Must Reads

Frank Schaeffer: President Obama Will Be Vindicated

E.J. Dionne: Clint, Rick and the limits of pessimism

Sahil Kapur: GOP Ripe For Splits In Assault On Birth Control Rule

NY Times Editorial: A Terrible Transportation Bill

Greg Hanscom: Non-starter: Republican transportation bill is dead on arrival

HuffPo: Cal Thomas Apologizes To Rachel Maddow For Contraception Comment

Rachel Maddow: War on Birth Control

Roger Bybee: Obama/Catholic Contraception Controversy Boils Down to Workers’ Rights

Mark Morford: How to be Outraged in America

Steve Benen: Chronicling Mitt's mendacity

Must Reads

Chauncey DeVega: The 10 Most Racist Moments of the GOP Primary (So Far)

Andrew Rosenthal: Chris Christie, Revisionist Historian

NY Times: Rabbi’s Followers Cast Doubts on Congressman’s Fund-Raising

James B. Stewart: Paying Far More Than 13.9%: A Taxpayer’s Lament

John Pitney Jr.: Why Gingrich would lose in a debate with Obama

Christopher Brauchli: The Condom's Cousins

Matt Taibbi: Is Obama's 'Economic Populism' for Real?

Jim Wright: The Special Kind of Crazy

An Open Letter to Arthur Brisbane

Here is my response to Arthur Brisbane, New York Times' Public Editor after his piece, "Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?" If you haven't read it yet, although I don't know how you may have missed it with all the hullabaloo about it, please follow the link.

Dear Mr. Brisbane:

"[Our readers] worry less about reporters imposing their judgment on what is false and what is true."

This line most struck me in your piece as an interesting take on what you feel is "judgment" as opposed to journalism. I was always under the impression that a reporter's job was not only to report on the facts of what they witnessed or heard, but also to distinguish between what is truth and what isn't.

The Mitt Romney example you put forth regarding his repeated accusation of President Obama "apologizing for America" is a perfect example. But let's take it one step further and ask the following: What if Mitt Romney had said that President Obama goes around the world insisting that the sky is green? Is the reporter bound to play stenographer and simply repeat the quote, or is he obligated to research the truthfulness of that quote in an effort to paint a more accurate picture? Facts are facts, opinions are opinions and lies are lies. The phrase "imposing their judgement" implies the reporter is giving their opinion and facts are secondary and inconvenient.

Maybe there is a difference between journalism and investigative journalism, but there shouldn't be. I would imagine a reporter wants to be as accurate as possible, and if that means researching to prove the subject of their story truthful or not, then in my opinion, that's what the job must entail. Otherwise, anyone can be a reporter simply by recording and transcribing an event.

Thanks,
Broadway Carl

And to me, that's the long and short of it. An entire online industry was born to fact check what journalists don't. Poltifact, Media Matters, FactCheck and others are watch dogs to what politicians, pundits and talking heads pass as news, but even some of them are now afraid to be labeled as biased toward the liberal end of the scale and try to play it down the middle. This was clearly evidenced by Politifact's 2011 Lie of the Year, calling the Democrats' accusation that the Paul Ryan economic plan would end Medicare as we know it, a falsehood.

Anyone looking at Ryan's plan would come to that conclusion - simply keeping the "Medicare" name while making the program an inadequate voucher system does not mean Medicare equals Medicare. I could shit in a box and gift wrap it, complete with a "Medicare" label on it. Does that make it Medicare? But I digress.

I agree with Tweeter @Shoq that the conversation is an important one, but I also understand the blowback when such a question need be asked, and that a reporter fact checking someone he/she is covering would be categorized as "truth vigilantism." There are still a majority of the population who rely on the fourth estate for their daily news. They assume what they read in major newspapers is fact. Opinion should be left in the editorial pages, but front page news must deal with the facts and be accurate. And I believe that it is the responsibility of the reporter to research the subject and double check the accuracy of the subject's statements.

This Guy Wants To Be President

For the last couple of weeks I've been watching the mainstream media give more and more time to the preposterous idea that Donald Trump is a legitimate contender for the Republican nomination for President. I couldn't turn on a cable news channel or broadcast news channel for that matter without seeing Trump's face demanding he be taken seriously while spouting debunked birther conspiracy theories whenever he opened his mouth. I would look at him and my first thought wasn't, "This guy would make a great president" so much as "I wonder what his hair looks like when he gets out of the shower." I don't think "Trump would be an awesome president." I think "A Trump presidency would be a national embarrassment."

And now we get to see how thin-skinned The Donald actually is courtesy of New York Times columnist Gail Collins. Last week, Collins decided to turn in a column deriding Trump for his headline grabbing ways, out-crazying the wingnut contenders by stealing the keys and taking a joyride in the Birther bandwagon. He insists on making his case with three year old debunked theories on the Kenyan-born, possibly Muslim, birth certificateless, Manchurian candidate President.  He's made his main talking point that this fake controversy is "the greatest scam in history." It doesn't matter that all these theories have been proven false. He's got people investigating and "they cannot believe what they’re finding." No details, of course, they just can't believe it. Maybe they can't believe their good fortune in being paid handsomely by Trump to investigate something that has been thoroughly exhausted; something that the Clinton campaign machine and the McCain campaign Edsel couldn't find. Something that can easily be Googled. Or maybe Orly Taitz is giving him legal advice while cleaning his teeth.

But the Collins opinion was just too much for Trump to bear, so he wrote a letter to the editor. A letter, that while insulting Collins for her "storytelling ability," sounds like it was written by a marginal high school student trying to sound smarter than he is. He then goes on to restate the whole birther nonsense, sticking to his guns, refusing to believe anyone or anything that proves the opposite.

Collins of course had to respond with a rebuttal today including other crazy shit Trump has said these last few weeks, like it was Bill Ayers who actually wrote "Dreams From My Father" or that people who went to school with Obama never saw him. She goes on to once again disprove the ridiculous statements, but no matter. At this point, Trump is all in and nothing anyone says can make him think any different. ...Maybe that's how he bankrupted his casinos.

But here's the thing: if a New York Times opinion columnist gets him so easily riled that he feels the need to write a letter, how is he going to react to the constant ridicule from primary challengers and media personnel during the campaign? You can see how upset he gets when someone disagrees with him, how emotional he becomes when he feels he's being interrupted (see the Meredith Vieira interview). How is he going to survive a year long campaign with that short hair trigger when Howard Dean was drummed out of the Democratic race in '04 for displaying his excitement after the Iowa primary results?

But I suppose Trump doesn't have to worry about that, because there's no way he'll run. There's no way he'll want to be viewed under a microscope with such scrutiny. This whole thing is a ratings ploy for his reality show, nothing more. And the fact that Republicans rate Trump second in a favorability poll combined with the antics of the fractured House majority being run by Tea Party freshmen reveals the sad state of the Republican party.

Quote of the Week

If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.

~ Frank Rich, March 28th, 2010 New York Times Op-Ed

Friedman Jacks Off On The Military

I really run hot and cold with Tom Friedman. Mostly cold. I'd like to dismiss him altogether but even a broken journalist is right twice a day, as in the case of his analysis on the current political climate of Obama hate coming from the far right.

But Friedman's latest column in which he suggests that President Obama embarrass the Nobel Committee by accepting the Peace Prize not on his behalf but instead on behalf of all the US military who have ever fought because they are the true peace keepers is a little over the top. Well, it would only be a little over the top if he'd just left it at that. What drives him over the Thelma and Louise egde is going on and on and writing an Obama speech in which the President stands before the US military, drops trou and proceeds to give them all a pearl necklace because of how fucking awesome they are. He then leaves a medal with Alfred Nobel's portrait on the side table and tells them he'll see them in Afghanistan.

Friedman seems to confuse empty Sarah Palin style military rhetoric with anything our President has ever said. That's where Friedman blew it, and his load, on this one.

Must Reads

The Declaration of Independence

The Progress Report: The New 'Judicial Activism'

NY Times Editorial: Firefighters and Race

Lt. Col. Barry Wingard: No Justice Today at Guantanamo

Digby: How It Happens

Susie Madrak: Compare and Contrast: A Woman With Pneumonia Goes to The Local Clinic

Bob Cesca: Time for President Obama to Throw Down Against the Corrupt and Spineless

Steve Benen: A Pattern Emerges...

Joe Conason: Suddenly, a Trillion Dollars Is Too Expensive?

Paul Krugman: That 30's Show and Secrets of the WSJ

Robert Gordon: Letter to Obama from a Dying Man

The Rude Pundit: George Washington Would Kick Teabaggers' Asses

Armadillo Joe recommends...

Matt Taibbi: Goldman Sachs is reeling under public pressure

Andrew O'Hehir: The un-American way of life

James Wolcott: Sarah Palin Taunts John McCain with Her Runaway Caboose

Sotomayor - UPDATED

NY Times: President Obama has decided to nominate the federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, choosing a daughter of Puerto Rican parents raised in Bronx public housing projects to become the nation’s first Hispanic justice, officials said Tuesday.

And wingnuts go apeshit in 5... 4... 3...

UPDATE (2:45pm): Boom! goes the wingnuts' heads!

Charles Krauthammer is already snarling on Fox News, warning viewers of the possible danger that -- as he put it -- Sotomayor's "concern for certain ethnicities override justice." He said that although her confirmation is certain, conservatives should oppose her nomination on principle and highlight that the type of justice Sotomayor allegedly represents -- justice that is unfair to white people in favor of "certain ethnicities" -- is deeply pernicious.

Glenn Beck: "Hey, Hispanic chick lady! You're empathetic ... you're in!"

Rumsfeld's Bible Thumping

What the fuck?!

Frank Rich: This Sunday, GQ magazine is posting on its Web site an article adding new details to the ample dossier on how Donald Rumsfeld’s corrupt and incompetent Defense Department cost American lives and compromised national security. The piece is not the work of a partisan but the Texan journalist Robert Draper, author of “Dead Certain,” the 2007 Bush biography that had the blessing (and cooperation) of the former president and his top brass. It draws on interviews with more than a dozen high-level Bush loyalists.

Draper reports that Rumsfeld’s monomaniacal determination to protect his Pentagon turf led him to hobble and antagonize America’s most willing allies in Iraq, Britain and Australia, and even to undermine his own soldiers. But Draper’s biggest find is a collection of daily cover sheets that Rumsfeld approved for the Secretary of Defense Worldwide Intelligence Update, a highly classified digest prepared for a tiny audience, including the president, and often delivered by hand to the White House by the defense secretary himself. These cover sheets greeted Bush each day with triumphal color photos of the war headlined by biblical quotations. GQ is posting 11 of them, and they are seriously creepy.

Take the one dated April 3, 2003, two weeks into the invasion, just as Shock and Awe hit its first potholes. Two days earlier, on April 1, a panicky Pentagon had begun spreading its hyped, fictional account of the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch to distract from troubling news of setbacks. On April 2, Gen. Joseph Hoar, the commander in chief of the United States Central Command from 1991-94, had declared on the Times Op-Ed page that Rumsfeld had sent too few troops to Iraq. And so the Worldwide Intelligence Update for April 3 bullied Bush with Joshua 1:9: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Including, as it happened, into a quagmire.)

What’s up with that? As Draper writes, Rumsfeld is not known for ostentatious displays of piety. He was cynically playing the religious angle to seduce and manipulate a president who frequently quoted the Bible. But the secretary’s actions were not just oily; he was also taking a risk with national security. If these official daily collages of Crusade-like messaging and war imagery had been leaked, they would have reinforced the Muslim world’s apocalyptic fear that America was waging a religious war. As one alarmed Pentagon hand told Draper, the fallout “would be as bad as Abu Ghraib.”

Read the entire article.

Dowd on Cheney: The man who never talked is now the man who won’t shut up.

I don't say this often, but great Maureen Dowd piece on Dick Cheney.

Flashback: Exxon Valdez

20 years ago today.



In March 1989, the Exxon Valdez supertanker, with an inebriated captain, ran aground on Bligh Reef, ruptured and spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, contaminating about 900 miles of shoreline.

The damage to the fishing industry and to native subsistence hunting lasted for years. Exxon originally was ordered by a federal court to pay $5 billion in punitive damages in 1994. A federal appeal in 2006 reduced it to $2.5 billion

On June 25, 2008, the United States Supreme Court further reduced the damages to just over $500 million.

Liberal Media's New Version of 'My Pet Goat'

Yesterday, President and Mrs. Obama stopped in on a class of second graders to visit and read a story and answer questions. Although the visit was planned, it was not announced.

The president and first lady Michelle Obama slipped out of the White House early Tuesday and visited second-graders at Capital City Public Charter School, a public school in D.C. "We were just tired of being in the White House," the president candidly told the students. "We got out! They let us out!" Mrs. Obama said as the kids and their teachers laughed. He and his wife read the students a book about the inspirational story of astronauts landing on the moon. He took a class photo, accepted hugs from the children, thanked them for pictures they made him, and even delivered them a couple of brown-paper bags full of books.

Our "liberal" media took the opportunity to make a comparison of this visit with the infamous 'My Pet Goat' Deer-in-the-Headlights - Run-For-Your-Lives debacle on the morning of September 11, 2001.

MSNBC's CONTESSA BREWER: Tamron, this was something of a flashback for many of us. As his nominee for Health Secretary was going down, the first couple paid a surprise visit to a DC charter school to read a book to children.

And Maureen Dowd of the 'liberal' New York Times, had this to say:

On 9/11, President Bush learned of disaster while reading “The Pet Goat” to grade-school kids. On Tuesday, President Obama escaped from disaster by reading “The Moon Over Star” to grade-school kids.

Are these bastions of liberal media, MSNBC and Maureen Dowd*, comparing Obama's visit as HHS nominee Tom Daschle withdrew his name from consideration to the madness of King George sitting in frozen terror for nine minutes while airliners kamikazied the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, the Pentagon and another went down in Pennsylvania?

Did Brewer just compare Tom Daschle "going down" to the airplanes going down? Or just the Towers? Did Dowd compare the 9/11 disaster that killed 3,000 Americans to Daschle's tax "disaster" and infer that Obama took off to a local school in order to avoid it? Even after he went on every major network to express his disappointment and anger but take responsibility for and apologize to the American people? (Something we never saw Bush do in eight long years.)

Boy, we certainly are lucky that we have a liberal media that has President Obama's back. Can you imagine if they were against him?

* That was Dowd's opening paragraph, and it didn't get much better after that.

(H/T Bob Cesca)

Respect For The Office

We had eight years, eight excruciatingly long years under one of the most, if not the most, criminal administrations in our nation's history under George W. Bush.

And just less than two weeks into President Obama's tenure, we now have this little nugget crapped out from former Bush White House chief of staff Andrew Card:

"...I found that Ronald Reagan and both President Bushes treated the Oval Office with tremendous respect. They treated the Office of the Presidency with tremendous respect. And some of that respect was reflected in how they expected people to behave, how they expected them to dress when they walked into the symbol of freedom for the world, the Oval Office. And yes, I'm disappointed to see the casual, laissez faire, short sleeves, no shirt and tie, no jacket, kind of locker room experience that seems to be taking place in this White House and the Oval Office."

Yes, you read that correctly. You can apparently wipe your ass with the Constitution of the United States while serving in the Bush administration, but you'd better damned well be wearing a jacket in the Oval Office while you do it.

This is almost too ridiculous to take seriously, but apparently Card was very serious while being interviewed by conservative radio douche Michael Medved when he was asked about the New York Times article regarding the "more informal culture" in the Obama White House.

Here is the picture that accompanied the article:

Pete Souza/White House, via Bloomberg News

Well, obviously it's clear to see why Card was upset. You can plainly witness the "short sleeves." Look! There's Vice President Biden sitting around shirtless and tieless. And is that Rahm Emanuel I see wearing a tank top, cargo shorts and flip-flops while shooting spitballs at the portrait of Abraham Lincoln?! And what's this?! Obama is snapping a towel at Biden's ass! OUTRAGEOUS LOCKER ROOM BEHAVIOR!

Perhaps Card doesn't understand that the phrase "respect for the office" doesn't literally mean the physical office. Because lord knows George W. Bush showed no respect for the office after twice swearing an oath to preserve, protect and defend that "goddamn piece of paper" as he so eloquently put it.* Respect for the office isn't about the ill-fitting, wrinkled suit you wear or the shine on your shoes. Respect for the office isn't the admiration for a rug that your wife designed.

But Andrew Card thinks he knows better. Let me remind you that this is the same Andrew Card who accompanied then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales in the dark of night to the hospital room of ailing Attorney General John Ashcroft in an attempt to get him to sign documents reauthorizing President Bush's domestic surveillance program that the Justice Department had deemed illegal. But he talks about respect for the office.

The "symbol of freedom for the world" as Card puts it is not the Oval Office. Arguably, the symbol of freedom for the world is the leader of the free world. So perhaps, when travelling around the world, the former leader of the "free" world could have shown more respect for the office than this, or this. Or this. Or this. Or this. Or this. Or... well, you get the picture.

So Mr. Card, I respectfully suggest that you shut the fuck up. These men are getting down to the business of righting the previous administration's utter incompetence and devastation they wrought on this country. So maybe they take off their jackets and roll up their sleeves to get to work. I know you probably only saw that from your former boss for the sake of a photo op, but get used to it here. The big boys are in town now, and if they want to take off their jackets to dig into a hard day's work that doesn't end at 6pm like you were used to, what difference does it make?

(H/T Steve Benen)

* While Fact Check.org doubts the validity of this story, former President Bush has never denied it, nor has it ever been proven completely false. The doubt is speculative.

John Updike Dies at 76

NY TIMES: John Updike, the kaleidoscopically gifted writer whose quartet of Rabbit Angstrom novels highlighted so vast and protean a body of fiction, verse, essays and criticism as to earn him comparisons with Henry James and Edmund Wilson among American men of letters, died today at a hospice outside Boston. He was 76 and lived in Beverly Farms, Mass.

William Kristol's Last New York Times Column

William Kristol issued his final column for the New York Times today and the collective sigh of relief could be heard across progressive America wherever you stood. However, Kristol, who was most known for being wrong pretty much every time he opened his mouth or put pen to paper, did his best to outdo himself. I suppose he figured since he was going down in flames, he may as well just vomit out any outrageous thing that came to mind.

This one paragraph alone had me in stitches:

Since Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, conservatives of various sorts, and conservatisms of various stripes, have generally been in the ascendancy. And a good thing, too! Conservatives have been right more often than not — and more often than liberals — about most of the important issues of the day: about Communism and jihadism, crime and welfare, education and the family. Conservative policies have on the whole worked — insofar as any set of policies can be said to “work” in the real world. Conservatives of the Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush years have a fair amount to be proud of.

Tell me you don't have tears rolling down your cheeks after reading that! He does admit that there have been "some regrets." Really, Bill? Do tell! He doesn't, but qualifies conservative ascendancy was due to the timing of liberalism's weakness in the 60s and 70s.

The main point of his column is the question of whether Obama "can save liberalism." The only reason I know that is because that's the title of his column. There's really nothing in the column to suggest the trouble with liberalism and how it needs saving, despite the fact that the GOP has been trounced in the last two elections. But judging by his track record, the last thing I'd want is any advice from Kristol about anything, especially how to save liberalism.

My other favorite line in this article from the man who was wrong on Iraq every step of the way, goes on to say how Obama's inaugural speech was "unabashedly pro-American and implicitly conservative." Did you expect it to be anti-American? And implicitly conservative? It all depends on how Kristol is defining "conservative," doesn't it? If he's going by the last eight years, then phrases like "we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord" and "We'll restore science to its rightful place"* and "we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals" are a direct repudiation of Kristol's previous "implicitly conservative" administration.

Kristol also seems to have trouble with Obama's only quote not being attributed to Thomas Paine, as if Paine is some kind of pariah and Obama didn't want people to know that it was a quote from "The Crisis."

For some reason, Obama didn’t identify the author of “these timeless words” — the only words quoted in the entire speech. He’s Thomas Paine, and the passage comes from the first in his series of Revolutionary War tracts, “The Crisis.” Obama chose to cloak his quotation from the sometimes intemperate Paine in the authority of the respectable George Washington.

Please, Bill, continue. Are you on to something? Why does Obama do this, Bill? What is your analysis? Of course, Kristol doesn't say. He just let's it hang out there. But that's always been Kristol's modus operandi. Throw something out there that sounds unbecoming, almost insulting, but for no apparent reason except to cast doubt on the subject and perhaps for plausible deniability when he's called on it. Ooh! Paine was "intemperate," calling for revolution against the evil British, and since Obama chose Paine's words, we'll have to keep a keen eye on how he governs. Sometimes I think Kristol literally takes a crap on a sheet of 8½" x 11" paper and turns it in as his op-ed piece.

Today I have a spring in my step, a song in my heart and a smile on my face because this is what I read at the end of Kristol's New York Times op-ed page: "This is William Kristol’s last column." And there was much rejoicing... Hooray!


* On a side note, who thought that they'd ever hear the words, "we'll restore science to its rightful place" coming from the mouth of a US President in 21st century America?

Must Reads

Scott Shane: Torture Remarks May Force Hand of New Administration

Paul Krugman: Forgive and Forget?

Amira Hass: Is Israel Using Illegal Weapons in Its Offensive on Gaza?

Matt Taibbi: Bush Apologizes: The Farewell Interview We Wish He'd Give

Where In the World Is Vicki Iseman?

Oh, there she is... and she's suing the New York Times for defamation.

A Washington lobbyist on Tuesday sued The New York Times for publishing an article that she says suggests she once had a romantic relationship with 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

The lawsuit, filed by lawyers for Vicki Iseman in a Richmond, Virginia, federal court, seeks $27 million in damages.

It claims that Iseman, a lobbyist at the firm Alcalde & Fay, was defamed by the Feb. 21 article and that she suffered damage to her reputation as well as to her emotional and mental health.

Okay, I have no problem with someone who believes they have been publicly defamed to sue. But what the fuck took so long? Why is this suit coming TEN MONTHS after the article? If I remember correctly, no one, NO ONE, could find this woman as she apparently went into hiding after the article was published. We couldn't even find a fucking current photo of her and still can't. All we got was this.

And now she's deciding to sue for $27 million?! I'm sorry, but if there was a time to do this, it was February 22, 2008 - the day after the article came out - a sign that she wasn't going to take this shit and was going to vigorously defend herself. Instead, she did her best impression of Greta Garbo*. If she had nothing to hide, why go into hiding? And I'm not going to accept the argument that it would have been a distraction from the presidential race. I'll dismiss that faster than you can say Rev. Wright. That's a bullshit excuse.

There ought to be a statute of limitations on stupidity.

* - Rumor has it that John McCain dated Greta Garbo in high school.

Must Reads

Bob Herbert: Stop Being Stupid

Joby Warrick: CIA buys Afghan chief's loyalty with Viagra

Must Reads

Joe Conason: Obama's Shrewd Choices

Robert Pear, NY Times: Bush Aides Rush to Enact a Safety Rule Obama Opposes

Ceci Connelly, Washington Post: US Health Care -'Not Getting What We Pay For'

All The News We Hope To Print - UPDATED

On the way in to work this morning, I was handed a copy of the New York Times for free. "How nice," I thought. But then I read the headline and spit out my coffee. IRAQ WAR ENDS.

What the fuck?! That was fast! Obama rules!

This morning, commuters in New York City were handed free copies of what appeared to be the New York Times. In fact, what they had been given was a surprisingly elaborate forgery: A fake version of the paper dated July 4th, 2009 that offers as its lead story "IRAQ WAR ENDS."

Other headlines in the paper, which is full of stories that, if true, would be cause for celebration among liberals, include "USA Patriot Act Repealed" and "National Health Insurance Act Passes"; the fake newspaper's slogan is "All the news we hope to print."

It's a full 14 page print version - a website version is also available but it seems overloaded.

Later on Wednesday morning, the Yes Men issued a statement claiming credit for the prank. The statement said, in part:

In an elaborate operation six months in the planning, 1.2 million papers were printed at six different presses and driven to prearranged pickup locations, where thousands of volunteers stood ready to pass them out on the street.

Pretty fucking brilliant. Even the ads are fake, but oh, so good. Here's what the full page ad from Exxon Mobil read:

We at Exxon are committed to meeting the new Congressional guidelines for socially, economically, & environmentally responsible enery. That's why we applaud the end of the war in Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq was supposed to mean access to oil without the costly interference of national sovereignty, and lower prices at the pump for you and your family. Projections and reality differed, but now we've learned: PEACE can also be lucrative.

Times have changed. Oil fields have reverted back to a newly independent Iraq, and Congress has mandated "Fair Trade," in which most profits go not to brokers, stockholders and a small management circle, but flow directly to those who produce. Exxon is excited about helping do things better - not just because it's the law, but because Exxon has always been about innovation. It's also an opportunity to turn over a new leaf. As Exxon finds itself under feredal oversight, we are more than happy to use our profits to develop sustainable, decentralized energy production. This will help fight further climate change, and prevent costly new wars over energy in the future. After all, if everyone can turn the sun or wind into power, what's there to fight about?

Peace. An idea the world can profit from.

Brought to you by Exxon. Finding decent ways to deliver the energy you need.

________________________

Now that's an advertisement!

Of course, my favorite article is "Court Indicts Bush on High Treason Charge." I'll scan and post it late tonight.

UPDATE (11/13/08 10:40am): Here's that scan. It' looks so much better in print, doesn't it? (Click on picture for full size.)