More Journalistic Serious Questioning

Chuck Todd: "The last question that Robert Gibbs received today was about Wesley Snipes. A reporter said, 'Wesley Snipes never would have had to go to jail had he been nominated to be Treasury Secretary."

You know because Wesley Snipes' willful failure to file Federal income tax returns is the same exact thing as Geithner's situation. Very serious news media we have in the White House Press Corps.


ADDING... On the bright side, you have people like Paul Krugman giving us some actual straight talk. Bad Faith Economics

Bush Legacy: The Madness of King George XLIII

We all know he was and is sorely lacking. The delusional press conference yesterday proved that George W. Bush's skewed view of what has transpired during his eight years in the Oval Office... or perhaps I should say seven years in the Oval Office and one year at his Crawford ranch, flies in the face of logic and facts. The video below is proof positive that Bush is completely deranged, has no clue of the damage he's done to the safety, security and moral standing of the country and shows in a microcosm the blunder that was the Bush Administration.

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And now comes word that even in what was hopefully his last press conference (barring his farewell address this coming Thursday), White House interns were used as seat fillers in the Press Briefing room after much pomp and circumstance of "Standing Room Only" warnings.

The White House had high expectations for yesterday's final, historic news conference. "ONE CORRESPONDENT PER ORGANIZATION," proclaimed the bulletin sent to reporters. "STANDING ROOM ONLY FOR NON-SEAT HOLDERS." But when the appointed hour of 9:15 a.m. arrived, the last two rows in the seven-row briefing room were empty, and a press aide told White House interns to fill those seats.

I was wondering who was was applauding as Bush left the podium. Now we know.

(H/T Bob Cesca)

Awww... Fox News Snub Streak Is Over

President-elect Barack Obama finally called on Fox News White House correspondent Wendell Goler during his press conference to announce Bill Richardson as the new Secretary of Commerce. Fox News had been shut out for five previous conferences as Obama rolled out his economic and national security teams, so you would think Goler would have a big question to ask.

He asked Obama if he was worried about Hank Paulson spending all the bailout money before he got to the White House. And to new Commerce Secretary Richardson? "What happened to the beard?"

I shit you not. He waited through six press conferences to ask about the New Mexico governor's beard. Awesome news group they have over there at Fox. Look at the chryon: ALERT! Fox News gets to ask a question! Our pants are now wet.

22,000 Dead in Myanmar Cyclone - First Lady Talks About Jenna's Wedding

You'd think MSNBC producers would pull the graphics and chyron stating the devastation in Myanmar, but they didn't.

Towards the end of a news confernce in which First Lady Laura Bush was answering questions (Lord knows about what) some intrepid White House Press Corp member asked for details about Jenna's wedding, with follow ups by other reporters. Laura Bush obliged and they all joked, but it seemed all a bit insensitive considering the conference dealt with Myanmar's tragedy.

Watch the video here.

T Minus 367/366 Days

From the calendar: "The night before Bush's first inauguration, members of Clinton's staff reportedly removed the "W" key from White House keyboards in protest of his election."

Kinda pisses me off that they couldn't find a quote for this day, he's had so goddamn many gaffes, but because so many people still believe the vandalism story to be true, let's research this, shall we?

ARI FLEISCHER PURPOSELY DECEIVED HIS PRESS COLLEAGUES RE CLINTON WHITE HOUSE BEHAVIOR

"NOT LONG after George W. Bush was sworn in as president, many were aghast to read in newspapers and hear on television that in the final days of the Clinton administration, employees had trashed the White House. Democrats were embarrassed, and Republicans, stroking their wallets, gloated that they knew all along the Clintons were hillbillies. The story began as a gossip item in The Washington Post that the letter ''W,'' Bush's middle initial, had been removed from keyboards, and within days it had mushroomed to a scandal reported prominently on TV and the front page of the Post. The details were startling: Walls had been desecrated with obscene graffiti, file cabinets glued shut, telephone wires cut, presidential seals steamed off doors and pornography left on fax machines. So extensive was the damage that a communications worker was said to have been reduced to tears and a national magazine hinted that the White House was spending $10,000 a day to repair phone systems damaged by departing Democrats. Talk-show hosts from the nutty right, like Jay Severin in Boston and his audience of dumb and dumbest, all congratulated themselves on having been proved right that the Clintons were trailer-park trash.

"And what of the Globe? At a time when Bush aides were privately promoting the story, Anne E. Kornblut of the Globe's Washington Bureau was filing stories that were skeptical. For example, at a briefing Jan. 25, Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer deceptively encouraged reporters' suspicions while refusing to confirm or deny reports of damage. The next day, in a 620-word account, Kornblut wrote: ''No public evidence exists that Clinton and Gore staff members vandalized the White House or Old Executive Office Building.'' For that statement, she was denounced by some for political bias and for not reporting in greater detail what one reader said was further evidence that under Clinton, America had seen the greatest moral decay since the founding of the nation. ''Kornblut either knows the truth and she wrote a blatantly dishonest, biased story,'' wrote Lee Vincent of Groton, Conn., ''or she is incompetent or inexcusably clueless about a widely known set of facts.'' Now, three months later, buried in the national briefs column in the Globe a few days ago was an AP story four sentences long that said an investigation by the General Accounting Office found no evidence of vandalism, no evidence of wires slashed, no evidence of equipment damaged, and no evidence or anything to match the allegations.

"Knowing how difficult it is to write against the current and risk the wrath of readers, not to mention the censure of editors, I called Kornblut to congratulate her for having covered the story with temperance and, above all, for having gotten it right. 'Just basic reporting,' she said. 'What made me suspicious was the fact that the White House wouldn't give specific examples and wouldn't say, on the record, that this happened here or that happened there. I made phone calls to people who told me it just wasn't true. Also, there were no pictures, and they never seemed to be able to say on the record, in public or at a press conference, here is what happened.'" --Boston Globe, 5/28/01

The General Services Administration has found that the White House vandalism flap earlier this year was a flop. The agency concluded that departing members of the Clinton administration had not trashed the place during the presidential transition, as unidentified aides to President Bush and other critics had insisted. Responding to a request from Rep. Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican, who asked for an investigation, the GSA found that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. "The condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy," according to a GSA statement. No wholesale slashing of cords to computers, copiers and telephones, no evidence of lewd graffiti or pornographic images. GSA didn't bother to nail down reports of pranks, which were more puckish than destructive. Among those pranks was the apparent removal, by aides to former President Bill Clinton, of the "w" key from some computer keyboards and the placing of official-looking signs on doors, saying things like "Office of Strategery," after a popular "Saturday Night Live" spoof on Bush. But the vandal scandal, tales of torn up offices and items stolen from the presidential jet, was the hottest story in town during the early days of the Bush administration until White House furniture and last-minute pardons pushed it off the front page. "I think it was this calculated effort to plant a damaging story," said Alex S. Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. "There was a sort of fertile ground for believing anything bad." Typical was Tony Snow, a syndicated columnist and former presidential speech writer for President Bush's father, who wrote that the White House "was a wreck." He also said that Air Force One, after taking Clinton and some aides to New York following the inauguration, "looked as if it had been stripped by a skilled band of thieves -- or perhaps wrecked by a trailer park twister." He went on to list all manner of missing items, including silverware, porcelain dishes with the presidential seal and even candy. "It makes one feel grateful that the seats and carpets are bolted down," Snow fumed. Except none of it happened. An official at Andrews Air Force Base, which maintains the presidential jets, told The Kansas City Star at the height of the controversy that nothing was missing. Bush himself acknowledged the same a few days later. And now GSA has made it official. --Kansas City Star, 5/17/01

Even back then, with the Clintons on their way out the door, these bastards had the nerve to kick them one last time, in true Rovian fashion, with lies about vandalism. And after they had handed the election on a silver platter by the Supreme Court. This is just another of many reasons why I hate these fucks. Looking at it in hindsight, it shows just how diabolical their thinking has been from the very beginning. It's not bad enough that they stole the election to begin with, they started spinning and mudslinging the very second they stepped in the White House.

The mentality on this one was, 'This has to be true. Why would anyone make up something this outrageous if they couldn't prove it?'. And they couldn't, but it didn't matter. It was the first of now hundreds of times the press became repeaters, not reporters. This was the turning point of where true journalism fell. Perhaps it was a test by then Press Secretary Fleischer to gauge the press corps he had to deal with, to see just how far he could get away with what would become the norm in the Bush White House. If they investigated, then he would know he'd have to be careful. If they just became human mimeograph machines, then all bets were off. Lie, lie, and lie became the status quo for the Bush Administration.

Hypocrite in Chief

As I sat mouth agape on my couch listening to Chimpy's latest press conference, a press gaggle riddled with so-called journalists who only agree with what the President has to say, my brain began to melt at the nonsense that was oozing out of his mouth.

Of course they saved the best question for last asking him his opinion of the MoveOn.Org "Petraeus/Betray Us" ad.

BUSH:

I thought the ad was disgusting. I felt like the ad was an attack not only on General Petraeus, but on the U.S. Military. And I was disappointed that not more leaders in the Democrat party spoke out strongly against that kind of ad. And that leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like Move-On-Dot-Org — or more afraid of irritating them, than they are of irritating the United States military. That was a sorry deal.

And there he is once again, with the usual "if you're anti-war then you are against the troops" bullshit. Bush insists that the Democrat-IC Party is making this a political issue, when all the while he's the one who set up General Petraeus as his front man. He's the one who crossed the line with using a military man as the latest mouthpiece for this administration.

I suppose it was alright and not "disgusting" when the Bush campaign slung mud at John McCain and Max Cleland. And where was the outrage after John Kerry was swiftboated?

If General Petraeus has betrayed anyone, it's himself. He wrote the book on battling counterinsurgency in which he quotes one soldier is needed for every 40 on the ground. That would equal approximately 650,000 US troops, the same number Generals Shinsecki and Abizaid said would be needed for success in Iraq before they were fired or resigned rather than deal with the know-nothings of the Bush administration.

Keith Olbermann's special comment was on point when it came to Bush's remarks yesterday:

OLBERMANN:

...you were the one who inappropriately interjected General Petraeus into the political dialogue of this nation in the first place!
Deliberately, premeditatedly, and virtually without precedent, you shanghaied a military man as your personal spokesman — and now you’re complaining about the outcome, and then running away from the microphone?

... The Republican Hamstringing of Captain Max Cleeland and lying about Lieutenant John Kerry met with your approval? But a shot at General Petraeus — about whom you conveniently ignore it is you who reduced him from four-star hero to a political hack — that merits this pissy juvenile blast at the Democrats on national television?

... Mr. Bush, you have hidden behind the General’s skirts, and today you have hidden behind the skirts of ‘the planted last question’ at a news conference, to indicate once again that your presidency has been about the tilted playing field, about no rules for your party in terms of character assassination and changing the fabric of our nation, and no right for your opponents or critics to as much as respond.

That, sir, is not only un-American — it is dictatorial.

The worst part of all of this is that 22 Democrats in the Senate bit hook, line and sinker into the Bush bait and voted on a non binding resolution to condemn the MoveOn ad.

Don't they have better things to do than waste time talking about an ad? By the way, they just denounced free speech. I suppose we can just scratch out the 1st Amendment to the Constitution.

Conditions at Walter Reed Hospital

Okay, let's see how the administration handles this one.

"We've done our duty. We fought the war. We came home wounded. Fine. But whoever the people are back here who are supposed to give us the easy transition should be doing it," said Marine Sgt. Ryan Groves, 26, an amputee who lived at Walter Reed for 16 months. "We don't know what to do. The people who are supposed to know don't have the answers. It's a nonstop process of stalling."

The common perception of Walter Reed is of a surgical hospital that shines as the crown jewel of military medicine. But 5 1/2 years of sustained combat have transformed the venerable 113-acre institution into something else entirely -- a holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged outpatients. Almost 700 of them -- the majority soldiers, with some Marines -- have been released from hospital beds but still need treatment or are awaiting bureaucratic decisions before being discharged or returned to active duty.

By now you have probably already heard of the deplorable conditions at Water Reed. Half-fallen down ceilings weighted with mold, mouse droppings and dead cockroaches, stained carpet and cheap mattresses. But the question remains, how is this administration going address it and answer for it? And how is the press corps in the White House going to ask the questions that need to be asked?

Here is part of an interview between Keith Olbermann and Jon Soltz, an Iraq war vet who is now Chairman of the political action committee VoteVets.org:

SOLTZ: Last year, the Republican Congress decided they were going to "brac" a lot of military installations around the country, which means "base realignment enclosure". Walter Reed came up on that list. So I think you're seeing the effects of that policy, which is "why are you going to fix the paint and clear the mice out of an institution that's closing?" I think the second striking thing about this piece is that this is actually a part of the Department of Defense. This is not the Veterans Administration which we know is woefully underfunded. The DoD is responsible for these soldiers until they leave active duty.
So basically, the same administration that brought us no body armor and no up-armored humvees is the same administration that brought us mice at Walter Reed. Their support for the war fighter is abysmal.

OLBERMANN: Even if this country had to pay full price at private hospitals so these guys, our neighbors and our friends, could get the care that they need... at full price - no insurance - could the cost possibly amount to more than a microscopic fraction of the billions we've seen vanish down the rabbit holes in Iraq?

JS: No sir, not at all. VoteVets.org, we did this big commercial with body armor and we blew up the body armor and it cost me $1,000 on Ebay to buy the piece; and when my unit went to Iraq , we were cross-leveling plates, we didn't have up-armored humvees and took public embarrassment for that. So the tactical equipment is actually not that expensive. What makes this so shocking is that the money is there for the Pentagon. They get what they request, they get the supplemental from Congress. So what this is, is an administration that is dedicated to the high end corporate contractors, the high end weapons systems in the sky, the super-duper missile defense systems that alienate our allies. These are the same people that are making $40 million a year on their corporate contracts, and that money is coming into the political system on one side. One of the things we do at VoteVets is try to fight for the war fighter and in this specific case, there's no reason why we can't spend the small money on the regular war fighter when we're spending the large money on weapons systems that aren't making a difference on the war on terror.

KO: Where are the Republicans speaking about the treatment of these maimed Americans? And where are the Democrats in their protest on this? Why is there no outrage about this extraordinary circumstance?

JS: I think this is a larger issue. A lot of people think supporting the troops right now means putting a $3 yellow magnet made in Hong Kong on the back of their Hummer and saying they support the troops. I think debate has been absent for a long time, that people would rather flip the channel than deal with the war.
As for the Republicans, the president just presented another budget that slams the VA two years down the road; it was woefully underfunded last year by $2 billion.
As for the Democrats, I think we're seeing movement in this direction. Congressman Murtha's plan here is basically not to let more guys go into Iraq unless they're trained properly, unless they're equipped properly. So this is the first time we're seeing oversight from Congress and I expect to see that. And there's no reason why the President and the Secretary of Defense shouldn't have an immediate investigation. I think Congress should demand hearings immediately on this because our troops deserve the best, and they deserve support worthy of the sacrifices they're making in this war.

Now we wait for the next step. Will there be investigations into yet another administration atrocity?

Watch the whole interview here.

Washington Post Sunday, Feb 18 piece here.