Day: November 26, 2005

New Orleans’ Missing Six Thousand

Jon Ponder

Karena:

6,664 people are still reported missing twelve weeks after Hurricane Katrina, but Kym Pasqualini of the Center for Missing Adults says most of them are probably alive and well! That’s great news, Kym!!!! Tell that to the folks who reported them missing.

Yup, they are probably off somewhere having a jolly old time! They are out there somewhere, working at a new job, setting up their new house, fit as fiddles they are! They are so alive and so well they just can’t be bothered to check in with their families or have their names removed from those pesky old government lists. Jeez.

Bush Knew Saddam-al Qaeda Link Was False from the Beginning

Jon Ponder

Murray Waas:

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

“You can’t distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror,” President Bush said in September 2002 – one year after he learned that the facts were otherwise.

The information was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the “President’s Daily Brief,” a 30- to 45-minute early-morning national security briefing. Information for PDBs has routinely been derived from electronic intercepts, human agents, and reports from foreign intelligence services, as well as more mundane sources such as news reports and public statements by foreign leaders.

This evidence means that the president, vice president and their top staffers lied repeatedly when they connected the Iraqi leader with bin Laden’s terrorist group. For example, one year after reviewing the PDB, Bush said:

“You can’t distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror,” President Bush said on September 25, 2002.

The next day, Rumsfeld said, “We have what we consider to be credible evidence that Al Qaeda leaders have sought contacts with Iraq who could help them acquire … weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities.”

And now:

The administration has refused to provide the Sept. 21 President’s Daily Brief, even on a classified basis, and won’t say anything more about it other than to acknowledge that it exists.

Polls: How Dangerous Is a 37% Approval Rating?

Jon Ponder

Teflon wearing thin? It is astounding that 37 percent of Americans still give George Bush a positive rating on his performance as president. (Even hard to fathom is the fact that 8 percent of Democrats approve of Bush!).

It is true, nonetheless, according to a recent USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll. In the past 50 years, only two presidents – Reagan and Clinton – have regained popularity after falling into the 30’s. The others never fully recovered from their drop in the polls:

  • Bush need look no farther than his father, George H. W. Bush, who struggled with a sluggish economy in 1992. His job approval hit 39 percent in February, and in November he was voted from office.
  • Carter, hurt by the Iran hostage crisis, was at 37 percent in September 1980. Two months later, he lost his re-election bid.
  • Ford, who succeeded Nixon, grappled with a falling economy and high inflation. He spent much of 1975 with approval percentages in the 30s and lost to Carter in ’76.
  • Nixon saw his approval rating plummet to 31 percent in the summer of 1973 as the nation followed the Watergate hearings. He resigned a year later.
  • Johnson, stymied by the Vietnam War, hit 36 percent in March 1968, the month he decided not to seek re-election.
  • Truman, beset by the unpopular Korean War, was at 23 percent in January 1952, when he chose not to run again.
  • Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy were the only two presidents in the past 50 years to never fall below 40 percent approval. Eisenhower’s low was 49 percent in 1960, shortly after a U.S. spy plane was shot down by the Soviets. Kennedy bottomed at 56 percent in September 1963, two months before his assassination, as the public began to grow uneasy about U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Craigslist Founder Considering Online News Project

Jon Ponder

Says MSM not doing its job: Craigslist founder Craig Newmark gave voice to millions of us when he spoke at an Oxford University event earlier this week:

Saying U.S. newspapers “are afraid to talk truth to power,” Craigslist founder Craig Newmark hinted that he’s about to launch a major online journalism project within the next few months that will copy the successful “wisdom of the masses” approach to classified advertising and apply it to journalism.

In a follow-up interview with the British newspaper the Guardian, Newmark expressed the frustration so many Americans feel about the overpaid lapdogs who report the news, especially those in the Capitol:

When talk turned to the problems plaguing the U.S. news industry, Newmark let fly: “The big issue in the U.S. is that newspapers are afraid to talk truth to power,” the Guardian quoted him as saying. “The White House press corps don’t speak the truth to power — they are frightened to lose access they don’t have anyway. … The American public has lost a lot of trust in conventional newspaper mechanisms. Mechanisms are now being developed online to correct that.”

Newmark also said coverage of the Iraq war and the press’ involvement in the Valerie Plame case had damaged American journalism.

About his new venture, Newmark said this on his blog:

I’m working with some folks on technologies that promise to help people find the most trusted versions of the more important stories… and this is personal, helping out another group not associated with craigslist. This kind of technology is intended to preserve the best of existing journalistic practices, and should help retain newsroom jobs.