I was watching the Larry King thing with Moore/Gupta and Atrios' reaction is my own:

I haven't gone into the full details, but from what I could tell from the Larry King joint appearance tonight what happened was fairly typical. Basically, to "fact check" Moore, the kind of scrutiny which rarely happens to, say, hacks from AEI or the Preznit of Amurka, Gupta pulled up some nitpickery alternative numbers. One could determine whether Gupta's chosen numbers were more or less correct than Moore's, but nothing supported the idea that Moore "fudged the facts" as was claimed. . . . [w]hat is clear is that "fact checking Moore" means one can throw up something, anything, and use it to cast doubt on his integrity. I welcome fact-checking. I just wish CNN would subject more of their guests to it.

In the spirit of fact checking, I would point to pieces of shoddy factual work by Gupta that I am personally familiar with. One was his fact-checking a few months ago of Bush's claim on stem cell research where Gupta was not willing to call out the flat out falsehoods of the bush Administration on this. Would that he held the President of the United States to the same standards as he appears to want to hold Michael Moore.

But the other was tonight.

I have an op-ed today in the Examiner newspapers taking to task those who criticized Live Earth, including Sir Bob Geldof, the British press and conservative bloggers. A snippet:

Yes, [Sir] Geldof, it was just a big pop concert. It won’t solve the energy crisis any more than your Live 8 concert ended poverty in Africa. But both are worthy endeavors.

Rock music is a great unifier. It transcends race, age, class and even politics. In today’s celebrity-driven culture, rock stars carry a lot of clout. To criticize them for using it to inspire positive change across society as they entertain us rings hollow.

The published piece omits the [Sir] which was in the version I submitted. I'm adding it back in here since I wouldn't have called Bob Geldof out only using his last name. Seems kind of rude.

Update: The AP Style people, Wikipdedia and commenters below point out that "Sir Geldof" would not be a correct appellation. I stand corrected, but again, I meant no disrespect to him.

Clark Hoyt, Public Editor of the New York Times, writes:

Why Bush and the military are emphasizing Al Qaeda to the virtual exclusion of other sources of violence in Iraq is an important story. So is the question of how well their version of events squares with the facts of a murky and rapidly changing situation on the ground. But these are stories you haven’t been reading in The Times in recent weeks as the newspaper has slipped into a routine of quoting the president and the military uncritically about Al Qaeda’s role in Iraq — and sometimes citing the group itself without attribution.

The answer is simple. The leadership at the New York Times is lacking. The editorship has gone from bad to worse with the departure of the awful Howell Raines to be replaced by the awful Bill Keller. The Times' leadership simply will not rein in the Judy Milleresque elements in its news operations. Perhaps this wake up call from the Public Editor can help change things.

I watched Live Earth non-stop from the opening of Sydney to the after Rio concert replays.

Here are links to videos of some of my favorite performances:

(Scroll down for continual updates)

Friday 8:00 pm MT: The Live Earth concert has begun in Australia. Blue King Brown is up, to be followed by Toni Collette. News coverage here.

You can watch all the concerts here.

Next up is Japan at 3:00 GMT and then China at 11:00 GMT.

Scroll down for updates.

The internet connection seems jumpy, maybe it's just mine. Television listings are here.

Update: 7:00 a.m. MT: You can now watch on Sundance and Bravo. The end of the Sydney concert was strange. Crowded House was on but there was no light on stage or in the audience, they were singing in the dark. Sundance just changed coverage to London Hamburg. There are almost no chirons so its difficult to tell where they are or who's playing if you don't know.

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In Wingnut World, the following is true:

From the July 5 broadcast of Cox Radio Syndication's The Neal Boortz Show:

BOORTZ: But in the case of Scooter Libby, Scooter Libby and Bill Clinton got sentenced and convicted for exactly the same crime. Can you -- now tell me, why is there so much outrage on the left that Scooter Libby isn't going to have to serve a 30-month jail term, and not a bit of outrage on the left that Bill Clinton didn't even get a 30-month jail term.

CALLER: I don't remember Bill Clinton actually being convicted for perjury.

BOORTZ: I'm sorry, he was.

John Solomon is gunning for the Pulitzer for best coverage of hair styling:

Solomon has run an odd front-page piece on John Edwards selling his house, a bizarre front-page expose on Hillary Clinton's charitable donations, and a sloppy piece on a Nancy Pelosi earmark for a San Francisco waterfront redevelopment project. Yesterday, however, Solomon out did himself, devoting nearly 1,300 words to the "controversy" surrounding John Edwards' haircut.

Enterprise journalism at its best. I must repeat my refrain -- it is not that the Media is biased, it is that it is incompetent.

Crooks and Liars has the transcript and the video of Keith Olbermann's special comment tonight on Countdown in which he calls on Bush to resign from office.

Some highlights:

I accuse you of handing part of this republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of you becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.

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Glenn Greenwald takes Michael Gordon of the NYTimes to task for, in Glenn's words:

uncritically recit[ing] the U.S. military's accusations against the Iranian government, and/or (2) offer[ing] assertions from Gordon himself designed to bolster those accusations. . . . I defy anyone to scour Gordon's article and point to a single difference, large or small, between its content and what a Camp Victory Press Release on this topic would say.

I take Glenn's point, but I was struck by this quote from the military spokesman:

When he was asked if Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could be unaware of the activity, General Bergner said "that would be hard to imagine."

Hard to imagine? Perhaps. But does Gordon or anyone in the Media think it is possible to "imagine" this was true?

George W. Bush [told] . . . the American people in a speech . . . that the [Abu Ghraib] scandal was the work of "a few American troops who dishonored our country."

From WMD to Cheney's involvement in leaking the identity of a CIA operative to warrantless eavedropping to torture, the Bush Administration has a long track record of not telling the truth.

What is hard to imagine is taking at face value any statement from any part of the Bush Administration. And unfortunately, that includes military spokespersons.

If you'd like to watch the musical tribute to Princess Diana currently ongoing at Wembley Stadium in London, here's the streaming link.

Prince William and Prince Harry will mark the 10th Anniversary of their mother's death with an event to celebrate her life.

Watch a live stream of the concert here, Sunday July 1, 11AM EST/8AM PST. The full concert will also be available here following the live streaming broadcast.

NBC will have a primetime special tonight with 3 hours worth at 9:00 pm ET.

TRex nails the she-pundit at Firedoglake while Digby holds court with another edition of Digby Speaks, You Listen.

"Feminizing" male Democrats and "masculinizing" female Democrats is pretty much all she does.

This isn't brain surgery. Faggots, smelly fat women, it's right out of the adolescent lizard brain, and sadly it works on a certain type of voter --- probably more than we would be comfortable knowing about. Coulter is an extreme version of a conservative archetype whose entire worldview is shaped by primitive notions of male dominance.

If you'd rather watch the latest segment of the discombobulated she-pundit, she comes undone in full glory yesterday morning during Joe Scarborough's MSNBC radio show.

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Via Atrios:

Joe Klein on 6/18/06:

In fact, the responsible path is the Democrats' only politically plausible choice: they will have to give yet another new Iraqi government one last shot to succeed. This time, U.S. military sources say, the measure of success is simple: Operation Forward Together, the massive joint military effort launched last week to finally try to secure Baghdad, has to work. If Baghdad isn't stabilized, the war is lost. "I know it's the cliche of the war," an Army counterinsurgency specialist told me last week. "But we'll know in the next six months—and this time, it'll be the last next six months we get."

Joe Klein, over two Friedmans later [today]:

It is, indeed, a moment of truth in Iraq. "This is a decisive phase," a member of Petraeus' staff told me and began to laugh. "That's one of our favorite jokes. It's always a decisive phase. But this time, I guess you'd have to say, it actually is." Operation Phantom Thunder, the nationwide offensive launched by U.S. and Iraqi troops in mid-June, may well be the last major U.S-led offensive of the war. "We couldn't really call it what it is, Operation Last Chance," says a senior military official. There is widespread awareness among the military and diplomatic players in Baghdad that, with patience dwindling in Washington, they have only until September — when Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are due to give Congress a progress report — to show significant gains in taming the jihadist insurgency and in arresting the country's descent into civil war.