Shitao/news

Lou Dobbs, "always a good man of business," as Marley's Ghost in A Christmas Carol: "Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

"The story on Chernobyl is of particular interest to me. I am originally from Ukraine and on some level I have witnessed the disaster from the very beginning. I would like to keep documenting the lives of people in that region, and hopefully I will get to see a re-settlement of the area when this region is deemed safe to inhabit." Dima Gavrysh to SLIDELUCK POTSHOW

Old Bill sucked shit through a rag when it came to doing his prime news gathering. For those smitten with his wordsmithing trumping other weaknesses, I'd offer the Jonathon Alter or Eric Alterman pieces as proof positive that they were thin veils for his mean schlockery..... May he and Bob Novak meet in the Styxian netherworlds and play pinochle thru eternity and keep pulling jokers out of each others bums...


When his scooplets panned out, as they did during the Carter administration, winning him a Pulitzer Prize, Safire the reporter would take a bow. When they didn't--see his contributions on Whitewater, the Vince Foster suicide, Wen Ho Lee, Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, the Mohamed Atta connection to Iraqi intelligence, and Iraqgate--Safire the opinionator would either say the jury was still out or just move on without correcting the record.

In an August 2003 Washingtonian profile by Harry Jaffe, Safire filibustered the case against correcting his Iraq and Bin Laden views by saying, "I don't feel the need to correct the record until the facts become clear." In an Aug. 21, 1995, New Yorker "Talk of the Town" piece, David Remnick chided Safire for having led Times readers astray with a 1987 column asking rhetorically if the Gorbachev-led Soviets weren't still out "to dominate the world." (For more on Safirean overreach, see Eric Boehlert's 2004 piece in Salon.)

It is unlikely anyone has ever come to this city and commented on how clean the streets are. But this litter-strewn metropolis is now wrestling with a garbage problem so severe it has managed to incite its weary residents and command the attention of the president.


Autumn

A touch of cold in the Autumn night--
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded,
And round about were the wistful stars
With white faces like town children.


--T. E. Hulme

On a day when Washington was abuzz with the news that former Vice President Dick Cheney planned to publish a tell-all memoir, former President George W. Bush offered his personal reason for not reading it. 



"I have no intention of reading Dick Cheney's book," Mr. Bush told reporters, "because it's a book." 



Mr. Bush said he was "surprised" that Mr. Cheney was publishing a book that reportedly is critical of him because "if you're trying to communicate some criticism to me, a book is pretty much the last place you'd put it."

For his part, Mr. Cheney confirmed reports that his memoir will be ghostwritten by the author James Frey.

Elsewhere, in an official statement, John Edwards said, "There are two Americas, and I have children in both."

Turdblossom arriving at his attorney's office on May 15th

Former White House political adviser Karl Rove played a central role in the ouster of a U.S. attorney in New Mexico, one of nine prosecutors fired in a scandal in 2006 over political interference with the Justice Department, according to transcripts of closed-door testimony released Tuesday.

Harriet Miers, then White House counsel, said in testimony June 15 to House Judiciary Committee investigators that Rove was "very agitated" over U.S. Attorney David Iglesias "and wanted something done about it."

The committee released more than 5,400 pages of White House and Republican National Committee e-mails, along with transcripts of closed-door testimony by Miers and Rove. Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., said the documents reveal that White House political officials were deeply involved in the firing of Iglesias and the other U.S. attorneys.