Metze Reading list for Monday, 21 February 2005

[Guest guest]

" Virginia Metze " <vmetze

 

 

Wed, 23 Feb 2005 00:22:16 -0600

Reading list for Monday, 21 February 2005

 

Monday was President's Day, but to tell the truth, I didn't have the

vaguest idea how to celebrate it, given the current state of the

institution!

 

Gannon is still big news, and reservations about Negroponte are

surfacing. And last, but not least, the Bush administration is

pulling out the stops as far as Social Security is concerned. (See

just below)

 

 

A New Target for Advisers to Swift Vets

By GLEN JUSTICE

Published: February 21, 2005

The New York Times

 

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 - Taking its cues from the success of last year's

Swift boat veterans' campaign in the presidential race, a conservative

lobbying organization has hired some of the same consultants to

orchestrate attacks on one of President Bush's toughest opponents in

the battle to overhaul Social Security.

 

The lobbying group, USA Next, which has poured millions of dollars

into Republican policy battles, now says it plans to spend as much as

$10 million on commercials and other tactics assailing AARP, the

powerhouse lobby opposing the private investment accounts at the

center of Mr. Bush's plan.

 

" They are the boulder in the middle of the highway to personal savings

accounts, " said Charlie Jarvis, president of USA Next and former

deputy under secretary of the interior in the Reagan and first Bush

administrations. " We will be the dynamite that removes them. " ...

Read the rest (quite a lot) at

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/politics/21social.html (I didn't

see the proposed ad on this site; will post it if I find it again.)

Ah! Found it:

http://bsd.democracyforamerica.com/page/petition/stopusanext Credible

Evidence Emerges That Jeff Gannon Coordinated With the G.O.P. to Bring

Down Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) in 2004 Election

 

Post-Election, Daschle Campaign Aide Says Thune and Gannon " Worked

Hand in Hand " ; Gannon's Work in South Dakota Shows Substantial Ties to

Current Thune Campaign Staffer Jason Van Beek

By [Nashua] ADVOCATE STAFF

Sunday, February 20, 2005

 

The National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman singled out

South Dakota Senator-elect John Thune ® for special praise, noting

that he ousted the first leader of either party running for reelection

in over 50 years. He had previously said that beating Daschle would be

like picking up three seats [in the U.S. Senate]. -- " Jeff Gannon " ,

November 17th, 2004 (Talon News)

 

South Dakota is a long way from Washington, D.C.--which makes it,

perhaps, no surprise that this story has taken so much longer to hit

the mainstream media in significant fashion than the more spectacular

fact that the man at the center of said story is a gay

prostitute/anti-gay Republican activist and worked, until recently, as

a " reporter " at the White House. ... Read the whole sordid story at:

http://nashuaadvocate.blogspot.com/2005/02/credible-evidence-emerges-that-jeff.h\

tml

or http://tinyurl.com/3v2vx

And speaking of Gannon, he is royally ticked off at all of this

unwelcome attention.

 

Separating the Gannons from the Guckerts (Keith Olbermann)

February 20, 2005 | 7:52 p.m. ET MSNBC

 

NEW YORK—So, the artist formerly known as Jeff Gannon is considering

suing everybody.

 

Well, this will separate the Gannons from the Guckerts.

 

Gannon told Newsweek that he is contemplating " suing liberal interest

groups, bloggers, and others, " for what he termed " political

assassination. " Don't see that in the statutes anywhere.

 

He is presumably pondering some sort of libel action, or perhaps he

harbors some vague hope of proving invasion of privacy. This would, of

course, require that what's been said about him isn't true (though he

hasn't denied it), and was maliciously published or broadcast by

people who knew it wasn't true or made no effort to confirm or refute

it. Of course, he had told Editor & Publisher last week that he would

no longer talk to the media, then followed that up five days later by

a complaint to the same magazine that nobody was trying to contact him

(and in the same interview denied he was giving an interview with CNN,

an interview which he taped about an hour later). ... Read more at:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6844293/

Time for Bush to define 'independent press'

 

by Dante Chinni

from the February 22, 2005 edition

Christian Science Monitor

 

WASHINGTON - The cafes and restaurants here were atwitter again last

weekend. Finally, after years of talking about things like terrorism

and deficits and Social Security reform, the capital's chatterers had

a story they could discuss without reading a briefing paper.

 

Thank you, Jeff Gannon or James Guckert or whatever your name really

is. It seems like old times again inside the Beltway. ... Read the

rest at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0222/p11s01-codc.htm

Will Pitt FYI: You Want To Win A War Against Iran?

 

Mon Feb 21st, 2005 at 04:38:34 AM EST

 

.... There is a good chance the inside people who used to talk to

Ritter don't talk to him anymore, or aren't in the know anymore.

Things change. So yeah, he could be wrong.

 

But I bet my reputation on him once. I'd be willing to do it again.

 

Meanwhile, I have a plan to win the Iranian War...

 

 

You want to win a war against Iran?

 

Easy.

 

All we need to do to overthrow the Ayatollahs, empower Sistani and

electrify the moderates is give the people satellite TV broadcasts.

Which means park one satellite over Iran and give them MTV 24/7/365.

The mullahs won't know what hit them. ... Read the rest at:

http://forum.truthout.org/blog/story/2005/2/21/43834/9243

In case you just can't get enough of the Jeff Gannon story, here's

another take:

The strange story of White House reporter 'Jeff Gannon'

Donald P. Russo

From The Morning Call -- February 19, 2005

 

Jon Stewart, the host of Comedy Central's ''The Daily Show,'' returned

recently to the Lehigh Valley for two appearances at Easton's State

Theatre. During his stand-up routine, Stewart said, ''Bush's

presidency is like 'The Truman Show,' it's a world of his own

creation.'' (He was referring to the 1998 Jim Carrey movie.) Based

upon recent events, it appears that George W. Bush creates not only

his own reality, but also, his own news media.

 

There was a time, not long ago, when the media would have taken a

president to task for launching a pre-emptive war under false

pretenses. Media pundits of yesteryear may have actually questioned

the notion of a president leading a nation into a protracted war based

upon spurious assumptions about the provenance of a prior terrorist

attack, or manufactured hysteria over weapons of mass destruction that

failed to materialize. ... Read more at: http://tinyurl.com/46hgo

Negroponte: Director of Intelligence Manipulation

By Marjorie Cohn

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

 

Monday 21 February 2005

 

With much fanfare, Bush announced on Thursday his nomination of John

D. Negroponte as the director of national intelligence. " John's

nomination comes in an historic moment for our intelligence services, "

Bush proclaimed ceremoniously. Intelligence, he said, is now " the

first line of defense " in the war on terrorism.

 

Bush failed to mention that when Negroponte was United States

ambassador to Honduras in the early 1980s, he provided false

intelligence to Congress about the Honduran " death squads. " ...

Read more at http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/022105B.shtml " So

you're not gay if you're on top. "

 

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

February 20, 2005

 

Jon Stewart cut to the chase about the GOP hypocrisy that embraces

both the demagogic political exploitation of homophobia and gays at

the top of the Republican Party and Internet gay hookers posing as

journalists. Stewart said of the GOP support for Gannon/Guckert (who

indicated that he was a dominant homosexual on one of his prostitution

websites): " So you're not gay if you're on top. "

 

That about sums it up for the GOP, which is using its usual shills --

such as Howard Kurtz, Michael Isikoff, and Wolf Blitzer -- to portray

Gannon/Guckert as a victimized gay. They did the same thing when they

claimed Clarence " Step'n Fetchit " Thomas was the victim of a

Democratic attack on blacks. Given that Republicans get political

mileage out of opposing affirmative action and the like, it's kind of

hard to swallow (excuse the imagery) the argument that Democrats

weren't going to let a Hispanic like Alberto " Torquemada " Gonzales

become the first Hispanic Attorney General because they are

discriminatory, whatever his faults -- and sanctioning of torture and

the executions of possibly innocent people are pretty big ones to

overlook. ... Read the rest at the buzzflash site:

http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/05/02/edi05031.html Army Having

Difficulty Meeting Goals In Recruiting

 

Fewer Enlistees Are in Pipeline; Many Being Rushed Into Service

By Ann Scott Tyson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, February 21, 2005; Page A01

 

The active-duty Army is in danger of failing to meet its recruiting

goals, and is beginning to suffer from manpower strains like those

that have dropped the National Guard and Reserves below full strength,

according to Army figures and interviews with senior officers .

 

For the first time since 2001, the Army began the fiscal year in

October with only 18.4 percent of the year's target of 80,000

active-duty recruits already in the pipeline. That amounts to less

than half of last year's figure and falls well below the Army's goal

of 25 percent. ... Read the rest of this article on Washington Post

site:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40469-2005Feb20.html

or http://tinyurl.com/6gwrz

 

There will never be a charge for this reading list and I won't ask for

contributions.

 

It may be freely distributed as long as it is sent out in its entirety

with this statement attached and no charge is made. Of course you are

free to use the URLs in your own posts, etc.

 

© Virginia Metze

 

If you got this from a friend and want to be on the list, send your

email address to vmetze at metze.net