This is the man the Pukes adore -- Ted Sampley. If you see any blogger, or hear any Puke on radio or television, citing "Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry" with approval, know that those persons are praising a convicted thug and, according to Senator John McCain, a fraud who preys on the survivors of men killed in the service of the United States.

Here's the story:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 -- Senator John McCain came to the defense of a fellow Vietnam War veteran, Senator John Kerry, on Friday by attacking the credibility of a North Carolina veteran who has dedicated himself to defeating Mr. Kerry in his campaign for president.

Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, called the man, Ted Sampley, "one of the most despicable people I have ever had the misfortune to encounter."

Mr. Sampley, a businessman from Kinston, N.C., has gained some attention in recent days for operating a Web site devoted to attacking Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, for his opposition to the war in Vietnam after his military service. The Web site, www.vietnamveteransagainstjohn kerry.com, includes pictures from the 1970's showing Mr. Kerry at antiwar protests. One shows Mr. Kerry at a rally, sitting several rows behind Jane Fonda, who was so outspoken against the war that she was labeled a Communist by her political opponents.

...

In 1993, Mr. Sampley was convicted of misdemeanor assault and sentenced to 180 days' probation for attacking a legislative aide to Mr. McCain.

...

Mr. Sampley once called Mr. McCain, who was held captive for five years in North Vietnam, "the Manchurian Candidate," a reference to a 1962 film in which a Communist-controlled candidate nearly becomes his party's candidate for president.

...

In defending Mr. Kerry, Mr. McCain --who has campaigned for President Bush this year -- said of Mr. Sampley: "I consider him a fraud who preys on the hopes of family members of missing servicemen for his own profit. He is dishonorable, an enemy of the truth, and despite his claims, he does not speak for or represent the views of all but a few veterans."

Mr. Sampley is not the only person actively seeking to discredit Mr. Kerry. In recent days, a picture showing Mr. Kerry at a podium with Ms. Fonda has circulated on the Internet. But the picture is a hoax, according to the photo agency that owns the original, Corbis. In the original photo, Mr. Kerry is alone at the podium.

Curb Your Bushthusiasm

From a man who didn't go AWOL.

Love Is Never Having to Say You're Sorry

"The truth is George Bush came to Alabama. He asked for weekend drills with us. He was assigned to me," said [Alabama Air National Guard Officer John] Calhoun, who was in Florida on Friday for this weekend's Daytona 500. Calhoun said he saw Bush sign in at the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group in Montgomery eight to 10 times for roughly eight hours at a time from May to October 1972.

"He showed up. He sat in my office. He signed in," Calhoun said. "He was very determined to be there. He was in uniform and he did what he was supposed to do."

However, Calhoun recalled Bush in the unit in the summer of 1972 when the documents indicate that he had not yet applied to serve there.

The records, for example, show Bush was not paid for any service during more than five months in 1972, from April 17 to Oct. 27. He was paid for two days in late October 1972, four days in mid-November 1972 and no days in December 1972.

Bush's letter requesting duty at the 187th is dated Sept. 5, 1972.

Calhoun said Bush's activities included "reading safety magazines and flight manuals in an office as he performed his weekend obligations." As World O'Crap reports, Calhoun told the Washington Post that Bush would "sit on my couch" and read those materials, and "[h]e never complained about coming."

No complaining from the couch? Mission accomplished!

Amazon Love Letters

Damn, it would have been good to have had access to this -- I have a huge list of authors whose reviewers I'd like to see revealed.

Close observers of Amazon.com noticed something peculiar this week: the company's Canadian site had suddenly revealed the identities of thousands of people who had anonymously posted book reviews on the United States site under signatures like "a reader from New York."

The weeklong glitch, which Amazon fixed after outed reviewers complained, provided a rare glimpse at how writers and readers are wielding the online reviews as a tool to promote or pan a book -- when they think no one is watching.

Too bad Tim Lambert didn't know about it either. (Couldn't somebody have put this to good use? I mean, who gives a shit about what Dave Eggers said?)

Oh, and here's the lame tie-in to today's "love" theme:

The New York Times reports that well-known discount erotic model and expert on loving families, "Doctor" Laura Schlessinger "used a call about an anonymous letter to vent her distress over some of her Amazon reviewers, who she described as 'scummy, creepy people.'" Hmmm... I can't believe Dr. Laura used to curse her mother with that mouth!

Grand Old Police Blotter: Defense of Marriage Act Edition

Love is all about protecting those you love. And Mike O'Neal (R - Okla) is the personification of love. O'Neal believes that heterosexual-only marriage is "unique relationship" and a "really valuable foundation."

GOP members of the Oklahoma House have offered three measures opposing gay marriages. House Joint Resolution 1042, by Rep. Mike O'Neal, R-Enid, would submit to a vote of the people a proposed change in the Constitution that states "only the union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Oklahoma."

O'Neal said making a change in the state Constitution would prevent the Oklahoma Supreme Court from taking action like that of the Massachusetts court.

"That's the way you deal with courts and the politically correct environment," O'Neal said. "You put all your really valuable foundations in state constitutions. And the unique relationship of marriage is one of those foundations."

introduced himself and presented a business card to a group of people from Tulsa who had journeyed to Oklahoma City for a conference in the hotel.

[He] then told one of the women in the group to get into some boxer shorts and a T-shirt and meet him in the whirlpool, according to the report. The woman declined and left.

Unable to reason with that woman, O'Neal approached another victim of the courts and the politically correct environment, and whispered to her, "Heterosexual marriage is an institution, but the warden's back in Enid so...."

He then sat on a sofa and began a conversation about marriage with the female victim, according to the report. The suspect, who reportedly was intoxicated, allegedly leaned over and asked the female victim an obscene question, according to the report.

The question was "you don't support obscene gay marriages, do you?"

In fact, the courageous O'Neal was so adamant about the value of heterosexual marriage that he reportedly attempted to restrain the woman after she threatened to vote against his marriage amendment.

Telling police later she "was in such a shock" that she got up and was attempting to gather some friends to join her in leaving when the suspect allegedly grabbed her left buttock and squeezed it tightly, according to the report.

Sensing that the will of the people was in peril, O'Neal pursued the matter even further.

The victim told police she was scared and left the lounge area, running with another friend to the elevator. As the elevator was closing with the victim and friend inside, according to the report, the suspect reportedly stuck his arms through the opening and spread the doors apart. The victim and friend ran underneath his extended arms. The victim called hotel security from her room and later was treated for a sprained ankle suffered when she ran away from the suspect, according to the report.

Well done, Mike! That's one woman who will never again question the sanctity of heterosexual marriage.

Asked about his heroic feats by the News & Eagle, O'Neal modestly stated, "I just can't talk about it right now, OK?"

A special debt of gratitude is owed to O'Neal by his wife, Jennie, and children, Katie, Dennis and Tricia, whose marriage and family have been strengthened immeasurably by O'Neal's defensive tactics.

According to the News & Eagle, O'Neal also introduced a bill in January 2003 limiting the use of incompatibility as a reason for divorce. You might want to put that bill on the fast-track, Mikey.

(Link via Buzzflash.)

Update: It's almost as if Mikhaela Blake Reid predicted this. Heh.

Update 2 (2/15): Added Enid News & Eagle link and updated official bio link. Mikey's a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives' "Wildlife Committee," so he may try to claim legislative immunity. And it's got an e-mail address for those wishing to discuss the uniqueness of marriage with O'Neal.

Isn't It Romantic

Love is even better the second time around, say those who have screwed up their first relationship. Among that group might be the neocon essayist who, although undoubtely a major embarassment to his parents, managed to find his way home due to the luminescent quality of his skin (or at least the large expanse thereof on top of his head).

Query: Which prolific, prizewinning Puke penned the following tribute to the woman generously willing to overlook his obvious defects?

[Name omitted]'s ease and calm had already gifted me with a wondrously new sense of comfort in my own skin. As we wandered about the Cape in a green VW bug on a night so dark no stars showed themselves, we made our own light. And when we turned round the Orleans rotary and knew the way home at last, I knew I had found my way home for the remainder of my days.

"Across the Net, all the lonely people -- the Wonkettes and wonkette-linking Kauses -- are stroking their pale, unloved thighs this day. Once again, they've found the way they can make blood rush all through their pale, unloved bodies.

...

MAN-OR-MOUSE KAUS: Incredible, isn't it? This is what Mickey Kaus cuts-and-pastes with thigh-rubbing glee.

...

"Kaus offers no reason to think that’s untrue, but runs to cut-and-paste it anyway. Blood rushing mightily to the 'front lines,' he then excuses himself for a few moments."

As usual, Bob Somerby gets to the heart of the matter, with plain-spoken eloquence. That's tough love, Bob -- but it's in service of a lost cause.

Who Was Saint Valentine?

Tradition tends to favour the Roman Valentinus, a priest who died in the year 270, as the origin of the feast day, which, incidentally, was dropped from the Catholic calendar in 1969.

According to one version of the tale, he defied the emperor Claudius II by continuing to marry young couples long after marriage had been outlawed by imperial decree, Claudius having got it into his head that the shortage of recruits to the army was due to the fact that married men made reluctant soldiers.

Very timely, as modern couples now marry in defiance of emperor Bushiass II (self-proclaimed "wartime emperor" and reluctant solider), who seeks to outlaw marriage by constitutional decree.

Watching Scotty Blow

Chuuby-faced liar Scott McClellan doesn't like it when the press questions his boss. According to this report at Washingtonian magazine's online site, Scotty almost blew his stack when Helen Thomas asked whether Bush was performing mandatory community service in his TANG days:

Thomas had gotten a tip that Bush might have been absent from duty in Alabama because he was performing court-ordered community service in Texas in 1972. She asked McClellan if that was accurate.

According to reporters in the press room, McClellan got red-faced and became so angry, it looked to some as if he were ready to pounce. He characterized the question as coming from "gutter politics."

Thomas, who has covered every president since Dwight Eisenhower and now writes a column for Hearst, was not fazed. "I think they are getting pretty nervous about this," she said Friday afternoon. "I've learned over the years that when you put out records, it often leads to more questions."

Give'm hell, Helen.

A Pickle, Not A Pickler

There is "no doubt" that Republican staffers acted improperly in accessing Democratic strategy memos on judicial nominees, the Senate's sergeant-at-arms said Wednesday, as he defended his investigation into the incident.

"There is no doubt that what was done by certain people was certainly improper. There is no way of getting around it," Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle said in an interview with The Associated Press.

When the Repukes and their allies are whining that the investigation by Pickle consitutes government waste, they fail to mention that patriot Pickle was picked for his post by that pickled peckerwood, Bill Frist.

And watch for Manny Miranda in an upcoming edition of the Grand Old Police Blotter.

Replacing The Chimp With Kaus Won't Help, Dennis

The Chicago Tribune reports:

"Miller's disconcertingly flaccid attempts to meld jokes on the news, serious political commentary, conservative hero worship and the chimp were greeted by a huge-by-CNBC-standards initial audience of 746,000 viewers, but they seem to be plummeting.

Week one averaged 540,000 viewers for the first airings of new shows; week two pulled in less than half, just 261,000."

Or, as Dennis might say, if it was written on a cue card in front of him: "Flaccid? The Exxon Vald-eez full of Cialis and a piece of steel rebar shoved down my urethral opening couldn't revive my tired schtick at this point!"

Who Is Maria Goodman?

And why does Kaus lack the stones to print her name?

Indecency

Eric Alterman says that the first time he saw Ann Coulter on CNBC (or MSNBC, same difference) she was spewing bile at a disabled veteran of the Vietnam war. It's no surprise that she hasn't evolved. TBogg points out that, contrary to Coulter's lie, Senator Max Cleland was the victim of a grenade dropped by a fellow solider, not a victim of his own error. I could not agree more with Tom's statement:

Ann Coulter shouldn't even be allowed to speak Max Cleland's name. And she shouldn't be allowed to get away with smearing him in order to prop up a lying fratboy coward who hid out in the National Guard and then couldn't even bother to show up for work. There's no bravery in lying about a man who showed up to do his job and paid the price that Cleland did. And it's too bad that Cleland doesn't have a leg left to kick Coulter's skinny ass back to Connecticut.

The Last Detail

Atrios already has this one too:

Bush moved to Alabama unit without Air Force permission

BY LARRY COHLER-ESSES AND BOB PORT

New York Daily News

NEW YORK - (KRT) - George W. Bush left his Texas Air National Guard assignment and moved to Alabama in 1972 even though the Air Force denied his request for a transfer, according to his military records.

In fact, Bush did not even ask for an official transfer until nine days after he moved to Alabama in May 1972.

The Air Force quickly rejected Bush's request, saying the fighter pilot was "ineligible" to move to the Alabama unit Bush wanted - a squadron of postal handlers.

But they were shark-infested mailbags!

washingtonpost.com has a new blog entitled "White House Briefing," written by Dan Froomkin. Froomkin says "Check here weekday mornings for a quick look at the most interesting items about the president and his staff from major newspaper, magazine and broadcast Web sites and weblogs."

Inexplicably, however, he links to this post at Roger Ailes. Look out "Dean" Broder, your reign as king of cliche and stale conventional wisdom is almost over!

(Thanks to John Dillinger (the reader, not the deceased bank robbed shot to death while exiting a Chicago movie theater)).

The Moonie Times also has a new blog, Insider (username: fuckmoon@hotmail.com; password: prudenbigot). Here's a representative sample:

Some Republicans are already worrying about President Bush's at-times detached demeanor during his Sunday "Meet the Press" interview. Is he heading down the same road as his father, who many complain didn't try hard enough during his re-election campaign? It's hard to believe Karl Rove would let that happen.

Whoa! Now that's inside! It's like being present in the White House, yet dead.

The Moonie-Sampley Connection

Today's Moonie Times quotes Sampley:

"If you mention Jane Fonda's name to a Vietnam veteran, it's a lightning-rod reaction," says Ted Sampley, publisher of the U.S. Veteran Dispatch and staunch opponent of Mr. Kerry. "She was supposed to be antiwar, but she clearly sided with one of the belligerents, which precludes her from being antiwar. She was a partisan."

Mr. Sampley first saw the photograph Monday on the Internet and purchased it for his online newsletter. He saw it pop up elsewhere, and he soon began receiving e-mail messages from readers who had seen the photograph.

The enemies of truth are pulling out all the stops. Bring it on!

Hypocrite Watch

Will any of the wingnuts offended to the brink of hysteria by the the Palm Beach State's Attorney's subpoena of Big Pharma's medical records raise a peep about this?

A move by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to subpoena the medical records of 40 patients who received so-called partial-birth abortions at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago was halted -- at least temporarily -- when a Chicago federal judge quashed the information request.

The ruling is the first in a series of subpoenas by the U.S. Justice Department seeking the medical records of patients from seven physicians and at least five hospitals, Crain's sister publication Modern Healthcare has learned. Besides Northwestern, Mr. Ashcroft is seeking patient records from University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers in Ann Arbor; Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia, owned by Tenet Healthcare Corp.; Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and Weill Cornell Medical Center of New York Presbyterian Hospital both of which are part of the New York-Presbyterian Healthcare System; and an unidentified San Francisco-area hospital.

Of course, unlike in Big Pharma's case, there's no probable cause to believe that any these patients were involved in a crime.

This should be front-page news, not buried in a regional business publication. And if the Cyst-kissing hypocrites address this abuse at all, it will be to praise the Crisco Kid and deny the existence of a right to privacy. Kudos to District Judge Charles Kocoras for protecting these patients' rights!

(Link via TAPped -- Pass it on!)

Lunatics Make Strange Bedfellows

A month or so ago, Clownhall.com slaphead Armstrong Williams was writing that "[i]n a culture that is increasingly vain and materialistic, [Michael] Jackson's rise and fall is a signpost for our great moral task: the need to carve out an immutable foundation that will help us quell the savagery that is innate to human beings." Today, Williams says to Jacko, "You rock my world."

[Armstrong] Williams denied he is now an official spokesman [for Michael Jackson] but appeared on two news shows yesterday with a new take on the man whose makeovers and child sleepovers he has slammed.

"I was more surprised after speaking to him," he told ABC's "Good Morning America." "I always perceived him as someone feeble and weak and soft-spoken. I was stunned at the strength of character."

The Daily News did not disclose whether Armstrong sent Jackson an autographed copy of his slender volume, Letters to A Young Victim.

Sampley Disgusting

Scoobie Davis also points us to a Joe Conason column on Ted Sampley, the scumbag behind the Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry website. Here's how Sampley smeared John McCain, a Vietnam P.O.W. when McCain ran against AWOL Bush:

"Sampley ... accused McCain of being a weak-minded coward who had escaped death by collaborating with the enemy. Sampley claimed that McCain had first been compromised by the Vietnamese, then recruited by the Soviets.

"To those who know McCain and are familiar with his behavior in captivity, the charge is ludicrous. McCain resisted his captors to such a degree that he was isolated in a special prison for troublemakers. He repeatedly refused special favors, including early release, and emerged as a spiritual and religious leader for other prisoners. Nonetheless, Sampley was persistent enough in his claims that the press in McCain's home state of Arizona picked up on the KGB story."

In 1992, Sampley wrote a long article that portrayed McCain as a "Manchurian candidate," who had betrayed America to the North Vietnamese and then enlisted as a secret Communist agent. But it wasn't until seven years later that the celebrated Navy pilot and ex-POW found out how much damage such smears could inflict. After McCain declared his presidential candidacy in 1999, Sampley revived the "Manchurian candidate" smear as a convenient weapon for the Senator's political enemies. Some of them, including the prominent conservative Paul Weyrich and Richard Mellon Scaife's Newsmax Web site, didn't hesitate to pick up the slimy stuff generated by Sampley. The fringe assault on McCain, amplified by the likes of Weyrich and talk radio, caused grave injury to his campaign during the pivotal South Carolina primary.

Conason points out that Kerry defended McCain against these smears, calling Sampley a stupid ass. I hope McCain will return the favor.

In the meantime, expect other stupid asses and chinless idiots to link to Sampley's scumbag website.

Update (2/11): A reader e-mailed a link to a page reprinting the chapter on Sampley from the book Prisoners of Hope by Susan Katz Keating. (Conason links to this site as well.)

Howie's column isn't really about the media at all, but rather a selective rehash of a ten-month-old Boston Globe series on John Kerry. He starts out inauspiciously:

The Boston Globe revisited the era in its seven-part series on the Massachusetts senator last year, and I've slogged through it again so you don't have to. The series also casts a slightly different light on Kerry's Vietnam heroics.

And you can't slog through it, Howie fails to provide a link.

While Howie claims the series "casts a different light on Kerry's Vietnam heroics," he mainly avoids the part of the series which actually addresses Kerry's time in Vietnam and, with one exception, quotes entirely from Part 3, which addresses Kerry's activities in the United States after serving after Vietnam. Howie cites cheap shots from Tricky Dick and his criminal crew: Charles Colson, H.R. Halderman and Spiro Agnew.

Most offensively, Kurtz claims that "Kerry had testified that some U.S. soldiers had raped, mutilated and randomly shot at civilians, shot cattle and dogs for fun and otherwise behaved abominably." This lie -- which has been repeated by lowlifes like Mark "Shite" Steyn and Sean Hannity -- has been exposed by bloggers Scoobie Davis, who quotes what Kerry actually said. On this point, it must be said that the Boston Globe article is no better, misquoting Kerry as well. But Kurtz doesn't mind repeating a smear if he can attribute it to someone else, including convicted criminals like Colson and admitted felons like Agnew.

Band of Brothers

John Kerry has appeared at numerous campaign events with the fellow veterans who served along side him in Vietnam (and made it home alive).

Anyone seen Bush's band of brothers?

Me, neither.

And neither has Scott "Tissue of Lies" McClellan:

Q. Scott, when Senator Kerry goes around campaigning, there's frequently what they call "a band of brothers," a bunch of soldiers who served with him, who come forward and give testimonials for him. I see, in looking at our files in the campaign of 2000, it said that you were looking for people who served with him to verify his account of service in the National Guard. Has the White House been able to find, like Senator Kerry, "a band of brothers" or others who can testify about the President's service?

MR. McCLELLAN: All the information that we have we shared with you in 2000, that was relevant to this issue. And all the additional information that has come to our attention we have shared with you. The President was asked about this in his interview over the weekend, and the President made it clear, yes, I want all records to be made available that are relevant to this issue; that there are some out there that were making outrageous, baseless accusations. It was a shame that they brought it up four years ago. It was a shame that they brought it up again this year. And I think that the facts are very clear from these documents. These documents -- the payroll records and the point summaries verify that he was paid for serving and that he met his requirements.

Q. Actually, I wasn't talking about documents, I was talking about people -- you know, comrades-in-arms --

MR. McCLELLAN: Right. That's why I said everything that came to our attention that was available, we made available at that time, during the 2000 campaign.

Q. But you said you were looking for people -- and I take it you didn't find any people?

MR. McCLELLAN: I mean, obviously, we would have made people available. And we -- Mr. Lloyd, who has provided a statement to put some of this into context for everybody, made some public statements during that time period to verify the records that the President had fulfilled his duties. And he put out an additional statement now to put this into context. He's someone with some technical expertise and someone that understands these matters, because he was in the National Guard at the time.

Q. Scott, can I follow on this, because I do think this is important. You know, it might strike some as odd that there isn't anyone who can stand up and say, I served with George W. Bush in Alabama, or in Houston in the Guard unit. Particularly because there are people, his superiors who have stepped forward -- in Alabama and in Houston -- who have said in the past several years that they have no recollection of him being there and serving. So isn't that odd that nobody -- you can't produce anyone to corroborate what these records purport to show?

MR. McCLELLAN: David, we're talking about some 30 years ago. You are perfectly welcome to go back and talk to individuals from that time period. But these documents --

What? Did Bush perform his duties in solitary confinement? Was he testing a top secret Flightsuit of Invisibility? He can't remember the names of anyone who he served under, or who served with him?

Josh Marshall quips:

Given the president's record as a businessman, and since he's now run the country hopelessly into debt, isn't it about time he sells the country off to some rich friends who will swallow the loss so he can move on to greener pastures?

Judy Miller, transcriptionist for the Iraqi National Congress and its fabulists, admits she makes shit up ... in e-mails:

The Times's Judith Miller has been the subject of harsh criticism. Slate, The Nation, Editor & Publisher, the American Journalism Review, and the Columbia Journalism Review have all run articles accusing her of being too eager to accept official claims before the war and too eager to report the discovery of banned weapons after it Especially controversial has been Miller's alleged reliance on Chalabi and the defectors who were in touch with him. Last May, Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post wrote of an e-mail exchange between Miller and John Burns, then the Times bureau chief in Baghdad, in which Burns rebuked Miller for writing an article about Chalabi without informing him. Miller replied that she had been covering Chalabi for about ten years and had "done most of the stories about him for our paper." Chalabi, she added, "has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper."

When asked about this, Miller said that the significance of her ties to Chalabi had been exaggerated. While she had met some defectors through him, she said, only one had resulted in a front-page story on WMD prior to the war. Her assertion that Chalabi had provided most of the Times's front-page exclusives on WMD was, she said, part of "an angry e-mail exchange with a colleague." In the heat of such exchanges, Miller said, "You say things that aren't true. If you look at the record, you'll see they aren't true."

...

I asked Miller about her December 20, 2001, article about Saeed al-Haideri, the Chalabi-linked defector who claimed that Saddam Hussein had a network of hidden sites for producing and storing banned weapons -- sites said to include the ground under Saddam Hussein Hospital. In a subsequent piece about the Bush administration's use of defectors, Miller had stated that al-Haideri's interviews with US intelligence had "resulted in dozens of highly credible reports on Iraqi weapons-related activity and purchases." Yet neither UN inspectors nor the Iraq Survey Group was able to confirm any of those reports. Al-Haideri, Miller acknowledges, "might have been totally wrong, but I believe he was acting in good faith, and it was the best we could do at the time."

To this day, neither Miller nor the Times as a whole has reported on the failure to confirm al-Haideri's claims. ...

Looking back at her coverage of Iraq's weapons, Miller insists that the problem lies with the intelligence, not the reporting. "The fact that the United States so far hasn't found WMD in Iraq is deeply disturbing. It raises real questions about how good our intelligence was. To beat up on the messenger is to miss the point."

Howie's Spin Cycle

Konflict of Interest Kurtz puts words in the mouths of unnamed "liberals":

Bush is getting bashed from both sides of the spectrum, but liberals are more likely to skewer Russert as well, saying he wasn't aggressive enough in the Oval Office setting. Although I wonder whether they would have been satisfied with any interview that didn't end with Bush admitting error and begging forgiveness.

Bullshit. First, I haven't seen any liberal saying Russert "wasn't aggressive enough in the Oval Office setting." The setting is irrelevant. Kurtz is the only one with the delusion that tough questioning inside the Oval Office is "rude." If a journo can't ask tough questions in the Oval Office, she or he shouldn't set foot inside it. All the liberal/left critiques of Russert I've read have given specific examples where Russert left a false statement unchallenged. Surely one can expect Russert to conduct a competent interview without expecting Bush to admit his incompetency.

Just read it.

(This too.)

The Book on Bush by Eric Alterman and Mark Green. Buy it before the November election sends it to the remainder bins.

Know the enemy.

Update: You can buy it here as well.

Softballs

David Corn has the best analysis of the Bush interview (i.e., the one I agree with the most). Corn says:

I waited for Russert to pounce on Bush. But no pounce came. Russert asked Bush why he insisted on cutting taxes in wartime (when every other wartime president since the Civil War has raised taxes). Once more Bush had the chance to pull out one of his stock lines: "I believe the best way to stimulate the economic growth is to allow people to keep more of their own money." Haven't we heard this before? Unfortunately, that could be said about much of what came out of Bush this hour.

Meanwhile, Howie the Obsequious Putz argues for a double standard:

But [Russert] did not cut off the president the way he would any other long-winded guest. Perhaps that would have seemed too rude. The result was more like a press conference, where each question was followed by a long, discursive answer.

Rude? Heaven forfend!

In his online column, Howie usually quotes his right-wing pals (NRO, Peg) on an appearance like this. Today he doesn't, not surprisingly.

Putzie does have a good item on Bill O'Reilly lying about his book sales and Sen. Clinton's.

Top Fun

While Pumpkinhead was choking the chickenhawk yesterday, the following ejaculation was heard:

"I served -- I flew fighters and enjoyed it, and provided a service to our country."

War is fun, said the wartime president. That explains a lot.

Of course, Big Russ knew not to ask the follow up:

"Mr. Bush, after you refused to take a physical in 1972, and were grounded by the National Guard, what service did you provide to our country?"