I think we are starting to see a pattern here. Let me just compare three recent examples in American current events to illustrate my point:

1. - A Democratic President (Clinton) gets frisky with an intern... media creates the biggest scandal ever. Outrage. Impeachment proceedings. Media frenzy. What are we going to tell the children?
   
   - A Republican administration gets caught paying columnists to spread propaganda, and illegally sneaking a male prostitute into the WH press corps to play fake journalist:
   
   Silence from the mainstream media.
   
   
2. - A Democratic politician (Gary Condit) gets frisky with an intern (Chandra Levy)... but later that intern is killed by a serial killer:
   
   The media turns it into the second largest scandal ever. Outrage. Investigations. Media frenzy.
   
   - The assistant of a Republican congressman (Scarborough) appears dead by what seems to be a blow to head in her office, in mysterious circumstances. The congressman soon steps down:
   
   Silence from the media. Furthermore, former congressman Scarborough is given a TV show on MSNBC!
   
   
3. - A powerful businesswoman with ties to the Democratic Party (Martha Stewart) is caught in a potential case of insider trading involving $60,000:
   
   Media pandemonium. Huge scandal. Frenzy and outrage. Stewart ends up being sentenced to prison for her involvement in this affair.
   
   - A Texas company with rock solid ties to the Bush administration and the GOP (Enron) collapses in one of the largest cases of corporate fraud in the history of the nation. We are talking billions of dollars here. There's info on alleged massive favors to Enron by Cheney and Bush:
   
   Silence from the media until it got too big... Then the case disappeared from the headlines. Ken Lay is yet to be charged or indicted.

I rest my case. Nobody should be surprised at the way the Gannon scandal is turning.

John Aravosis points today to an article by Johanna Neuman in the L.A. Times that completely misses the basic point of the developing Gannon scandal. This is the first time in three weeks that the L.A. Times covers the story, and they decide to completely confuse the underlying factors that make this a scandal of serious proportions.

I have an important question for Johanna Neuman, Howard Kurtz, and the rest of the so-called "real" journalists that have gone out of their way to derail and obfuscate the Gannon scandal:

Repeatedly you have implied journalists and the profession of journalism feel threatened by blogging. It's the talk of the town in your trade, as bloggers are snatching real investigative reporting away from the big media, while the MSM slips further into irrelevancy.

My question is the following, and I think it goes to the root of it: how come you don't feel threatened by Gannon and other fake reporters planted by the Bush administration? Do you feel your job has become one step above stenography? Are you not bothered by the unprecedented efforts by this administration to replace real reporters with paid shills? Why do you look the other way?

I mean, given a chance to investigate a case of governmental fraud, and a saucy scandal with roots that may lead to higher-ups in the White House, first you completely ignore it. Then you go out of your way to turn it into a story about big mean bloggers playing reporter and invading Gannon's so-called privacy ?(that is, a series of public websites in the world wide web where he advertised his services as a prostitute).

This is the question they need to answer. It's not just about this scandal. The MSM have purposefully stepped down from their duties to investigate and keep an eye on those in power for the rest of us. Now they are content to just copy and paste the official releases from the White House, and this has been explicitly going on for four years. That's the matter.

Yup. Someone spent some time and work on this one:

http://www.12thharmonic.com/wordpress/?p=728

It's pretty funny actually.

Last night John Aravosis of AmericaBlog started a contest to mock the nasty GOP ad attacking the AARP.

Here's my contribution:



And I think it could be applied to the MEDIA as well:



Take your pick!

It seems like the news on this guy keep coming out by the hour. Difficult to keep up. Let me list the latest:

- AmericaBlog: Gannon reportedly knew about "Shock and Awe" four hours before it happened. Notice one important thing about this new revelation: this confirms the previous discovery that Gannon/Guckert was regularly in the WH press room BEFORE he was hired by Talon. This is in direct contradiction with the official version of the story by both Gannon and the WH. They claimed that Gannon started working as a White House reporter when Talon News hired him for this task. Talon didn't even exist as a web-based bogus news service until March 29, 2003. So this puts witnesses claiming Gannon/Guckert was in the WH before that date.

The guys at Daily Kos have analyzed some broadcasts from CSPAN that reveal Jim/Jeff was there before the "official" date of hire.

- The website PRWatch reveals, after parsing other WH broadcasts, that a figure resembling Jim/Jeff could be seen in the WH in November 2002.

It's starting to look like Jim/Jeff was as much a fixture in the White House as Barney the dog. He he was given exclusive access to incredibly sensitive and classified information.

The question is, who is Gannon's trickdaddy in the White House?

on edit:

Atrios just posted the following in his blog:

One of Gannon's "scoops" was that CBS producer Mary Mapes was the person who had originally received the documents.

One wonders how JimmyJeff knew that.

Fascinating...

Indeed, my friend. Indeed.

Again, you heard it here first last summer: Timeline of Terror Alerts

Today, AP news brings us this revelation, which should surprise NOBODY!

Ridge Met With Bush's Pollsters During 2004 Campaign Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge met privately with Republican pollsters twice in a 10-day span last spring as he embarked on more than a dozen trips to presidential battleground states. Ridge's get-togethers with Republican strategists Frank Luntz and Bill McInturff during a period the secretary was saying his agency was playing no role in Bush's re-election campaign were revealed in daily appointment calendars obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act. (...)

Notice that among the Bush campaign pollsters that Tom Ridge met includes the mendacious Machiavellian strategist Frank Luntz. I'm sure they just met to discuss the latest dirt on J-Lo, I'm sure. Right....

Check out our chart of terror alerts. According to the AP article, Lunz and Ridge met first in May 17 04. Notice the flurry of terror alerts issued right after. Obvious to the naked eye.

(Link via Phoenix Woman)

Remember our now famous Timeline of Terror Alerts? Remember that very revealing chart? I think it's time to bring it out again.

As soon as the Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert scandal reached the mainstream media, we had another terror alert today:

Officials Warn of Future Terror Attacks

WASHINGTON - Speaking with one voice, President Bush's top intelligence and military officials said Wednesday that terrorists are regrouping for possible new strikes against the United States.

They said the best defense was for Congress to approve the president's military and anti-terror budget. But some in Congress, including prominent Republicans, were questioning some of that spending.

Offering few specifics on terror threats, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a House hearing that the government could reasonably predict attacks would come from terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and other means.

Meanwhile, new CIA Director Porter Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee the Iraq war was giving terrorists experience and contacts for future attacks, and FBI Director Robert Mueller expressed worry that a sleeper operative in the U.S. may have been in place for years, awaiting orders for an attack.

"I remain very concerned about what we are not seeing," Mueller said in remarks he submitted to the senators. (...)

Independently of the potential veracity of these statements, they have overplayed their hand in the past with many terror alerts of no substance. As we pointed before, it's been clear that they used many of the most mendacious terror alerts to bump bad news off the headlines, to divert from incriminating information that could damage the administration. Should we believe them now?

Or maybe it's the Gannon scandal getting too close?

Just wondering...

AmericaBLOG finally spills the beans on the true personality of Jeff Gannon:

(WARNING: Mature content discussed in this link)
> A Man Called Jeff

The Raw Story reveals even more:

> Questions surface on relationship with WH staff

Pass the popcorn.

Now the Gannon story seems to be unfolding, it may be good to bring this one back. For the record, Bush does seem to have a fondness for bald men:

Bush and his bald men fetish



The blog Rigorous Intuition draws a closer conclusion:

The smoking scalp?

The guys at Brad Blog caught CNN in an embarrassing blunder. Last week CNN posted two different stories on their website, on of them about the nuclear capabilities of North Korea, and another about the nuclear capabilities of Iran. Both articles included aerial photos of the alleged nuclear facilities of each country. Problem each, they used photos of the same location. They actually look like the same photo, one of them just cropped. But one is supposed to be in Iran and the other is supposed to be in North Korea!

The question we should be asking CNN is who's the source for these photos? Is this just sloppy work or a purposeful attempt to deceive? You be the judge.

I just had to mention my utter disgust at Howard Kurtz' impossibly revolting performance on today's "Reliable Sources" on CNN.

The guy oozed contempt for bloggers and went out of his way to defend Jeff Gannon/Glucker. He mentioned the horrible bloggers attacking poor, poor Gannon and getting into his private life (a freaking lie). He mentioned bloggers harassing this poor soul and his family (infuriatingly false).

He even shamelessly tried to defuse the serious matter of Gannon/Glucker changing his name and getting WH press credentials on a false name. Howie said that "it's not a big deal to change your name. Famous people like Woodie Allen did it." Nice try!

He brought some guests to chastise bloggers and trot again the fact they are not "real journalists" but they sure abide by the same rules imposed on big media (of course, Howie only uses this defense when it's convenient for him).

His whole performance was blatantly aimed to defend Gannon and flog bloggers. Kurtz changed the issue from "former male prostitute and/or hustler gets WH credentials under false name to loft softballs in press conferences while representing a false news organization with ties to the Texas GOP," to "lefty bloggers harass a conservative WH reporter and trespass into his private life." It seems very clear to me that Howie only feels outrage in one direction: the left. If the subject of a scandal is a Democrat, Howie sure joins the feeding frenzy. When the subject of a scandal is a conservative, Howie goes out of his way to attack those reporting on the scandal. It's already TOO OBVIOUS.

Overall, it was a disgusting performance, typical of this media whore. Why in the world is this guy the "gatekeeper" for journalists ethics? Why is he the lighthouse for media criticism? This is atrocious!

Susie Dow sent me a message suggesting to take a look at the timeline of Talon NeWS/ Plame affair events that they have compiled. They've done a pretty impressive job so far, so I decided to take some of their items and contrast them with our timeline of terror alerts.

I decided to check some additional items from the time Talon News/ Gannon were set up, and realized something the guys at Daily Kos missed:

Ari Fleischer resigned soon after Talon News/ Gannon was created and right after Kristof revealed in the NYT the lies about the yellowcake uranium lies.



Here's my speculation (and again, it's just speculation): could Ari Fleischer have known about Rove setting up Talon News, and got scared after Kristof started revealing some of the most outlandish lies of the Bush/Cheney team?

Or could it be that Ari, trying to protect whatever was left of his integrity, got out quick when he saw the type of games they were starting to play?

I think the Ari Fleischer angle needs to be looked into.

Wow! We made it to the finals of the 2004 Koufax Awards for the title of best post of the year!!!!

You can help us get closer to achieving the final honor by voting at the Wampum site. Please use the following link to VOTE for our nomination in this category (one vote per person, etc, etc.):

http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001715.html

Simply go to the bottom of the page and post there your votes for the Best Post category for "Timeline of Terror Alerts by Julius Civitatus (with help from Biltud) at JuliusBlog"

Thank you for your support in advance!!!

As you probably know by now, Gannon suddenly resigned as more dirt was unveiled about his shady past:

http://jeffgannon.com/

Then the bogus media organization he represented scrapped all of his articles from their website, in true Orwellian fashion.

Then two Democrats in Congress, Conyers & Slaughter, demanded investigation of Gannon in Plame "leak":

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/politics/11gannon.html

Unfortunately, as the guys from AmericaBlog and Atrios pointed (and as yours truly predicted), the mainstream media is not covering this scandal properly. Republican apologist Howard Kurtz did what he does best, covering up for the Republicans. CNN's Wolf Blitzer, being the asshole extraordinaire that he is, seems to be siding with the bogus journalist. Blitzer made it look as if it was all about "mean liberal bloggers" attacking a "decent conservative reporter." Infuriating, to say the least. There's no depth to Wolfie's whoredom, apparently.

To top it all off, there's a hint that Karl Rove himself may bee behind the whole thing (surprise surprise). From AmericaBlog:

So just how close is Karl Rove to this story? Well, here's a little tidbit. In an article titled "Freewheeling 'bloggers' are rewriting rules of journalism" (USA Today, December 30, 2003), Kathy Kiely writes:

In the past year:

* GOPUSA.com, a Web site run by Bobby Eberle, a Houston engineer with no previous journalism experience, scored an interview with President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove.

Mr. Eberle is the CEO of GOPUSA.com and Talon News, Jeff Gannon's employer. He regularly writes on GOPUSA.com under the byline:

By Bobby Eberle
Talon News

So GOPUSA.com gets access to Rove. Interesting. Gannon/Talon also get access to CIA documents that expose undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. Very Interesting. Is there a link? Only the Justice Department investigation knows. Wonder what's holding up that prosecution?

Why am I not surprised that behind a rotten dirty trick involving setting up shady characters as fake reporters in the WH press may be the chubby hand of Karl "Mayberry Machiavelli" Rove?

This story keeps getting more and more convoluted.
To be continued...

As you may be aware by now, last week it was revealed that Jeff Gannon, an alleged journalist was given access as a Washington press corp for the bogus Talon News in order to loft softballs during press conferences.

Well, if having the White House setting up fake journalists wasn't bad enough, this matter just got a lot nastier. Readers from Daily Kos, Atrios, and AmericaBlog have been digging more info on this shady Jeff Gannon and have discovered the following:

• Jeff Gannon is not even a journalist, and Talon News is not a real news organization.
  
  
• Jeff Gannon is not even his real name. The guy is called Jim D. Guckert, which makes his White House press corp credentials illegal (no aliases are allowed for members of the WH press corps). This may hint an involvement of the WH in setting this guy up.
  
  
• Jim D. Guckert owns several web domains under the moniker "Bedrock Corporation." Some of these domains include the following:
  
  Hotmilitarystud.com
  Militaryescorts.com
  Militaryescortsm4m.com
  
  Yes, those seem to be the domain names for male prostitution websites. The mind boggles!

Just imagine for a second what the so-called "liberal media" would have done if the Clinton administration had been caught setting up a former gay male prostitute and/or hustler as a bogus Washington press reporter to pitch them softballs.

I can see the headlines, the outrage, the calls for impeachment. Oh, the humanity! "What will we tell the children?"

But you know, these are the doings of the Bush administration, the values-oriented, holier-than-thou, gay-hatin', teflon-coated Bush administration.

These explosive revelations will go down the drain, and the so-called "liberal media" won't even dare touch this outrageus scandal. Nobody dares touch the Bush administration in this climate.

No, not me! I'm just referring to one of the best Flash cartoons I've seen in a while. Check it out:

http://www.thefrown.com/things/becomerepublican/

Priceless.

I just don't understand T-Mobile. I don't.

I had this great service with T-Mobile for a couple of years. My plan is fine and I'm happy with it. No need to change it. My phone, though, has stopped working properly and it's a nightmare to have a decent conversation with anyone.

I called T-Mobile several times about this problem, and this is the solution they offer me: the model for my cell-phone is out of the guarantee period, therefore they can't cover any repairs, so they suggest I get a new phone. I'm cool with that, and I could use some of the neat new features in the latest phones. Now, in order to get a new phone from T-Mobile, I need to change to a different plan and sign a yearly contract. And still, I would have to pay a huge chunk for a new cell-phone.

So, to get this straight: in order to get the same cell-phone that T-Mobile gives away almost for free to new customers, I would have to change my plan, sign a contract, and still pay over $130. Nice customer care, fellows! What T-Mobile is telling you is that they welcome your new business as a new customer. But once you are a customer, you are on your own... and no soup for you! So I feel like I'm stuck with a barely working phone, yet forced to upgrade the plan if I need a new phone. They are kicking me out as a customer!!!

Any alternatives? Any suggestions? Any way around this? I'm all ears...

Disturbing news from the media watchdog FAIR (via Democratic Underground). Apparently it has been revealed that the New York Times decided not to print a very damaging report that proved Bush cheated in the debates, just three days before the election.

No seriously, like Eric Alterman says: What Liberal Media? One of the most respected newspapers in the country decides to pro-actively CENSOR a very good report because it was negative of Bush. I wonder if they would have done the same thing if the report had been about Kerry, or Gore. The NY Times had no qualms publishing the most disturbingly false innuendo regarding the "Whitewater" fiasco during the entire Clinton administration. No lie or fake scandal was low enough for the NY Times to print. Under the reign of Raines, the Times became a crusader against anything with the name Clinton in it. But when it comes to the Bushes, they suddenly become concerned with ethics issues and move toward self-censorship before publishing a very damaging article.

Once again, the mainstream media shows they know which side their toast is buttered. When push comes to shove, they rather self-censor and look the other way than doing their jobs as journalists, if the subject is Bush. They were not so squeamish with Clinton as we all know.

The Emperor's New Hump The New York Times killed a story that could have changed the election—because it could have changed the election By Dave Lindorff One week before Election Day, the Times (10/25/04) ran a hard-hitting and controversial exposé of the Al-Qaqaa ammunition dump—identified by U.N. inspectors before the war as containing 400 tons of special high-density explosives useful for aircraft bombings and as triggers for nuclear devices, but left unguarded and available to insurgents by U.S. forces after the invasion. On Thursday, just three days after that first exposé, the paper was set to run a second, perhaps more explosive piece, exposing how George W. Bush had worn an electronic cueing device in his ear and probably cheated during the presidential debates.
It's clear even from unenhanced photos that George W. Bush has been wearing some kind of object under his clothing, both during the debates and at other public appearances. The enhancements done by NASA scientist Robert Nelson show a rectangular object with a long "tail"; in some shots a wire leading over Bush's shoulder is visible. This configuration closely resembles a PTT (Push To Talk) receiver with an induction earpiece, a device used by some actors, newscasters and politicians to allow for inaudible voice communication in a public setting. The particular model pictured here (which does not appear to be the exact type Bush wore) was manufactured by Resistance Technology, Inc. of Arden Hills, Minn. That the story hadn’t gotten more serious treatment in the mainstream press was largely thanks to a well-organized media effort by the Bush White House and the Bush/Cheney campaign to label those who attempted to investigate the bulge as "conspiracy buffs" (Washington Post, 10/9/04). In an era of pinched budgets and an equally pinched notion of the role of the Fourth Estate, the fact that the Kerry camp was offering no comment on the matter—perhaps for fear of earning a "conspiracy buff" label for the candidate himself—may also have made reporters skittish. Jeffrey Klein, a founding editor of Mother Jones magazine, told Mother Jones (online edition, 10/30/04) he had called a number of contacts at leading news organizations across the country, and was told that unless the Kerry campaign raised the issue, they couldn’t pursue it. More... http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2012

Your so-called "liberal" media at work...

It's final. The senate confirms the nomination of Alberto Gonzalez for Attorney General. The Republicans get their way thanks to the votes of six "so-called" Democrats: Landrieu, La.; Lieberman, Conn. (as usual); Nelson, Fla.; Nelson, Neb.; Pryor, Ark.; Salazar, Colo.

What a disappointment these shameless six!

But even more disappointing than the votes of these six Democrats is tea fact that Senator John McCain also voted for Torture Boy Gonzalez. McCain knows first-hand what torture is, and why we should support the Geneva Convention. Yet McCain voted to confirm Alberto "Little Noriega" Gonzalez and to ratify his stance on the treatment of prisoners. The Rude Pundit, as usual, puts it even more bluntly:

- Alas, John McCain

- Confirmation of Gonzales

With every decision, McCain is becoming more and more of a disappointment.