The right wingnut Mighty Wurlitzer has been going after Sonia Sotomayor for the simple reason that she was on President Obama’s short list for the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy.

Jameson Foser (via Murshed Zaheed):

Where does Sonia Sotomayor go to get her reputation back?

May 08, 2009 6:14 pm ET

With last week’s news that President Obama will soon get to choose a Supreme Court nominee, media immediately began speculating about who he would choose. And, just as quickly, some media started trying to undermine potential selections. (Back when Democrats were expressing skepticism about President Bush’s nomination of Samuel Alito to the high court, the media chastised them for “pre-judging” the nomination. Now the media itself is rushing to judge nominees before they are even nominees. What a difference a few years make.)

Second Circuit Court of Appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor has been the subject of the harshest criticism, led by New Republic writer Jeffrey Rosen. Rosen took a brief glance at Sotomayor’s rulings, talked to a few people who don’t like her, and typed up their anonymous complaints. Sound like an overly harsh assessment of Rosen’s research? It isn’t. In fact, that’s pretty much how Rosen himself describes his research…

Also from Media Matters: Will media note political motives behind conservative criticisms of SCOTUS nominee?

It now appears that she may indeed be his nominee:

Worst Kept Secret In Town To Be Revealed: Sotomayor Announcement

And I hate meta.

It all started late last night with this little Twitter post from Chad Livengood, political reporter for the Springfield, Missouri News-Leader:

RT @edronco: (via @faraichideya) “I would trust citizen journalism as much as I would trust citizen surgery.” – Morley Safer, CBS News about 9 hours ago from web

I replied:

@ChadLivengood I would trust “professional” reporting on politics as much as I would trust the same reporting on inside the beltway parties. about 9 hours ago from web in reply to ChadLivengood

Uh, oh. A pile on.

@ChadLivengood Oh dear god. What are you so afraid of? about 9 hours ago from web in reply to ChadLivengood

Then Blue Girl opened up via Twitter:

I dunno, @ChadLivengood. Rather depends on the citizen, don’t you think? Take me for instance. 25 Yrs trauma team, I can save you. about 9 hours ago from txt

@ChadLivengood…And by the way, sport, it was MY argument that got the Libby pre-sentensing letters released, NOT THE TRADITIONAL MEDIA!!! about 9 hours ago from txt

Let me draw an analogy for you, @ChadLivengood. We may be an invasive species in your habitat, so? Adapt or die. Law of the jungle,Baby.Deal about 9 hours ago from txt

1 Lst thng,@ChadLivengood: if your kind hadn’t dropped the ball, there would have been no void for us to fill, and I sure wouldn’t b makng$ about 9 hours ago from txt

And bhindepmo weighed in:

@ChadLivengood At least some certified public journalists walk amongst us citizen journalists. We blog because founding newspapers is tough about 7 hours ago from web in reply to ChadLivengood

Here’s the Twitter post from Ed Ronco, repeated by Chad Livengood:

RT @faraichideya (via @KelleyLCarter) “I would trust citizen journalism as much as I would trust citizen surgery.” – Morley Safer, CBS News 3:44 PM May 22nd from web

Here’s the Twitter post, from Farai Chideya:

” I would trust citizen journalism as much as I would trust citizen surgery.” — Morley Safer, CBS News via TheTurnerReport.com 2:53 PM May 22nd from web

Is this starting to look like a children’s game?

The Turner Report quote:

…Quote of the Week

“The blogosphere is no alternative, crammed as it is with ravings and manipulations of every nut with a keyboard… Good journalism is structured and structure means responsibility… I would trust citizen journalism as much as I would trust citizen surgery.” -Morley Safer, CBS News…

Which lead to TVNewser:

Thursday, May 21

Morley Safer: “I Would Trust Citizen Journalism As Much As I Would Trust Citizen Surgery”

In a speech after receiving the 2009 Fred Friendly First Amendment Award from Quinnipiac University, Morley Safer discussed the impact on journalism of the troubled newspaper industry.

“The blogosphere is no alternative, crammed as it is with ravings and manipulations of every nut with a keyboard,” he is quoted in a Qunnipiac press release as saying yesterday. “Good journalism is structured and structure means responsibility…I would trust citizen journalism as much as I would trust citizen surgery…”

Which lead to the original Morley Safer quote via a press release from Quinnipiac University:

Quinnipiac University Presents Fred Friendly Award to Morley Safer

NEW YORK, May 20 PRNewswire-USNewswire — Morley Safer, the “60 Minutes” correspondent, expressed concern Wednesday about the future of journalism as the newspaper industry continues to shrink.

“The death or disintegration of local newspapers threatens all of journalism and by extension the public’s right to know,” said Safer, who received the 2009 Fred Friendly First Amendment Award from Quinnipiac University Wednesday. About 120 broadcast journalists and network executives attended the 16th annual event at the Metropolitan Club.

“In small towns and cities, who will be snooping in city hall, in zoning boards and town councils where developers and low-level politicos earn their graduate degrees in corruption?” Safer said.

The award winning journalist also said he does not think that citizen journalism is the solution.

“The blogosphere is no alternative, crammed as it is with ravings and manipulations of every nut with a keyboard,” Safer said. “Good journalism is structured and structure means responsibility. …I would trust citizen journalism as much as I would trust citizen surgery…”

Yes, yes, just who is snooping in those places where people “…earn their graduate degrees in corruption…?” Just asking.

Structure? I’m just waiting for someone to explain the Faux News Channel and sainted journalists.

You know, this could all be resolved if we would just convene a panel on blogger ethics.

Representative John Burnett (D-40) posted via Twitter about private jail legislation in the General Assembly:

HB 44 Private jail. Sponsor says he took my amdt requiring pvt jails to notify sheriffs of escapes. Odd. He voted and argued against it. 4:27 PM May 15th from web

HB 44 passes 108-44. Phony private jail reform. Exactly what private jails wanted. 4:54 PM May 15th from web

I found the first post particularly interesting, so I inquired via Twitter:

@johnburnettkc HB [SB?] 44. Private jails. Who is the sponsor you refer to who voted against your escape notification amendment? 10:29 AM May 19th from web in reply to johnburnettkc

I received the following reply:

@MBersin Denny Hoskins R-Warrensburg 22 minutes ago from Tweetie in reply to MBersin

The latest summary for SB 44:

…CCS#2/HCS/SCS/SB 44 – This act creates new requirements for private jails. Private jails are facilities not owned or operated by the state, a county, or a municipality that confine or detain prisoners who are awaiting trial, awaiting sentencing, or serving a sentence in jail. Such private jails shall be subject to all applicable state laws and local ordinances.

Any written report regarding a state criminal law violation that would result in a punishment of at least one year in prison shall contain the name and address of the private jail, the name of the prisoner or person who may have committed the violation, information regarding the violation, the name of the complainant, and other relevant information. The administrator shall, in a timely manner, refer all reports to law enforcement having jurisdiction. The administrator and employees shall cooperate in the investigation of the facts alleged in the report insofar as is consistent with the constitutional rights of all parties involved.

In the event that a prisoner is missing, the private jail shall take prompt and reasonable action to discover where the prisoner has escaped. Upon learning such an escape has occurred, the private jail shall promptly notify law enforcement and provide them with all available information known about the escape and the escapee.

Any person who makes a report, or who testifies in an administrative or judicial proceeding arising from the report, shall be immune from any civil or criminal liability for making such a report or for testifying, unless the person acted with malice.

Persons confined in private jails shall be separated and confined by gender. Persons confined under civil process or for civil causes shall be kept separate from people confined regarding criminal matters. The administrator shall arrange for necessary health care services and provide adequate clothing, food, and bedding, for those persons confined in the private jail. Deprivation of such items shall not be used as a disciplinary action against a confined person. No person confined in a private jail shall be used in any manner for the profit, betterment, or personal gain of any county or private jail employee. Any law enforcement investigation of a report regarding necessary health care or use of a confined person for profit or gain shall be concluded in a timely manner and a written report shall be provided to the private jail.

Nothing in the above provisions shall create a new civil cause of section.

The state or its political subdivisions shall not contract with any private jail to provide services, unless such jail provides written documentation of its ability to indemnify for liability arising from the operation of the jail.

Currently, a person is prohibited from bringing certain items, including controlled substances, alcohol, items prohibited by law or rule, and weapons, into a county jail. The punishment for such crime varies from a class A misdemeanor to a class C felony, depending on the item brought into the jail. Under this act, a person is prohibited from bring such items into a private jail as well. The administrator of a private jail may deny visitation privileges to or refer to the county prosecutor any person who knowingly brings, or tries to bring, items into the jail, which are prohibited by the jail’s rules and regulations. Violation of this provision shall be an infraction if it is not covered by other statutes.

Currently, a person commits the crime of damage to jail property if such person: 1) knowingly damages a city or county jail building or property, or 2) knowingly starts a fire in a city or county jail. Such crime is a class D felony. Under this act, damaging property at a private jail shall have the same criminal penalty.

This act requires private jailers to check for outstanding warrants through MULES before releasing an individual, in the same manner as county jailers. If an outstanding charge or warrant exists, the private jail administrator must tell the appropriate agency and transfer the individual accordingly. If a private jail administrator purposefully fails to perform a warrant check with the intent to release the person, he or she is guilty of a class A misdemeanor. An administrator shall not be liable for failing to perform a warrant check if the MULES system is not accessible.

Currently, escaping or attempting to escape from a county or city jail is a class D felony, unless certain aggravating circumstances apply, in which case, the penalty is increased. Under this act, escaping from a private jail shall have the same criminal penalty.

Currently, if a person is serving a sentence in a county jail on conviction of a felony and he or she fails to return to confinement as required under a work-release program, while serving a sentence with a term that is not continuous, or under another type of sentence where he or she is temporarily permitted to go at without a guard, he or she is guilty of a class A misdemeanor. Under this act, failing to return to confinement to a private jail shall have the same criminal penalty.

Currently, a public servant with charge of a prisoner, who knowingly permits him or her to escape is guilty of a class D felony, unless the public servant allows the prisoner to have a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument, in which case, the crime is a class B felony. Under this act, knowingly permitting escape from a private jail shall have the same criminal penalty.

The full text of SB 44, as Truly Agreed To and Finally Passed [pdf].

The Warrensburg Daily Star Journal covered the passage of SB 44 on May 19, 2009, discussing the “escape clause” in some detail:

…Pearce’s Senate Bill 44 followed a September escape from a private jail, Integrity Correctional Center, Centerview.

One escapee, a kidnapper, remained on the run for eight days. The other, a registered sex offender, remained free for more than a month before being recaptured.

Shortly after the inmates’ escape, Sheriff Chuck Heiss said he did not receive notification quickly from the private jail staff.

The jail’s director, Dave Burris, said Heiss received notice after the jail made sure an escape occurred.

Heiss, an outspoken critic of private jails, said Monday he appreciates the immediate notification requirement.

“I don’t want to be 12, 14 hours into it before we get a notification and then show up and realize it’s too late,” he said…

Interesting. The republican Johnson County Sheriff and the repub
lican Senator from the District were for it. And the private jails were against it: “…Representatives for Missouri’s two private jails did not want any restrictions….” According to Representative John Burnett (D), Denny Hoskins (r – noun, verb, CPA) “voted and argued against it.” Well, Denny? We could ask you directly, but there’s that Twitter block thing.

“Dulce et Decorum Est” is the title of a Wilfrid Owen World War I poem. The Latin quotation he refers to means: It is sweet and becoming to die for one’s country. But Owen spoke bitterly about that sentiment, and I agree with him.

Please excuse me. I can’t memorialize the soldiers who’ve died in our country’s wars because I believe that, almost without exception, we trump up noble sounding pretenses and go to war for profit. Smedley Butler, one of the most highly decorated Marine generals in our history decided as much at the end of his career.

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

Butler died in 1940, and his examples are dated, but you know full well that today’s wars are fought for oil. The pooh bahs will tell us it’s about fighting terrorism, as they did in Iraq and are currently doing about Afghanistan. But don’t forget that the oil that lies above Afghanistan, if it’s to come to this country, will have to arrive via a pipeline through that treacherous killing ground.

And so, many young Americans are going to die there, in a war that won’t be won. Perhaps, in the case of Democrats, this one will be fought to prove that we’re not “weak on national security” as Republicans claim we were in Viet Nam, but whatever the motive, the bankers Smedley Butler came to disdain are still profiting. We will appropriate obscene amounts of money, as we have been doing exponentially since Korea, despite Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex.

And, as Herman Melville noted, young men will foolishly pay the ultimate price for this greed:

Youth must its ignorant impulse lend–

Age finds place in the rear.

All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys,

The champions and enthusiasts of the state:

(…)

Expectancy, and glad surmise

Of battle’s unknown mysteries.

All they feel is this: ‘t is glory,

A rapture sharp, though transitory,

Yet lasting in belaureled story.

So they gayly go to fight,

Chatting left and laughing right.

But some who this blithe mood present,

As on in lightsome files they fare,

Shall die experienced ere three days are spent–

Perish, enlightened by the vollied glare;

John Kenneth Galbraith says we create myths to sell ourselves on the need for a war, and that the young are easily sucked in by those myths:

“Men must have a fairly elevated motive for getting themselves killed. To die to protect or enhance the wealth, power, or privilege of someone else, the most common reason for conflict over the centuries, lacks beauty.

The Age of Uncertainty, p. 111

How beautiful is it to die for oil, or, for that matter, to prove you’re not weak on national security?

So, on this Memorial Day, I do not give thanks for those who’ve died in our wars. The front page of today’s Post-Dispatch has a picture of a two year old boy looking at the medals of his father, who died in Iraq. I don’t honor that death. Instead, I curse Bush and Cheney, I curse Halliburton, Blackwater, and all the businesses who’ve gotten rich out of this war, and I curse our gullibility about the myths that take us to war. Until Americans begin to agree with me, many more toddlers will look at medals instead of getting hugs from their dads.

In September 2002, after almost two years out of office, former Vice President Al Gore publicly criticized the Bush administration’s rush to war with Iraq in a speech in San Francisco:

Al Gore – September 23, 2002

IRAQ AND THE WAR ON TERRORISM

Al Gore

Former U.S. Vice President

…Moreover, President Bush is demanding in this high political season that Congress speedily affirm that he has the necessary authority to proceed immediately against Iraq and, for that matter, under the language of his resolution, against any other nation in the region, regardless of subsequent developments or emerging circumstances. Now, the timing of this sudden burst of urgency to immediately take up this new cause as America’s new top priority, displacing our former top priority, the war against Osama Bin Laden, was explained innocently by the White House chief of staff in his now well-known statement that “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August…”

After being out of office and power for a fraction of that time former Vice President Dick Cheney has been speaking out against the policies of the Obama administration:

Posted on Thursday, May 21, 2009

Cheney’s speech ignored some inconvenient truths

By Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON – Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s defense Thursday of the Bush administration’s policies for interrogating suspected terrorists contained omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.

In his address to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy organization in Washington, Cheney said that the techniques the Bush administration approved, including waterboarding – simulated drowning that’s considered a form of torture – forced nakedness and sleep deprivation, were “legal” and produced information that “prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people…”

Evidently some of the media aren’t as worshipful as he’d like, but he does get access. Why would Dick do this?:

Dick Cheney: Why So Chatty All of a Sudden?

By Michael Duffy / WASHINGTON Wednesday, May. 13, 2009

…A more likely explanation is that Cheney, who championed the idea of preemptive-attack doctrine as Vice President, knows that in politics as well the best defense is often a good offense. With the White House decision to release various Bush-era memos on interrogation, and the coming disclosure of thousands more photographs from Abu Ghraib later this month, Cheney is “trying to rewrite history,” says a Republican consultant who has experience in intelligence matters. “He knows that as time goes by, he will look worse. And so he’s trying to put his stroke on it…

Well yeah, those photos haven’t been released yet. But they will be.

A good portion of the media coverage of Al Gore’s dissent in 2002 was less then deferential, including republican talking points in their coverage:

Gore challenges Bush Iraqi policy

Questions the timing of a military strike

From John Mercurio

CNN Washington Bureau

Tuesday, September 24, 2002 Posted: 3:38 PM EDT (1938 GMT)

…Republicans were quick to dismiss Gore’s remarks as overtly political.

“It seemed to be a speech more appropriate for a political hack than a presidential candidate by someone who clearly fails to recognize leadership. It was a contradiction within a contradiction,” said RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt…

Updated 9/24/2002 3:56 AM

Gore blasts Bush on Iraq war

By Susan Page and Richard Benedetto, USA TODAY

…Asked to respond, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, “The president has united America and America has rallied behind the call for action, and he will continue to lead and unify even if splits begin to emerge within the Democratic party and its presidential candidates.”

Republican National Committee spokesman Jim Dyke dismissed Gore’s speech as crafted “for a political hack.” He said Gore “may be serving a political purpose in appeasing a certain segment of the Democrat party that wants to use this type of rhetoric…”

In 2009 the White House has been a little more circumspect:

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

__________________________________________________

For Immediate Release                   May 22, 2009

 

PRESS BRIEFING

BY

PRESS SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS

James S. Brady Press Briefing Room

12:23 P.M. EDT

…Q : About the great debate yesterday, how does the President feel about having Cheney speaking on the same day? In a way is he pleased to have these speeches in such sharp relief that it gave the public a chance to say, okay, here’s column A, here’s column B, and to compare it? And also, how does the President feel about the propriety of a Vice President who just only recently left office speaking out? President Bush said he was not going to for a while. Presidents usually keep pretty quiet that first year after leaving office. Are there different rules for Vice Presidents? What are your thoughts?

MR. GIBBS: The second one is a good question. I don’t know what the rules are. I mean, obviously, anybody is free to speak. I think many, as well as you, have noted that the President and the Vice President have taken different tacks since leaving office about what they’re going to do and what they’re going to say. As I said yesterday, watching Vice President Cheney appears as if he’s extending an argument that my sense was had inside these walls for many years during the administration which he served as Vice President.

I think the President — in terms of yesterday’s speeches side by side I think the President is not going to shy away from the debate on these issues. I think that was evident yesterday, and I think he always thinks it’s helpful for the American people to be able to see, as you said, side by side, what the competing debate and narratives are. I don’t think that’s anything he’s going to shy away from.

I think both would understand that these are complex issues, big decisions that have to be made, that the President is going to do all in his power to keep the American people safe. But he is strongly committed to the notion that we’re going to change the way we conduct our foreign policy.

Q:  And he sees nothing inappropriate in what the former Vice President —

MR. GIBBS: I mean, you know, I think the President would leave it up to the Vice President as to determine what he wants to do…

And our old media considers Dick Cheney a “star”:

Howard Fineman

Meet the Real RNC

Ignore the party, Rush, Newt and Cheney are the muscle

May 20, 2009 | Updated: 9:14  p.m. ET May 20, 2009

…Right now there are two RNCs here in Washington, side by side. The contrast is instructive.

One, the Republican National Committee, is a clueless self-parody. The other, the (R)ush-(N)ewt-(C)heney tag team, is providing the real muscle as the Republican right begins to build traction in taking on President Obama and the Democrats.

The official RNC just spent the last two days wasting time and inviting ridicule-listening to a listless, empty speech by its chairman, Michael Steele, and debating the grand idea of calling the Democrats “socialists.” Meanwhile,
Rush Limbaugh hammers away at the Democrats and the president on radio every day; Newt Gingrich sarcastically attacks Nancy Pelosi on The Daily Show (and gets laughs for doing so); and Dick Cheney continues his high-profile, Iraq-star media tour…

And our old media in 2002?:

From the WSJ Opinion Archives

by JAMES TARANTO

Tuesday, September 24, 2002 4:04 P.M. EDT

…So who’s this impostor, claiming to be Gore, who delivered a speech yesterday at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, in which he delivered what the Associated Press calls “a sweeping indictment of President Bush’s threatened attack on Iraq, calling it a distraction from the war on terrorism that has ‘squandered’ international support for the United States.”

It appears Saddam Hussein has unleashed a new weapon of mass distraction on America, a Gore-like android so realistic it is every bit as lifeless as the real thing. Quoth Robo-Gore…

Reporting on the usual media suspects in Salon in 2002:

Give ’em hell, Al

With a series of fiery speeches, the former vice president recovers his voice, his backbone and his place as the 2004 Democratic front-runner.

[September 28, 2002]

…Not everybody likes the new Al Gore. A Republican National Committee spokesman called him a “hack,” and a sputtering Charles Krauthammer termed his Iraq speech a “disgrace,” while an even more unhinged Michael Kelly denounced it as “dishonest, cheap, low … It was wretched. It was vile. It was contemptible. But I understate.” (Adjust Kelly’s medication now!) On Friday, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer took the same contemptuous line, sneering that “Al Gore changes his stories and his tune so often on so many different issues that it’s not an effective use of time to pay much attention to what he says.” Meanwhile Sen. Joe Lieberman, displaying the same habit of folding under GOP pressure that he did in Florida in 2000, rushed to the president-select’s side: “I’m grateful President Bush wants to do this [invade Iraq], and I don’t question his motives,” Lieberman told reporters.

Lieberman is not the only old friend who turned on Gore. The New Republic also quickly piled on after his Iraq speech. The TNR turnaround is particularly stunning: The magazine fired Michael Kelly for his Gore-bashing in 1997, but now Gore’s old friends at the magazine are smacking him almost as hard as Kelly is. TNR dismissed the San Francisco speech as “a political broadside against a president who Gore no doubt feels occupies a post that he himself deserves. But bitterness is not a policy position. In past moments of foreign policy decision — first the Gulf War, then Bosnia — Al Gore has championed the moral and strategic necessity of American power and thus offered a model for his party. We wish we could say that at this moment of decision he was doing the same.” The unprecedented spectacle of TNR bashing Gore for his reservations about an Iraq war shows the extent to which protecting Israel — publisher Marty Peretz’s first love, even before Al Gore — is the driving force behind the get-Saddam fever. ..

And some not so usual suspects:

Hawking War Guilt

By Jim Sleeper

October 25, 2007

One of the most dispiriting causes of the biggest strategic blunder in American history may be the least understood: from the run-up to the Iraq War in 2002 until at least the 2006 elections, it wasn’t the Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters who stampeded the chattering classes and liberal audiences toward our still-unfolding disaster. It was the “best” thinkers, writing in the New York Times Book Review and The New Republic, who cued the orchestra of high-minded opinion to play a medley of half-truths and hosannas in support of the war…

The right keeps trying to rewrite history (it’s in their nature):

Barnes falsely claimed Gore “flipped on Iraq”

August 14, 2006 7:42 pm ET

On the August 12 edition of Fox News’ The Beltway Boys, co-host and Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes falsely claimed that former Vice President Al Gore has “flipped on Iraq.” In fact, as Media Matters for America has noted, Gore has consistently opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

…Barnes argued that with the defeat of Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman in the August 8 Connecticut Democratic primary, the Democratic Party lost its “last living hawk on national security.” He further stated that while Gore “used to be a hawk,” he has since “flipped on Iraq.” In fact, in a September 2002 speech, Gore made clear his reasons for opposing the United States’ Iraq policy, explaining how his opposition to President Bush’s push for the invasion of Iraq was consistent with his support of the 1991 war against Iraq. He stated that, although “in 1991, I was one of a handful of Democrats in the United States Senate to vote in favor of the resolution endorsing the [first] Persian Gulf War,” and Saddam Hussein’s “Iraq does … pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf region,” “I am deeply concerned that the course of action that we are presently embarking upon with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century…”

Say it ain’t so, Joe:

The Truth About the War in Iraq and Al Gore

Posted May 8, 2006 | 09:42 PM (EST)

…It is sometimes said that good ideas have many fathers but bad ideas are always orphans. And so it is with the retrospective of the decision to go to war in Iraq. As everyone from the White House and Secretary of Defense to members of Congress and the media engage in revisionist history concerning who said what and who knew what about the decision to invade Iraq, it is important to hold everyone’s feet to the fire. The integrity of our democracy requires it. The American people should demand it. Joe Scarborough, the self-styled straight-talking host of Scarborough Country, contributed to annuals of revisionism last Thursday (May 4, 2006) when he suggested that Al Gore was a Johnny-come-lately in his opposition to the War in Iraq. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The truth is that, on September 23, 2002, in a speech at the Commonwealth Club — long before the invasion of Iraq and before members of Congress voted to give President Bush authority to invade — Vice President Al Gore unequivocally and emphatically stated his opposition to a War in Iraq and set forth a multitude of reasons why…

Never let the facts get in the way of republican memes, talking points, and spin.

Former Vice President Al Gore on former Vice President Dick Cheney:

Al Gore to Dick Cheney: ‘I waited two years’

By ANDY BARR | 5/16/09 7:05 AM EDT 

Al Gore said Friday that fellow former Vice President Dick Cheney has jumped back into the political fray too soon into the new administration’s term.

“I waited two years after I left office to make statements that were critical,” Gore said during an interview on CNN, pointing out that his critiques were focused on “policy.”

“Talk about somebody that shouldn’t be talking about making the country less safe, invading a country that did not attack us and posed no serious threat to us at all,” Gore said of Cheney…

Now, which one of the two won by 543,895 votes in 2000?

From a comment at Balloon Juice:

C’mon didn’t you know the real golden rule:

Waterboard your neighbor before they teabag you.

That’s from the Sermon on the Undisclosed Location.

We are not worthy.

…if you can’t afford health care on your own, don’t get sick.

Four months, five pages

…After four months of work on an extremely important issue that affects just about every person in America, Blunt has only been able to come up with….”a five-page briefing document…”

But, but, but we had such high hopes. Roy Blunt (r-lobbyists) via Twitter:

Busy week. Several productive Health Care Solutions Task Force meetings. 5:02 PM May 15th from mobile web

Are those “five pages” double spaced, with wide margins? Just asking. That’s what usually happens when you play video games instead of doing your homework.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for April 2009:

…Two states, Missouri and Nebraska, posted significant jobless rate decreases from the prior month (-0.6 and -0.3 percentage point, respectively)…

The percentage unemployment for Missouri, compared to a year ago:

Missouri

April 2008 – 5.6%

April 2009 (preliminary) – 8.1%

Over-the-year rate change (preliminary) – 2.5%

The actual numbers (seasonally adjusted):

Missouri

Civilian labor force (Numbers in thousands)

April 2008 – 3,010.4

February 2009 – 3,019.7

March 2009 – 3,014.0

April 2009 (preliminary) – 3,008.5

Unemployed (Numbers in thousands)

April 2008 – 169.9

February 2009 – 251.9

March 2009 – 261.7

April 2009 (preliminary) – 242.9

Unemployed (Percent of labor force)

April 2008 – 5.6%

February 2009 – 8.3%

March 2009 – 8.7%

April 2009 (preliminary) – 8.1%

[emphasis added]

Note that the total number of employed in the civilian labor force still dropped from March 2009 to April 2009.

…or is all republican spin intentionally plagiarized from rejected Monty Python scripts?

…State Republican Party Chairman Doyle Webb of Benton said he doesn’t comment on statements by candidates, “but Sen. Hendren certainly does not speak on the behalf of the Republican Party of Arkansas…”

Uh, isn’t that a comment? Just asking.

Via Angry Black Bitch.