What bokononists whisper whenever they think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.


By Elton Beard

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who divide people into two kinds and those who don't. I don't.


Weblogs & Zines
AintNoBadDude
A Level Gaze
Amygdala
Atrios
Blah3
Blue Streak
Body and Soul
Brad DeLong
CalPundit
Daily Kos
Demosthenes
Digby
Electrolite
GeekPol's evil twin
get donkey!
Lean Left
LiberalDesert
LiberalOasis
Looking Glass
Lying Media Bastards
MadKane
MaxSpeak WebLog
NakedWriting.com
NathanNewman.org
Pandagon.net
Rittenhouse Review
Road to Surfdom
Roger Ailes
RuminateThis
Scoobie Davis Online
Scribbler
SideShow
Sisyphus Shrugged
Skippy
Talk Left
Talking Dog
TBOGG
Team Murder
This Modern World
uggabugga
Whiskey Bar
[Age Before Beauty]
Abu Aardvark
alicublog
All Spin Zone
AMERICAblog.org
american street
Angry Bear
Anonymous Liberal
Angry Liberal
A Spork
Aunt Elinor Fights Crime
Baghdad Burning
Big Brass Blog
Bitch. Ph.D
BlogD
Bloggasm
bloggy
Blue Gal
Bob Harris
Booman Tribune
Bottle Of Blog
brainhell
Brown Bag Blog
Broad View, The
busy, busy, busy (II)
Byrd's Brain
Ceteris Paribus (E)
Chase me, ladies
Claudia Long
coeruleus
corrente
Cowboy Kahlil
Crooked Timber
Crooks and Liars
Cynical-C Blog
David E's Fablog
Demagogue
Democratic Daily
Democratic Veteran
Dependable Renegade
different strings
Discourse.net
Drunken Monkey
D-Squared Digest
Drug WarRant
Economist's View
Elayne Riggs
elementropy
Emphasis Added
everythingsruined
Ezra Klein
Fafblog
Fanatical Apathy
Feministing
firedoglake
First Draft
Funny Farm, The
Glenn Greenwald
Hamster
Hairy Fish Nuts
Hellblazer
Hitchens Watch
Interesting Times
James Wolcott
Juan Cole
Julie Saltman
JuliusBlog
Kathryn Cramer
Lawyers, Guns & Money
Left Coaster
Left End
Left I on the News
Liquid List
Mahablog
Making Light
Majikthise
Mark A. R. Kleiman
Martini Republic
Matthew Yglesias
Meta and Meta
MF Blog
mfinley.com
Michael Bérubé
micah holmquist
Miniver Cheevy
Mortaljive
MyDD
mykeru.com
Needlenose
Night Light
Next Blog Blog
No More Mr. Nice Blog
Nitpicker
Norbizness
Orcinus
Pacific Views
Pharyngula
Philosoraptor
Pink Chimpanzee
Politics in the Zeros
Poor Man, The
Proteus454
Pro-War.com
Reading A1
Reading and Writing
Remain Calm
Riba Rambles
Rising Hegemon
RoguePlanet
Rox Populi
Sadly, No!
Sasha Undercover
Satirical Political
Scott Rosenberg's
Scriptoids
Seeing The Forest
Shakespeare's Sister
Shrill Blog
Skull/Bones 2004
Slacktivist
Smythe's World
SteveAudio
SubIntSoc.net
Suburban Guerrilla
SullyWatch
The Talent Show
Think Pogress
Thomas Friedman is
Tiny Revolution
Tristram Shandy
Unfogged
Upper Left
Wampum
War and Piece
World O'Crap

Technorati Profile


ARCHIVE ARCHIVE ARCHIVE

Sunday, April 27, 2003
10:00 PM PT

Media missive materializes, mechanism mysterious. Recent news reports have White House press secretary Ari Fleischer expressing Mr. Bush's faith in Sen. Rick Santorum and, presumably, his agreement with the Senator's concept of inclusiveness. The following snippet is from the earliest googleable mention of this, an Associated Press story posted Friday, April 25, 2003 11:17 AM EDT :

"The president has confidence in the senator and believes he's doing a good job as senator" and in his No. 3 Senate GOP leadership post, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Friday.

In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Santorum compared homosexuality to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery. He also said the right to privacy does not exist in the Constitution.

"The president believes the senator is an inclusive man. And that's what he believes," Fleischer said.

By Friday evening, the story had gained wide media circulation - a Google news search today finds 95 similar articles attributing the exact same quotes to Ari Fleischer. But none of them identify the venue or circumstances in which Fleischer issued his remarks. Even the Washington Post's Saturday article by Dana Milbank and Alan Cooperman identifies the quotes only as what "Ari Fleischer told reporters yesterday".

So just how did Ari Fleischer issue these widely quoted remarks? According to the White House web site, Fleischer published one statement Friday, and it made no mention of Santorum. His only interactive session with the press that day was a briefing, the transcript of which does not include the quotes at issue either, but does contain this exchange:

Q: Ari, both Senator Frist and Senator Specter have publicly supported Senator Santorum. And my question: Does the President believe they were wrong to do so, because while governor of Texas he ever tried to get that state's sodomy law repealed?

MR. FLEISCHER: As I said this morning, Lester, the President has confidence in Senator Santorum, both as a senator, as a member of the Senate leadership.

Intriguingly, Mr. Fleischer referred to what he "said this morning". But what exactly did he say earlier Friday morning, and who did he say it to? All we have are a few context-free sentence fragments attributed to Fleischer, with no indication of the mechanism by which they came to be known to the media.

The thing is, the administration hated the Santorum story and desperately wanted it to go away (see "GOP Gag Order" at Atrios), but the fundamentalist sponsors of the GOP were expressing displeasure with the Republican Party's lack of support for Santorum. To appease the base without drawing too much attention, the White Houses appears to have injected its wording of choice directly into the media mainline. Slick. However, some media entity must have carried the administration's water here, conveying Ari Fleischer's oddly truncated "inclusive man" quote set - exactly what the White House wanted published, and nothing more - to the rest of the media, without leaving a trace. It would be interesting to know how they pulled that off.

Friday, April 25, 2003
4:30 PM PT

No Sanctum for Santorum. The folks at the Family Research Council (whose home page bears an eerie resemblance to one of our favorites, Liberal Oasis) seem to be getting a bit worried about their Republican allies. Here is part of what they posted in response to the recent unpleasantness with Sen. Rick Santorum:

As the controversy surrounding Sen. Rick Santorum continues to rage, the leadership of the Republican Party is AWOL. Beyond a few tepid statements of personal support for Sen. Santorum, no prominent national GOP leader seems willing or able to mount a spirited, principled defense of marriage and family. The question naturally arises: Have Republican leaders been so intimidated by the smear tactics of the homosexual lobby and its Democratic attack dogs that they are cowering in silence? If Republican leaders cannot mount a vigorous defense of marriage, then pro-family voters perhaps should begin to reconsider their loyalty to the party.
Is the Right finally showing some cleavage?

Thursday, April 24, 2003
12:00 PM PT

John Derbyshire

Shorter John Derbyshire:
Pseudoscience vs. Snobbery

  • I am unable to distinguish between Vladimir Lenin's communist dictatorship and Bill Clinton's center-right liberalism.

  • I detest snobbery, I mean, I really, viscerally, loathe it, and this leads me to hold in utter contempt the vapid antisocial dimwits who hold views that are clearly inferior to my own.

  • I myself am a scientifically-educated person but I prefer to deal with people who believe in mythology and pseudoscience, because that makes them more reliable.

  • Given a choice between a president who believes that the universe is 6,000 years old and a president with some grasp of science, I prefer the one who opposes fornication and homosexuality.

Wednesday, April 23, 2003
12:00 PM PT

Shorter Senator Rick Santorum:

I'm not against gay sex, I'm against all sex unless it's blessed by a priest, or is with a priest.

Tuesday, April 22, 2003
6:00 PM PT


 

Gingrich blasts 'political failure' at State Department

White House defends Powell

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich illustrates the extent of Powell's effectiveness in the White House.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich blasted the State Department Tuesday for a series of what he described as political failures leading up to an unjustified unilateral war against Iraq.

Gingrich said that in the internal White House debate, the State Department had failed to convince the president that the U.N.-sanctioned inspections process was working and that there was no real evidence of Iraq possessing any weapons of mass destruction, and that a failure of this magnitude meant that it was time for "bold, dramatic change" at the department.

"The last seven months have involved six months of diplomatic and political failure and one month of military success," said Gingrich, a conservative intellectual and frequent Fox News contributor. "Unfortunately, these failures resulted in the initiation of an unprovoked war on pretexts that were flimsy to non-existent." Quoting from the Judgment of the Nuremburg Tribunal, Gingrich noted that "to initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime."

Secretary of State Colin Powell at work in the White House.

Gingrich, who resigned the speakership under fire in 1999, faulted Secretary of State Colin Powell for being upstaged by the Defense Department. "Rumsfeld just created facts on the ground, positioned the troops, poisoned relations with our European allies and put Bush in a position of either starting an offensive war in defiance of world opinion, or backing down and look like a wimp. Powell, in the most charitable interpretation, knew better but was just dragged along. Of course, it didn't help that Bush has psychological issues with Saddam, but if I were secretary of state, I'm certain I would have been a lot more forceful in arguing against committing a crime against humanity."

The White House, however, expressed its confidence in Powell.

"There was nothing Secretary Powell could have done to prevent this war, since the president absolutely wanted to do Iraq," White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said Tuesday. "Secretary Powell did an excellent job as an usher in that process."

In his speech, Gingrich said he was not criticizing personalities, but "effectiveness." And he had some praise for Powell.

"I think Secretary Powell is very bright, very able in his own way, but I just think he is in over his head in this White House," Gingrich said. "The secretary of state should be a bold, dramatic, synthesizing thinker, a far-sighted visionary with a firm grasp of the future who has a plan to renew America."

Monday, April 21, 2003
10:00 AM PT

Shorter Bill Safire: Follow the Money

  • Military occupation = freedom.
  • Screw France!
  • Screw Russia!
  • Follow the money, but never to Bechtel or Halliburton.

Home


ARCHIVE

2007
December          
November          
October          
September          
August          
July  30      9  
June          
May          
April  2        
March  5        
February  5 12 19 26  
January  1  8 15 22 29
 
2005
December 5 12 19 26  
November   7 14 21 28
October 3 10 17 24 31
September 5 12 17 26  
August 1 8 15   29
July 5 12      
June   6 13 20 27
May       23 30
April 4 11 18 25  
March   7 14 21  
February   7   21 28
January 3   17 24 31
2006
December          
November          
October          
September   11 18 25  
August   7     28
July 3 10 17 24 31
June 5 12 19 26  
May   8 15 22 29
April 3 10 17 24  
March   6 13 20 27
February   6 13 20 27
January 2 9 16 23 30
2003
December 1 8 15    
November 3 10 17 24  
October 6 13 20 27  
September 1 8 15 22 29
August 4 11 18 25  
July 7 14 21 28  
June 2 9 16 23 30
May 5 12 19 26  
April 7 14 21 28  
March 3 17   31  
February 3 17   24  
January 6 13 20 27  
2004
December   6 13 20  
November 1 8 15 22 29
October 4 11 18 25  
September H 6 13 20 27
August I A T U S
July          
June   7 14 21 28
May 3 10 17 24 31
April   5 12 19 26
March 1 8 15 22 29
February 2 9 16 23  
January   12 19 26  
2001
December 3   10    
November 4   11 19 26
October   11      
September          
August          
July          
June          
May          
April          
March          
February          
January                      
2002
December 2 9 16 23 30
November 4 11 18 25  
October 7 14 21 28  
September   9 16 23  
August 5 12 19    
July 1 8 15 22 29
June 3 10   24  
May 6 13 20    
April 1     22  
March 4 11 18 25  
February 4   18 25  
January 6   21 28  


Busy, busy, busy.

What bokononists whisper whenever they think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.


New Window
Home
Archives

Site Search
   
wwwSite

Players
Altercation
BuzzFlash.com
Cursor
Daily Howler
Media Matters
Huffington Post
Talking Points
Tapped
TPM Cafe
truthdig
truthout


Boutique
Agonist
Best of the Blogs
The Daou Report
Failure Is Impossible
FreewayBlogger
Idiocentrism
Info Clearing House
Jesus' General
Jon Swift
Lefty Directory
Memeorandum
Neal Pollack
Rational Enquirer
Reality Control
  Ambient Alert
  Official Simulator
  Orwell Search
  Get Me Rewrite!
Tiny Polemics
Temple of GWB
Stand Down
UnaBlogger
Unknown News
Wall St. Follies


Open Letters To...
Chris Matthews
Tim Russert
Washington Post


Roll your own
me-zine

The floggings will cease when morale improves.
hits