Bill O’Reilly: “First of all, pepper spray -- that just burns your eyes, right?”
Megyn Kelly: “It’s like a derivative of actual pepper. It’s a food product, essentially.”
Slackstory has launched an online petition to have Megyn Kelly "“eat or drink a full dose of pepper spray on national television.”
via thedailywh.at
“Transocean President and Chief Executive Officer Steven L. Newman received about $4.3 million in cash bonuses and stock and option awards" raising his 2010 total compensation to $6.6 million.
"In justifying the bonuses, Transocean cites the increased burden on executives of responding to the spill"
"Notwithstanding the tragic loss of life in the Gulf of Mexico, we achieved an exemplary statistical safety record as measured by our total recordable incident rate and total potential severity rate,[emphasis added]" Transocean states in the filing. “As measured by these standards, we recorded the best year in safety performance in our Company’s history, which is a reflection on our commitment to achieving an incident free environment, all the time, everywhere.”
I believe this may be a case of damned statistics.
Meanwhile, back in the Gulf:
In a deal with U.S. regulators, BP this summer plans to restart deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico on 10 wells in exchange for tougher safety rules, British media reported Sunday.
via blogs.forbes.com and www.msnbc.msn.com
"I was a dissenting voice. I didn't want to use force," Bush said.
"I never considered myself a maverick," McCain told Newsweek's David Margolick in an interview..."I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities."
*How can you tell if a (lawyer/politician/etc.) is lying? Because their lips are moving.
Via www.huffingtonpost.com, which includes several videos in which McCain refers to himself as a maverick.
A new addition to the "Because their lips are moving" list:
The editors of PolitiFact.com have chosen Sarah Palin's "Death Panels" claim as the "Lie of the Year." Palin responded by denying that "her claim that health care legislation contains death panels...is the 'lie of the year'...or a lie at all."
"She was talking about, she now says, the Medicare Advisory Board, in combination with forecasted declines in Medicare spending."
The furor over "death panels" was sparked by a provision in early drafts of the health care reform bill for end of life counseling; Palin's Facebook statement mirrored the clamor of the right wing at the time.
Right after Fox's management emailed a memo about eliminating errors on their news (I know, they were serious!), the chart below was used to explain some poll results.
63% + 60% + 70% = 193%! Don't be too discouraged, though. That's 193% of just Republicans.
Some highlights from the memo:
The memo was sent after Fox recently ran stories that used films of larger crowds from past stories as background for reports on a rally and for Sarah Palin's book tour. The memo didn't address whether Fox's usual dishonesty is included in the memo's warnings.
Memo from MediaBistro's FishbowlDC. Chart via Wonkette: All 193% of Republicans...
ABC News reports that top officials of the Bush Administration, including Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Ashcroft, discussed and approved detailed interrogation plans and methods of torture to be used. President "We-Don't-Torture" Bush said he knew about and approved of the discussions. The significance of this story is the shocking admission that top officials not only approved of the use of torture, but that they discussed and approved of specific techniques against specific prisoners.
Jan Crawford Greenburg's ABC News Blog posted a summary with links to key stories, and Digby sums it up by saying that:
"There was a time when the Village clucked and screeched about "defiling the white house" with an extra marital affair or hosting fund raising coffees. I would say this leaves a far greater stain on that institution than any sexual act could ever do.
The vice president, national security advisor and members of the president's cabinet sat around the white house "choreographing" the torture and the president approved it. I have to say that even in my most vivid imaginings about this torture scheme it didn't occur to me that the highest levels of the cabinet were personally involved"
The Center for Public Integrity, a non-partisan non-profit that produces responsible investigative journalism, released The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path To War that concluded that:
"President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq."
And
"...the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq"
As a part of preparing the study the Center produced, and has made available on their web site, a 380,000 word database of the statements made by top Bush administration officials that enabled comparisons between what they said and what they actually knew according to official documents and statements.
Via Mark Morford, photo from Political-News.org
Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations - New York Times
"...soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency."
Talking Points Memo on the investigation of the Blackwater incident in Iraq:
"A few days ago the State Department released what it called a "first blush" report on the Blackwater incident in Baghdad, a report which largely exonerated the Blackwater personnel involved.
I noted at the time that "first blush" was something of an understatement since the report was based exclusively on statements the State Department took from Blackwater operatives on the scene. In other words, the Blackwater employees who did the shooting gave State an account that largely exonerated themselves. A truly shocking development.
But it seems that I was behind the curve on the level of caricature and self-parody that is the military contracting biz in Iraq these days.
The report was written out of the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the folks who hired Blackwater to provide security for US diplomats in Iraq. But it turns out that the State Department employee who interviewed the Blackwater folks and wrote the report, Darren Hanner ... well, he wasn't a State Department employee. He was another contractor from Blackwater.
So yes, you've got that right. We've now reached what can only be called the alpha and the omega of contracting accountability breakdown ridiculousness. We're outsourcing our investigations of Blackwater to Blackwater."
Via For Your Entertainment. Image ABC News
Last Thursday Jon Stewart showed a video of Tony Snow from March 15th, saying of the fired US Attorneys "It's pretty clear that these things are based on performance and not on sort of attempts to do political retaliation, if you will."
He then showed a video of Tony Snow from Wednesday, June 13th, where a reporter asks about Snow's assertion. Snow interrupted the reporter to say "No, that is something we have never said."
Via Crooks and Liars
Jurassicpork of the Welcome to Pottersville blog has done a terrific job of collecting some astounding screenshots of Fox News stories that are, at best, dishonest. A few show simple mistakes, like putting a volcano in Indonesia instead of the Philippines, and some demonstrate Fox's militant fanaticism ("Why the fuss about torturing people who want us dead?"). But too many reflect clear attempts to mislead viewers, such as repeatedly referring to Republican gay pedophiliac predator Rep. Mark Foley as a Democrat.
Read all of Fox News at Its Finest
