Author: Trish

Life in the Propaganda Age

Trish

Excellent commentary by The Week’s Eric Effron on the revelation that BushCo has been planting propaganda in the “free” Iraq press. You know, ala some dictator, like Saddam Hussein maybe.

…after decades of tyranny, the Iraqis don’t need better or different propaganda; they need less of it

Propaganda may be a reality of war. But after decades of tyranny, the Iraqis don’t need better or different propaganda; they need less of it. And it’s hard to see how planting articles with headlines such as “The Sands Are Blowing Toward a Democratic Iraq” and “Iraqi Forces Capture al Qaida Fighters Crawling Like Dogs” could ever fool anyone.

In its own defense, the Pentagon says that its phony news stories merely reported the truth to a populace steeped in anti-American lies. But as an old journalism teacher of mine used to say, the difference between journalism and propaganda is not a matter of accuracy—it’s a matter of “intention.” One is meant to inform and enlighten; the other, to screen out contradictory information and promote a narrow agenda. That distinction, sadly, is being erased, and not only in Iraq. From the blogosphere to 24/7 cable news to a mainstream media desperate to keep our attention, it’s ever harder to find information not tainted with an ideological or marketing agenda. Rather than seek some semblance of the truth, we’re now encouraged simply to pick a source consistent with our biases. The Information Age, it would seem, has been mislabeled. We’re all actually living in the Propaganda Age.

New reports reveal the Pentagon has launched a $300 million psychological warfare campaign to plant more propaganda throughout the world. I remember when America didn’t need to be sold to anyone, but that seems so last century now.

Christmas in Florida, and the Imaginary Manatees are Dancing

Trish

Oops, Columba did it again! Florida’s First Lady has commissioned an official state Christmas ornament, depicting West Indian manatees, endangered marine mammals native to Florida. Of course, she failed to acknowledge the environmental policies of her husband, the gov, put the animal at risk. The Southwest Florida Herald Tribune’s Mark Zaloudek:

The official state marine mammal gets top billing this year in “Manatee Dance,” which depicts some manatees frolicking amid water lilies and papyrus. (Just for the record, manatees aren’t likely to eat water lilies, and you’d have a hard time finding papyrus in Florida waters inhabited by manatees, but hey, who am I to challenge an artist’s concept?)

Mark also didn’t mention that the normally gray sea cows are depicted in a cheerier than life red, while the water lillies and papyrus are in artificially festive green and gold. Hey, whatever works.

Jeb, meanwhile, has done so much to make manatees of any color extinct that he was issued an “F” by an environmental group in 2002.

Manatee advocates gathered today at the Florida Press Center to issue Governor Jeb Bush a report card on protection of his “favorite mammal.” Standing in front of a pile of 174 stuffed manatees, representing the number killed by watercraft since the Governor’s October 2000 Manatee Summit, Rodger Schlickeisen, President of the national environmental organization, Defenders of Wildlife, condemned Bush’s performance.

“The Governor receives an ‘F’ in manatee protection,” said Schlickeisen. “Not only has Governor Bush given meaningless lip service to manatee protection, but he is facilitating the active undermining of protections for this endangered animal by special interests and agency officials.”

This isn’t the first time Columba has failed to connect the dots between Bush talk and Bush action. Last month, she had the gall to urge local school officials to put more emphasis on art education. She didn’t mention that her husband cut the funding for such instruction, and that his unswerving emphasis on the FCAT – Florida Comprehensive Acheivement Test – leaves teachers no time for anything but teaching the test. Palm Beach Post:

Florida’s first lady challenged parents and the community to become more involved in arts education and noted the importance of private funding at a time when state and federal dollars are focused less on the arts and more on preparing students to pass standardized tests.

Speaking almost inaudibly at times, the petite, soft-spoken Columba Bush told her audience, “We all share in the responsibility of giving Florida’s children an education in the arts.”

Yeah, but some of us share it more than others, Columba.

Abramoff Homie Agrees to Tell All; Now Casting: Miamiana — The True Story

Trish

The plot has thickened and it’s not looking good for Jack Abramoff. His co-defendant on wire fraud and conspiracy charges, Adam Kidan, has agreed to sing like a budgie in exchange for a reduced sentence, from the 30 years he was facing down to 10.

The news seems to come as a surprise to Abramoff. South Florida Sun Sentinel:

Kidan reportedly feared for his life, which is kind of funny, considering that Boulis is the one who ended up splattered all over his car in a hail of bullets

Abramoff’s attorney, Neal Sonnett, said, “I hadn’t heard that” when asked Wednesday about Kidan’s intended plea. Sonnett said he wouldn’t comment until he received official notification. Abramoff has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Under the plea deal, Kidan would testify against Abramoff, his longtime friend and mentor.

We’ll understand all this better in the movie version, but basically it looks like Kidan and Abramoff, who met (I’m not making this up) at a young Republicans club while they were in college in Washington, cooked up a scheme to rip off the owner of the SunCruz gambling boats. Gus Boulis, a Greek immigrant, built the casino operation from money earned in his Miami Subs sandwich franchise but was now in need of a solid, upstanding American to look like the boss. […]

Creating Special Dec. 26 Memories at PR

Trish

The water cooler (as if we had one) discussion at “work” the other night was over the supposed Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays flap much ballyhooed by the Christian police and in which Pres. and First Lady Bush have taken a stand abandoning Christmas. The consensus (almost) was that it’s ridiculous for Jewish people to mind being told to have a “Merry Christmas.” Right.

I noted that our company will be closed Monday, Dec. 26, which this year is the first days of both Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, although it has nothing whatsoever to do with the traditional Christian holiday. Everyone was silent for a moment, then agreed that whatever you want to call it, they’ll be happy to take the day off.

We at Pensito Review took a poll of our holiday efforts in each of our three corners. Jon, the California half, purchased and decorated the standard conifer, as he said, ala the “Currier & Ives snowy day that is LA in December.” He also put together the fabulous holiday greeting from the staff here at PR, which you can enjoy in the upper right column of our homepage until we need the space for something else. Note the absence of the C-word.

Buck, ever the sentimental one, and still recovering from the recent South Florida storms, said –

We did not do a “real” holiday tree this year, but opted instead for the plastic palm tree with permanent lights attached. It doesn’t have that pesky pine smell and hasn’t shed a single fake palm frond.

Here in North Florida (slogan: It’s not really South Georgia), Pepsi, Stinky, and I are still undecided about the tree situation. We may or may not purchase and furl (?) one but we’ll refer to it as a “seasonal display” if we do. And you?

Did Someone Leak Bush’s Speech to Hil?

Trish

Or is she just that good?

In case you missed the memo, Sen. Hillary Clinton did a brilliant job of emailing people yesterday with the facts — as opposed to the spin — on Bush’s call for Congressional support of disarming Saddem Hussein way back when.

Of course, now we refer to this as “Quagmire in Iraq.” But Hillary still remembers why she voted to give the president the authority to make decisions in 2002.

“It is time for the President to stop serving up platitudes and it is past time for the President, Vice President, or anyone else associated with them to stop impugning the patriotism of their critics.” – Sen. Hillary Clinton

I voted…on the basis of the evidence presented by the Administration, assurances they gave that they would first seek to resolve the issue of weapons of mass destruction peacefully through United Nations sponsored inspections, and the argument that the resolution was needed because Saddam Hussein never did anything to comply with his obligations that he was not forced to do.

Their assurances turned out to be empty ones, as the Administration refused repeated requests from the U.N. inspectors to finish their work. And the “evidence” of weapons of mass destruction and links to al Qaeda turned out to be false.

Before I voted in 2002, the Administration publicly and privately assured me that they intended to use their authority to build international support in order to get the U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq, as articulated by the President in his Cincinnati speech on October 7th, 2002. As I said in my October 2002 floor statement, I took “the President at his word that he will try hard to pass a U.N. resolution and will seek to avoid war, if at all possible.”

Instead, the Bush Administration short-circuited the U.N. inspectors – the last line of defense against the possibility that our intelligence was false. The Administration also abandoned securing a larger international coalition, alienating many of those who had joined us in Afghanistan…

I take responsibility for my vote, and I, along with a majority of Americans, expect the President and his Administration to take responsibility for the false assurances, faulty evidence and mismanagement of the war.

Hillary’s email went out a full day before Bush’s speech but in it she correctly anticipates both the speech’s contents and its themes.

After all, if ever there was someone who could stand in front of a meticulously staged backdrop before a crowd of hand-selected supporters and spout absolute inanities with an air of bluster and arrogance, that man is George W. Bush.

It is time for the President to stop serving up platitudes and present us with a plan for finishing this war with success and honor — not a rigid timetable that terrorists can exploit, but a public plan for winning and concluding the war. And it is past time for the President, Vice President, or anyone else associated with them to stop impugning the patriotism of their critics.

You go girl.

Katherine Harris Staffers Can’t Get Out Fast Enough

Trish

The average member of Congress holds on to high-level folks for four to five years, but nine months is about all anyone can stand with Florida U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris. Great job by the Sarasota Herald Tribune, which uncovered the red flag in the Harris office.

Her turnover rate is so rare it prompted a longtime GOP consultant to describe it as “chewing through staff like an industrial wood chipper.”

In just under three years, U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris has had four chiefs of staff, four district directors and four press secretaries…

Turnover isn’t limited to Harris’ congressional office, either. As she prepares to run against Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, Harris has been hampered by turnover on her campaign staff. Her campaign manager quit last week, after just a few months on the job and not long after she lost a pollster and a campaign finance director earlier this year.

Harris can explain each and every departure, and why each former staffer is unwilling to talk to the media about the experience of working for her.

…Harris said most of the employees have left because they’ve gone on to better jobs. If anything, the turnover shows her staff members are in high demand after gaining experience in a “high-profile” office.

“They always get stolen away,” Harris said.

She also said the Capitol Hill lifestyle — long, unpredictable hours and bad pay — make it hard for her to keep staff.

But her turnover rate is so rare it prompted longtime GOP consultant Rick Wilson to describe it as “chewing through staff like an industrial wood chipper.”

Poor communication and micromanagement seem to be big factors in making Harris the Boss from Hell.

Harris failed to tell her congressional staff that she planned to run for U.S. Senate before she announced it to the media. Some staffers, including her now-former district director Kim Hutchens, called the newspaper to hear about her decision.

She’s also not averse to making her employees redo their work, even after it has been sent out. In October, after a press spokesman released a statement answering questions about her fund-raising totals, Harris required him to send out a revised statement with minor wording changes.

Gov. Bill Richardson Commits Political Suicide for Baseball

Trish

Another Democrat saves Republicans a bullet by shooting himself in the foot so they won’t have to. New Mexico’s Gov. Bill Richardson has established a credibility issue which will make great late night fodder now and in the 2008 presidential race, if he decides to enter it.

“After being notified of the situation … I came to the conclusion that I was not drafted by the A’s,” Richardson said.

For nearly four decades, Richardson has maintained he was drafted as a pitcher in 1966 by the Kansas City Athletics.

But an Albuquerque Journal investigation found no record of Richardson being drafted by the A’s, who have since moved to Oakland, or any other team.

Richardson’s explanation for the claim is even lamer than the issue of whether he was drafted by the A’s.

“After being notified of the situation (by Journal reporter Toby Smith) and after researching the matter … I came to the conclusion that I was not drafted by the A’s,” Richardson said.

Well there you go. With those feeble words, another one bites the dust, and without even having to be smeared by Repug goons.

Richardson included the fact in a brief biography released when he successfully ran for Congress in 1982. The Clinton White House mentioned it in a 1997 news release, when Richardson was about to be named U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Over the years, several media organizations have reported it as fact, including The Associated Press, the New York Times and New Republic magazine, along with political almanacs.

Richardson, who was a star right-handed pitcher in high school and played at Tufts University, maintained, though: “I was actively scouted by several major league teams.”

Yeah, blah blah, Ginger. Look, it’s really simple: don’t lie, don’t embelish, don’t go there. It will absolutely bite you in the ass sooner or later, and now the Dems — and Latinos — stand to lose a great candidate. Thanks Bill. You pitched a real no-hitter this time.

Following the Money to Scooter Libby

Trish

Know who’s pitching in to help Scooter Libby beat the rap on charges of grand jury perjury and obstruction in the CIA leak case? The list is pretty interesting.

[St. Petersburg, Fl.] developer Mel Sembler, a former U.S. ambassador, is taking a leading role in raising millions for the legal defense fund of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby…

The fund, which was formed several weeks ago, has received assistance from friends, colleagues and former government officials, according to former Justice Department spokeswoman Barbara Comstock, who is helping Libby. That group includes former United Nations Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick.

Other contributors include investor Howard Leach, lobbyist Wayne Berman, both of whom help raise money for President Bush’s campaigns; Richard Carlson, president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, 1992-1997; former presidential candidates Steve Forbes and Jack Kemp; and former Sens. Fred Thompson of Tennessee and Alan Simpson of Wyoming.

Ex-CIA director James Woolsey also is helping, as are magazine publisher Philip Merrill, a former president and ex-chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, and Mideast historian Bernard Lewis…

Sembler, a longtime Republican fundraiser, has helped candidates at all levels, from St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker up to both President Bushes.

From 1997-2000, he was the Republican National Committee finance chairman. He served as ambassador to Australia and Nauru from 1989 to 1993, and most recently as ambassador to Italy.

If Scooter needs to put up a multi-million dollar defense, maybe a presidential pardon isn’t a slam-dunk. I’d say it depends on how poll numbers are at the end of his trial. Pres. I Don’t Pay Attention to Focus Groups will let him go as long as it doesn’t cost him any political capital.

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.”

Offshoring CIA Torture: European Probe Expands

Trish

Europe is vigorously investigating which of its members helped the CIA get away with disappearing and torturing suspected terrorists over the four years since 9/11. The probe began after a Nov. 2 story in the Washington Post exposed suspicious flights.

Whether it was European complicity in the U.S. effort to “offshore” its torture, or the CIA simply using our allies behind their backs, the activity was widespread. AP:

Human Rights Watch identified possible sites for secret detention centers, based on flight logs of CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004

Austria’s air force was investigating allegations that a CIA transport plane containing suspected terrorist captives flew through the neutral country’s airspace in 2003, and Denmark said it would ask U.S. authorities for details about the alleged transport of detainees on planes said to be used by the CIA over Danish territory…

Bulgaria was the latest country to deny reports of involvement, saying the CIA’s planes never landed at the Sarafovo airport near the Black Sea…

Human Rights Watch said it had evidence indicating the CIA transported suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan to Poland and Romania. The New York-based group identified the Kogalniceanu military airfield in Romania and Poland’s Szczytno-Szymany airport as possible sites for secret detention centers, saying it based its conclusions on flight logs of CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004…

On Tuesday, Swiss senator Dick Marty, who leads the Council of Europe probe, said he was investigating 31 suspect planes that landed in Europe in recent years…

Other airports that might have been used by CIA aircraft in some capacity include Palma de Mallorca in Spain, Larnaca in Cyprus and Shannon in Ireland, as well as the U.S. air base at Ramstein, Germany, Marty said in a report.

Swedish authorities, meanwhile, have confirmed at least one plane with alleged CIA links landed in Sweden three times since 2002. Denmark says 14 flights with suspected CIA ties entered its airspace since 2001; Norway has confirmed three such flights; and Icelandic media have reported 67 landings.

There have been other unconfirmed reports in Macedonia and Malta.