From "Dewey Beats Truman" to "Rove Indicted": When Scoops Go Really, Really Bad

(Also crossposted to my diary at My Left Wing)

Now, it is important to remember before I go on that Karl Rove will more than likely ultimately be indicted (and probably more than likely pardoned, too); and that truthout.org's flameout on reporting his indictment last week should not yet be compared too much with the historic Chicago Tribune banner headline in 1948.

Nevertheless, after one week since Jason Leopold dropped his bomb that turned out to be more stink than WMD, and the first gleeful, then brooding response amongst the liberal/Left blogosphere and media which it created, the aftermath of it; the main issue remains the same:

How in the hell could some people be so freakin' stupid, inept, and gullible???

And what does this say about the liberal "netroots" and their assumed power..or the supposed superiority of the "independent media" over the evil "mainstream" media???

First off..any one of you MLW peeps who came away underwhelmed at the half-hearted attempt of a rebuttal/apology by truthout this past Thursday, please raise your hand.

On Saturday afternoon, May 13, 2006, TruthOut ran a story titled, "Karl Rove Indicted on Charges of Perjury, Lying to Investigators." The story stated in part that top Bush aide Karl Rove had earlier that day been indicted on the charges set forth in the story's title.

The time has now come, however, to issue a partial apology to our readership for this story. While we paid very careful attention to the sourcing on this story, we erred in getting too far out in front of the news-cycle. In moving as quickly as we did, we caused more confusion than clarity. And that was a disservice to our readership and we regret it.

As such, we will be taking the wait-and-see approach for the time being. We will keep you posted.

Marc Ash,
Executive Director - t r u t h o u t [email address snipped]

I thought so...I did, too. I mean, if you are going to promise that if you were proven wrong that you were going to reveal your sources; then do the crawfish backwards to "well, maybe we got a little too far ahead of the news cycle..but we stand by our story" in the total abscence of proof that justifies your story....then how does that make you look any less like a schmuck who got played?? Especially considering Leopold's past history of malfeasance that plays seriously into questioning his legitimacy as a journalist??

Secondly, what can you say about those in Liberal Blogtopia, Goddess bless their hearts....left jilted at the bedroom door awaiting the breatless orgasms of seeing Unka Karl frogmarched into the DC jail..only to be left with their pants down and their vibrators running on empty??? Not to mention the field day that their enemies in Right Blogostan ara having over watching their enemies get punk'd, never mind those in the MSN who have chafed over the criticism that "independent media" is supposedly superior because they're not beholden to "corporate dominated" rules of conduct and standards.

The point being, though, that anyone who really understands the nature of reporting and deep cover and the political nature of scooping understands quite well that not all "intellegence" is that intellegent, and that unless it comes directly from the main source -- in this case, Patrick Fitzgerald himself -- anything and everything about his investigation should be taken with about 50 grains of salt and a chaser of vinegar. After all, he is still a registered Republican, and I don't think that he is that deep with the likes of William Rogers Pitt or other liberal bloggers that he would voluntarily share classified and confidential info with them and risk damaging his case.

All I will do, for the time being, is what all of us should probably be doing henceforth: just sit back and let Fitz do his work, and allow him to choose his time for ultimately dropping the bomb on Unka Karl. That way, when he gets enough to corrall the whole gang, including Tricky Dicky II (aka, the VP named Cheney), the orgasms will be that much sweeter and more powerful.
Besides, if the CIA scandal doesn't get the Bushclan in the end, there's always Hookergate, Abramoff, the war in Iraq, the tanking economy, the War on Sex/Drugs/Women/Mexicans/Blacks/All Non-Rich Non-White Non-"Americans" to hammer on their coffins.

BTW...the entry at MLW contains a poll about when you think Fitz will indeed drop the hammer on Rove...feel free to check it out and respond; Maryscott would love the additional traffic.

Whose Free Speech??? Larry Flynt, Havard, and More "Hustling"

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The Townhall.com Lecture On Ruling Women's Wombs (or, This Is Your Brain After Too Much Wingnut Kool-Aid)

Oh. My. Goddess.

Just when I thought that I had mined the bottom of the barrel as far as wingnutter logic can go, here comes TBogg to refer me once again to that graveyard of "conservative" thought called Townhall.com....for what has to be one of the whackiest, looniest attempts to justify controlling women's wombs ever since...well, EVER.

T already beat me to fisking this pixellated pile of crap already..but still, this deserves a special touch that only the exclusively patented can of SmackDog Whupass (tm, 2005) can provide...thusly, I procede with the article:

The pill that kills -- available at a doctor near you
By Nathan Tabor

May 15, 2006

You should know before hand that Mr. Tabor, in addition to being "a conservative activist and the founder of "TheConservativeVoice.com" (and no. I'm not providing him any link, just Google if you want to see his work), is also a current candidate for a Congressional seat in North Carolina. I guess that he figures that Vernon Robinson and his "Steppin Fetchit for Jessie Helms" act is lonely.

Anyways..enough with the prelims; onto the breach we go, gas masks locked and loaded....

Imagine going to your doctor and being offered a pill—not because you were sick, or in any danger of becoming sick. No—your friendly physician is simply giving you drugs because you’re a woman.

If that sounds like a Hitchcock horror story to you—be prepared. Gynecologists around the country are embarking on a weird medical experiment that could have serious repercussions for women’s health.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has decided it won’t wait for the Food and Drug Administration to approve over-the-counter sales of the so-called morning after pill—a pill which is supposed to help women who are harboring regret over a sexual encounter the night before. Of course, it doesn’t matter that the FDA is hesitant to give the pills out like candy because it doesn’t want to promote promiscuity among young people. Also, some leading medical experts say that the morning after pill doesn’t just prevent pregnancy—it can also kill a child who has already been conceived in her mother’s womb.

OK.....first ALL STOP right here.

So the "morning after pill" (I assume he's talking about the "Plan B" pill that is being withheld from approval by the FDA due to wingnutter..errrrr, conservative opposition) is intended, in Mr. Tabor's view, to aid women who are merely "harboring regret" about screwing someone the night before??? Hmmph....you would think that this fool hadn't known that lots of those women don't have any regrets about sleeping around...mostly because either they (1) insisted on the proper protection, such as condoms and birth control; or, (2) they don't feel so ashamed of themselves for their human needs as apparantly he thinks they should. (I'm assuming, of course, that like most other Religious Reich wingnutters, Mr. Tabor is just as opposed to regular birth control and condom usage for the same reason..namely, that it promotes female "promiscuity" without the rewards of forced pregnancy or shame therof.)

And did it ever occur to Mr. Tabor that some of those women seeking the pill might have a legitimate beef that their regrettable sexual encounters were, shall we say, coerced?? You know, like..RAPE and INCEST??? Or perhaps Mr. Tabor believes that those harlots and jezebels should suffer through the same shame and punishment that all 'ho's and sluts who defy God's law on sex outside of procreative marriage should suffer?? Nahhhh...he's just a concerned conservative citizen who cares about the rights of children, especially those not yet born...or even created.

Reading on....

No, ACOG won’t let the facts stand in the way of its misguided idea of scientific progress. In fact, the gynecologists’ group employs this fuzzy reasoning for promoting morning after pill prescriptions: women tend to have sex on weekends. Maybe women also tend to have beer on Saturday nights. Does that mean their family doctors should load them up with six packs every time they come in for flu shots?

The fact is, the pro-abortion contingent of ACOG is running scared. Pharmacists throughout the country have said they don’t want to dispense the morning after pill, also known as emergency "contraception," because they have religious and moral objections to it. The abortionists know that if they can get women hooked on the morning after pill that they’ll have more support for their agenda—which includes abortion any time for any reason, anywhere.

Funny...but I've never heard of any gynecologist (or any serious pro-abortion rights advocate) ever proposing or even sponsoring abortions after the sixth month of conception, have you??? And for the most part, those pharmacists who insist that their "moral and religious" objections outweight the basic medical requirement to provide for a paying patient's prescription have been mostly confined to a few big-box providers such as Rite-Aid and Costco; Walgreens and (for all I know) Wal-Mart continue to require their pharmacists to honor their committments to their customer's prescriptions. Besides, don't women already have traditional birth control pills to hold them through???

And also...giving women the option of a prescription that they can easily ignore and throw into the trash isn't quite the same as giving away free six-packs of beer at them, now isn't it??

It’s interesting to note that some experts have come to the conclusion that there really isn’t a great demand for the morning after pill. In other words, pharmacies are not going to go out of business for refusing to stock it. So the only way for big drug companies to sell the morning after pill and other such concoctions is to market them directly to doctors.

So much to say about that paragraph...but I'll let TBogg have this one:

Pharmacies will also not go out of business if they don't stock Preparation H, but that won't stop hemorrhoids from happening. Ask Denny Hastert.

And I don't see pharmacies going short on Viagra, either...but then again, men's eternal erections (which, I dare to say, are still required to provide the sperm to make a baby in the first place) aren't much of any concern to Religious Reichian men such as Tabor, now isn't it???

Every time a woman comes into a gynecologist’s office, ACOG wants the doctor to offer her advance prescriptions of the morning after pill. But it is apparently not enough to simply make the offer; indeed, some women are reporting that their gynecologists are insisting that they take the prescription—even if they say repeatedly that they don’t want it. The doctors urge them, "it’s good for a year!" This kind of scenario makes a mockery out of the phrase "pro-choice." In a situation like this, how can anyone not conclude that "pro-choice" is really "pro-abortion?"

To which the proper response to such aggressive selling should be the obvious: "NO MEANS NO." Followed by a trip to find another, less obnoxious pharmacist.

And, it's not like doctors aren't that aggressive with other medications (Xyloft, Pepcid (before it went OTC), Ritalin, and so on...) that Big Pharma wants to push on them....but those medications don't favor "'ho's" and "sluts", do they???

Apparently, ACOG sees no reason for gynecologists to inform their patients that the morning after pill can cause abortions—even if some women have strong moral objections to abortion. For ACOG, the pill is a simple solution to the estimated 2.7 million unplanned pregnancies that occur each year.

But the fact of the matter is, a number of us were the result of unplanned pregnancies. You don’t have to be planned—or even wanted by your natural parents—in order to make a difference in this world. Every human life is precious from the moment of conception—and no dictate from ACOG can change that.

Ahhhh, yes..."unplanned pregnancies"....I guess that even Mr. Tabor didn't feel comfortable (or probably just plain forgot) with the usual phaseology of "unborn babies". And I thought that it was just "the abortionist wing" not the whole of ACOG, that were pushing Plan B as an "abortion by demand" product???

But this "every life is precious from conception on" that really gets me..I mean, it's so nice to see that "conservatives" like Mr. Tabor really do treasure and respect the humanity of preborn zygotes all the way to and past birth. Now, if only he and his fellow and sister conservatives would show some kind of respect for the children living OUTSIDE of the womb by not sacrificing them in unwinnable wars, threatening nuclear annihilation, leaving them for dead after natural disasters (oh, I forgot..that only applies to BLACK people, since they're not really human), busting the federal deficit for massive tax breaks and subsidies to the super rich, destroying the only ecosystem that we on this Earth have to survive....you know, those "culture of life" things that you say are so lacking in this culture??

Oh, but those things are just too LIBERAL and too tolerant of women controlling their own bodies in offence to your "God" of stern Christian sexual morality...so never mind.

Doctors routinely tell pregnant women not to take any medication during their pregnancies for fear that it will harm their unborn children. If a pregnant woman can’t take an aspirin, how can doctors assume that it’s safe for her to take the morning after pill? What if the pill "fails" and the woman remains pregnant? Or what if the woman takes the pill when she’s already six weeks along? And what’s to prevent the pill from getting into the hands of the woman’s impressionable 13-year-old daughter, who sees the pill as a good excuse to "hook up" with a boy she barely knows? Will ACOG pay for the girl’s counseling when she discovers that the boy who took away her virginity is a stalker or 40 years old?

As if a woman is going to wait until five months after her pregnancy to go into the pharmacy looking for a pill that is designed for "the morning after"???

Actually, as commenters to TBogg's blog pointed out constant times, the morning after pill is only just that; it would have no impact on embryos existing inside the womb. It is designed to affect the uterine wall so that an egg cannot attach itself to the womb to be fertilized to begin with. No sperm = NO FERTILIZATION = NO ZYGOTE = NO F'n PREBORN CHILD. Unless, of course, you believe that any prevention of an egg to be fertilized into a potential child is prima facie abortion, or that any woman who has sex outside of "God's law" of procreation should be forced to undergo pregnancy as a punishment for her sluttish behaviour....which, unless I skipped over somehow, is Mr. Tabor's exact point.

And this is the crowning touch: "Will ACOG pay for the girl's counseling when she discovers that the boy who took away her virginity is a stalker or 40 years old?"

Ahhh...uhhhhh....errrrrr...Mr. Tabor....I would think that you would have a bit more respect for young women that they would probably be able know a 40 year old man from a 14 year old boy?? I mean, hormones can do strange things to people, but really??? And there is this issue of date rape drugging, too....

Any doctor who thinks nothing of dispensing a pill that can kill has no place in the healing arts. Whether an abortion is surgical or chemical, it is still a tragedy for both mother and child.

So does that mean that Mr. Tabor will be, if elected to Congress, front and center in the battle against killer drugs prompted by pharmaceutical companies for profit??? (If he's like most right-wing Republicans, more than likely he'll be too busy taking money from them, and supporting legislation against lawsuits against those seeking redress against them.)

Yep..that's some strange Kool-Aid up there in North Carolina these days...'ya think?? Give him a couple of months and young Tabor'll be up there in Santorum/Coryn territory talking up the dangers of rampant homosexuality leading to "man/dog sex" or "man/box turtle sex". Who knows....maybe he'll say that White-hating sluts faking rape reports are caused by radical feminism, too??

Wingnuts...a special breed of nuts. Gotta love 'em.