A view from Main Street America by a congenital Democrat and truth-seeking attorney. Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community. Posting on the Internets since 2004.
Showing posts with label Washington Post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington Post. Show all posts
It looked like 1) just a technical glitch or hacking 2) the usual case of a news outlet pulling back a story to do more checking 3) someone pushed a button too early on a story being held for a later date 4) a bombshell report was killed because of pressure from a presidential campaign 5) none of the above.
We still don't know for certain, but The Washington Post says it had something to do with an unedited caption to a video that should not have gone up. But what about the video itself? And a separate documents file?
It's been scrubbed. (Of course, their IBM Selectric tech team couldn't figure out that if you were going to pull the article, you needed to pull all the places where the article got archived, like The Google [right now it's the last result on page 1, and that will change as more blogs cover this story] and Yahoo Buzz!. And their own website, which still has an active link to the scrubbed story, which people have been leaving comments on.)
What story, you ask? Tom Gosinski, the former director of government and international affairs for the American Voluntary Medical Team, a nonprofit organization headed by Cindy Hensley McCain, gave a videotaped interview (two excerpts from YouTube are at the end of this post) to the press yesterday alleging that John McCain used his Senate staff and position to cover up his wife's drug use, and that he intervened with the Drug Enforcement Agency to prevent her being prosecuted.
Basically, Cindy McCain was stealing pain medication that was supposed to be going to the children her charity served. She had a huge painkiller addiction (taking 30 to 50 pills a day) and started forging prescriptions on the prescription pads of doctors who volunteered for the charity, and because she was taking so many, used the names of her employees to get even more pills. Gosinski found out she had forged his name on a prescription, complained and got fired.
McCain has always claimed he didn't know about Cindy's drug abuse, but Gosinski says this is nonsense as he picked her up from the hospital in 1991 after she overdosed. Gosinski also says McCain through his Senate office got Cindy McCain a diplomatic passport, which allowed her to pass through Customs without having her bags searched. After Gosinski got fired, McCain got a political buddy of his, Maricipa County Attorney Rick Romley, to open an investigation into Gosinski. So Gosinski, the man whose name was forged onto prescriptions so Cindy McCain could get drugs illegally, he gets investigated; John McCain used his position and influence to shut down the investigation of his wife, the actual criminal. If she hadn't been married to a Senator, she would have gone to jail, as Arizona has some of the harshest mandatory minimum sentences for drug use in the country.
Not exactly the rosy picture the Republicans painted of the McCains at their disgusting convention last week.
And it looks like McCain is still wielding his powerful position to keep the truth about his wife's abuse out of the public eye.
Good news story of the day: the Supreme Court ruled that The Great Writ, the writ of habeas corpus, applies to the Guantanamo Bay prisoners: The Rule of Law Prevailed The prisoners are entitled to challenge their detention in federal court; the Bushies have failed in their attempt to create an extrajudicial SuperMax prison for the world. But it was only a 5-4 decision; our democracy rests on the weary shoulders of 88-year-old Justice John Paul Stephens. Elect Obama, save the Court.
We all know the corporate media is bought and paid for. And then we see the concrete evidence. David Broder, the supposed "dean of the Washington press corps" is selling his own corpse to speak at coporate events. If they're lucky, he then features their issue in a column. Presstitute. David Broder’s Moonlighting: Post columnist benefits from corporate speaking deals
The WaPo says they were just kidding about that whole dumb women thing. So, they think it's OK to joke about sexist stereotypes, and they really think we are dumb enough to accept that lame excuse. Laura Rosen has excellent coverage of the issue at War and Piece.
Vanity Fair reports that George Bush, Master of Disaster, royally fucked up the Gaza/Hamas/Fatah/Israel relationship (which was bad enough to begin with) with a disastrous intervention into Palestinian politics. If you don't have time to read the whole article, here's a summary by Ron Beasley of Middle Earth Journal:
* The administration demanded that elections be held in Palestine, the Democracy thing you know. * Hamas won 56 percent of the seats in the Legislative Council which took everyone in the administration by surprise. They must not have been listening to Rumsfeld when he said Democracy is messy. * The Bush administration told the Abbas to disolve the recently elected government and declare Marshall law. * They then armed his party, Fatah. * When word of this leaked out the result was a civil war which Hamas won. * Hamas confiscated most of the US supplied weapons are are now using them to shoot at Israelis.
Did you ever buy that Airborne stuff that is supposed to keep you from getting sick on planes? Turns out they made up the supposed scientific research they cited. There's a $23 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit (they must have sold a LOT of those pills, no?) and The Consumerist has the links where you can file for your refund. This is the kind of case tort reformers want to eliminate.
A little parody site: John McCain Is Our Jalopy. Just keep hitting refresh to see the messages change. Climate Progress points out the "brutal drought" in Australia and predicts that this is what the American Southwest will be like in 2050.
Yesterday the Washington Post published an editorial by conservative writer Charlotte Allen, entitled "We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get?" (I'm not linking that piece of shit. Go to the other links in this post, from the excellent feminist website, Feministing.) On the online edition of the post, the article was front-paged with this teaser headline: "Women Aren't Very Bright".
The article is pure conservative crap. The woman even calls herself a dummy in it, and extrapolates from anecdotal evidence that all women are dumb. Sad. But why is this getting printed on the editorial page of a major newspaper? Do they take us for fools? I guess they do. I'm not dumb. I wouldn't subscribe to the Washington Post if they paid me to. No money for Fred Hiatt's right-wing editorial page. Let Novak and Krauthammer eat dirt.
I posted a comment on the article quoting the John Lennon song, "Woman is the N***er of the World", but they deleted it. So: It's OK to call women dumb, but not to use the epithet nigger to make a point, even if you are commenting on an article that reveals prejudice and stereotyping.
A few months ago the ombudsman for the Post wrote wondering why young female readership of the Post was down (hat tip, Atrios). I can't imagine, can you?
Imagine if the Post had published such an article about other groups? Why are Blacks So Dumb? Why Are Jews So Dumb? Why Are Catholics So Dumb? Why Are Handicapped People So Dumb? Why Are Old People So Dumb?
ANATOMY OF A SMEAR, by Richard Cohen: Write a column claiming the only African-American presidential candidate must support Louis Farrakhan, because the candidate's church gave him an award. Spend the entire column outlining Farrakhan's misdeeds. Sneak in this sentence at the end: "I don't for a moment think that Obama shares Wright's views on Farrakhan." Pretend that you have not delivered a vicious, factfree smear. Go have cocktails with Fred Hiatt.
Remember that cartoon I posted yesterday, from the Washington Post with PMS and other neanderthal jokes about Hillary? Blogger Mithras looked further: When you look at all the cartoons Oliphant's done about Hillary in the past few months, it's pretty clear that he hates women, not just Hillary Clinton. Prick.
Howell whines that people are angry that the WaPo put rumors about Barack Obama's Muslim ties on the front page and didn't identify them as false. Now, horrors, readers are saying bad things about the WaPo and the breakdown of journalistic standards! She may as well have published a column entitled: "Wahhhhhhhhhhhh!"
Here's how I'll describe Howell, using the immortal stylings of the author of the Obama hit piece, Perry Bacon:
"Despite [her] denials, rumors and e-mails circulating on the Internet continue to allege that Howell (Ombudsman), is a "Potted plant" in a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected dogcatcher, she would take the oath of office using toilet paper, rather than the Washington Post, as Perry Bacon Jr. did in his front page article on Obama in the Washington Post last week."
If you leave a comment on a Robert Novak column in the Washington Post calling him a traitor, it will be deleted. See here; note that the first commenter states: "Can we once discuss the merit of the article without all that pointless name-calling, however justified it may be?"; this is in reference to several traitor comments which the Post removed.
However, if you leave a comment calling President Bush Chimpy McFlightsuit, that comment is OK. See here, 6th comment down.
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