Month: October 2005

This afternoon, reports had the death toll from yesterday’s South Asia earthquake at 3,000. The number is now 18,000 30,000.

As in ‘jonesing‘. Gets me every time, and now I’m sitting here wondering what in the heck it means.

I hate when people do this.

😉

UPDATE: OK, so it wasn’t the news I was jonesing about, but I suppose it is important to fans of Bill Hobbs. He has announced today a self-imposed blogging hiatus. He claims that he doesn’t intend to disappear completely, but that his readers won’t find political issue focused commentary on his site for the foreseeable future.

It’s deja vu all over again. Whenever a black cloud moves in over the Clinton’s, their minions are dispatched throughout the land for the counter attack. Wanna bet that puppet master Sidney Blumenthal is somewhere, hunkered below ground in a dark room coordinating this response?

Via Drudge Report

Under strong pressure from former President Bill Clinton’s advisers, CBS’s “60 Minutes” has agreed to read a statement denying an explosive charge being made on Sunday night’s program by former FBI director Louis Freeh, the WASHINGTON POST reports.

In the statement, Samuel “Sandy” Berger, Clinton’s national security adviser, challenges Freeh’s assertion that Clinton failed to press Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to cooperate with an investigation of the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers in that country, and used the occasion to ask for a contribution to his presidential library. The Saudis made such a donation last year – six years after the 1998 meeting.

Berger, who was at the meeting, said: “The president strongly raised the need for Saudi officials to cooperate with us on the investigation into the attack on Khobar Towers at the time when the FBI was attempting to gain access to the suspects. The president did not raise in any fashion the issue of his library.”

Clinton spokesman Jay Carson said he told CBS’s Mike Wallace that he had supportive accounts from five other former officials at the meeting, including those briefed about a private conversation between Clinton and Abdullah.

“The fair journalistic question is why they didn’t call and get comments for their story from people who were in the room, such as Sandy Berger, and why they took until Friday afternoon to get that done,” said Lanny Davis, a former White House lawyer, who tried to persuade “60 Minutes” producer Jeff Fager to allow him or another Clinton spokesman to appear on Sunday night’s segment.

Carson, who called the Freeh book “a total work of fiction.”

I can’t even imagine what a lonely existence it must be to live your life at the beckon call of Bill and Hillary. The loyalty is stunning. And for what? Are all of these boot-lickers awaiting appointments to the best leadership positions in a hoped for Hillary administration? Are they really risking all of their credibility for this?

So far, we know that hundreds have died as a result of a 7.6 magnitude earthquake near the Pakistan-India border. The death toll, currently 3,000, will no doubt climb higher, due to the weak infrastructure in the area

In terms of relief, this disaster (so far) hasn’t suffered from bureaucratic dysfunctionality, as we saw immediately after Hurricane Katrina. According to early reports, relief efforts began within ‘minutes’.

Political tensions between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir region took a back seat Saturday as Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to offer help. Musharraf thanked him for his offer.

Musharraf called the quake “a major catastrophe” and said that “relief efforts began minutes” after it happened.

Pakistan’s military spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan told CNN it was the largest relief operation the country has ever mobilized.

Tents, sleeping bags, blankets, water, food and a lot of help were arriving from all over the country and overseas, said Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.

“The government has moved quickly, and we hope that we can minimize the losses,” he said.

The United States, Britain, Germany, Turkey, Japan, the United Nations and non-governmental humanitarian groups have marshaled resources to help the region.

I don’t know about you, but I’m ‘disastered out’. My brain just can’t handle another week of tragedy TV coverage. Pleas for relief help. Geraldo types sensationalizing the destruction.

I just can’t do ‘it’ anymore.

You knew it would happen, and it has. Former Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork slams Miers and calls her nomination a ‘disaster’.

TUCKER CARLSON, MSNBC HOST: Are you impressed by the president’s choice of Harriet Miers?

JUDGE ROBERT BORK, FORMER SUPREME COURT NOMINEE: Not a bit.  I think it’s a disaster on every level. The first one is, that this is a woman who’s undoubtedly as wonderful a person as they say she is, but so far as anyone can tell she has no experience with constitutional law whatever.  Now it’s a little late to develop a constitutional philosophy or begin to work it out when you’re on the court already.  So that—I’m afraid she’s likely to be influenced by factors, such as personal sympathies and so forth, that she shouldn’t be influenced by.  I don’t expect that she can be, as the president says, a great justice.

But the other level is more worrisome, in  a way:  it’s kind of a slap in the face to the conservatives who’ve been building up a conservative legal movement for the last 20 years.  There’s all kinds of people, now, on the federal bench and some in the law schools who have worked out consistent philosophies of sticking with the original principles of the Constitution.  And all of those people have been overlooked.  And I think  one of the messages here is, don’t write, don’t say anything controversial before you’re nominated.

It’s odd that Justice  Roberts, who is now the chief justice, and who will probably be an excellent choice in many ways, also had no track record that was easy to follow.

The Borking continues, here.

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post published excerpts from the first chapter of the forthcoming book by former CBS producer Mary Mapes which reveals this tidbit on what she thinks of bloggers:

“I was incredulous that the mainstream press — a group I’d been a part of for nearly twenty-five years and thought I knew — was falling for the blogs’ critiques. I was shocked at the ferocity of the attack. I was terrified at CBS’s lack of preparedness in defending us. I was furious at the unrelenting attacks on Dan. And I was helpless to do anything about any of it.”

Did Mapes believe she did anything wrong? Anything? Even a single incey wincey mistake?

“I remember staring, disheartened and angry, at one posting. ’60 Minutes is going down,’ the writer crowed exultantly. My heart started to pound. There is nothing more frightening for a reporter than the possibility of being wrong, seriously wrong. That is the reason that we checked and rechecked, argued about wording, took care to be certain that the video that accompanied the words didn’t create a new and unintended nuance. Being right, being sure, was everything. And right now, on the Internet, it appeared everything was falling apart.I had a real physical reaction as I read the angry online accounts. It was something between a panic attack, a heart attack, and a nervous breakdown. My palms were sweaty; I gulped and tried to breathe . . . The little girl in me wanted to crouch and hide behind the door and cry my eyes out.”

And about those fake memos…

“Faxing changes a document in so many ways, large and small, that analyzing a memo that had been faxed — in some cases not once, but twice — was virtually impossible. The faxing destroyed the subtle arcs and lines in the letters. The characters bled into each other. The details of how the typed characters failed to line up perfectly inside each word were lost.”

Riiiight.

And she goes on. What does she think of her critics?

“To these people, there was no such thing as unbiased mainstream reporting, certainly not when it came to criticism of the president, no matter how tepid. To them, there was Fox News and everything else — and everything else was liberal and unfair.”

And lest you believe that Mary will be out there alone battling the nay-sayers armed with nothing but her bullhorn book, Dan Rather is ready to fight too.

“Dan Rather wants to reopen the investigation into President Bush and the National Guard story that resulted in the Memogate scandal and led to his early departure from the anchor desk.

“But his bosses at CBS have forbidden him to go back at it, he said. ‘CBS News doesn’t want me to do that story,’ Rather said during an interview that aired on C-SPAN. ‘They wouldn’t let me do that story,’ he said during the shockingly frank interview with former NBC newsman Marvin Kalb . . .

“‘I believed in the story,’ Rather said. ‘The facts of the story were correct. One supporting pillar of the story, albeit an important one, one supporting pillar was brought into question,’ he said. ‘To this day, no one has proven whether it was what it purported to be or not.’”

This is what happens to you when you live in the liberal MSM bubble. Your life, your world, your reality is completely different than the rest of the regular folks out there. You’re reporting is unimpeachable. Everything else (blogs) is fallible. At the end of the day, if you believe what you’ve reported, you are right. If someone else doesn’t believe, they don’t know the facts. It goes on and on…at CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, et al.

I’ll take a pass on Mary’s book, and go read this one again.

Boy George has been busted for drug possession, again.

Singer Boy George was arrested on suspicion of possessing drugs and making a fake police report after he called 911 early Friday and falsely said his home had been burglarized, police said.

The singer, whose real name is George O’Dowd, called police from a Little Italy apartment around 3:14 a.m. and reported a burglary, said Detective Kevin Czartoryski, a police spokesman.

Officers arrived on the scene and discovered a small amount of cocaine next to a computer, police said. A woman in the apartment said there was more cocaine around and police were continuing to investigate.

Heh, that’s helpful. With friends like these, who need enemies? “Oh yeah, sure Mr. Ossiffer, I know there are more drugs around here. Youshoo a wannnt me to help you find dem?”

But really, we’re supposed to believe that Boy George still has a drug problem?

What drug problem? I’m gonna need more proof.

UPDATE: Boy George could face 15 years in prison.

UPDATE II: Gettin out of dodge. Boy George lands at Heathrow.

UPDATE III: We’re not talking about a line on a mirror here. BG had 13 bags of cocaine in his NYC apartment.

Yesterday, Peggy Noonan called Bush’s decision to nominate Harriet Miers a ‘Misstep’.

“The Miers pick was another administration misstep. The president misread the field, the players, their mood and attitude. He called the play, they looked up from the huddle and balked. And debated. And dissed. Momentum was lost. The quarterback looked foolish.”

And today we have Charles Krauthammer simply stating ‘Withdraw This Nominee’.

“To nominate someone whose adult life reveals no record of even participation in debates about constitutional interpretation is an insult to the institution and to that vision of the institution.”

“By choosing a nominee suggested by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and well known only to himself, the president has ducked a fight on the most important domestic question dividing liberals from conservatives: the principles by which one should read and interpret the Constitution. For a presidency marked by a courageous willingness to think and do big things, this nomination is a sorry retreat into smallness.”

Meanwhile, the president is sure Miers will be confirmed.

President Bush predicted Friday that Harriet Miers will be confirmed to the Supreme Court despite grumbling from conservatives that has led a few to call for the president to withdraw her nomination.

Asked he if would rule out ever seeing Miers’ name withdrawn, Bush did not answer directly — substituting instead words of confidence about her confirmation process. “She is going to be on the bench,” he said. “She’ll be confirmed.”

“I’m confident she’s going to be a Supreme Court judge who will not legislate from the bench and will strictly interpret the Constitution,” the president said after a meeting in the Oval Office with the prime minister of Hungary. “When she’s on the bench, people will see a fantastic woman who is honest, open, humble, and capable of being a great Supreme Court judge.”

News cycles are traditionally slow on weekends, and without a major news story to fill the void over the next couple of days, there will be plenty of opportunity for cable news networks and Sunday talk shows to continue the drumbeat of discontent.

What will Monday bring?

I don’t think we’ll see a withdrawal of this nomination by Bush. He’s already drawn the line and the political risk of doing a 180 right now is just too high. Miers may decide to withdraw on her own if she believes she’s doing irreparable harm to the president. But if she doesn’t hit the eject button herself, Karl Rove could solve the problem by privately ‘encouraging’ a majority of senators to vote the nomination down, thereby effectively saving face for the president. I’m not advocating that option, but as we all know, there are many paths to compromise in the 11th hour.

Penn Station has resumed normal operation after authorities shut it down earlier today. New terror threats have put The Big Apple on edge, and security in New York City is on high alert.

Authorities briefly closed part of Penn Station on Friday and commuters headed to work under the watchful eyes of police after a newly disclosed terror threat against the New York subway system.

A discarded soda bottle filled with an unidentified green liquid was found at the station during morning rush hour, Amtrak officials said. The substance did not pose a threat to passengers and was removed for testing.

Officials in New York revealed the threat Thursday, saying an FBI source warned that terrorists had plotted to bomb the subway in coming days. But Homeland Security officials in Washington downplayed the threat, saying it’s of “doubtful credibility.”

President Bush maintained that New York acted alone in unveiling the threat, but he wasn’t second guessing their decision nor was he suggesting they overreacted.

“Our job is to gather intelligence and pass it on to local authorities. And they make the judgements necessary to respond,” Bush told reporters. Administration security officials had said on Thursday the threat to New York was of “doubtful credibility,” a phrase repeated earlier Friday by Bush’s spokesman.

“The level of cooperation between the federal government and the local government is getting better and better. And part of that level of cooperation is the ability to pass information on. And we did, and they responded,” Bush said during a picture-taking session at the White House with the prime minister of Hungary.

Asked if he thought New York officials had overreacted, Bush said: “I think they took the information we gave and made the judgements they thought were necessary. And the American people have got to know that, one, we’re collecting information and sharing it with local authorities on a timely basis. And that’s important.”

The Counterterrorism Blog continues to provide great coverage of this story.

That is what’s causing New York City to enhance security on its mass transit system today. According to FOX News, the threat of a terrorist attack on the subway was investigated and deemed credible.

A NYPD source told FOX News that the threat involved 19 suitcase bombs to be placed in the subway system.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared at a news conference alongside Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly in which they announced the threat and said it was the most specific they had received to date.

“This is the first time we have had a threat with this level of specificity,” Bloomberg said.

The AP has more.

Even more here at the Counterterrorism Blog, including this little tidbit:

LOTS of inconsistent and cautious information from official and other CT Blog sources – DHS and NYPD clearly do not agree on this info. For instance, MSNBC: “Sources told NBC that the information came from a single informant of varying credibility…A homeland security official tells NBC News that though the source has “doubtful” credibility, the heightened security in NY is necessary out of an abundance of caution. The source has apparently given some accurate information in the past, and some inaccurate.” CNN reports that DHS sources said that the threat was deemed “not viable” although investigation still ongoing, indicating that DHS possibly would not have released info to public. Fox News & CNN first reported that their DHS sources indicate NO specific credible threat. CBS News’s Jim Stewart cites a source that this is “imagination run amok,” with no suspects currently in the U.S.

The Political Teen has video of Bloomberg’s news conference.