LALARRY

Shameless Exploitation Department

Sick is too generous a description for FOX NEWS' Jim Angle's recent interview with two severely wounded Iraqi Vets, (almost boys really, they looked under 21), one had lost an eye, another severely wounded by an ied that hit him directly and a Major a veteran of Afghanistan who did not seem wounded . Here's a paraphrase of some of the interchange:

Angle: How many surgeries have you had ?

Vet : Three, I have another one soon

Angle: I hope that 's the last one.

Vet: I don't know, Vet shows Angle a large piece of shrapnel removed from his body.

Angle: It's great that we're able to treat injuries that in other wars soldiers would not have survived . What are your plans now ?

Wounded Vet: I don't know, try to put my life back together, maybe continue my education.

and in the don't ask a question unless you know the answer you're going to get department: Angle tries to push the FOX/Admin line that all is well in Iraq, it's just the reporting that is the problem.

Angle: What is it that the American people should know about Iraq that they aren't seeing reported.

Wounded Vet: That IEDs(improvised explosive devices) are going off all the time not just the ones you hear about hear at home

oops, young man you're off message, didn't you get briefed in the green room ?

This one seemed to have thrown Angle for a loop so he quickly turned to the Major,who had served in Afghanistan, not Iraq.

Major: We're making imporant progress in Iraq and Afghanistan yada, yada.

Also involved in the talk show/fax news/WH/DoD campaign to tell us that the problem is not what is going on in Iraq but that the "mainstream media" don't report all the good things was radio talk show host Laura Ingraham.

Ingraham was just back from a 5 day swing through Iraq hosted by the US military. Judging by her website, she spent the entire time led around the country by US military, never venturing out on her own or hiring an independent Iraqi translator to take her around.

But she came out swinging with NBcs David Gregory on the TODAY Show challenging it to come to Iraq, have the TODAY show broadcast from Iraq "the way it did from the Olympics" (sic). Then they would see the real story in Iraq as she did, not just reporters from hotel roofs reporting on IEDs.

Now what Katie and Matt following Laura's carefully controlled itinerary and reporting from the Green Zone wearing flak jackets would do to increase Americans' knowledge of what is going on in Iraq, I for the life of me can't figure out .Yes, it would further the chance for the military to spin as they granted interviews in the "media center" in the green zone, that Laura made use of. And on a positve note interviews with enlisted men on camera would be grear for family back home. And maybe Katie could bring along a popstar to perform. But that's a USO show, not reporting.

and the reporters missing the story ? they include

NBCs chief correspondent in Iraq who has been there for years and is fluent in Arabic, Time's Michael Ware who has been there for 4 years and often travels throughout the country with Arabic translators, the NYT reporters who have been there and each stay at least a year and make extensive use of Iraqi reporters and translators since it is so deadly for its American reporters to travel in the country (isn't that  itself a reflection of what's really going on?).

As Michael Ware pointed out to rt wing talking head Hugh Hewitt as Hewitt tried to trash his reporting as biased: why would the US military continue to give me off the record briefing if they thought my reporting distorted things. ?

The interview was interesting, Hewitt didn't lay a glove on him imo, although in Hewitt's worldview, the fact that Ware thinks the invasion was a mistake, makes all his msm reporting biased Funny he thinks right wing bloggers are no more "biased" than a real reporter like Ware.

But Laura in her flak jacket mugging for poses with US soldiers on her 5 day US military supervised tour of Iraq got us the real story.

Funny, Martha Radatz of ABC commenting on her return from a short trip to Iraq (her tenth) said things were worse than she ever had seen them. She went around the country accompanied by a translator not the US military(and bodyguard no doubt), the translator himself pleaded for help in leaving the country due to the level of violence. She said she visited a group of Iraqi security and asked them with no  expectation of a particular response if they were ready to fight on their own, if they had adequate equipment. All of them answered no.

Oh and by the way, the pics and diary of her Iraq trip are no longer on her website She (and the rest of her talk show colleagues) have moved on to trashing illegal immigrants as a threat to our nation's identity.

I guess the real story on Iraq is out now and the American people no longer have to be told what is "really" going on. Or is the news just so bad she can't talk about it. You decide.

We Report..You Decide..Except When We Inteview, Report, Decide and Spin for You

Now why, oh why would VP Dick choose Brit Hume of FOXNEWS for a sitdown and an exclusive interview to tell the true story of the shooting incident. It couldn't be that Hume knows the VEEP since his days as a Congressman or that FOX might offer a sympathetic venue, Hume knows the real reason:

Hume also dismissed the suggestion that politics played into Cheney's decision to speak with him. After airing the interview on his show, "Special Report With Brit Hume," Hume said that a rival network crew had approached him outside the White House earlier in the day and asked if Fox News got the exclusive because the channel is "associated with conservative causes."

"I said, nah, I didn't think that was the reason," Hume recounted on the air Wednesday evening. "I thought it was probably because he wanted to go with the news channel with the largest audience."

absolutely correct. If the interview would have been on another network, no one would have watched

And while the VEEP was gracious enough to take full responsibility for the accident (what would you expect, that he try to pin it on the 78 yr old guy who just had a heart attack while on his hospitable bed), he was absolutely sure that if he had to do it again, he would make the country aware of the incident in the same way. If there is  any controversy over the delay in notifying the country and the story's dissemination by his host speaking to a local Corpus Christ it is...all drummed up by the media.

After all this makes sense to you doesn't it

Mr. Cheney said that he delayed making the news public because "this was a complicated story" and that he would do so again. It was more important to contact members of Mr. Whittington's family, he said, than to get the story out to the public immediately (NYT)

from the transcript:

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I said Karl has hunted at the Armstrong, as well, and we're both good friends of the Armstrongs and of Katherine Armstrong. And Katherine suggested, and I agreed, that she would go make the announcement, that is that she'd put the story out. And I thought that made good sense for several reasons. First of all, she was an eye-witness. She'd seen the whole thing. Secondly, she'd grown up on the ranch, she'd hunted there all of her life. Third, she was the immediate past head of the Texas Wildlife and Parks Department, the game control commission in the state of Texas, an acknowledged expert in all of this.

And she wanted to go to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, which is the local newspaper, covers that area, to reporters she knew. And I thought that made good sense because you can get as accurate a story as possible from somebody who knew and understood hunting. And then it would immediately go up to the wires and be posted on the website, which is the way it went out. And I thought that was the right call.

Q What do you think now?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I still do. I still think that the accuracy was enormously important. I had no press person with me, I didn't have any press people with me.

So the key to getting an accurate story out is to call reporters that you know. Yeah, in  bizarro world.

and given that and the rest of his dealings with the public is it any surprise that he has this opinion of his own credibility

Q -- and it does raise the question of whether you couldn't have headed off this beltway firestorm if you had put out the word to the national media, as well as to the local newspaper so that it could post it on its website. I mean, in retrospect, wouldn't that have been the wise course --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, who is going to do that? Are they going to take my word for what happened? (ponder that one for a minute, he doesn't think anyone would believe his own account of an accident. Does that mean he thinks anyone believes what he says about, say, the War in Iraq ?)

and the whole controversy ? Blame it on the press. And especially one particular news outle. You couldn't possibly guess which one that would be ?

I had a bit of the feeling that the press corps was upset because, to some extent, it was about them -- they didn't like the idea that we called the Corpus Christi Caller-Times instead of The New York Times. But it strikes me that the Corpus Christi Caller-Times is just as valid a news outlet as The New York Times is, especially for covering a major story in south Texas

After the conducting the interview Hume of course made sure he didn't do any spinning on the VEEP's behalf:

During an appearance on "Studio B With Shepard Smith," Hume previewed the highlights of Cheney's comments, even as he questioned whether the public was as upset as the White House press corps about the administration's handling of the incident.

"If my e-mail is any guide and the things I'm hearing from just people in the street that you talk to and people that you know, I don't think much of the nation feels particularly deprived that they found out about this on Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening instead of Saturday night or Sunday morning," Hume said.

Fox colleague Bill O'reilly in the no spin (sic) zone:

Bill O'Reilly has been arguing that the shooting doesn't affect the average American one whit but that "the press is making a big deal out of this because they despise Dick Cheney."

Most amazing this morning is a WSJ Op ed (yes, really this appears there) column by ex Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan floating the idea the Dick be squeezed out:

.....

...This person will not be Dick Cheney, who has already said he doesn't plan to run. So Mr. Bush may feel in time that he has reason to want to put in a new vice president in order to pick a successor who'll presumably have an edge in the primaries -- he's the sitting vice president, and Republicans still respect primogeniture. They will tend to make the common-sense assumption that a guy who's been vice president for, say, a year and a half, is a guy who already knows the top job. Anyway, the new guy will get a honeymoon, which means he won't be fully hated by the time the 2008 primaries begin.

This new vice president would, however, have to be very popular in the party, or the party wouldn't buy it. Replacing Mr. Cheney would be chancy.

I'm in shock. If Maureen Dowd wrote this the WSJ?FOX msm would be all over her.

That Damn Liberal MSM, It Just Dominates the Media

NYT yesterday:

"The ratings contest between the two cable news channels remains hugely lopsided — the 2.05 million viewers that Fox drew, on average, during prime time last year is more than double the 936,000 who watched CNN, according to Nielsen Media Research. To Mr. Klein, those numbers have obscured some of the progress that his network has made on his watch."

btw I don't know if I mentioned these states before: WSJ circulation 2x that of NYT. Rush Limbaugh audience 14.5 million, Al Franken (only liberal talk show in the top 10 in ratings: .5 mln(

Fred Barnes Constitutional Scholar Redux

(yes it is a paraphrase but 100% on point) - remember Barnes earlier stated there was no right to abortion because it was "nowhere in the Constitution"

Barnes on the legal challenge to the recently disclosed surveillance program:

One of these guys was convicted of trying to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, it would be wrong if his conviction would be overturned because some of the wiretaps of him were illegal.

yes Fred, illegally obtained evidence should always be admissible, particularly if the crime was really, really bad. Like crimes that were committed, not just planned. Like rapes, armed robbery and murder. Heck let's just throw out the fourth amendment altogether...it "ties the hands" of law enforcement.

Similar comments were heard by many FOX analysts, including ex Sen John Kasick (remember he was sworn to uphold the constitution as Senator, at least he should know better) who shouted down a lawyer whose client, convicted based on a confession, of terrorist activity. The lawyer raised the possibility he would challenge the conviction on the grounds his client was wiretapped illegally.  Kasick basically asserted the client had no fourth amendment rights, nor would the attorney if he is speaking to the felon's mother.

What I don't get is this:

The admin is so sure they are fully within their rights in all these wiretap and surveillance programs based on a pretty much blanket Presidential privilege. So instead of having surrogates blanket the media with rationales and justifications, why not issue a brief giving the official rationale.

And they should welcome the challenges in the courts if their case is so strong. As W said "bring it on" settle it once and for all in their favor and the critics will be totally silenced.

The full Barnes Idiotic Quote

Thanks again to media matters for the full transcript:

BARNES: Here's what he said again, Brit. You showed it before. He said the constitution does not protect a right to an abortion. That is the respectable, intellectual position on Roe v. Wade. It doesn't -- there are lots of people who think, and I can cite Larry Tribe, the Harvard professor, Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor, as well. Ruth Bader Ginsburg even questioned the reasoning and constitutionality of Roe v. Wade. Not the result. Obviously those people are probably happy with the result. Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University, has said the same thing. Abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution. And remember

BARNES: OK. Well, it was cited in Roe v. Wade. And abortion simply -- is simply not in the Constitution, and that is -- I mean, Mort [Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call and a panelist on Special Report], you've heard it from many people too. That is an intellectually respectable position. It doesn't mean you, as a Supreme Court justice 20 years later, you're going to overturn Roe v. Wade, exactly as Mara [Liasson, National Public Radio political correspondent and Special Report panelist] said.

if you really care media matters gives an in dept analysis of this issue suffice it to say Barnes has no idea what he is talking about. I guess this time he couldn't even regurgitate the Republican talking points without embarrassing himself.

FOX News Expert Commentator Barnes: Replace Supreme Court with a Computer

Displaying his in depth knowledge of the American judicial process,Fred Barnes FoxNews commentator, beltway boy, and managing editor of the prestigious and influential Weekly Standard explained to anchor Brit Hume :

that it was an "intellectually sound" position to oppose roe v wade because "abortion isn't mentioned anywhere in the constitution"

No sooner were those words out of his mouth than the FOXNEWS switchboard lit up like crazy and Barnes' email inbox was flooded. Most of the emails were from segregationists asking for Barnes to be the spokesman for their campaign to overturn brown v. board of education. "Integration isn't mentioned in the constitution", the segregationists told Barnes.

Barnes was also contacted by groups looking to reinstate the 18th century practice of branding petty thieves with a hot iron. It's not prohibited anywhere in the constitution they wrote. A smaller group also wanted to institute the practice of cutting off the hands of thieves using the same argument.

Another interesting development was a new product from microsoft based on Barnes view of the American legal system. Following Barnes argument that if it ain't mentioned in the constitution it ain't legal, Microsoft has developed a new product.

With Barnes as spokesman Microsoft's software will include a full copy of the constitution and an algorithm to see if the situation in the case before the court is mentioned in the constitution. If if the activity under consideration is prohibited explicitly in  the  constitution than the prohibition stands, if not it is permitted. All cases that do not contain issues explicitly covered in the text of the Constitution generate a "dismiss" output from the software. The beauty of the product , the microsoft exec heading the project said, is that we don't have to worry about all that stuff about earlier rulings, precedents, yada yada. All we need is the text of the constitution.

Microsoft expects to replace appellate courts in the next few months. The Supreme Court is to be replaced by computer by April.

We Distort You Decide: Their Election Review

Repub and Dem spinners on FOXNEWS ( i don't remember the name) the below are paraphrases  (my bolds)

Foxie : Is this a setback for Bush ?

Repub spinner: Not at all, these were local elections (W went on the campaign stump for the Rep in VA), voters in 2006 will support Repubs because they support the  Pres domestic agenda  ( i don't know about VA in Corzine the Repub ran on big tax cuts, Corzine criticized being unclear on the costs of the tax cuts on social programs),

and here's the kicker: the winners in VA and NJ gubernatorial elections were incumbents

DEM spinner: I don't know what you mean by incumbent: In NJ a Senator won for Gov and in VA the Lieut Gov won for Gov

Foxie: What about NYC, a Republican won there ?

Now this has got to be one of the stupidest, most ignorant comments about NYC politics I have ever seen in the media, and the guy lives in NYC, hemust live there in a (foxie ?)  bubble. Bloomberg runs as far away from W and the national republicans as he can (to cite one example he is pro choice). Next to no NYC voters view the mayoral election in party terms. Repubs voted for Dem Koch twice, Dems voted for Repub Giuliani and Bloomberg because they were competent not because of their party.

And that horrible pinko, liberal NYT would never endorse Rep Bloomberg would it  ?

From this morning's edition of that "rag":

"Since this page endorsed Michael Bloomberg's re-election as mayor, we're obviously glad that New York City voters agreed."

Fox News expert Barnes worked his spin as best he could, downplay the VA  (where Bush campaigned)  and NJ  He spent most of his time talking about the electoral setback to Schwarznegger. Funny how he chose to concentrate on the defeat for the Rep that  tried to avoid being associated with the Pres.

Foxie question for Barnes:  A lot of high hopes for  Corzine  if he he's not able to deliver on things like cutting  property taxes will he be in trouble ?  (why he would be in trouble if he didn't deliver on his opponent's campaign promise wasn't specified)

Barnes: Well, Corzine spent a tremendous amount of money (no mention that this was a campaign between 2 mega millionaires who both spent obscene amounts of money in the campaign)

we distort you decide

Interesting how this morning the French Riots are given just about equal airtime as the elections here in the US. I never noticed this much reporting of foreign news on FOXNEWS before.

FOX NEWS: We Distort : You Decide

Yes, I know I am a masochist but I just can't stop watching FOXNEWS, their jaw dropping distortions make for such fun entertainment.

Lately, I've been skipping the programs of out and out clowns and distortion kings Hannity and Oreilly and catching Brit Hume's program instead. Hume who has a serious background in print and broadcast media is supposedly presenting a hard "news" program. From the FOXNEWS website: With more than 35 years of journalism experience to draw from, Brit Hume is FOX News’ Washington, D.C. managing editor. Hume serves as anchor of "Special Report with Brit Hume," the highest rated political program on cable television.

The highlight of the program is when he presents his "panel of experts " to comment on the news. Apparently they have dumped liberal commentator Juan Williams for challenging Hume on a number of occasions. So now the panel is an amen chorus of Morton Kondracke, Fred Barnes and Charles Krauthammer with mousey moderate Mara Liason of NPR popping in with the occasional innocuous comment to prevent the session from looking 110% like a Republican Party press briefing. As "moderator" Hume always manages to chime in with a view party line bits as well.

Typical was the following exchange yesterday (i'm paraphrasing- no transcript available:

They were discussing the Democrats move to push the Senate into closed session to press for a more in depth investigation of the WH role in skewing and misusing intelligence. A second report from the Senate Intelligence Committee was supposed to address that issue but comm. Chairman Rep Sen Pat Roberts has been dragging his feet on this.

From NYT reporting on the epidode:

Democrats said last week's indictment of Mr. Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, highlighted anew the need for the Senate to examine the administration's handling of intelligence. They said the unusual demand for a closed session was made out of frustration with the refusal of the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, to make good on his February 2004 pledge to pursue such an investigation.

After Mr. Reid invoked Senate Rule 21 allowing senators to request a closed session, the galleries were cleared, C-Span coverage was terminated and the chamber's doors were closed for about two hours. In the end, lawmakers agreed to name three members from each party to assess the state of the Intelligence Committee's inquiry into prewar intelligence and report back by Nov. 14.

Mr. Roberts denied having done anything to slow the inquiry. In fact, he said, Intelligence Committee staff members were aggressively working on what is known as the Phase 2 intelligence inquiry, so named because the panel completed its initial work on the quality of the intelligence in July 2004.

"We have agreed to do what we already agreed to do," Mr. Roberts said on the Senate floor, "and that is to complete as best we can phase two of the Intelligence Committee's review of prewar intelligence in reference to Iraq."

But why let the facts get in the way when you're a FOXNEWS expert commentator

Hume: So what do you think about the stunt the Dems pulled shutting down the Senate. What were they making such a fuss about an intelligence investigation for ? We all know what happened, Saddam had ties to al Qaeda (i guess all doesn't include that same intelligence committee which said the opposite in its first report)

Barnes: Right and I don't know what they are complaining about the committee is working on that investigation (yea, and it's taken 16 months so far to complete). We all know about those links to al Qaeda. And we also know about his nuclear program. Remember those aluminum rods that the administration claimed were to be used for nuclear weapons preparation ? The ones all the reports later (some based on leaked documents from nuclear experts at the Dept of Energy ? We now know from French intelligence (! sic) that they were indeed to be used for nuclear weapons. (yes, French intelligence, a frequent reliable source relied on by Fox News to counter analysis by  US govt officials, particularly in the runup to the invasion of Iraq)

Barnes:Besides, if the Dems want to know what's going on in the Senate intelligence committee they just have to ask Senator John Rockefeller the ranking Dem on the committee who has been working with Sen. Roberts

That aforementioned Sen. Rockefeller in the NYT:

But Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, questioned Mr. Roberts's commitment to the inquiry. He said that whenever the panel closed in on the sensitive question of administration handling of intelligence, "then all of a sudden an iron curtain comes down."

"I have to say in all honesty that I am troubled by what I see as a concerted effort by this administration to use its influence to limit, delay, to frustrate, to deny the Intelligence Committee's oversight work into the intelligence reporting and activities leading up to the invasion of Iraq," Mr. Rockefeller said."

results of the "stunt"(NYT)

In the end, Democrats won the creation of a bipartisan six-member group to assess the progress of the inquiry and report back in mid-November. .

but on one thing they may be right, little will come out of the above and the mid November report will be meaningless:

"They didn't get anything out of it, other than some headlines," Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader,

and where did the good Sen. decide to tell the American people that the new bipartisan panel will produce nothing ?

...in an interview on the Fox News Channel (where else ?)

also hilarious is the FOXNEWS'  "Beltway Boys" in which Morton Kondracke and Fred Barnes behave like two chipmunks in heat, excitedly finishing each others' sentences in the rush to present Rep and WH talking points disguised as their analysis. Kinda like point/counterpoint without the counterpoint.

Think I'm wrong about FOX ?  Please comment and describe anything on CNN that comes anywhere close to these examples of "media bias and distortion".

Yes the FoxNews Scrubbies are in Charge in August

With the FoxNews biggies on vacation the second team is subbing and they have produced some whoppers.

The other day JIm Angle subbing for Brit Hume told us that the inability of the Iraqis to agree on a constitution was no big thing because "they have a lot of decisions to make" (as opposed to being deadlocked after months of discussing the most fundamental issues related to their government)

but I missed this whopper by John Gibson (he of the wacky hairdo): Thanks to ever vigilant media matters.

Fox's Gibson: What's wrong with Bush administration's "pick" of WMD as "good reason" for Iraq war?

Listen to this audio clip

While guest hosting The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly, Fox News host John Gibson explained that President Bush and his administration had decided that they "wanted to get" Saddam Hussein and so they "picked" weapons of mass destruction as the justification to win world approval for the invasion of Iraq. Following his explanation, Gibson asked, "What was wrong with that thinking?"

From the August 12 broadcast of Westwood One's The Radio Factor:

GIBSON: I think what happened was [President] Bush said, and I said, "You know what, we have a firm demonstration how vulnerable we are to terrorism, let's look around and see who is it that wants to do things to us. And let's go knock them off -- the guy who did it to us and the guy who is thinking about it," and picked Saddam Hussein. We think he's a bad player, we think he's got a grudge, we think the war in '91 never ended for him. He's going right on doing stuff to us under the radar. And there's a ton of stuff connecting him to terrorists, but if you don't want to believe it, fine.

But let me just say, that we said we're going after Saddam Hussein. That's what was going on in our country. And people said, give us a good reason. We said, OK, fine, let's find one. Let's pick one. What is it you would believe -- what is it you would give an OK for war? What is it? And then the world said, weapons of mass destruction. OK, fine. What's the information out there? French say they got them, Russians say they got them, the U.N.'s [United Nations] past resolutions, Bill Clinton said they got them and you can't trust them.

So we say, OK, fine, that's the reason. We'll pick that one. But when you get right down to it, way before that one ever was offered, we wanted to get him because he's just a bad guy who shouldn't be running that country, and we had good reason to fear. We were vulnerable if left him sitting there. What was wrong with that thinking