I missed this before, but Howie Kurtz, who often takes his cues from the right wing, talked about it this morning on CNN. The producer of the infamous "Path to 9/11" has a conspiracy theory:

"Whatever anyone may think about me or this movie, this is a bad precedent, a dangerous precedent, to allow a movie to be buried," added Nowrasteh, who received death threats even before the miniseries was broadcast last September. "Because the next time they'll go after another movie. The Bush administration may go after a movie. The next administration may go after a movie. No matter who it is, they may go after a movie. I think this town needs to stand up."

Stand up for an atrocious, unfair and inaccurate work presented as factual? Nowrasteh has an ally:

This isn't about politics, said film director Oliver Stone, but about the right of artists to have their work distributed. "This is a shame; it's censorship in the most blatant way," said Stone, who has hired Nowrasteh for several writing projects. "I'm not vouching for its accuracy -- it's a dramatization -- but it's an important work and needs to be seen."

It deserved to be scorned and was as it was a piece of fiction passed as fact. It was on ABC for 2 nights. There are a lot of "works" that were much more deserving to be seen than that "work." I think ABC should sell it back to Nowrasteh though so he can sell it through the usual right wing channels.

In an atrocious piece of reporting fueled by a rigged poll question, the New York Times "reports:"

Americans trust military commanders far more than the Bush administration or Congress to bring the war in Iraq to a successful end, and while most favor a withdrawal of American troops beginning next year, they suggested they were open to doing so at a measured pace, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll. . . . Asked to choose among the administration, Congress and military commanders, 21 percent said they would most trust Congress and 68 percent expressed most trust in military commanders.

There are many problems with this storyline. First and foremost, Americans do not get to choose who gets to "end the war." Perhaps the New York Times does not know this, but we are a country that has civilian control of the military. The military follows the orders of the civilian Commander in Chief, the President of the United States. Bruce Ackerman has written on this alarming view of military control apparently endorsed by the news pages of the New York Times.

More.

I got to meet Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo tonight. We had our makeup done together. He was on CNN and I was on after him on MSNBC.

We chatted very amiably for over a half hour. I told him I thought he looked very good (posture and clothes) in the Republican debates, and although I've never agreed with anything he's ever said, I think it's pretty cool he's taken his quest for the Republican nomination as far as he has.

I did try to ask him some serious questions. Does he read blogs? Never. His campaign had a blogger who was terrific but he went back to college. He gets news clips with articles about himself every day. He knows bloggers write negative things about him and he has no interest in reading them.

Does he have a favorite for the Republican nomination if he's not the candidate? No.

More...

I first saw this over at Sideshow. It seems to be becoming a national story. It is quite amazing that the aspiring Ms. Teen South Carolina, Lauren Caitlin, could be so stupid.

If you haven't seen it yet, check it out for a good laugh.

The winner, by the way, was Miss Teen Colorado, Hilary Carol Cruz.

Update 8/28: She answers the question much better on the Today Show today.

Football on NBC tonight cut into Keith Olbermann's debut of Countdown on NBC in many parts of the country. In Denver, the network joined the show in progress at 9:30 pm, after the game.

I did get to see the "Worst Person of the World" segment, which was very good. If you missed it, Crooks and Liars has the video. From the transcript:

Limbaugh: “…..Democrats want to get us out of Iraq, but they can’t wait to get us into Darfur.” He continued: “There are two reasons. What color is the skin of the people in Darfur? It’s black. And who do the Democrats really need to keep voting for them? If they lose a significant percentage of this voting bloc, they’re in trouble.” A caller responded, “The black population,” to which Limbaugh said, “Right.”

No man who writes this could be:

Dive into a conversation about America in the Arab world today, or even in Europe and Africa, and it won’t take 30 seconds before the words “Abu Ghraib” and “Guantánamo Bay” are thrown at you. Yes, both are shameful, but Abu Ghraib was a day at the beach compared to what Al Qaeda and its Sunni jihadist supporters have been doing in Iraq, yet none of their acts have become one-punch global insults like Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.

Is Tom Friedman out of his mind? Is his winning argument that 'yes, the United States is shameful, but Al Qaida is worse?'

This man is considered a leading pundit in our country? The last 6 years can come as no surprise in light of that. Friedman is a disgrace.

Sean Hannity did some fundraising for Rudy Giuliani. Some folks wondered if Fox Noise cared about this. Well, they did not really wonder - we all know Fox Noise is in the bag for Rudy, from Ailes on down. But Fox responded:

The New York Daily News reported yesterday that Fox News personality Sean Hannity introduced Rudy Giuliani at a closed-door $250/head fundraiser in Cincinnati on August 9. Bill Shine, Fox's senior vice president of programming, said Hannity should not be judged according to the standards of journalistic ethics, which speak out against actively helping a candidate in such a manner. "Sean is not a journalist - Sean is a conservative commentator," Shine said. "Sean doesn't hide, and never has hidden, his beliefs from anyone."

Of course that is true for the entire Fox Noise Network, a propaganda arm of the Republican Party. There are no journalists at Fox Noise. I applaud them for admitting this. So the question is why any Democrat (I am looking at you Harold Ford) would appear on a Republican Propaganda Network?

Jackson Browne, Lives in the Balance:

There are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire

Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus in the Washington Post have some behind the scenes details of how the FISA Amendment passed.

It doesn't change anything. The Dems caved and Speaker Pelosi promising to revisit the bill doesn't make their rollover any more palatable.

From 1980, The Grateful Dead and Uncle's John Band

Whoa-oh what I want to know, where does the time go?

With the TL kid in town this week, wiretap motions due and my new MacBook arriving and beckoning me to set it up (thanks again to all who contributed) blogging fell by the wayside this week.

I should be back to regular posting Tuesday. Till then, thanks to Big Tent for keeping TalkLeft updated and to readers for stopping by.

Via Think Progress:

Wow. More

Last week it was the Washington Post. Today it is columnist Ellen Goodman. What is it about the media that compels it to falsely insist liberal bloggers are a bunch of angry white males and that female bloggers were conspicuously absent from Yearly Kos?

See Jane's debunking today of this Invisible Woman myth.

There is no dearth of politically liberal blogs written by women. And there was no shortage of women at Yearly Kos. Here's Digby:

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