Random weekend tidbits

... as I get caught up on my reading...

• Is there going to be a draft? In a way, there already is. Further, if you're under 35 and a nurse, linguist, or someone with other specialized skills, you have special cause to be worried. At what point does an "all-volunteer army" cross the line and become more like a mercenary force? All this and thoughts about our anemic anti-war movement in an article from Rolling Stone.
• This is incredible. The Tennessee revenue stream and state budget are in a shambles, the governor is going to court in an effort to foist the cost of giving medical treatment to our poor onto local hospitals and governments, our schools are falling apart, and Chris Clem thinks the best course of action for our state is to dictate what may or may not be discussed in the classroom (full article after the jump because the TFP web site sucks). Heh. There's a good one: republicans trying to protect people from "religious indoctrination." And if colleges are forcing their liberal views on students, where are all these republicans coming from? Sorry, kiddies, but the main reason there aren't more conservatives in higher ed is because there's not enough money to be made there. (...which segues nicely into the next bullet...)
• And speaking of Horowitz (if you read the TFP article, anyway), check out this stunning demonstration of willful ignorance: "University professors are a privileged elite that work between six to nine hours a week, eight months a year for an annual salary of about $150,000, according to David Horowitz." And this is the kind of idiocy Chris Clem aspires to? That claim is so obviously wrong that there's no point in even bothering to refute it. It's hard to believe anyone takes these morons seriously.
• I've been sitting on this one all week because I've been waiting for the public outcry and/or some media coverage of the story, but there's been nothing but a bit of noise from a few bloggers. Condi Rice blatantly and shamelessly lied to the American people. Where is the outrage?
• The ground is shifting beneath Big Media as Soros and Buffet invest in cable.
• And just how pathetic is Brit Hume? Now he's just making shit up. We expect that kind of crap from ideologues like William Bennett, but Hume is supposedly a journalist, isn't he? Or perhaps he is yet another shill on the White House payroll? Hrmmm...

The story that keeps on giving

This Guckert story isn't going anywhere. A piece from Frank Rich is set for Sunday's NYTimes (after the jump) and there's nothing on the horizon to distract everyone, especially as the plot continues to thicken. Yesterday's Nashua Advocate points out that "Guckert may have been in the White House press corps even before his 'hiring' by Talon News" and that the democrats are poised to drop the ball yet again:

Certainly, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan was complicit in Gannon/Guckert's attempt to obscure his real identity (and we now know why Gannon/Guckert so obscured that identity, perhaps McClellan knew too), as Progressive Trail has so expertly detailed:

The [Standing] Committee [of Correspondents'] documents also make it pretty clear that the White House and the Congressional Press Gallery knew that Gannon was Guckert and didn't seem to care about his use of a pseudonym, something Press Secretary Scott McClellan confirmed during Thursday's White House briefing.

Now McClellan is stonewalling U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), who has called McClellan three times in the last seventy-two hours to get information on the credentialing process for Gannon/Guckert.

According to The Raw Story, McClellan hasn't returned those calls, which -- incredibly -- is causing Lautenberg to consider backing down.

What's with the Democratic Party these days?

Well, we've been asking ourselves that question for years, and are now hoping that Dr. Dean has arrived on the scene with a spine transplant ready to go. As Maureen Dowd points out, "Even the Nixon White House didn't do anything this creepy." But with half the press bought and paid for, and the other half clearly demonstrating where they put their allegiance (also see references to the Blitzer "interview" with Guckert in the Rich article), it's not hard to imagine that this may ultimately fizzle too.

JG news week

I had a busy day yesterday -- I was a TFT presenter at the JFK luncheon club (sorry, no link -- email me for more info) and then yet another doctor's appointment in the afternoon (gosh, once they suck you back into the system, they don't let go!). Since I was away from the computer for most of the day, I didn't get to read much news, so I'm letting bloggers get me caught up this morning. And it would appear we're still gnawing on the Jeff/Jim/JD/Gannon/Guckert saga. Here's a few links with your (mid-) morning beverage:

• smijer runs through the reasons this is not about whether Guckert is gay (also, note how smijer totally smacks down commenter John Cole).
• Blogoland brings us more hypocrisy from Glenn Reynolds (via Oliver Willis).
• Americablog offers evidence that Guckert might be a male prostitute (while others wonder about Guckert's connection to Scott McClellan). AmericaBlog has a ton of other posts about this story as well.
• Via Kos, Digby goes into why that matters.
• A Kos Diarist raises the issue of the Guckert/Plame connection
• Genia at SistersTalk bottomlines the debate.
• ... and Gen. JC Christian, patriot reaches out to Gannon.

Rats -- I've got to get to work... I'll probably be adding to this list throughout the day...

Keyes Family Values

"Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful. Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:" -- Luke 6:36-37

Apparently the supposedly christian Alan Keyes is using a different bible than the rest of us. Either that, or he's decided all the stuff Jesus said didn't really count -- what really matters is adhering to a platform of exclusion, which puts profits and ideology over lives, even if a life is one you brought into the world (via AmericaBlog).

Now Maya Keyes -- liberal, lesbian and a little lost -- finds herself out on her own. She says her parents -- conservative commentator and perennial candidate Alan Keyes and his wife, Jocelyn -- threw her out of their house, refused to pay her college tuition and stopped speaking to her.

And speaking of republican family values, did you hear that among so many other revelations, wanna-be supporter of troops Mr. Jeff Jim JD Gannon Guckert also owes a ton of money in back taxes?

More Gannon Fun

It's the story that keeps on giving!

OLBERMANN: Was he—it's been reported that he was issued daily passes rather than the proverbial hard pass, the permanent one that admitted him. Is that correct, to your knowledge?

MILBANK: Well, we don't know. I've seen him with something that looked an awful lot like a permanent White House pass, with his face, name and organization on it. Others have seen the same thing. We don't know for sure. But either way, it's clear that Scott Mcclellan knew that it wasn't his real name. He had to provide his real name to get into the White House. So, here you have the press secretary to the United States, playing along addressing this guy by his pseudo name. So there was some degree of complicity, even if he was not granted, against White House rules, an actual hard pass.

Stay tuned, folks! This one has a lot of mileage left in it!

UPDATE: There's lots of Gannon stuff up on AmericaBlog.

Mocking the Sycophants

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And another one gone, and another one gone

McManus makes three.

One day after President Bush ordered his Cabinet secretaries to stop hiring commentators to help promote administration initiatives, and one day after the second high-profile conservative pundit was found to be on the federal payroll, a third embarrassing hire has emerged. Salon has confirmed that Michael McManus, a marriage advocate whose syndicated column, "Ethics & Religion," appears in 50 newspapers, was hired as a subcontractor by the Department of Health and Human Services to foster a Bush-approved marriage initiative. McManus championed the plan in his columns without disclosing to readers he was being paid to help it succeed.

The slezoid actually brought his dog and pony show here to Chattavegas:

McManus provided training during two-day conferences in Chattanooga, Tenn., and also made presentations at HHS-sponsored conferences. His syndicated column has appeared in such papers as the Washington Times, the Dallas Morning News and the Charlotte Observer.

And he's apparently the guy behind marriagesavers. Perhaps I'm a jaded cynic, but I think this guy screams scandal. In another couple of months, he'll be in the papers again, but it'll be because his wife is leaving him after he's caught in a strip club with some fishnets around his ankles or something. Or maybe not. I don't know why I don't believe in these pious, holier-than-thou pseudo-preacher types, but I don't.

Another one bites the dust

Just how much taxpayer money has been funneled into Bush's propaganda campaigns?

"The Bush marriage initiative would emphasize the importance of marriage to poor couples" and "educate teens on the value of delaying childbearing until marriage," [Maggie Gallagher] wrote in National Review Online, for example, adding that this could "carry big payoffs down the road for taxpayers and children."

But Gallagher failed to mention that she had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote the president's proposal. Her work under the contract, which ran from January through October 2002, included drafting a magazine article for the HHS official overseeing the initiative, writing brochures for the program and conducting a briefing for department officials.

"Did I violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it?" Gallagher said yesterday. "I don't know. You tell me."

I'm kind of surprised that you even had to ask, Maggie. The answer is yes, and the question was pretty much a no-brainer. Thanks for playing. You can go away now.

Armstrong apologizes

Armstrong Williams made a pathetic attempt to rescue his career in his column today. Unfortunately, he lied in the process:

In 2003 Ketchum Communications contacted a small PR firm that I own, Graham Williams Group, to buy ad space on a television show that I own and host. The ad was to promote The Department of Education's "No Child Left Behind" plan. I have long felt that school vouchers hold the greatest promise of ending the racial education gap in this country. We need to hold schools accountable for their failures and create incentives to change. That is why I have vigorously supported school vouchers for the past decade—in print, on TV, during media appearances and in lectures. I believe that school vouchers represent the greatest chance of stimulating hope for young, inner city school children&mdashoften of color. In fact, I am a board member of Black Americans for Educational Options (BAEO), because I feel that school choice plans hold the promise of a new civil rights movement.

In the past I have used my column space to convey the promise of school options. I continued to do so, even after receiving money to run a series of ads on my television show promoting the "No Child Left Behind" act. I now realize that I exercised poor judgment in continuing to write about a topic which my PR firm was being paid to promote.

But, it wasn't just a matter of his talking about an issue that was contained in an ad on his show. The contract he had with the Bush Adminstration required him to regularly comment on the No Child Left Behind Act in his show and in his columns, and to convince others to do the same. This is illegal. Much like so many other people connected with this adminstration, this jackass is a weasel who doesn't have the cajones to own up to what he's obviously done. How pathetic.

Well, his column has been dumped and supposedly, his tv show has been suspended. No doubt, he's now well qualified to be hired by the Bush Adminstration for something. And speaking of the Bush adminstration, that's where the story continues:

There can be no defense of syndicated columnist Armstrong Williams' disgraceful grab of public money from the Education Department to tout President Bush's No Child Left Behind law while posing as an objective journalist. But focusing on one man's ethics disaster misses the larger and more important story of the Bush administration's pattern of placing propaganda in U.S. news media.

[...]

Williams is likely to skip away with little more than a spate of bad publicity and a hand slap for another reason. During the past decade, the major networks have shamelessly blurred the line between news and corporate and government infomercials. At the eleventh hour of the presidential campaign, Sinclair Broadcasting announced that it would air a program on its TV stations that falsified the Vietnam War record of Kerry. The Clear Channel Network bankrolled billboards praising Bush, and the gaggle of right-wing talk radio shock jocks blatantly promoted Bush's re-election. The FCC, which has gone berserk over rock stars' foul language and a momentary glimpse of Janet Jackson's breast, has knuckled under and given the media conglomerates free rein to bombard the public daily with partisan political blather.

Who else has been playing shill for the Bush administration in exchange for our tax dollars? Armstrong says there were others. Perhaps time will reveal their identities...

UPDATE: Oliver Willis is trying to get some of the right wingers to go on the record. Will they be happy for the opportunity to clear their names, or do they have something to hide?

What are the odds?

UPDATE: Frank Rich had a piece in the New York Times on January 13th, which follows, after the jump.

The press takes another hit

I have no idea which is more pathetic and disgusting: that Armstrong Williams accepted money from the Bush adminstration in exchange for his "opinion" of their education plan; or that the Bush administration actually paid someone (with US taxpayer funds) to play shill and spread their propaganda while pretending that it was just his opinion. Either way, just when I think that these sleazoids can't sink any lower, they manage to surprise me.

White House paid commentator to promote law

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same.

The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that aired during the show in 2004.

Williams said Thursday he understands that critics could find the arrangement unethical, but "I wanted to do it because it's something I believe in."

The top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. George Miller of California, called the contract "a very questionable use of taxpayers' money" that is "probably illegal." He said he will ask his Republican counterpart to join him in requesting an investigation.

The contract, detailed in documents obtained by USA TODAY through a Freedom of Information Act request, also shows that the Education Department, through the Ketchum public relations firm, arranged with Williams to use contacts with America's Black Forum, a group of black broadcast journalists, "to encourage the producers to periodically address" NCLB. He persuaded radio and TV personality Steve Harvey to invite Paige onto his show twice. Harvey's manager, Rushion McDonald, confirmed the appearances.

Williams said he does not recall disclosing the contract to audiences on the air but told colleagues about it when urging them to promote NCLB.

"I respect Mr. Williams' statement that this is something he believes in," said Bob Steele, a media ethics expert at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies. "But I would suggest that his commitment to that belief is best exercised through his excellent professional work rather than through contractual obligations with outsiders who are, quite clearly, trying to influence content."

The contract may be illegal "because Congress has prohibited propaganda," or any sort of lobbying for programs funded by the government, said Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "And it's propaganda."

White House spokesman Trent Duffy said he couldn't comment because the White House is not involved in departments' contracts.

Ketchum referred questions to the Education Department, whose spokesman, John Gibbons, said the contract followed standard government procedures. He said there are no plans to continue with "similar outreach."

Williams' contract was part of a $1 million deal with Ketchum that produced "video news releases" designed to look like news reports. The Bush administration used similar releases last year to promote its Medicare prescription drug plan, prompting a scolding from the Government Accountability Office, which called them an illegal use of taxpayers' dollars.

Williams, 45, a former aide to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is one of the top black conservative voices in the nation. He hosts The Right Side on TV and radio, and writes op-ed pieces for newspapers, including USA TODAY, while running a public relations firm, Graham Williams Group.

This isn't just a problem for Williams and the Bush adminstration. I know that this guy doesn't claim to be a journalist, and clearly his career is over (or at least it should be), but he's been a talking head and/or columnist for just about every "news' organization in the nation. Will any of these stations or papers feel the need to respond to this additional evidence that more and more, rather than delivering real news, they are just spitting out White House talking points and pretending that dumbed-down infotainment is legitimate news? 2004 was, among other things, the year when traditional American news outlets lost their credibility and 2005 is so far looking even worse. Is it any wonder that newspapers and TV news are both seeing their readership and ratings flounder?

UPDATE: Armstrong got canned by Tribute Media Services. And in a convergence of America's greasiest media sleazoids, Williams appeared on CNN with Robert Novak today. Oh, and he's not giving the money back. Full text on the other side of the jump.