Johnny Coli

It was the top link. Here it is linked from Wapo, if that makes it any more relevent. Same Reuters story, but linked to from WaPo to satisfy Gavin Here it is in the Boston Globe. Same Reuters story, but linked to from the Globe to satisfy Gavin

I was ripping on Wacka's obvious delusion that they all come from Mexico (as in ethnically), which couldn't be more absurd. Irish immigrants rally against proposed law Other ethnic groups to join rallies This isn't just about "mexicans standing around outside Home Depot." It includes many nationalities. How many people would be behind expelling 25,000-plus irish immigrants?

It's a Reuters article.

And they've changed right back....Zarqawi still a big problem There you go. I was wrong. No propaganda. Iraq=War on Terror, just like Dubya says.

Even the Koreans? Or the Costa Ricans? Or the Peruvians? Or the Irish kids over here in Boston? Send any and all undocumented workers to Mexico?

I have read the whole speech. He seems pretty specific as to who he's refferring to: He goes on and on about al Qaeda, militants, and attempting to control Iraq. He may not be outright lying, but he's not exactly being totally truthfull about the nature of the insurgency in Iraq, either, which also harkens back to his selective declassification of intelligence to sell the war to begin with.

I did read your response in this thread from last week, and I found the candor to be a lot more refreshing than what is coming out of the administration. As for disinformation, the "anti-Bush" crowd as you have referred to them, have quite a lot of ground to cover to even approach the level of disinformation coming out of this administration.

Based on the context of his whole speech, I don't think you could come away without linking "militant", "al-Qaeda" and "terrorist" together as the same entity. Here's a section using all three, and wrapping it up using "enemy in Iraq", where "enemy" is referred to as al-Qaeda from his first point. Here's "enemy" in the context of his first point: The speech writer has clearly distinguished regime remnants from terrorists, and has clearly defined terrorists and enemy. It's a great speech for defining who the enemy is. He's got good writers, I'll give him that.

It's been a talking point for Bush when he speaks about Iraq. He's repeatedly used insurgency, al-Qaeda, and Zarqawi almost interchangably when discussing the war in Iraq. From a speech 10 months ago (WH link): That single instance is the only time he mentions "regime remnants" in the whole speech. Look, as stated in a previous post, I'm 100% behind getting Zarqawi. But selling a bunch of half-truths because you're afraid your support at home for the war will dissappear is pretty freaking weak.

As opposed to what the administration wants me to see? Let's turn this debate into belittling my views and my missing the big picture.

I'm not understating what a POS Zarqawi is. He should be villified, and I agree with the effort in trying to split the insurgency. But the idea that Zarqawi and al-Qaeda are the driving force behind the insurgency, as purported constantly by Bush in his speechs, is not entirely truthfull. It's slightly more than "bleed" back to the american press. He continually states that it is the reason we are there...to paraphrase, to take the fight to al-Qaeda. Is he there? Yup. Is he a piece of garbage that deserves the worst of the worst when he's caught? A big yup. Is he being used as a tool to keep support in the US up for the war in Iraq? IMO, Yup. That's all I'm saying. The administration refuses to admit they have a civil war going on, because the american people are already more than skeptical about why we're in Iraq. If you walked out onto the street today, and asked 100 people who they think is responsible for the insurgency in Iraq, what do you think the majority of the answers would be? Ergo, successful propaganda campaign.

From the first paragraph and the third: And here is what I described: There are multiple examples in the piece stating that the military used the press to do just what was stated. They even used the term "psy-ops." I suppose I could rephrase it: I do see a problem with it, because it's another half-truth used to drum up support for their war.

Well, after several days of not denying that they declassified the parts of the NIE that supported their claims and helped them to sell a war, the administration finally admitted that The Emporer did indeed declassify parts of the report, but also put forth the laughable notion that he didn't know what Cheney and Libbey were doing with it. I don't know what's more absurd, Bush coming out and saying he has no idea what he's doing with classified intelligence, or that he declassifies intelligence at the behest of Cheney without knowing why. Bush Ordered Declassification, Official Says So, the guy who is declassifying intelligence doesn't really know what it's eventually going to be used for. The wheels on the bus go round and round.....

I'll tack this WaPo article onto this thread, because it deals with Iraq and the above-mentioned propaganda. Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi The gist of the article points to a psy-ops program aimed at US citizens to enhance the idea that Al-Qaeda is instrumental in the insurgency. I love the part where they mention Fox News. It's a good thing this administration has such an honest and forthright track record with the american people, otherwise I might feel used.

You should send your evidence to Fitzgerald, then, because according to him, she was still covert. Newsweek--The CIA Leak: Plame Was Still Covert

The Mouth of The Emperor had a tough day in the press briefing. Here's the Press Briefing transcript. There's a pretty long, but hilarious exchange between The Mouth and a reporter regarding a press conference on July 18, 2003. Libby "leaked" the info to Judith Miller on the 8th. Scott get's a bit flustered. Like I said, it's a pretty long exchange, but here's a snippet: (emphasis mine) That's good comedy!

Except we're not talking about some congressional staffer leaking a memo from some sub-committee debating the finer points of a bill. We're talking about the POTUS authorizing parts of, and half-truths of pre-war intelligence in order to grease the rails of public opinion to make a war more palatable. He systematically de-classified only the intelligence that supported his claims, then had someone leak it to the press. That's an abuse of power IMHO. The consequences of leaking a policy memo aren't in the same league as that of leaking pre-war intelligence in order to sell a war.

I've let this current revelation about Bush wash over my brain for 24 hours now. While I've been told that it's perfectly legal for him to classify and de-classify information at will, I'm still somewhat confused as to why he had to authorize the anonymous leak of this info to begin with. If he believed the info contained in the NIE to be innoucuous enough to declassify it and have one of his lackey's hand it over to the press (as an anonymous source), then the question begs "Why not just reveal it in a speech to the American people yourself?" Why all the cloak-and-dagger/deep-throat nonsense? To continue to trot out the excuse that "They just suck at PR" is trivializing the abuse of power here. Yes, it is perfectly legal for Bush to classify and declassify material. However, what he has done is use this privledge of office as a political tool. To me, that is an egregious abuse of the office of the POTUS. Others may clearly dissagree with me, of course, and no doubt will point out to me why I am wrong. But this new twist, combined with Alberto Gonzales' testimony before Congress yesterday (Gonzales Suggests Legal Basis for Domestic Eavesdropping) is unsettling because it appears, on the surface, that this administration truly believes it is free to do as it pleases. What he did may have been "legal", but IMO it was also wrong.

I don't know why this guy is bringing this up now, as the study was released last year (WaPo 29-Mar-2005). Here is the abstract. From this data, culled from a 1999 survey, I believe the authors are making a huge leap from how a professor may lean politically to how that translates into bias in a University lecture. They are making an assumption that liberal-leaning professors will teach with a bias, but that isn't asked or quantified in the study. From the 2005 WaPo article: Uh-huh......starting to make sense now.... Based on what data? How are they measuring "possible discrimination" and drawing "the most likely conclusion" from this data set? Here's a quote from Jonathan Knight, director of academic freedom and tenure for the American Association of University Professors, also from that article. So a six year old survey of the personal politics of 1600+ University professors was used to ascertain that there is bias in the content of the classes at those Universities? In which classes? How do Biology and Chemistry faculty teach with a liberal bias? Those conclusions are absurd.

I was there in the mid-80s. We used to drink on the abandoned concrete landing down on the Hudson. Sometimes there'd be 30 or 40 of us getting bombed all weekend long on that concrete slab. I slept there next to a fire on multiple occasions, rather than stumble up to the dorms. I you don't know how to drink, you'll never know how to cook.

You had me at "paroxysms of the illiterate."

MSNBC has the Mandisa post-mortem up, along with a pic of her from Tuesday.

Holy smokes! Didn't see that one coming. Nice shell-game going on with AI. I don't think the people they trot out for the bottom three is legit. Two weeks in a row now, they've stuck someone in there to shock the audience into voting. Last week McFunbags, this week Paris. I don't know how Bucky is doing it. This guy has had to re-book his flight home three weeks in a row. I'm really starting to pull for him, which means the producers will whack him regardless of how many actual votes he gets. Going into this year they fed us a crap line about how this was the most talented group ever. Two weeks in a row and they've all hit bottom. They're losing the audience. Queen night? Jesus. Mandisa leaving is bizzarre, and I'm going to have to call my wife's hairdresser to get the info on why the "happy" crowd bailed on her. Something's a-foot.

Better late than never I suppose…. Please direct any and all hate mail to my boss for making me earn my pay today, and try not to get wet as we jump the shark with this review. Idol followed up last week’s colossally terrible hour of TV by curling out another steamer this week. What did they expect when they caved into corporate interests and killed off The Most Dangerous and Complex Contestant this show has ever had on two weeks ago? Add in the fact that my wife abandoned me and Idol this week for the pop-culture rope-a-dope of The Gilmore Girls, and AI was going to have to really bust out the big guns to get me interested last night. So imagine my horror when the featured country artist turned out to be Kenny Rogers? What!?!?! The Fried Chicken guy?!? The guy who played Brewster Baker in the movie Six Pack?!?!….Spoiler Alert via Wiki…. As expected, he offered little useful help, and the suggestions that did come out of his mouth were totally ignored by the contestants who were wondering who this homeless man was that smelled like fried chicken. Taylor Hicks: He’s done. Last week wasn’t an aberration. The Old Shoe Patrol (let that one simmer in your brain for a few minutes, return, and then laugh your ass off at the genius of it) was a one-trick epileptic pony. No jumping around like an idiot means you have to have some other talent, like singing (ahhhh, nope), or looks (ahhhh, nope), or charisma (ahhh, nope). A horrible, horrible start to the show. (Wife laughing out loud in the other room while watching another show) Mandisa: If you’re slightly overweight (and who couldn’t stand to lose a few pounds) there is only one thing worse than wearing horizontal stripes on a light-colored blouse…and that’s wearing horizontal zig-zag stripes on a light-colored blouse. The way it clung to her boobs combined with the horizontal pattern and her gyrating around on stage made it look like two giant bulging eyes blinking and threatening to explode out of their sockets. I was reminded of those fat drunk guys who paint faces on their bare torsos and run around in giant hats, only in this case it was one butt-ugly hat with fake eyebrows. She’s probably safe, but I’ll never be the same. Elliot: Another dull performance, more praise from the judges. What are they hearing that I’m not? Are all the dentists in America watching this show and stabbing at their cell phones keeping him on TV? I never made a dime in the music business after years of rolling around in broken glass, and to think all I had to do was stop brushing my teeth. If I knew then what I know now…. (My wife is laughing at another pop-culture reference in the other room) Paris: Little miss hair extensions went with a bob this week. She totally nailed her song just to spite me, and I loath her for it. Best line of the night from Simon…. “She reminds me of a young Dionne Warwick!” Silence and scattered golf claps from the teenagers in the AI audience. Uproarious laughter from the jaded viewer watching on a spare TV in the office. He might as well have called her a young Anita O'Day. Ace: Looks but no talent earns another trip to the bottom three. More worried shrieks from teenage girls and used up, manic-depressive, alcoholic, pill-popping dance choreographers. He did enough pouting to get through another week, though. Pickler: Another shameless attempt by FOX and AI to rehab the image of one of their contestants. It’s too late, because the bag is already over the head of that cat. Sixty percent of the respondents in an US weekly poll (I read it for the articles) think Pickler is faking it. But that’s not an altogether bad talent to have for where she’s going to end up… “You’re in the bottom three.” Get used to hearing that phrase, La Chica Estúpida. Chris Daughtry: He sang so soft you could almost hear Bo Bice cackling from beyond the grave. You stayed a week to long, buddy. Welcome to hell. Katherine: I loved every minute of it. How about you? Bucky: YESSSS! I was looking forward to this performance for six freaking days (writer’s embellishment). This was theeee night for Bucky Covington! The rest of these hacks didn’t know a damn thing about country music. Bucky’s been painting cars, training in honkey-tonks, drinking unflouridated water, all leading up to this…the moment that he was put on this earth for! What song would he pick?!? What would he wear!?! How much solid ass would he kick!?!?! Like this review, the show has completely sucked up until this moment. But the kid from North Carolina, who may or may not be speaking English, was going to bring the freaking house down!! (Me shouting into the other room: “Bucky’s up next!!!” Wife shouting back from the other room: “Who cares.”) Whoa….Bucky comes out singing a ballad in Cantonese, with a stupid grin on his face. What a total and complete let-down. I sat through that tepid hour of entertainment for absolutely nothing, much like you just did in reading this horrible piece of journalism. So who gets the boot tonight? Bottom three…Ace, Bucky, and I’ll go out on a limb and say Taylor. Bucky’s gone.

Well, that would be a pretty rare scenario. Companies that have 11 employees or more are required to offer insurance. The only people who qualify for free health care are people who make less than $9600/year, and the employer is exempt for the first $50,000 of the surcharge for each employee. I don't see that one being a problem, really. You could make a case that this part of the bill screws over companies with 10 or fewer employees who make less than $9600/year, but if that's how little they're paying their employees fug them.