Dana Milbank appeared on Keith Olbermann last night and pointed out most of the problems that the bloggers have had with Jeff (whatever his name is) Gannon having access to the White House. He gives a hat tip to World O' Crap as a source of information. Listening to Milbank talking about the much more serious issue of Jeff "G" as a shill for the White House after hearing Howard Kurtz completely glaze over the story on Blitzer, shows you the difference in reporting that can go on between "columnists from the same paper.
Milbank: As of Monday I saw whatever-his name-is waiting outside there at the White House, in fact he would probably be allowed to continue doing this as of now if their weren't some website called of all things "World O' Crap" that had gotten into all those personal allegations. It was Jeff's decision or whatever his name's decision to uhh step down. He wasn't kicked out of the White House at all. That's really where all the scandal lies in this whole thing.
"The issue here is whether someone with connections to male prostitution was given unfettered access to the White House and copies of internal CIA documents. For a family values administration, that's pretty creepy," said John Aravosis, one of the bloggers chasing the story."
Maybe Jack Tapper and Ruth Marcus will come to their rescue again because I imagine Tapper will just say that FOX News was getting their info from one uncorroborated source inside the prison walls and it's a very dangerous place to do reporting in. As for Ruth Marcus? I'll remain silent on her.
Tamara Haley, 38, is doing time for heroin possession and prostitution. She said Monday: "Everyone will want a piece of her. It will make them famous if they hurt Lindsay Lohan. "Or if you get her to cry, the whole ward will laugh and people will love it -- even the guards."
Haley also warned bisexual Lindsay of the jail's lesbian gangs -- and offered advice on how to avoid their clutches. She said: "The gay inmates wear their shirts inside out to let others know they are available.
"So if Lindsay doesn't want someone to grab her ass she'd better keep her shirt on straight.
"Women grab each other like animals when the guards aren't looking. It's disgusting."
And if the lesbians don't get her, Tamara says she might get it from all the murderers even though she'll be segregated from them.
Haley added: "She'll be segregated from the general population, but where she's going it is even worse. It's the wing where the murderers are. "I don't think they will actually be able to get to her, but you never know. At the very least some of those hard cases will try to scare her. They'll scream stuff to her from their cells.
Yea, prison is tough like that. Now that's real reporting.
Don't miss the FOX411 host saying that Lohan will be subjected to a "full cavity search" too.
We have crazed, angry blacks stealing the election for Obama and wild hordes of lesbian prisoners having their way with you too. We're losing the culture wars. It's all going to hell with your liberal agenda!
A police investigation into corruption at the Vatican has taken a twist with the discovery of an organised network of male prostitution. So far a senior aide to the Pope and a Vatican chorister have been removed from their posts over allegations of involvement in the homosexual prostitution ring.
The allegations were made public when Italian newspapers published transcripts of phone calls recorded by police. Police had been conducting an unrelated corruption investigation. Apparently the tapes record Angelo Balducci, a Gentleman of His Holiness, negotiating with Thomas Chinedu Ehiem, a 29-year-old Nigerian Vatican chorister, about men he wanted brought to him for sexual purposes.
Balducci held a high position within the Vatican and carried the coffin of Pope John Paul at his 2005 funeral. He has now lost his position as a Gentleman of the Holiness. The taped conversations include Balducci describing precise physical details of the men he desired.
Balducci was a member of one of the world's most exclusive fraternities – the Gentlemen of His Holiness, or Papal Gentlemen, the ceremonial ushers of the papal household.
The scandal is just the newest scandal in a seemingly never ending series of scandals involving the Catholic Church. There is no telling how extensive the prostitution ring is within the Vatican, or what, if any knowledge, Pope Benedict XVI had of the nefarious activities taking place within his household.
The scandal is yet another indication of the corruption and moral hypocrisy which surrounds the Pope, and permeates the Catholic Church.
Why is it that those so insistent on controlling and judging others' behaviors always seem to have the hardest time living up to their own standards?
Thank God for Joe Conason, who's a consistent champion of the poor and working class. He writes about the trumped-up hysteria about ACORN - and says Republicans who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones:
[...] ACORN's troubles should be considered in the context of a history of honorable service to the dispossessed and impoverished. No doubt it was fun to dupe a few morons into providing tax advice to a "pimp and ho," but what ACORN actually does, every day, is help struggling families with the Earned Income Tax Credit (whose benefits were expanded by both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton). And while the idea of getting housing assistance for a brothel was clever, what ACORN really does, every day, is help those same working families avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes.
Perhaps the congressional investigation now demanded by some Republican politicians would be a useful exercise, if conducted impartially. A fair investigation might begin to dispel some of the wild mythology promoted by right-wing media outlets.
Among the most popular canards on the right, repeated constantly by conservative pundits and politicians, is that ACORN has been found guilty of engaging in deliberate voter fraud, using federal funds. In reality, ACORN has registered close to 2 million low-income citizens across the country over the past five years -- a laudable record with a very low incidence of fraud of any kind.
Over the past several years, a handful of ACORN employees have admitted falsifying names and signatures on registration cards, in order to boost the pay they received. When ACORN officials discovered those cases, they informed the state authorities and turned in the miscreants. (That was why the Bush Justice Department's blatant attempt to smear ACORN with rushed, election-timed indictments became a national scandal for Republicans rather than Democrats.) The proportion of fraud is infinitesimal. For example, a half-dozen ACORN workers were charged with registration fraud or other election-related crimes in the 2004 election. They had completed fewer than two dozen false registrations -- out of more than a million new voters registered by ACORN during that cycle. The mythology that suggests that thousands or even millions of illegal registrants voted is itself a fraud.
If only the Republicans who have worked up a frenzy over ACORN's alleged crimes were so indignant about real and damaging voter fraud -- such as the amazing case of Young Political Majors, the firm that ran GOP registration efforts in California, Massachusetts, Florida, Arizona and elsewhere before the authorities in Orange County, Calif., busted its president, Mark Anthony Jacoby, and sent him to jail last year. He had built a lucrative partisan career by teaching his minions to deceive thousands of voters into registering as Republicans rather than Democrats, among other scams. Of course, the only on-air mention of the Young Political Majors scandal on Fox News was made by blogger Brad Friedman -- and the national media, mainstream and conservative, generally ignored it. They were too busy generating "controversy" over ACORN.
So now the overhyped voting registration tales are metastasizing into wild accusations about ACORN's finances and programs, including claims that the group will receive billions in federal bailout funding and that it is a hotbed of corruption, perhaps even murder. In fact, ACORN affiliates -- those not involved with voter registration -- have received a few million dollars annually in federal funding. The group is not scheduled to receive any bailout money (although working people would probably benefit more from subsidizing ACORN than greasing AIG and Goldman Sachs).
I watch a video like this - thoughtful doctors pointing out the pressing need for health care reform - and I just have to shake my head at the travesty we have instead. I'm especially furious at the obstructionist role taken by the Blue Dogs, the quasi-Democrats.
The thing is, the Blue Dogs are not negotiating in good faith - that is, they are not trying to improve health care - or people's lives, unless that person is an insurance company lobbyist. It's about money and influence, and how much they're willing to do to get it and keep it. Nice to see prostitution pays off!
On June 19, Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas made clear that he and a group of other conservative Democrats known as the Blue Dogs were increasingly unhappy with the direction that health-care legislation was taking in the House.
"The committees' draft falls short," the former pharmacy owner said in a statement that day, citing, among other things, provisions that major health-care companies also strongly oppose.
Five days later, Ross was the guest of honor at a special "health-care industry reception," one of at least seven fundraisers for the Arkansas lawmaker held by health-care companies or their lobbyists this year, according to publicly available invitations.
The roiling debate about health-care reform has been a boon to the political fortunes of Ross and 51 other members of the Blue Dog Coalition, who have become key brokers in shaping legislation in the House. Objections from the group resulted in a compromise bill announced this week that includes higher payments for rural providers and softens a public insurance option that industry groups object to. The deal also would allow states to set up nonprofit cooperatives to offer coverage, a Republican-generated idea that insurers favor as an alternative to a public insurance option.
At the same time, the group has set a record pace for fundraising this year through its political action committee, surpassing other congressional leadership PACs in collecting more than $1.1 million through June. More than half the money came from the health-care, insurance and financial services industries, marking a notable surge in donations from those sectors compared with earlier years, according to an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity.
A look at career contribution patterns also shows that typical Blue Dogs receive significantly more money -- about 25 percent -- from the health-care and insurance sectors than other Democrats, putting them closer to Republicans in attracting industry support.
Most of the major corporations and trade groups in those sectors are regular contributors to the Blue Dog PAC. They include drugmakers such as Pfizer and Novartis; insurers such as WellPoint and Northwestern Mutual Life; and industry organizations such as America's Health Insurance Plans. The American Medical Association also has been one of the top contributors to individual Blue Dog members over the past 20 years.
Many liberal Democrats and advocates of health-care reform were angry about the compromise bill and view the Blue Dogs as being too cozy with drugmakers, hospitals and insurers, and they argue that the conservative Democrats should be more supportive of the agenda set by President Obama and Democratic leaders.
"The Blue Dogs are carrying water for the industry instead of their constituents," said Richard Kirsch, national campaign manager for Health Care for America Now, a liberal pro-reform group. "In effect, the Blue Dogs and the Republicans are taking positions that are closer all the time and further away from what most Americans want."
“If the situation progresses, we will be just like India...They are busy building public fountains when we don’t have water in the sink.”
- Abdulalah F. Alafar, director of the Maryam Establishment for Children charity in Baghdad.
The American invasion of Iraq has left quite a legacy. We've lost billions of dollars in cash meant for Iraq's reconstruction, while the women left widows by our bombing sell themselves for enough money to survive:
Among Iraqi women aged 15 to 80, 1 in 11 are estimated to be widows, though officials admit that figure is hardly more than a guess, given the continuing violence and the displacement of millions of people. A United Nations report estimated that during the height of sectarian violence here in 2006, 90 to 100 women were widowed each day.
In large cities like Baghdad, the presence of war widows is difficult to ignore. Cloaked in black abayas, they wade through columns of cars idling at security checkpoints, asking for money or food. They wait in line outside mosques for free blankets, or sift through mounds of garbage piled along the street. Some live with their children in public parks or inside gas station restrooms.
Officials at social service agencies tell of widows coerced into “temporary marriages” — relationships sanctioned by Shiite tradition, often based on sex, which can last from an hour to years — to get financial help from government, religious or tribal leaders.
Other war widows have become prostitutes, and some have joined the insurgency in exchange for steady pay. The Iraqi military estimates that the number of widows who have become suicide bombers may be in the dozens.
In the past several weeks, even as the government has formed commissions to study the problem, it has begun a campaign to arrest beggars and the homeless, including war widows.
[...] Efforts to increase the government stipend for widows — currently about $50 a month and an additional $12 per child — have stalled. By comparison, the price of a five-liter container of gasoline, used for cars as well as home generators, is about $4.
Still, only about 120,000 widows — roughly one in six — receive any state aid, according to government figures. Widows and their advocates say that to receive benefits they must either have political connections or agree to temporary marriages with the powerful men who control the distribution of government funds.
“It is blackmail,” said Samira al-Mosawi, chairwoman of the women’s affairs committee in Parliament. “We have no law to treat this point. Widows don’t need temporary support, but a permanent solution.”
The latest plan, proposed by Mazin al-Shihan, director of the Baghdad Displacement Committee, a city agency, is to pay men to marry widows. “There is no serious effort by the national government to fix this problem, so I presented my own program,” he said.
When asked why the money should not go directly to the women, Mr. Shihan laughed.
“If we give the money to the widows, they will spend it unwisely because they are uneducated and they don’t know about budgeting,” he said. “But if we find her a husband, there will be a person in charge of her and her children for the rest of their lives. This is according to our tradition and our laws.”
Yeah, because it would be too difficult to just educate them. And besides, then they get ideas - and we can't have that.
A two-day prostitution sting in St. Paul netted 35 men, including a longtime Republican operator in Minnesota politics.
Peter Hong, 41, of Minneapolis, was one of 19 men picked up Wednesday afternoon after police say he responded to an ad for sex put out in newspapers and online by the St. Paul Police Department's vice squad.
The Carleton grad was a campaign spokesman for Gov. Tim Pawlenty in 2002 and congressional press secretary to Sen. Rod Grams, R-Minn., for much of the 1990s. He also served as the Bush-Cheney Minnesota campaign spokesman in 2004. His most recent political stint was as presidential campaign spokesman for Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Hong is currently self-employed and "Always Searching for the Next Big Thing!" according to his profile on the business-networking Web site LinkedIn. Read on...
The Senate Ethics Committee has decided not to investigate Louisiana Senator David Vitter.
The Republican was linked to an elite Washington prostitution ring owned by Deborah Jean Palfrey. Palfrey committed suicide May 1st, two weeks after being convicted of racketeering and money laundering.
The bipartisan ethics panel says it decided against a probe because the conduct occurred before Vitter became a senator. And it says it didn't result in any criminal charges or involve the improper use of his public office or status.
He gets off on a technicality. Wow, another shocker. CREW sums it up nicely:
“The Senate Ethics Committee has once again done what it does best: nothing.
I wonder if the Senate Republicans gave him another standing ovation? That might be something. And poor Mr. Super Tuber just can't get no respect from his buddies.
Fender-benders aside, Vitter finds himself in some hot water now that Deborah Palfrey is going to trial and he's been named as a potential witness. As News 9 reports, Vitter may even invoke his 5th amendment rights. We'll be sure to follow this one.
CNN said it shouldn't have used a former U.S. attorney who quit his job after allegedly biting a stripper as an analyst about New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's prostitution scandal.
No mention of Kendall Coffey's past was made when anchor Tony Harris interviewed him Tuesday on the legal questions surrounding Spitzer's case. Coffey quit his job in May 1996 after being accused of biting a topless dancer on the arm during a visit to an adult club after losing a big drug case.
Coffey talked on CNN about what kind of charges the New York governor could face. Spitzer is accused of having a high-priced call girl visit his hotel room during a visit to Washington last month.
While Coffey's past is known to CNN's booking department, it wasn't to the person who set up Harris' segment. CNN spokesman Nigel Pritchard blamed a "miscommunication."
"Coffey has been a guest on CNN in the past but was probably not the right one for this story," Pritchard said.
