Think Progress

After his plane was forced to take evasive maneuvers to avoid rocket-propelled grenades while taking off from Baghdad, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) said “he watched through the window as the grenades exploded near the plane. He said he felt the blasts.” Asked if he was frightened, Inhofe responded, “Not a bit. I was kind of excited.”

URL: Think Progress

   more »

Media Matters for America

Between August 28 and August 31, NBC, CNN, and Fox News all aired reports or discussions on Norman Hsu, the Democratic donor known for being a top contributor and fundraiser to the campaigns of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY). The Los Angeles Times reported on August 29 that, in 1991, Hsu "pleaded no contest to grand theft, agreed to serve up to three years in prison and then seemed to vanish. 'He is a fugitive,' Ronald Smetana, who handled the case for the state attorney general, said in an interview." The previous day, The Wall Street Journal had suggested that Hsu may have funneled illegal campaign contributions to Clinton by reimbursing people for contributions made to Clinton under their names. However, there is no evidence that any candidate or committee who received money from Hsu knew anything about the controversies surrounding him, and many campaigns that received money from Hsu -- including Clinton's -- have since said they will donate it to charity. On August 31, Hsu turned himself in to authorities in California. The August 29 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, for example, teased the story with a picture of Clinton with the ...   more »

Media Matters for America

On the August 30 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews did not challenge former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's (R-TX) assertion that former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) "resigned from Congress because the Republicans demanded that he resign from Congress." In fact, as Media Matters for America noted, ABC News chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross, who broke the story, reported on September 29, 2006, that Foley resigned "hours after ABC News questioned him about sexually explicit internet messages with current and former congressional pages under the age of 18." And during an October 2, 2006, press conference, then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) stated that "Foley resigned almost immediately upon the outbreak of this information, and so we really didn't have a chance to ask him to resign," as Media Matters also noted. Furthermore, while a House Ethics Committee report on the scandal found no evidence that Hastert or other members of the Republican leadership knew about the sexually explicit instant messages that Foley allegedly sent to pages, the committee did find that "the weight of the evidence supports the conclusion that Speaker Hastert was told, at least in passing, about the emails ...   more »

Media Matters for America

On the August 30 edition of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, guest host Christine Romans repeatedly claimed that American troop deaths in Iraq "are down this summer." Romans also reported that "[t]he Pentagon today is citing the surge in Iraq as a reason for a drop in troop deaths this summer," by comparing casualty figures in July and August to those in May and later asked if lower American casualty figures were a measure of the success of the "surge." However, as Media Matters for America documented, statistics compiled by the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count on its website iCasualties.org show that the 260 U.S. troop deaths in Iraq during June, July, and August 2007 make this the deadliest June through August of the Iraq war for U.S. troops.

From iCasualties.org:

June-July-August 2003: 113 American troops died

June-July-August 2004: 162 American troops died

June-July-August 2005: 217 American troops died

June-July-August 2006: 169 American troops died

June-July-August 2007: 260 American troops died

Despite these facts, on four occasions, Romans and CNN senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre asserted that troop deaths are down this "summer":

• Previewing a report from McIntyre, Romans said: "U.S. troop deaths in Iraq ...   more »

News Hounds

According to TVNewser, the gap in ratings between The O'Reilly Factor and Countdown got much smaller this week. O'Reilly fans will say it's because Bill is off this week while Olbermann fans are suggesting the network sampling of Countdown last Sunday created new viewers.

comment: Maybe the people who only watch O'Reilly, to be amused by his outrageous behavior, discovered that Countdown is far more entertaining. Bill-O has recently been as predictable as Ann Coulter and as irritating as John Gibson. Olbermann's ratings have been inching up on BOR for some time now and it's just going to continue.

note: To the O'Reilly fans about to jump on this, I'll save you some trouble with a prepared response since you always say the same things when BOR is threatened..
Yes, Bill O'Reilly's show is still #1. He's still your cable king and in your eyes we, no doubt, are still considered "libtards',"loons","traitors" and "haters". That being said, there's really no need to waste your energy typing those nasty messages. It appears that even Bill-O's fans are now annoying and predictable.

URL: News Hounds

   more »

One Pissed Off Veteran

Jeez, I kinda feel sorry for the guy. You know who I mean, Senator Tappy McWidestance, aka Larry Craig (R-Hypocrite). Here is a deeply-closeted gay guy who had the sad misfortune of aligning himself with the wrong political party, and has had to live a life of secrecy ever since, even to the point of having to marry a woman to throw off the scent of gay-ness.

But ultimately his own self-loathing and the profound emotional wreckage from hiding his true colors were the cause of his self-outing -- I mean, gay sex in a public airport bathroom. Really.

That seems to be the problem with a lot of these closeted gay Rethugs -- they managed to get themselves ensconced in a political party that hates them and hates their "gay lifestyle" (whatever the fuck that is).

On the other hand, they knew what the Rethugs stood for when they joined the party. And if they had not only been deep in the closet, but also hiding under a rock while they were there, they had to know immediately that their new buddies hated them. Not them personally, of course, since they didn't really ...   more »