What to do when you need a crowd of supporters

For a week, Republican Bret Schundler's campaign Web site showed the fiery Republican primary candidate in a suit with a crowd of cheering supporters behind him. But the picture was really from a Howard Dean rally. Schundler's image was used to digitally replace that of a smiling Dean in the picture, and the former Jersey City mayor's name was superimposed over both a "Howard Dean for America" sign and a Dean cap worn by one of his supporters at a Great Falls, Va., rally last year. Big Fish, the Washington, D.C.-based marketing communications firm Schundler hired for his campaign, also worked on Dean's run. A junior staffer at the firm used the Dean photo from the company's photo collection, said Tom Frank, Big Fish's creative director. Frank issued a written apology to Schundler and said the candidate had no knowledge about the photo's origin.
from the Newsweek article GOP candidate's Web site used doctored Dean photo

Disassembling Bush

A day after I quoted Bush and posted the definitions for "Gulag" and "absurd," Reggie Rivers did the same in the Denver Post and went on to compare Gulag to Guantanamo. Read the article here.

Coulter & North Korea

In this week's column, Ann Coulter says:
"I would sooner trust the North Koreans to keep their word than the Democrats"

Name Calling

Upset that Dick Cheney called North Korean leader Kim Jong Il "one of the world's most irresponsible leaders" in an interview with CNN Monday, North Korea said Cheney "is hated as the most cruel monster and blood-thirsty beast," according to a report by the official Korean Central News Agency Thursday.

But they are happy that Bush called Kim Jong-il "Mr. Kim Jong-il"

Rumsfeld, Iraq, and Amnesty Int'l

In a statement released yesterday, Amnesty International USA Director William Schulz said that this wasn’t their first report about the administration’s mistreatment of prisoners. "Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush administration ignored or dismissed Amnesty International’s reports on the abuse of detainees for years," says Schulz. Amnesty International (AI) first communicated its concerns about the treatment of prisoners to Rumsfeld in January 2002 and continued to raise these concerns at the highest levels as allegations of abuse mounted from Afghanistan, Guantanamo and Iraq. The administration, says Schulz, responded by preventing human rights workers from investigating or visiting the detention facilities in question. Schulz contrasted the administration’s actions in this regard to countries such as Libya and Syria that have allowed independent monitors to examine prison facilities.

Schulz also found it ironic that AI had criticized the human rights record of Iraq under Saddam Hussein in the early 1980s at the same time Donald Rumsfeld had been sent by the Reagan administration to establish friendly ties and trade relations with the dictator.

An Amnesty International press statement cited numerous references by Donald Rumsfeld to AI’s work, including the following: On March 27, 2003, Rumsfeld said:
We know that it’s a repressive regime? Anyone who has read Amnesty International or any of the human rights organizations about how the regime of Saddam Hussein treats his people? The next day, Rumsfeld cited his "careful reading" of Amnesty:
[I]t seems to me a careful reading of Amnesty International or the record of Saddam Hussein, having used chemical weapons on his own people as well as his neighbors, and the viciousness of that regime, which is well known and documented by human rights organizations, ought not to be surprised. And on April 1, 2003, Rumsfeld said once again:
[I]f you read the various human rights groups and Amnesty International’s description of what they know has gone on, it’s not a happy picture.

from Bush vs. Human Rights: Amnesty International Strikes Back
By Joel Wendland

Rumsfeld friends with Saddam = ignore AI
Rumsfeld not freinds w/ Saddam = site AI
Saddam gone = ignore AI

Jeff Gannon's Lie Detector Test

Jeff is bragging on his blog:
VINDICATION! NOT FAKE, NOT PLANT, NOT SHILL!I went on PAX TV's "Lie Detector" to answer questions about my two years in the White House press corps. WATCH My critics are unusually silent.Let's strap some of my former colleagues to the polygraph. Come here, Helen! Better yet, let's hook up Dan Rather and Eason Jordan."

First of all, what would Helen (Thomas) have to lie about?

Second, why did Jeff look so surprised and relieved when the host said their test indicated he told the truth? He also mentioned that it was a "risk" to go on the show.

Third, the question was if he was "fed" questions, which implies that someone else wrote the question. Obviously, he was coming up with questions that were friendly, but how did he get in there? Did he spend the night? Did he have behind the scenes meetings with Whitehous staff? Why didn't "Lie Detector" ask these questions?

This site mentions talk about a DNA test (to prove he is/isn't Johnny Gosch). But clip they reference (and Gannon's clip) doesn't show any of that.

UPDATE: Since he no longer has access to the Whitehouse's press conferences, Gannon can only post the questions he would ask, if he were. On June 1st, he said that his Whitehouse press question would have been: "Would you comment on the results of the lie detector test I took to prove that I am not a Bush administration plant?" And he wonders why we call him a fake-journalist...

Depends on who you believe

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." -Cheney 8/26/02

"I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." -Cheney 5/30/05

"Things are getting worse by the day: The mayhem continues in Iraq, with today at least 40 people dead, including five US soldiers in Diyala province as the meltdown of the failed US-led occupation continues." -Dahr Jamail, an unembedded reporter in Iraq 5/30/05

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is a war we are winning." -Cheney 6/1/05

"The death toll for American troops in Iraq rose in May to the highest level since January, with the U.S. military saying on Tuesday insurgents have doubled their number of daily attacks since April." -Reuters 6/1/05

More crazy Cheney

As to allegations of mistreatment of detainees, Cheney argued, "if you trace those back, in nearly every case, it turns out to come from somebody who has been inside and been released to their home country and now are peddling lies about how they were treated".

1. every case turned out to come from somebody on the inside who was released because no one can talk to or hear from anyone on the inside who hasn't been released. And how would anyone on the outside know what happened?

2. those who have been released were released because we couldn't find anything to charge them with. I'm sure they are angry, but they sure don't have to peddle lies. They were illegally detained without international rights for a crime (?) they didn't commit.

Is Bush scripting Cheney?

Cheney: "I think the fact of the matter is, the United States has done more to advance the cause of freedom, has liberated more people from tyranny over the course of the 20th century and up to the present day than any other nation in the history of the world."

The history of the world, huh? You mean the Roman Empire, Ancient Greece and the Pharaohs didn't do as much as us over the course of the 20th century???

Articulate Bush (sic)

"I'm aware of the Amnesty International report, and it's absurd. The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world," he said, and added that Washington had "investigated every single complaint against [sic] the detainees." "It seemed like [Amnesty] based some of their decisions on the word and allegations by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people [who] had been trained in some instances to disassemble [sic] - that means not tell the truth," Bush went on. "And so it was an absurd report. It just is."

Speaking of dissemble...here's a translation:

"I'm aware of the...report" Meaning: "I haven't read it"

Washington had "investigated every single complaint against the detainees" Meaning: "We have known about the abuse and have found some of the allegations credible

"People who had been trained in some instances" Meaning: some of them were innocent

Daddy Bush wants more...

Gov. Jeb Bush on Wednesday brushed off his father's public suggestions that he should run for president.

The elder Bush said "the timing's wrong" because Jeb Bush has said "he doesn't want to do it." But the former president then added: "Nobody believes that."

Bush to learn about Deepthroat

President Bush said on Wednesday the disclosure that the former No. 2 official at the FBI was Watergate's "Deep Throat" source caught him by surprise and he's anxious to learn more details about his relationship with the news media. "It's hard for me to judge" whether former deputy FBI Director Mark Felt provided a valuable public service or acted improperly, Bush told reporters. "I'm learning more about the situation," he said.

``For those of us who grew up -- got out of college in the late 60's -- the Watergate story was a relevant story. And a lot of us have always wondered who Deep Throat might have been. "

Maybe he'll learn that it happened in the early 70's...and it was relevant to more people than those who went to college in the late 60's

Deep Throat Fun

Now that the mystery has been solved (with a confession), here's a look at some more humorous speculation from the past:

Deep Throat was really...

George H. W. Bush

Fred LaRue

William Casey (yeah right!)

Pat Buchanan (???)

Woodward & Bernstein originally said they would only reveal the secret upon Deepthroat's death. But Deepthroat is already dead

Absurd Gulag

WASHINGTON, May 31 (MASNET & News Agencies) - President George W. Bush slammed as "absurd" an Amnesty International report alleging that his administration had set up an international "gulag" outside legal control.
The U.S. president bristled when asked at a White House press conference about an Amnesty report last week which said the Guantanamo detention camp for terrorist suspects had become the "gulag of our times", reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Amnesty International last week said human rights are in retreat worldwide and the United States bears most of the responsibility, reports Reuters news agency.
"It is an absurd report. It just is," Bush said, asked about the report by the London-based human rights watchdog which referred to "a new [U.S.] gulag of prisons around the world beyond the reach of the law and decency."
"I'm aware of the Amnesty International report, and it's absurd. It's an absurd allegation," Bush replied.

Definition of absurd: 1 : ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous2 : having no rational or orderly relationship to human life : MEANINGLESS; also : lacking order or value
Definition of gulag: Etymology: Russian, from Glavnoe upravlenie ispravitel'no-trudovykh lagerei chief administration of corrective labor camps: the penal system of the U.S.S.R. consisting of a network of labor camps

Fair and Balanced and always Right

"Even we at Fox News manage to get some lefties on the air occasionally, and often let them finish their sentences before we club them to death and feed the scraps to Karl Rove and Bill O'Reilly. And those who hate us can take solace in the fact that they aren't subsidizing Bill's bombast; we payers of the BBC license fee don't enjoy that peace of mind.
Fox News is, after all, a private channel and our presenters are quite open about where they stand on particular stories. That's our appeal. People watch us because they know what they are getting. The Beeb's institutionalized leftism would be easier to tolerate if the corporation was a little more honest about it." - London bureau chief for Fox News

Oops

the American army announced in a statement that it had released the chairman of the Iraqi Islamic party Mohsin Abdul Hamid after it had announced his detention was made mistakenly yesterday at dawn.

Member of the party's political bureau Ala' Mekke described these acts of arrest as "a black point in the history of the Americans in Iraq."

Gotta Love Helen Thomas

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward raised some eyebrows on Sunday by suggesting that Vice President Dick Cheney was a "serious darkhorse" candidate for the 2008 presidential race. Now syndicated columnist Helen Thomas has proposed a campaign strategy for a Cheney run: "He certainly could campaign on the theme that he has had experience in running the White House."

And Deep Throat Is...

W. Mark Felt? Or so he claims... Vanity Fair claims he admitted that he is the famous Watergate whistleblower.

Here a resume (of sorts) for W. Mark Felt

Ronald Reagan gave him a pardon for authorizing FBI agents to break into Vietnam protestors' offices without warrants.

Read Reagan's statement on the pardon

Here is some old Deep Throat speculation that includes W. Mark Felt:

Slate 2002

Answers.com

Washington Post