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Valerie? Joe? Are you listening? Let me offer some well-intentioned advice. When liberal Larry O'Donnell - he of the infamous anti-Swifty meltdown - goes on Keith Olbermann's Countdown and calls your lawsuit 'very weak' and even the Olber-meister himself won't ride to your defense, it's time to fold your tent, toss in your hand, throw in the towel and quietly slink away. This has to go down as the biggest busted flush of a lawsuit-cum-publicity stunt in recent memory. What's next? Val and Tonya Harding in a pay-per-view steel cage match?

Let's put it this way. Zinedine Zidane would have a better shot suing Materrazi for bruising his forehead with his chest.

As if the incursions into Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah, and subsequent counter-attacks by Israel and now escalating efforts by Israel to fight back with bombings inside Lebanon, are somehow the fault of the Bush administration, on Thursday's NBC Nightly News reporter Andrea Mitchell asserted: “Critics in both parties say the administration has been so focused on Iraq and Afghanistan, it has failed to pay enough attention to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.” Mitchell had asked: “What role has the U.S. played? Today, U.S. diplomat David Welch arrived in Israel, but critics say, too late, 17 days after the first Israeli soldier was captured. And Condoleezza Rice has not been to Israel or the Palestinian territories since last November." James Steinberg of the University of Texas then maintained “that American credibility has been damaged by our unwillingness to get involved." (Transcript follows)

The Business Wire just reported that Valerie Plame Wilson and husband Joe Wilson have scheduled a press conference Friday to announce a lawsuit against I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Karl Rove, and Vice President Dick Cheney:

Valerie Plame Wilson, Ambassador Joseph Wilson and their counsel, Christopher Wolf of Proskauer Rose LLP, will hold a news conference at 10 AM EDT on Friday, July 14 at 10:00 AM at the National Press Club, 529 14th St. NW, 13th Floor, Washington, DC 20045, to announce the filing of a civil lawsuit against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice-President Richard Cheney and Karl Rove.

The release continued:

Quiz time: When is a political ad that features pictures of deceased, flag-draped American heroes controversial? Apparently, the answer is only when Republicans produce such a commercial. The Democratic Campaign Committee has posted a 60 second spot on their Web site, and it shows images of the coffins of American military personnel, as well as a soldier standing in front of a makeshift grave marker. (Update, 5:40pm EDT July 14: The ad has now disappeared from the DCCC Web site, replaced by one calling for a hike in the minimum wage.)

Unsurprisingly, ABC, NBC and CBS expressed no outrage over the Democrats attempt to politically exploit America's fallen. NBC's Today show, ABC's Good Morning America, and CBS's The Early Show this morning all completely ignored the issue.

Now look what we've done! The global warming we've caused will ruin Napa Valley wine!

That's what CBS would have you believe as it picked up on a new study arguing pretty much that global warming will wipe out 80 percent of America's vineyards. But other global warming believers doubt the study's conclusions and vintners argue they can keep producing wine in warmer climes with improved technology.

For my full article, click here. Below is an excerpt:

Global warming may doom the Napa Valley, CBS News warned its July 12 “Evening News” audience. Yet correspondent John Blackstone excluded any scientists, including those who otherwise believe in man-made global warming, who warn that new computer models are conclusive or don’t match up against recorded climate patterns.

There was an amusing story going around right after Nixon's re-election in 1972. As the story goes a New York columnist wondered how Nixon got re-elected as that Columnist had never met anyone that voted for him. This is the same sort of hermetically sealed bubble in which writer for Fortune magazine, Marc Gunther, seems to live. A nether world where everyone he meets is homogeneous, all having the same opinions, influences, and pastimes.

In a recent article titled "The extinction of mass culture", Gunther bemoans the loss of what he imagines is a common American culture because of the rise of the Internet, its diversity of sources of information ringing death knell for the MSM.

Much has been made of Ann Coulter's remarks on 9-11 widows. Her remarks about a few activists who tried to score political points against Bush were not an indictment of all 9-11 widows like that done by liberal cartoonist Ted Rall on Feb. 28, 2002. The five-panel cartoon included phrases such as:

"Of COURSE it’s a bummer that they slashed my husband’s throat. But the worst was having to watch the Olympics alone!"

"I keep waiting for Kevin to come home, but I know he never will. Fortunately, the $32 million I collected from the Red Cross keeps me warm at night."

Panel caption: Next Up: Terror Widow Meets Terror Widower!
Woman: A prenup?! I got $18 million from the airline security firm!
Man: Yeah, but I sued the airline itself– I scored $5 million.

You may wonder whom exactly the New York Times defines as "heroes," but in this instance they say it is U.S. military veterans. It is a salute to all those soldiers who manage to stay alive despite the actions of the New York Times to give tips to terrorists on how best to fund roadside bombs.

Since you've survived our onslaught, we'll give you a job fair.

Presented by The New York Times Job Market in partnership with leading veterans organizations and government agencies, Salute Our Heroes™ will again provide former servicemen and women and spouses of active-duty military personnel with unprecedented job opportunities and career seminars.

iMedia Connection reports that blogs are becoming more mainstream and that a true "democratization" of content has ocurred, where what people hear as fact no longer comes from a few large media outlets.

Record numbers of people are now visiting blogs, proving that blog visitation is now part of mainstream online behavior for many internet users.

Once bastions for the tech elite, blogs are now as ubiquitous to the web as reality shows are to television. Blogs are redefining how people experience the web and, in many ways, have helped precipitate the shift towards user-generated content on the internet (otherwise known as the Web 2.0 movement).

The emergence of the blogosphere has marked the true democratization of the internet-- a paradigm shift that has taken users from merely having access to information to allowing them to engage in the free exchange of opinions and ideas. But how do we know whether this shift is truly occurring on a wide scale? comScore data show that record numbers of people are now visiting blogs, proving that blog visitation is now part of mainstream online behavior for many internet users.

You know the drill...

On Tuesday night’s “O’Reilly Factor,” host Bill O’Reilly and guest Laura Ingraham had a marvelous time tearing apart The New York Times (video link to follow). During the discussion, Ingraham pointed out something that many Americans now feel about the Old Grey Lady:

Well, I think that they truly believe that America is the single biggest danger to the modern world.

I don't think, Bill, that they believe that they have a dog in this terrorism fight. I think they think it's a fight between two groups of fundamentalist, the fundamentalists who are the Islamists. They don't much care for them.

But then the fundamentalists in the Bush administration, who have this messianic view of the world that they can make the world in their own image. And I think they're more petrified of the Bush fundamentalism, as they refer to it, than they are the Islamists.

Yikes. That about says it. O’Reilly then asked a pivotal question:

President Bush announced some great news about the economy Tuesday, but the media weren't in any mood to celebrate. Though the budget deficit for 2006 looks to be significantly lower than forecast just five months ago, TV news outlets were quick to rain on the president's parade.

CNN's Ed Henry cynically compared this announcement to the president declaring an end to major combat operations in Iraq in 2003. Meanwhile, NBC's Brian Williams downplayed the good news by stating “administration critics say the White House has deliberately inflated its own deficit projections in the past few years to score political points when the actual numbers came in lower.”  

CNN's Jack Cafferty would never pass up an opportunity to attack Karl Rove, whether that means a fat joke, or in this case, painting him as a criminal, even though he did nothing wrong. On the 5pm hour of yesterday's The Situation Room, Cafferty played the clip he loves oh so much of President Bush saying he will "take care of" anyone who violated the law in the leaking of Valerie Plame's name. It turns out no one did violate the law, according to prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Well, it seems this wasn't enough for Cafferty who responded "oh, please" to the tape of the President's remark. (Video link to Expose the Left after the break)

Cafferty follows his distress of Rove's occupational status with the most illogical thought on leaks, even for Jack Cafferty. The CNN anchor complained the administration thinks leaking information about a terrorist surveillance program is a threat but leaking Plame's name is not. Jack, who seemed to want it the other way around, doesn't share the news outlets who release information about national security programs may be breaking the law. Go figure.

Let's imagine an American World Cup team member 'of pallor' had head-butted, oh, an Arab or African player. Would the MSM be quick to excuse, even to make the incident the object of humor? Or would we have been treated to mind-numbing disquisitions on racism in sport as a microcosm of society at large?

But when a French player of Arab ancestry head-butts an Italian? Well, CBS tells us, boys will be boys. CBS's Elizabeth Palmer, who narrated a segment on the incident on this morning's Early Show, informed us that "it's a male thing understood around the world." To prove her point, CBS ran a clip from an Adam Sandler flick showing the comedian, as a football player, taking a flying foot leap into another player who had insulted his mother. We were also treated to images of video spoofs and video games that the incident has generated.

The Washington Post puts Hillary Clinton on the front page today, a story by Lois Romano headlined "Beyond the Poll Numbers, Voter Doubts About Clinton." This could be read as a bad-news story for Hillary. But it's mostly just a forgettable speculative bubble about 2008. Here's what sticks out to me in the Post poll:

A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll highlighted the paradox. Fifty-four percent of those responding view her favorably, and a significant majority give her high marks for leadership (68 percent), strong family values (65 percent), and being open and friendly (58 percent). At the same time, only 37 percent of Democrats in the poll say they would definitely vote for her for president.

This is a nice summation of the Plame case:

"Now that Karl Rove won't be indicted, now that the President won't fire him, now that it really doesn't matter any more, more details of the Valerie Plame leak investigation trickle out."

Source:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060712.wcialkeak0712/BNStory/International/home