Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

Ed Schultz, the nation’s largest progressive talk radio host, is moving head-to-head with Rush Limbaugh’s sometime in December, industry insiders familiar with the deal tell RAW STORY. The move – which puts Schultz in the choice noon to 3 p.m. window – will also bring him face-to-face with Air America’s flagship talker, Al Franken.

Two radio insiders, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed the move. Both characterized the decision to move The Ed Schultz Show from drive-time to early afternoon as one intended to bolster a rapidly growing national audience.

The decision to move Schultz to noontime eastern could put another nail in the coffin of Air America, which filed for bankruptcy Oct. 13.

A 2006 survey by Talkers Magazine pegged the Fargo talker’s listenership at 2.25 million, tying Schultz at #10 among radio hosts nationwide. Air America’s Al Franken rated #12, with an audience of 1.5 million.

Limbaugh still dwarfs all liberal radio hosts in popularity, with an estimated audience of 13.5 million, according to the Talker’s survey, down from 14.75 million in 2005. Sean Hannity pulls in roughly 12.5 million listeners.

A spokesman for Schultz said he couldn’t comment on the report, but confirmed that a major announcement would be made on Thursday’s show.

Schultz is expected to announce the change on the Thursday’s program.

Bush has a track record of changing policies on a dime, such as when he ousted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld only days after saying he would stay until the end of his term. But his comments today, coupled with other statements in the past few days, seemed to set firm lines on Iraq beyond which the president will not be pushed, despite growing discontent with his policy at home.

As Matt Drudge reported earlier, actor Danny DeVito seemed drunk when he went on an anti-Bush tirade on ABC’s The View on Wednesday. DeVito recounted how he last visited the White House during the Clinton years, warmly noting that "the place was, had that kind of Clinton feeling, you know," before denigrating President Bush as "numb nuts" (or something like that — ABC bleeped over the last part of that word).

DeVito then began what was supposed to be mimicry of Bush, making a variety of weird sounds and facial expressions.

... After his Bush-bashing, DeVito then asked the panel what they thought about "the hat trick last week — Rumsfeld, the House and the Senate," referring to the Democrats’ election victories and Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld’s stepping down. DeVito announced how he reacted to the news: "I took my clothes off."

The Washington Post reports— that Webb— who has a son serving in the Marines in Iraq and is a strong critic of the war— initially tried to avoid President Bush— but then had this brief conversation:

"How's your boy?" the president asked.

Webb responded, "I'd like to get them out of Iraq."

"That's not what I asked you," Mr. Bush answered. "How's your boy?"

Said Webb —"That's between me and my boy, Mr. President."

A source told "The Hill" newspaper— that Webb said he was so angered by the exchange— he was tempted to slug the president.

CNN reporter Hala Gorani: Well, within the context of the leaders conference in Dubai and also within the context of this debate, this semantics debate, over whether to call what is going on on in Iraq a civil war, the former Secretary of State Colin Powell says he thinks we can call it a civil war and added if he were still heading the State Department, he probably would recommend to the Bush administration that those terms should be used in order to come to terms with the reality on the ground.

I’m paraphrasing what he told me. This was closed to cameras and this was something he said within the context of this academic debate with 2 or 3,000 people watching on in the region.

• Crist the rock
• Justice for Martin III: The FAIR handy media...
• Justice for Martin II: Paging Dr. Baden
• Justice for Martin
• About Mr. Siebert...
• Death for joyriding?

Tags: Martin Lee Anderson, Florida, Juvenile Justice, Cover-ups

1) Rudolph Giuliani - 64.2. (9)
2) Sen. Barack Obama 58.8 (41)
3) Sen. John McCain 57.7 (12)
4) Condoleezza Rice - 56.1 (7)
5) Bill Clinton - 55.8 (1)
6) Sen. Joseph Lieberman - 52.7 (16)
7) NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg - 51.1 (44)
8) John Edwards - 49.9 (20)
9) Sen. Hillary Clinton - 49 (1)
10) N.M. Gov. Bill Richardson - 47.7 (65)
11) Sen. Joseph Biden 47 (52)
12) Nancy Pelosi 46.9 (34)
13) Gov. Mitt Romney - 45.9 (64)
14) Former VP Al Gore - 44.9 (3)
15) President George Bush - 43.8 (1)
16) Sen. Evan Bayh - 43.3 (75)
17) Newt Gingrich - 42 (15)
18) Sen. Bill Frist - 41.5 (53)
19) Sen. Harry Reid - 41.2 (61)
20) Sen. John Kerry - 39.6 (5)

The shooting occurred early Sunday morning as an undercover officer trailed three men -- Sean Bell, 23, Joseph Guzman, 31, and Trent Benefield, 23 -- as they left a bachelor party at the Kalua Cabaret club in Jamaica. The trio had argued with two men inside the club and left, trying to avoid trouble, witnesses said.

The officer told the three men to stop, although witnesses differ about whether the officer identified himself and flashed his badge.

Bell and his friends, witnesses told the New York Daily News, feared that the undercover officer was a friend of those they had argued with and that he was carrying a gun. The men tried to pull away in their car, scraping the leg of an officer. An officer fired a shot, and four more officers pulled out their 9mm guns and began shooting.

Three bullets fatally struck Bell, a delivery man and father of two, who died just hours before his marriage ceremony was to take place.

Benefield and Guzman were injured; the latter had 11 bullet wounds. None of the three men carried a gun, and police manacled the two survivors as they lay bleeding, a fact that concerned civil libertarians.

"It's not as if people so seriously wounded were a flight risk," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "Yet they were treated as criminals for having gotten shot by the police."

Kelly offered a carefully calibrated defense, noting that the Hispanic officer who opened fire was a 12-year veteran and apparently thought the car was trying to hit him. Three of the five officers who fired shots were black or Latino.

Kelly's spokesmen released data showing that New York officers now fire 40 percent fewer shots per incident than in 1995. Police killed 30 people in 1996, compared with nine in 2005 and 10 so far this year. ...

Peering into a car, an undercover cop yelled, "Gun! Gun!" when he saw one of the passengers reaching for something in his waistband - and fired the first of 50 shots that led to the death of a bridegroom on his wedding day.
When it was over, 23-year-old Sean Bell was dead, his two friends were badly wounded and no gun was found.

The Hispanic officer, whose name was not available last night, told other cops that he followed Bell and his buddies from a notorious Queens strip club to his Nissan Altima outside. He said he flashed his shield and yelled to "Show your hands!" before Bell clipped him with the vehicle.

Then he saw the front-seat passenger, later identified as Joseph Guzman, reach toward his waistband, police sources told the Daily News - prompting him to fire 11 rounds at the men, beginning the deadly fusillade.

The controversial shooting led community leaders to stage two emotional meetings yesterday, one with Mayor Bloom.berg and another last night with Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

Emerging from his meeting, Bloom.berg denounced the shooting - even as he cautioned against rushing to judgment.

"It's hard for me to understand why 50-odd shots were taken," Bloomberg said at the City Hall news conference, where he stood alongside several black elected officials. "To me that sounds like excessive force."

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly also indicated that the five cops involved in the shooting broke NYPD regulations, including those concerning the use of deadly force.

Kelly said NYPD rules prohibit cops from shooting at a car, even when it's being used as a weapon. He also said this appears to be a case of "contagious fire."

"We stress, when officers go to the range, that they fire no more than three rounds," he said. "And, then, they look."

Although Bell and another of the wounded men, Trent Benefield, 23, were black, Bloomberg said it doesn't appear race figured in the early-morning shooting.

Two of the five officers who opened fire are black, two are white and the officer who fired the first shot is Hispanic. But Bloomberg acknowledged the mounting anger over the fatal shooting of yet another unarmed black man. "The community is outraged, and I am, to put it mildly, deeply disturbed," he said.

Bell's fiancée had stronger words for the five officers who took away her bridegroom.

"They murdered him," a sobbing Nicole Paultre told Brown last night at the emotional meeting with black leaders.

Police sources identified the white cops as Detective Mike Oliver, who fired 31 shots, and Officer Mike Carey, who fired three times.

Also on the scene was Lt. Jerry Napoli, a white 23-year veteran who ducked for cover under a dashboard when the shooting started, the sources said.

The names of the other officers who discharged their guns were not available last night. They have all been placed on administrative leave and ordered to surrender their weapons.

After the shooting, Detectives' Endowment Association President Michael Palladino called the shooting justified because Bell was using his car as a "lethal weapon." He continued to blame the victims yesterday.

"If the driver of the vehicle had responded to the detective's command this would not have happened," he said. "He would be a married man today."

The officer who fired 31 of those shots was 12-year-veteran Detective Mike Oliver, who was photographed yesterday by The Post leaving his lawyer's downtown office. ...

... The undercover officers involved in the shooting say they thought a man in Bell's group had a gun when one tried to stop him in his car outside the club, sources have said. Then, after Bell began ramming his Nissan Altima into one of the plainclothes cops, the officer started firing - and set off a deadly exchange of bullets between him and confused backup detectives who thought the gunfire was coming from the victim's car.

• Update: Bloomberg does the un-Giuliani
• Death by unnatural causes

Tags: NYPD, Sean Bell, police shooting, New York

Bush Library Courts ‘Wealthy Heiresses, Arab Nations, Captains of Industry’ To ‘Polish’ History
The New York Daily News reports, “President Bush and his truest believers are about to launch their final campaign — an eye-popping, half-billion-dollar drive for the Bush presidential library.”

Bush is attempting to raise $500 million to build his library and a think tank at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Bush fund-raisers hope to get approximately $250 million from what they call “megadonations” of $10 million to $20 million each. Among the candidates for “megadonations,” whose names will remain anonymous:

Bush loyalists have already identified wealthy heiresses, Arab nations and captains of industry as potential “mega” donors and are pressing for a formal site announcement - now expected early in the new year.

Bush allies feel they need enormous funds to shape how history views Bush’s legacy. A Bush insider said, “The more [money] you have, the more influence [on history] you can exert.” Much of the money will be used to build a “legacy-polishing” institute:

Bush had earlier indicated his desire to create a think tank “to talk about freedom and liberty and the DeTocqueville model of what [French political philosopher Alexis] DeTocqueville saw in America.”

In 1973, the Senate voted 92-3 to confirm Gerald R. Ford as vice president, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew, who'd resigned.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel, trying to build on a shaky cease-fire in Gaza, offered Palestinians today a series of incentives including negotiations and a prisoner release if they turned away from violence.

There was little new in Mr. Olmert’s speech. But the timing was important, because both Mr. Olmert and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, are eager to bolster their own political positions, begin a serious dialogue and stop a bloody cycle of violence.

Mr. Olmert spoke just days before President Bush is to arrive in Jordan to discuss Iraq and other regional issues and one day after King Abdullah of Jordan warned of “the strong potential of three civil wars in the region, whether it’s the Palestinians, that of Lebanon, or of Iraq.”

Expectations are high that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may come here after Jordan to try to solidify the fragile rapprochement that Mr. Abbas and Mr. Olmert are discussing, which may include an extension of the cease-fire to the occupied West Bank.

In his speech, Mr. Olmert appealed to Palestinians to turn away from militant resistance and commit to peaceful negotiations that would result in an independent state. “You, the Palestinian people,” Mr. Olmert said, “are standing in these days at an historic crossroads.”

If the Palestinians can form a new unity government that satisfies international standards and they release a captured Israeli soldier, Mr. Olmert said, he would respond by immediately meeting with Mr. Abbas; releasing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, some of them serving long sentences; reducing checkpoints; and moving toward a further, unspecified withdrawal of Israeli settlers from the West Bank.

Mr. Olmert promised that Israel would also then release to the Palestinian Authority the $50 million a month in taxes and duties that Israel has collected for the Palestinians but withheld, arguing that the ruling Hamas faction is a terrorist group. The total so far this year is more than $500 million.

But all of these steps — essentially confidence-rebuilding measures — are far short of serious negotiations about a peaceful solution to the conflict, which is nearly 60 years old.

One of the new elements in the speech was more subtle, an Israeli official said, pointing to Mr. Olmert’s praise for Arab countries like Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states that “strive for a peaceful solution to the conflict between us.” Mr. Olmert said he found parts of a Saudi peace initiative to be “positive,” the first time that an Israeli leader has done more than declare the initiative an internal Arab document, the official said.

The 2002 Saudi initiative, supported by the Arab League, offered normal relations with Israel in return for an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 boundaries, the establishment of a Palestinian state and a solution to the issue of Palestinian refugees. Mr. Olmert has said that Israel will not return to the 1967 lines, but is willing to negotiate land swaps.

“I intend to invest efforts in order to advance the connection” with those Arab states “and strengthen their support of direct bilateral negotiations between us and the Palestinians,” Mr. Olmert said.

Mayor Bloomberg emerged from a meeting with the police commissioner and community leaders Monday and said that it seemed like "excessive force was used" when a groom was killed on his wedding day by a flurry of police gunfire outside a strip club.
“I can tell you that it is to me unacceptable or inexplicable how you can have 50-odd shots fired, but that’s up to the investigation to find out what really happened,” Bloomberg said at a news conference after the meeting.

The groom, Sean Bell, 23, was killed and two of his friends were wounded Saturday at 4 a.m. after a bachelor party at the strip club. Suspecting that one of the men had a gun, police fired 50 rounds into the vehicle. The men were unarmed.

Bloomberg was joined by Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Rep. Charles Rangel, and several other officials and community leaders at the meeting.

Sharpton called it a “very candid, a very blunt meeting.” He said the message to Bloomberg was: “This city must show moral outrage that 50 shots were fired on three unarmed men.” Bloomberg was steadfast in his support for Kelly, who has been denounced by some community leaders over the shooting.

“I think he’s the best police commissioner the city has ever had,” Bloomberg said. “Nobody takes this more seriously than Commissioner Kelly and I do.”

Leaving Iraq, Honorably
By Chuck Hagel
Sunday, November 26, 2006; B07

There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq. These terms do not reflect the reality of what is going to happen there. The future of Iraq was always going to be determined by the Iraqis -- not the Americans.

Iraq is not a prize to be won or lost. It is part of the ongoing global struggle against instability, brutality, intolerance, extremism and terrorism. There will be no military victory or military solution for Iraq. Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger made this point last weekend.

The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation -- regardless of our noble purpose.

We have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam. Honorable intentions are not policies and plans. Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there. They will decide their fate and form of government.

It may take many years before there is a cohesive political center in Iraq. America's options on this point have always been limited. There will be a new center of gravity in the Middle East that will include Iraq. That process began over the past few days with the Syrians and Iraqis restoring diplomatic relations after 20 years of having no formal communication.

What does this tell us? It tells us that regional powers will fill regional vacuums, and they will move to work in their own self-interest -- without the United States. This is the most encouraging set of actions for the Middle East in years. The Middle East is more combustible today than ever before, and until we are able to lead a renewal of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, mindless destruction and slaughter will continue in Lebanon, Israel and across the Middle East.

We are a long way from a sustained peaceful resolution to the anarchy in Iraq. But this latest set of events is moving the Middle East in the only direction it can go with any hope of lasting progress and peace. The movement will be imperfect, stuttering and difficult.

America finds itself in a dangerous and isolated position in the world. We are perceived as a nation at war with Muslims. Unfortunately, that perception is gaining credibility in the Muslim world and for many years will complicate America's global credibility, purpose and leadership. This debilitating and dangerous perception must be reversed as the world seeks a new geopolitical, trade and economic center that will accommodate the interests of billions of people over the next 25 years. The world will continue to require realistic, clear-headed American leadership -- not an American divine mission.

The United States must begin planning for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq. The cost of combat in Iraq in terms of American lives, dollars and world standing has been devastating. We've already spent more than $300 billion there to prosecute an almost four-year-old war and are still spending $8 billion per month. The United States has spent more than $500 billion on our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And our effort in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, partly because we took our focus off the real terrorist threat, which was there, and not in Iraq.

We are destroying our force structure, which took 30 years to build. We've been funding this war dishonestly, mainly through supplemental appropriations, which minimizes responsible congressional oversight and allows the administration to duck tough questions in defending its policies. Congress has abdicated its oversight responsibility in the past four years.

It is not too late. The United States can still extricate itself honorably from an impending disaster in Iraq. The Baker-Hamilton commission gives the president a new opportunity to form a bipartisan consensus to get out of Iraq. If the president fails to build a bipartisan foundation for an exit strategy, America will pay a high price for this blunder -- one that we will have difficulty recovering from in the years ahead.

COLMES: Hey, Mark, let me ask you a question. You -- you got into some controversy during your testimony. They tried to paint you as a racist and tear you apart because of what you said. Does that bear any relation to the acquittal of O.J. Simpson? Do you think anything you said and the way you were treated --

FUHRMAN: Oh, who cares, Alan? That's apples and oranges now. Now, we're talking about a guy that's going to make $3 million to come and play a fairytale for you about, "If I did do it, this" --

COLMES: I'm asking you a question, though, about whether your testimony bears any --

FUHRMAN: Well, I'm not answering that question, Alan. I'm not on the hot seat, Alan.

COLMES: I'm asking you a simple question.

FUHRMAN: This is O.J. Simpson's day. I know -- I'm not answering it. I'm done answering that.

COLMES: You -- you said, in the last segment, that these people will go and kill someone and go have chicken at KFC -- who are you talking about?

FUHRMAN: That's right. I'm talking about a murderer, whether they're white, black, or Caucasian, or they're Mexican. It doesn't make any difference; they have no emotion. You've never seen one, Alan. That's why you wrote that chapter in your book that said he's innocent.

COLMES: Do you think what you said -- do you think that comment could be interpreted as a racist comment -- they go have chicken at KFC?

FUHRMAN: I used to eat chicken at KFC. Alan, you know something? You've got a chip on your shoulder, and you want to find something wrong with everything that somebody --

COLMES: I don't have a chip on my shoulder. You're the one who won't answer my question about whether your testimony had anything to do with the acquittal of O.J. Simpson.

FUHRMAN: Alan, you haven't -- Alan -- Alan, you haven't asked a decent question yet.

COLMES: Well, maybe I haven't gotten a decent answer.

During the trial, Fuhrman denied ever using the word "nigger" for the previous ten years, yet the defense was able to find an audiotape contradicting that testimony. Fuhrman gave a taped interview in 1985 to Laura McKinney, an aspiring screenwriter working on a screenplay about female police officers. Fuhrman bragged about his membership in the secret organization within the LAPD known as MAW (Men Against Women). In further interviews, Fuhrman bragged about beating and torturing gang members, and was quoted as saying "Yeah we work with niggers and gangs. You can take one of these niggers, drag 'em into the alley and beat the shit out of them and kick them. You can see them twitch. It really relieves your tension." He went on to say "we had them begging that they'd never be gang members again, begging us."[citation needed] Fuhrman's negative attitude toward African-Americans was also evident in the taped interview. He said that he would tell Blacks, "You do what you're told, understand, nigger?"[citation needed] See Fuhrman tapes for more details.

As a result, the prosecution labeled their main police witness as a "bad cop." With the jury absent on September 6, 1995, Fuhrman was asked questions as to whether or not he had ever falsified police reports or if he had planted or manufactured evidence in the Simpson case and he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Fuhrman later pled no contest to a perjury charge and was sentenced to probation and fined $200.

Fuhrman was the officer who found both gloves (one at the murder scene, the other at Simpson's home), much of the blood drops at Simpson's home, and who entered Simpson's estate without a search warrant due to exigent circumstances. Only very limited excerpts of the tapes were admitted as evidence in the 1995 murder trial against O.J. Simpson, yet the admitted portions were strong enough to cast doubts on Fuhrman's motives and credibility.

• O.J. Interview part 1


• O.J. Interview part 2


• O.J. Interview part 3


• O.J. Interview part 4


• O.J. Interview part 5

The exposure of the Valerie Plame Wilson and her CIA non-official cover Brewster Jennings & Associates front company and her official cover Counter-Proliferation Division colleagues by neo-con elements in the Bush administration has taken a deeper turn down the rabbit hole of the CIA Leakgate scandal. While the neo-cons in Washington and Jerusalem continue to rattle sabers against Iran's nuclear program and were responsible for the phony intelligence on Iraq's non-existent nuclear program, the very same neo-con elements have not only turned a blind eye to Turkey's acquisition of nuclear technology but have been involved in the proliferation of such technology to and through Turkey. The interest of Brewster Jennings and the CIA in Turkish nuclear smuggling activities potentially involved moving up the food chain and stinging individuals close to Vice President Dick Cheney, including Lewis "Scooter" Libby.