More typical behavior from the Bush Administration.

In retaliation for Scott McClellan’s new saucy tell all book, which he is now pimping*.

I like this part.

Fox News contributor and former White House adviser Karl Rove said on that network Tuesday that the excerpts from the book he’s read sound more like they were written by a “left-wing logger” than his former colleague.

— Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief. (emphasis added)  Read more 

Another one bites the dust.

GELES (AP) — The Los Angeles Times fired its top editor after he rejected a management order to cut $4 million from the newsroom budget, 14 months after his predecessor was also ousted in a budget dispute, the newspaper said Sunday.

James O’Shea was fired following a confrontation with Publisher David D. Hiller, the Times reported on its Web site. The story didn’t say when the confrontation took place.

“The Los Angeles Times, like all newspaper companies, is facing major challenges in charting a course that will be successful for the future. The path ahead is going to be difficult and requires that our people and our organization be aligned behind what we need to do,” Hiller said in a statement. “As a result of these changes, Jim O’Shea will be leaving the Times.”

O’Shea’s departure comes just a month after the Times’ parent, Chicago-based Tribune Co., was taken private in an $8.2 billion buyout by real estate magnate Sam Zell.

The departure also follows that of his predecessor, Dean Baquet, who was forced to resign after he opposed further cuts to the newsroom budget in 2006.  Read more 

It’s very “funny,” and worth regular and front page blog posts on “liberal” blogs, to talk about Republican candidates who come in last, next to last, or nearly last. These same candidates get all kinds of free coverage from the media outlets the liberal blogosphere is supposed to “balance.” They also have plenty of money to purchase their own ads, money raised from rich people and big corporations and the avowed enemies of the liberal blogosphere.

It’s not funny, or worth any regular or front page blog posts, to talk about progressive Democratic candidates who finish just behind the “two front runners,” or way behind, or even second in some races. These candidates have little money with which to buy ad time, and are constantly shut out of the primary process by way of lawsuits, media blackouts, and fact-free misrepresentation by the SCLM. They are at the same time closest in policy, voting records, and speech to the “liberal blogosphere.”

Discuss.  Read more 

Seriously, I am so sorry to hear about this. Anyone who has details about his blog, I’d appreciate hearing them.

(CNN) — Authorities have fired an official in central China after city inspectors beat to death a man who filmed their confrontation with villagers, China’s Xinhua news agency reports.

The killing has sparked outrage in China, with thousands expressing outrage in Chinese Internet chat rooms, often the only outlet for public criticism of the government.

The incident has also alarmed advocates of press freedom, who say municipal authorities had no right to attack a man for simply filming them.

Police have detained 24 municipal inspectors and are investigating more than 100 in the death of Wei Wenhua, a 41-year-old construction company executive, Xinhua reported on Friday.

The swift action by officials reflects concerns that the incident could spark larger protests against authorities, whose heavy-handed approach often arouses resentment.

On Monday Wei happened on a confrontation in the central Chinese province of Hubei between city inspectors and villagers protesting over the dumping of waste near their homes.

A scuffle developed when residents tried to prevent trucks from unloading the rubbish, Xinhua said.

When Wei took out his cell phone to record the protest, more than 50 municipal inspectors turned on him, attacking him for five minutes, Xinhua said. Wei was dead on arrival at a Tianmen hospital, the report said.  Read more 

Don’t you just love it when Republicans speak of death, destruction, and destitution as a “win-win” situation? They’re so good at it, it just comes naturally to them. The important point of the MJ story:

That’s a tradition that goes back to the origins of the nation. The founding fathers saw the press as the lifeblood of democracy—only informed voters could compose a true democracy, they believed—and thus created a postal system that gave favorable rates to small periodicals. (George Washington actually supported mailing newspapers for free.) For 200 years, small periodicals and journals of opinion were given special treatment.

The 2007 rate hikes, which went into effect this summer, changed that. Now, periodicals are still expected to cover attributable costs and pay no overhead, but because the cost of delivering mail has gone up, rates within the class have gone up as well. In advance of the rate hike, the Postal Service submitted a proposal to the Postal Regulatory Commission that would have raised the rates in the class more or less evenly. The PRC rejected the proposal in favor of a rate package put forward by Time Warner that, unsurprisingly, hands small periodicals much steeper rate hikes than their large counterparts.  Read more 

Gaslighting:

Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse. It uses persistent denials of fact which, as they build up over time, make the victim progressively anxious, confused, and less able to trust his or her own memory and perception. A variation of gaslighting, used as a form of harassment, is to subtly alter aspects of a victim’s environment, thereby upsetting his or her peace of mind, sense of security, etc.

Gaslighting is a common tactic/symptom of some mental disorders such as Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), and other Personality Disorders. People having BPD will use gaslighting (conciously or unconciously) along with a wide variety of psychologically manipulative/abusive tactics to fend-off criticism of their own actions that they deem too painful to accept responsibility for.

The term was coined from the 1940 film Gaslight and its 1944 remake in which changes in gas light levels are experienced several times by the main character. The classic example in the film is the character Gregory using the gas lamps in the attic, causing the rest of the lamps in the house to dim slightly; when Paula comments on the lights’ dimming, she is told she is imagining things.

[view:timeline_gaslight_2004_campaign]

Or, as our goateed Rove-emulators from Chattanooga call him, “the leader of the free world”.

As it turns out—in the Coptix-hostedserviced Chattanooga Times Free-Press—Coptix reveals today that they faked the Rove photo originally posted on the Gidcumb’s site. So, one of the fakers is posing with Bush in the photo above.

My concern was that the Rove photo was an April Fool’s joke; too good to be true. Typically, however, April Fool’s jokes take place on April 1 [and the light-hearted prank is revealed at the end of the day, not three days afterward]. So I checked other sites, checked the Google cache, checked the Chattanooga Times-Free Press on the Bush visit, and went with it.

What didn’t—and perhaps should have—occurred to me was that three parties would cooperate in planting the disinformation.

First, Coptix themselves. They’re looking pretty good right now, eh? (Actually, they’ll probably get plenty of business from the wingers, now.) I do wonder how Karl Rove feels about having his photo faked. And I do wonder how Bush feels about having his photo taken, smiling, right next to fakers. (Probably nothing, but you never know.) Here’s what Coptix has to say for themselves:

Mr. [Josiah] Roe [that would be the original commenter who planted the fake story in our comments section] said the company altered the photo and placed it on the Internet after bloggers implied that Coptix was involved in a “vast right-wing conspiracy” because the company — along with another local firm, SmarTech — provides an Internet service for the Republican National Committee.

I’m not sure I understand Roe’s logic here—to prove you’re not part of a conspiracy, you plant disinformation? This seems a particularly odd strategy in this context, since Rove is well known for planting disinformation. One might almost think that Roe was part of a Rovian ploy that aborted. If one was foily.

Mr. Roe said his firm altered the photograph as a humorous way to get exposure for Coptix.

Well, he’s certainly ended up getting exposure. And good luck to him. The wingers have lots of money, so I imagine this will work out quite well for him. As Carol Darr says:

Carol Darr, director of George Washington University’s Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, said the doctored image is really a “dirty trick.”

“You’re putting something out there that is deliberately deceptive (and) … you know that people who are in on the joke will catch the significance,” said Ms. Darr, 55. “It is just simply a lie.”

Now for the Gidcumbs, on whose site the disinformation was planted once Coptix had PhotoShopped it. Here’s what they have to say for themselves:  Read more 

Republicans are such crooks:

From Brent Budowsky
February 18, 2007
To: Robert Kaiser, Washington Post

Mr. Kaiser, I am forwarding below the note I wrote to Messrs. Graham and Hiatt about Outlook’s Victoria Toensing piece today.

With all due respect [snicker], I have long admired your work, but that piece today was the most egregious attempt at jury tampering that I have ever seen in this or any other town.

I spent six years at the core of the group writing the CIA Identities Law with its original sponsor, Senator Lloyd Bentsen. Setting aside my great differences with both Editorial and Op Ed pages at the Post on this case and Iraq in general, this piece was different. It was a clear attempt to influence the jury, after the defense rested and before the jury is given the case.

I predict the Judge will not be a happy camper, but beyond this, the piece was a shameless attempt to present a nullification defense to the jury, by an officer of the court who has worked for the Departement of Justice. It is attempt to bypass the judge and jury and present arguments to the jury, through the Post, that would not be admissable for law or fact, which also included factual inaccuracy.

This is the functional equivalent of the Post editorial board and the Libby defense team standing outside the jury room, handing the jurors leaflets, ignoring the judges instructions, and handing the jurors inadmissable evidence and telling them to vote not guilty.

I believe the Post owes its readers an alternate viewpoint, presented with the same visibility as Ms. Toensing’s piece, though the ridiculing artwork will not be necessary and the tone of prosecution is more worthy of a second tier blog than the paper of record for this Capital.

Please, can we just keep Froomkins, Walter Pincus, and Dana Milbank, and bulldoze the rest of Pravda into the Potamac?  Read more 

Seriously. This is an outstanding example of why the WaPo is worthy of lining your birdcage and wrapping your fish. Get ready for this: Anti War crowd guilty of ’Hindsight Bias.’

Antiwar liberals last week got to savor the four most satisfying words in the English language: “I told you so.”

This was after a declassified National Intelligence Estimate asserted that the war in Iraq was creating more terrorists than it was eliminating. For millions of people who opposed President Bush’s mission in Iraq from the start, this was proof positive that they had been right all along. Yes, they told themselves, we saw this disaster coming.

An intelligence estimate that said the Iraq war was creating more terrorists than it was eliminating was proof to some doubters that they knew all along the war would be a disaster. But psychologists say they are guilty of hindsight bias.

Only … that isn’t quite true.

One of the most systematic errors in human perception is what psychologists call hindsight bias — the feeling, after an event happens, that we knew all along it was going to happen.  Read more