Aguanegro wonders…

…about the wisdom of boycotting the ‘08 Beijing Olympics because of the PRC’s crackdown in Tibet while the United States is in the midst of two military occupations. (Oh wait, Iraq and Afghanistan are totally different from Tibet? Bullshit.) Tell Richard Gere to clean his own house before he tries to fix up someone else’s.

Oh wait, maybe the Iranians aren’t the ones trying to start World War 3.

Alas, the Times does good work. Apparently, Iran isn’t pursuing nuclear weapons to destroy us, Israel and our freedom. Apparently there are times you can believe some of the things about Iran, like “civilian nuclear program” and “Iran Generally Truthful About Nukes“. I know, I’m way too cynical. But seriously, nobody could have seen this one coming. Quote of the new millennium, right here:

“In interviews on Monday, some administration officials expressed skepticism about the conclusions reached in the new report, saying they [political appointees] doubted that American intelligence agencies had a firm grasp of the Iranian government’s intentions.” Naturally, italics mine.

Bill prefers briefs. Hillary prefers both diamonds AND pearls. CNN considers itself a news agency.

Deja vu. The heat on Hillary Clinton is building. Every move her campaign’s made over the past few weeks has been ridiculed, slandered, and scrutinized by every reporter, pundit, and blogger under the sun.

Most recently we saw “DiamondsorPearlsGate” at the Democratic debate on November 15. This is one of the more interesting events in the primary season to date, for a couple of reasons.

We had the Clinton campaign threatening that Blitzer better not “Pull a Russert” at the debate. Blitzer claimed he was not pressured by anybody to act one way or another at the debate, but who knows. What should be a flashing red light that the Clinton’s people probably did exert some kind of pressure him is the fact that the campaign came out and congratulated Blitzer for doing such an “outstanding” job.

Now, down to the issue. Clinton was asked by an audience member whether she preferred diamonds or pearls. She rolled with it and said she likes both. A softball question, without a doubt. What makes it interesting is that Bill Clinton was asked a question along the same lines during the MTV “Rock the Vote” campaign in 1992: “Boxers or briefs?”

Here’s the problem. Clearly, CNN was not unaware of the dramatic symmetry between the questions and the two Clintons, separated by 15 years. They had to be aware of what they were doing, there’s simply too much staging that goes on for it to be a theatrical coincidence.

But when it happened in 1992 it was on MTV. CNN is now taking journalistic cues from MTV? A so-called “trusted” television news outlet is mimicking the network that produces Laguna Beach?

A softball question in response to “pressure” from the Clinton campaign? Maybe.

A PR stunt? Yup.

Bad journalism? Absolutely.

It reminds me of the time when Jon Stewart went on CNN’s Crossfire, and thrashed Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson for being the political hacks that that are, and for “hurting America”. It’s one of my fondest and proudest moments in television history. It shook up the CNN producers quite a bit, and eventually lead to the show’s cancellation. The best part about the interview was the mere fact that at one point, the Crossfire hosts, who are supposed to be the “real” journalists, grilled the guy on a Comedy Central show about why he, the comedian, wasn’t asking the guests on his show tougher questions.

Such astounding irony only reveals itself in such humorous ways once in a blue moon.

Stop the presses!

What is this? An Associated Press article titled “IAEA: Iran Generally Truthful on Nukes“? This should finally prove to Bush and the United States, Israel, France…maybe not. Why is it that policies are dictated by the talking heads, columnists, and “faith-based” (As Scott Ridder calls them) analysts, rather than by the people who use evidence and reporting? It’s too bad the IAEA is completely disregarded by almost all of the important players in this situation. They’re doing their job (and quite well apparently) just like they did in Iraq before the war, yet still no one believes them because the agency isn’t finding any of the things in Iran that we’ve been imagining.

The AP actually made a little slip up in its headline. The story is about how Iran has been honest about its nuclear program, which it has always states as being for peaceful purposes. The AP headline ignores this fact and automatically jumps to the “they’re building nukes” frame of mind.

Although the link above leads to the New York Times, I’m almost positive the headline comes from the AP newsire. If you google the headline, you’ll see that it’s nearly identical on all the other news sites except for USATODAY, which changed “nukes” to “nuke history”.

Follow up: Hillary Clinton and question planting.

This question planting “goof” may be turning into a mini-scandal (Here are links to part 1 and part 2). CNN sat down for an interview with Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, the college student who first brought to light Hillary Clinton’s preference to only give answers to questions she knows beforehand.

Yes, everybody does it. Political campaigns are fanatical, psychotic PR micro-managers that grow stronger in the soft glow of prime-time television and softball questions about the “issues.” Yes, they’re targeting Hillary Clinton because she’s Hillary Clinton.

But maybe the incident will signal to others who’ve seen question planting during the Obama, Edwards, Thompson, or Giuliani campaigns to blow the whistle and come forward. And that just might force these political campaigns to be a little more honest, and the candidates to be a little more candid with their answers.

Then again, it could all backfire, and the campaigns will just become more secretive and shady. Who knows.

Spinning The Surge

As The Surge ™ in Iraq winds down, it’ll be interesting to see who takes a story like this and tries to claim it’s evidence of a partial withdrawal. If you add 30k troops to 140k and then remove that same 30k, you haven’t withdrawn at all. You’re just back where you started a year ago with a couple of hundred dead soldiers and a many thousands of dead civilians.

‘This Is Called National Defense’

The following is an unpublished passage written by Joseph Heller that was printed in the New York Times at some point in the mid-1970’s. I found it in a newspaper clipping while I was cleaning out a deceased relative’s belongings from a closet. It is and will probably remain the single most scathing piece of literature that I have ever read, and manages to sum up my feelings about the government in under 300 words. Read the full piece after the jump.

*EDIT: I removed the date that the piece was written. It couldn’t have been written in ‘65 because MLK was murdered in ‘68. The actual newspaper clipping says 1965, so you can blame the Times copy desk for the slip up. Thanks to peppergomez from Digg for pointing that out.

**EDIT: I took a screenshot of the PDF of the piece from the New York Times archive. I hope this clears up any questions about proper sourcing. Check out the screenshot here:

http://tovoteornottovote.wordpress.com/2007/11/12/proof-pudding/

Support diversity (and dictators, too).

Friedman’s insight is incredible. He’s 100% correct when he says that the people and governments of the Middle East should practice greater tolerance and diversity. Diversity is really the root of democracy. Let’s pray to God(s) that leaders like King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia will grow tolerant enough to prop up intolerant, repressive, archaic monarchies and dictators that bribe fundamentalists in order to stay in power.

You’re doing a heckuva job, Dianne.

Just another example of the Democratic party aiding and endorsing the Federal government’s expansion and legalization of domestic wiretapping and spying. Great job, Dianne.

Congressional Democrats get a pass on PAC contributions.

I just had a look at Ken Vogel’s piece called “Dem’s cash swing dwarfed by GOP’s 1995 windfall” over at Politico. It’s a pretty disheartening story. The implicit message in the headline and the text is that the Congressional Democrats should get a pass and a pat on the back for getting less lobbyist and special interest money than the Republicans did when they took over the House in 1995. The lesser of two evils is preferable, even though it’s still evil.

This article doesn’t tell me that the Democrats are running a tighter ship than Republicans, as it was meant to: it inadvertently flaunts the fact that Congress is bought off by special interests, regardless of which party is in power. Although non-ideological “…PACs tend to write checks to politicians in relatively bipartisan patterns…” these groups give based on who is in the majority:

“Their contributions are investments for access to those who control their issues, said Michael J. Malbin, Executive Director of the Campaign Finance Institute. And since the majority party controls the agenda, he said ‘giving patterns follow the institutional power in Congress.’”

Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions or being short-sighted, but “investments for access to those who control their issues” sounds very clearly like buying off legislators.