Day: November 24, 2005

Must Listen: If Bush was Joking, Why is Blair Panicking?

Trish

Stop what you’re doing and listen to this NPR report on the British cover-up of Tony Blair holding Bush back from bombing the headquarters of Arab satellite station Al Jazeera.

Blair putting a restraining hand on George Bush casts Bush as somehow trigger happy…with Blair constantly reaching for the cold flannel to mop his forehead and calm him down

Day to Day’s Madeleine Brand interviewed the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland, who reported the questions being asked in England are: If that good-natured, wacky cut-up George Bush was just joshing, then a) why was his proposition – and Blair’s attempts to talk him out of it – included in an official memo; and b) why is the British government going to such great lengths – invoking a gag order and threats of criminalization against anyone who might leak the memo’s contents – to squash it?

The answers to those questions include the possibility that there are other things in other memos, both about Bush’s idiocy and Blair’s restraining hand. And maybe, just maybe, the actual bombings of Al Jazeera in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the one at the Hotel Palestine in Baghdad, which killed one Al Jazeera journalist and critically wounded two more, were not the pure accidents the Bush administration claimed.

Nabil Khoury, a U.S. State Department spokesman in Doha, said the strike on the Arab satellite TV network’s office was a mistake, and he called upon al-Jazeera not to jump to conclusions. “My personal view is that it is a mistake, a grave mistake. It is something we all regret,” Khoury said. “I personally cannot imagine that a country which respects general freedoms can target media establishments.”

Time to get a more vivid imagination, Nabil.

Some Al-Jazeera employees felt the bombing might have been deliberate, for the station has been reporting extensively on the plight of Iraqi civilians and the number of casualties from U.S. bomb attacks…

Chief editor Ibrahim Hilal, speaking from the station’s headquarters in Doha, said witnesses “saw the plane fly over twice before dropping the bombs. Our office is in a residential area and even the Pentagon knows its location.”

Meanwhile, Freedland paints an even more nauseating picture.

The idea of Blair putting a restraining hand on George Bush casts Bush as somehow trigger happy…with Blair constantly reaching for the cold flannel to mop his forehead and calm him down. That’s not a flattering image, really, for either of them.”

Poll: 64% Believe Bush Is a Misleader

Jon Ponder

Return to Credibility Gap: One thing the political class learned during the Vietnam era is that the U.S. president cannot lead if he has no credbility with the public:

Among Democrats, 91 percent believe Bush lies to the public, and among Independents, 73 percent also say he misleads.

A majority of U.S. adults believe the Bush administration generally misleads the public on current issues, while fewer than a third of Americans believe the information provided by the administration is generally accurate, the latest Harris Interactive poll finds.

While the telephone survey of 1,011 U.S. adults indicates about 64 percent of Americans believe the Bush administration “generally misleads the American public on current issues to achieve its own ends,” opinion on the topic is clearly divided along party lines. A large majority (68 percent to 28 percent) of Republicans say the Bush administration generally provides accurate information. However, even larger majorities of Democrats (91 percent to 7 percent) and Independents (73 percent to 25 percent) think the information is generally misleading.

When asked about former Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who has been indicted on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements, more than half of U.S. adults say the situation indicates “a larger problem in the Bush administration,” while 35 percent say it was an “isolated incident.” About 82 percent of Democrats say it indicates a larger problem, while 70 percent of Republicans feel the Libby case is an isolated incident.

Kolbe (R-AZ) Retires – House Cleaning in 2006 May Hinge on the West

Jon Ponder

Liberal Republican Rep. Jim Kolbe of Arizona – the only out gay Gop in Congress – announced his retirement this week opening up another vunerable GOP seat in the West.

Kolbe’s district includes Tucson, which President Bush carried by only 53 percent, so this is a seat that is a possible pick up for Dems next year.

Other possibly vulnerable seats in the West include:

Al Franken Confronts Justice Scalia at Event

Jon Ponder

Page Six:

AL Franken, the former “Saturday Night Live” star, found out the hard way not to mess with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who chided Franken as if he were a delinquent schoolboy at Time Warner Center on Monday night.

Scalia, following in the footsteps of Karl Rove and Bill Clinton, was the guest at Conversations on the Circle, a series of one-on-one interviews with outgoing Time Inc. editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine…

When Pearlstine opened the floor for Q&A, Franken stood up in the back row and started talking about “judicial demeanor” and asking “hypothetically” about whether a judge should recuse himself if he had gone duck-hunting or flown in a private jet with a party in a case before his court.

Franken was clumsily referring to the fact that Scalia had gone hunting and flying with Dick Cheney before the 2000 election.

First, Scalia lectured Franken, “Demeanor is the wrong word. You mean ethics.” Then he explained, “Ethics is governed by tradition. It has never been the case where you recuse because of friendship.”

…”I think I got under his skin a little,” Franken humbly told us.