact that McCarthy was correct. Note yet another Hollywood blacklist fabrication, Good Night, Good Luck. More deliberately inaccurate crap about the evils of the blacklist. (As if Venona didn't exist.)

Speaking of leftists - that is, BBC correspondents - aged Brit socialist apologist Sir David Frost has joined al jeezera.

A useful idiot. Just like the idiots who were Soviet spies, who were ID'ed by HUAC as being spies, and who successfully turned the accuser into the evildoer.

Contraband Transcripts

The Left Wing repeats endlessly that there was a single reason for the Iraq War, and that the entire endeavor has gone awry. The MSM is a partner in this message delivery system, as it slants hard news and analysis into an anti-war angle. The anti-war message is almost always the primary driver of MSM stories. Bummer likes to refer back to transcripts - a favorite debunking technique - and regarding the Iraq War, Bush's Call to War transcript, or "Casus Belli" - is right here, 3 weeks before the Iraq War began. (The Left HATES the fact that these transcripts exist on the dangerous, unregulated, right wing, hate-mongering internet.)

Well, shocker - the Leftist MSM did it again. Bush delivered an in-depth, long-overdue speech about Islamo-fascists yesterday. The actual transcript is here. Drinking coffee this morning with the front pages of the MSM, I was ready to count the number of paragraphs the MSM devoted to attacking Bush, vs. the number of paragraphs that reported the actual speech elements. I rough-counted about a 4-to-1 (against) ratio in the MSM lead stories in the NYTimes and LATimes. In other words, Bush laid out a major policy speech, and the MSM spent 80% of its hard news coverage of such policy speech by attacking Bush.. To the MSM, the speech was nothing other than a platform to attack.

What the MSM simply will not print is here and here (and here) . Heresy to do so. Even the act of printing the heretical words, will render unto anyone connected with the story an immediate evaporation of the accolades of Leftist Manhattan and Washington society. No more dinner invitation, etc.

***
nb: Hinderaker smells the same MSM misdirection coffee.

The Gathering Storm Against Unconstitutional Outsourcing

The Kelo case - whereby the Supreme Court decided that it was not the proper body to determine whether a locality's definition of "public purpose" in condemning property was too promiscuous - has been roundly criticized. One angle is that that governmental province - at least, those that are specified in the Constitution - cannot be outsourced, including without limitation to an organization that is organized "for profit."

The 23 reading today get a rare BummerTreat: An original idea, never heard before. Bummer has been cooking it up for some time.

You see, credit cards have become the nation's currency. If you have any doubt, try using one at McDonalds. Yes, you can use your credit (or debit) card to buy a burger.

Credit card companies, eager for more customers, are no longer engaged in a 1-for-1 exchange with merchants. Rather, the credit card companies are increasingly taking a 3% -- even a 5% -- scrape, putting some in their pocket, and rebating some to the card user, as a bribe for using the card. Merchants are getting upset.

Free enterprise? Maybe.The credit card companies are certainly in the business of issuing and managing a new form of currency. Branded currency. Mastercard-brand dollars. Visa-brand dollars. Very lucrative.

Except ... that little Article I Constitutional problem.... You see, only Congress has the power to issue currency. It's a government function, not a private, for-profit endeavor:

Article I, Section 8:

"The Congress shall have power to: ... coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures..."

Article I, Section 10:

"No state shall ... coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts ...."

Granted, there are nuts shacked up in remote compounds, flying 200-year old flags, claiming that the Federal government is not legitimate, etc. I'm not talking about that.

I'm referring directly to the Constitutional provisions that explicitly and implicitly establish the Federal government as the exclusive administrator of the currency, with a small exception made for state governments dealing directly in bullion. Nowhere is MasterCard-branded currency provided for... particularly a private currency that costs 3% each time you use it.

Can the Feds or any state "outsource" that governmental function, to for-profit entities?

The storm is gathering. Bummer has no plans to hold any securities of banks with large credit card portfolios....

On the Plame Target

Regarding Judith Miller and her cynical grab for absolute immunity: Outstanding, nowhere-else reasoning by Hinderaker at Powerline.

Yet I think he gives too much benefit of the doubt to Miller. I believe that Miller's crusade is partially, at least, an emotional reaction to her realization that she, and the MSM, no longer are protected by the "immunity-from-everything" shield that the MSM has enjoyed for 3 decades. This immunity has resulted in a sort of "Tragedy of the Commons" effect for the MSM, particularly the syndicated hard news MSM (the NYTimes, WaPo, Network News, the AP and Reuters). Individual (micro) decisions to push a political agenda resulted in the serious degradation of the news divisions of the MSM (macro). Put simply, it's a mild version of slaying the golden goose.

See, the hard news MSM institutions were built around a certain news-cycle paradigm. They broadcast it, and in almost all cases, what they said become the presumptive truth, with only a few relatively unread activist journals dissenting, weeks or months later - too late to have any mass effect. Ideologues increasingly were drawn to the field - over the past 30-40 years, Leftist ideologues - to 'fight the power.' Vietnam war reporting was the catalyst; it drew the initial left-leaners, and reporting was the field. Follow that with Watergate, and there was blood in the water for any college Leftist who wanted to change society. Becoming a reporter was a viable avenue for a Leftist. Voila, we soon had an MSM newscorps comprised of about 90% liberals and/or Leftists.

And what the MSM news printed or said, set the agenda. Reagan, who knew a thing or two about media, was an effective counter at times. But the institutional Leftist hegemony remained. And from that, the immunity from any real competition to the Leftist agenda, on a mass scale.

The immunity-born-of-hegemony changed, with talk radio, Drudge, Fox and then blogs. By the early 21st century - 9/11 is a decent marker date - the MSM had gotten buggy-whipped; it did not have the internal architecture to confront intellectual and ideological challengers, particularly when the challengers consistently beat or tied the MSM to the punch as far as the news cycle.

Now, when the story breaks, it's no longer just the liberal version, with some obscure monthly with 5,000 readers running a conservative counterpoint 6 weeks later. Instead, by noon, all sides to a story are now aired.

And...stories are now being broken in the blogs and elsewhere. The MSM doesn't pick them up for 24-72 hours, and by then, the MSM has almost no control over the story.

Imagine that change in under 10 years. Players who set the agenda with almost absolute hegemony and immunity, within a decade find themselves in institutions that are increasingly second-cycle news, and are increasingly reactive to other media, rather than agenda-setting.

Simply put, the MSM lost its monopoly, and hence its immunity from having to be correct.

What is the connection to Miller and Plame? The MSM, as a collective, continues to throw a hissy fit over the loss of power. And individual members of the MSM also throw tantrums. Like Judith Miller. Joe Wilson. Jordan Eason. Rather and his entire staff.

And to their shock, the majority of their prior viewers and readers, yawned.

That's an important emotional underpinning to the Miller jail stint.

Effete thugs liked their immunity, and they aren't happy about losing it.

***
I hypothesize that an emotional hissy fit is an equal cause of Judith Miller going to jail, as any legal maneuvering. Having said that, Hinderaker is spot on.

Prize for Conducting Bali Bombings

Islam-fascists struck Bali in the 2002 Christmas bombings, killing hundreds.

They were rewarded with light sentences, which sentences were reduced. 2, maybe 3, years in jail.

They struck again. Couple dozen dead, minimum.

***

In the currency of their culture, the bombers were rewarded for the first bombing. Any doubt as to why they, and so many others, sought to do a second bombing?

Rewards shape behavior.

***

Eradicate the Islamo-fascists. As in, kill them, and fumigate the dens from which they spawn. It's the only thing that will work. With fascists, that is. Show me a contrary example, and I'll consider it.