Meta and Meta

Another 16 Words

Sixteen words you aren't likely to hear in the next State of the Union Address: The Italian government has learned that Iraq recently sought $40,000,000 in automatic weapons from "black" sources.

Le Réel N'a Pas de Patrie

Matt Yglesias notes a conspicuous case of fact-based reporting:

[T]he AFP tries a revolutionary experiment in writing their story in such a way as to make readers better informed about the issue at hand rather than more familiar with the president's propaganda. Here's the lede:

US President George W. Bush charged Monday that Iran has openly declared that it seeks nuclear weapons -- an inaccurate accusation at a time of sharp tensions between Washington and Tehran.

Oh, my! Imagine the world we might live in if this were the standard way to open a newspaper story about the president making a false or misleading claim.

Unfortunately, imagining appears to be what we're stuck with.

Anyway, commenter Dr. Wu suggests a salutary modification:

US President and lying sack of shit George W. Bush charged Monday that...

(Via Brad DeLong.)
 

                                                                                               

Oops. Did I Say That Out Loud?

Shorter Mitt Romney's Foreign Policy: I agree with everything he said. But he should've kept it quiet.

Credit where credit is due: "I mean, [Obama's] gone from Jane Fonda to Dr. Strangelove in one week." Misleading and deeply dishonest? Yes. But funny.

UPDATE: This wound up being shorter Clinton, Dodd and Biden as well.

The Life Worth Living

Hilzoy has an outstanding post analyzing the Right-Blogospheric reaction to the Baghdad Diarist, Scott Thomas Beauchamp. A taste:

Dear right-wing bloggers: Stop. Think. Reread the original piece. It's not about how our soldiers are murderers and scumbags. It's not a vicious left-wing assault on them. It's trying to make some sense of how war makes you do things you wouldn't ordinarily do, and it's pretty obvious that what sparked it was that "Scott Thomas" saw himself doing these things.

Yes, well, shorter Right Blogosphere: Beauchamp is reflectively exploring the deep wells of cruelty that run through the souls of all human beings. And that's got to stop.

Putting the "Gone" in Gonzales

Wow. Just, wow.

Don't Give Them Any Ideas

I like my representative Henry Waxman's response to the president's contention that Justice will not be allowed to prosecute congressional contempt citations in "executive privilege" cases: "I suppose the next step would be just disbanding the Justice Department."

U.S. attorneys are but "emanations of a president's will," after all...

Kristol's Balls

In response to Bill Kristol's preposterous declaration that the Bush presidency "will probably be a successful one," David Corn has authored a salutary review of Kristol's track record as a political scryer.

Turns out, Kristol's record is not so hot. My favorite quote: "Very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by this president."

ADDENDUM: It just occurred to me that if you readjust the scope on the prepositional phrase in that quotation, you get an interpretation that is...true! (I.e., "Very few wars in American history were prepared by this president more thoroughly than this war.") So, wow, Kristol might not be a common hack after all; he might in fact be an exceptional hack. Who knew?

Yeah, We Can Tell

David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo:

From Maria Bartiromo's interview of Condi Rice in the current issue of BusinessWeek:

MB: Would you consider a position in business or on Wall Street?

CR: I don't know what I'll do long-term. I'm a terrible long-term planner.

Filibuster-Busters

As Josh Marshall has been pointing out, the MSM are apparently reticent to call a Republican-led filibuster a filibuster.

Now they've gone one better, taking to characterizing the Democrats' attempt to counter a filibuster as a...filibuster!

So...who you gonna call?

UPDATE: Media Matters has a thorough rundown of this surreal journalistic pathology.

Hertzberg on Cheney's Netherbranch

Hendrik Hertzberg had a good line about Cheney's novel dual claims of executive and (I guess you'd call it) nonexecutive privilege in this week's New Yorker:

On Cheney's version of the government organization chart, it seems, the location of the Office of the Vice-President is undisclosed.