Short Stories, Long Odds

This guy has a lot of experience as a Foreign Service officer. And for instance, he was the ambassador in Honduras during the Contra war. So he clearly knows how to deal with clandestine operations. That was a pretty clandestine one for several years. And he didn’t end up in jail, which is a pretty good attribute for him. A lot of others practically did.
– Charles Krauthammer, talking about Negroponte’s finer qualifitcation, stemming from his oversight of human rights violations in Honduras on FOX’s Special Report All-Star Panel

This comes from Media Matters, as does this hilarious retrospective about Rush Limbaugh’s factual reporting, after Rush said that “we don’t make things up on this program”. Rush also stepped up to defend Bill “Falafel” O’Reilly after O’Reilly stridently claimed that FOX never lies, in defense of Brit Hume, after Hume grossly distorted FDR’s comments on Social Security.

FOXNews is a rich tapestry.

Remember when I said about objectivity being a problem for journalists? Well FOXNews doesn’t worry about bullshit like that! They just, you know, circumvent facts. I know its an old song that everyone likes to sing, but sometimes those guys make me want to set myself on fire and jump out a window.

Hunter S. Thompson is dead. Many people are hesitant to say he committed suicide, but most reports list cause of death as “a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.”

This is depressing. WaPo has an interesting anecdote:

His beat, he once said was “the death of the American dream.” Interviewers later suggested to him that he in a way embodied that dream. They said he exploded in profanity, but conceded that perhaps he did.

For those of you wondering who Hunter S. Thompson is? Thompson was a pioneer in journalism, a Woodward that hangs out at the bar you’re afraid to go into. He was full of booze, drugs, and vitriol. He carved a path for himself and countless imitators (of which I’m certainly not innocent) in new journalism with gonzo – hyper-subjective journalism. He argued that objectivity was not always the best way to get to the truth, and he was right.

God dammit.

I’ve been avoiding beating the hell out of you guys with social security because Schwarz and that other, more senior Josh are doing a much better job than I ever could.

However, there’s a very simple method of explaning what’s wrong with Bush’s plan, and I could no longer pass it up:

Seriously, it uses math. Check it out.

Jeff Gannon is someone I’ve been meaning to talk about for weeks now, but Bulldog has been doing all the talking that needs to be done for himself. Does his case matter ethically? It depends on where you draw the journalistic line.

There are very few “objective” news agencies left. Both sides can point to cases in the last 20 years and say “Well, your guys have been given nothing but softballs to answer by x, y, and z.” And its true. The problem isn’t with the people we put in the White House press room, the problem is who they work for. Objectivity or a proclivity for hard news as a reporter is no longer valued, and it certainly isn’t profitable.

So, on to domestic issues – Porter Goss went before the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday and dropped the bad foot bombs left and right. He detailed what many of us have long expected but what the administration is loathe to tell us – that we aren’t ready for what terrorists may be able to do to us, and that they may have their hands on nuclear materials. Goss also, along with the Intelligence Committee, decried the fact that despite bipartisan cooperation on the Intelligence bill, the role of Intelligence Director had yet to be filled.

Well, this morning over coffee, Bush decided to give the job to John Negroponte, ambassador to Iraq. He must be confirmed by the Senate, and this will be a chance for Senate Democrats to shine and stand firm against human rights violations and torture as most of them did against Alberto Gonzales.

So who is John Negroponte? Well, he’s certainly qualified for CIA work, considering the large amount of it he did in the 1980’s. If you remember anything about CIA-trained death squads in El Salvador, Honduras had those too. And guess who trained them? John Negroponte!

He was also involved in the Iran-Contra affair, in his superivison of the construction of the El Aguacate airbase in Nicaragua where Contras were trained, opponents were tortured and bodies were buried. Reagan’s omelette of freedom was made here and in his fight to bring down the Sandinistas, and Negroponte was often the whisk working on the eggs of necessity.

Wow. I probably shouldn’t run with food analogies so hard.

So anyways, if you remember the protest when he was named Ambassador to Iraq, I’m hoping that the same thing happens and this guy gets stopped. He will do nothing but further the penchant this government has for encouraging rights abuses to clear the way for marching freedom. “Intelligence” doesn’t just mean “analysis,” kids. Do a little poking around about the things the CIA did on Bush 41’s watch.

I may have more to say about this later today, but right now the idea of Negroponte being in charge of American intelligence operations makes my stomach hurt. Not like it would if I were being overseen by him in Honduras in the 80’s, but still pretty bad.

UPDATE
Man, I forgot to talk about Secretary Rumsfeld skipping out on the House Armed Services Commmittee’s hearing yesterday despite 2 dozen members waiting to ask him questions. He was in such a hurry, he got up and started packing up his briefcase in the middle of questioning!

You’d think, with him and the President asking for $500,000,000,000.00 for the Pentagon and who knows how much more for the war in Iraq, that he would stick around and answer some questions like he’s required to. But not Rumbo! He has shit to do!

Someone has finally paid me to write. You can see it in this week’s issue of Boston’s Weekly Dig.

Also, oh my god have I been busy. I will have big-um updates tomorrow.

PS. Email the Dig staff and let them know that if I were in the paper every week, you’d pay to read it.

Its free, but the sentiment will help me on the road to becoming Captin Write-a-tron.