Suggested Reading 8/14/07

Raw Story: Kucinich: DLC agenda 'indistinguishable' from Neoconservative agenda

From the story: "...'The Democratic Leadership Council's agenda is indistinguishable from the Republican Neoconservative agenda,' [Kucinich] went on. 'They want to continue to stay in Iraq. They reject the idea of a not-for-profit health care system. ... These analysts are ... trying to keep a politics that really helps support a privileged few at the expense of the many. So I'm the candidate of the people.'"

Good points all.

TPMMuckraker: Rove's Departure: The Hunted Remains The Hunted

From the story: "The New York Times and others weigh in with the obvious: Karl Rove's departure doesn't change a thing with regard to the Democrats' investigations of him. They'll keep pursuing him, and the White House will keep stonewalling with the same sweeping claims of executive privilege. The only thing that changes is that Rove has got to get himself a lawyer."

Clearly, Karl's bullshitting days are nowhere near over.

Associated Press: Iraqi Deputy Oil Minister Kidnapped

From the story (link mine): "Dozens of uniformed gunmen in 17 official vehicles stormed an Oil Ministry compound in Baghdad and abducted a deputy oil minister and three other officials, a ministry spokesman and police said. Outside the capital, two suicide truck bombers separately struck a strategic bridge and a complex housing a small religious minority, killing at least 19 people, police said.

"The attacks came as 16,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops began a new operation north of the Iraqi capital targeting insurgents who have fled a crackdown in the restive city of Baqouba, the military said Tuesday."

This is defined by the Bush administration as "making progress."

Huffington Post: Robert Naiman: U.S. Media Ignores Estimate of 1 Million Iraqi Deaths

From the story: "Yesterday a radio interviewer in South Africa asked me what had been the response of the 'mainstream media in the United States' to Just Foreign Policy's ongoing estimate of the Iraqi death toll from the U.S. invasion and occupation, which on Thursday crossed the one million mark.

"Sadly, I had to report that it has been ignored by mainstream media, even the wire services..."

Proof positive that the argument that we were going to 'save' the iraqis with invasion was bullshit -- the media, Bush, the military, right wing talk radio, etc. clearly don't give a damn about iraqis.

Geeks Are Sexy: Fox News Changes Wikipedia To Smear Rivals; Comprehensive List of Changes

From the story: "...So we went ahead and took a look at other changes to Wikipedia allegedly made by the people from the Fox News offices - the changes originating from IP address "12.167.224.228". (Here's the DNS lookup for 12.167.224.228.) We've done the legwork of poring through all the edits and published a comprehensive list below, omitting corrections of minor errors and clarifications of fact, i.e., the innocuous. The following below are clearly anything but, however..."

The story goes on to list major edits to entries for Keith Olbermann and Al Franken, as well as editing out embarrassing or scandalous entries for Bill O'Reilly, Shepard Smith, and Brit Hume -- among others.

A little on the geeky side, but they list the edits before and after, so you can see what the problem is (via reddit).

Congressional Quarterly: Hastert Planning to Retire at End of 2008, GOP Sources Say

From the story: "After less than a year as a rank-and-file House member, former Speaker J. Dennis Hastert is expected to call an end to a political career that made him the longest serving Republican Speaker in the history of the House of Representatives."

Hastert is currently in his eleventh term, making his retirement more or less twenty years too late.