telescreen.org

Gotham, originally uploaded by Vidiot.

Taken last Tuesday. (Ah, the joys of long exposures.)

Why was the Italian government trying to push the US into war with Iraq?  And why is Italian PM Berlusconi saying that he tried to dissuade Bush from going to war, when the Italian military intelligence service repeatedly tried to shop the forged Niger yellowcake documents to France, Britain, and the US?

And will Bush or Rice have harsh words for Berlusconi during his visit to the White House today?  (Doubtful.  That would require a.) self-examination and b.) a conscience, both of which are conspicuously absent in the Bush Administration.)

SWAT Team Hand Signals.  (Via Czeltic Girl.)

Best NYT headline I've seen in a while:

Good Smell Perplexes New Yorkers

(Smelled it first on the Lower East Side, and assumed it was from the new Starbucks on Delancey. Then it got stronger and more maple-y toward Rivington & Clinton. I then took the subway home to Astoria, where I was perplexed to smell maple again on 30th Avenue.)

Actually, it's slightly alarming that particles can be dispersed in such concentrations over such a large area. Doesn't seem to bode well for chem/bio attack preparedness.

I really like writing this blog.  And I'd miss it if I couldn't.  But if it were actually worth what this site claims it is ($38,953.26 as of this writing), you bet I'd take the money and run.

Wow.  It's been quite a week here at Telescreen...and big thanks go out to the New York Times, who linked to the below post in a roundup of bloggers' reactions to Miers' nomination withdrawal.  (Scroll down to 12:45pm ET.)

So is President Bush pissed at Harriet Miers?

After all, he doesn't like it when people want to "cut and run":

"Withdrawing before the mission is complete would send the signal that the U.S. is weak and that all they have to do is terrorize and we will leave," Bush said.

What's it like to work in a White House under siege?  Paul Begala (who should know) has written a compelling account of what's likely going on right now.

And also:  Wow.  Scuttling a nomination?  Drastic step, to be sure.  (and as much as I'd love to think so, I don't believe it's a back-handed way to distract from the coming indictments.)  And I love how they're blaming the Senate for, y'know, asking about how she makes decisions and might rule from the bench.  The next nominee, though, I'm sure, will be infinitely scarier, more competent as an attorney, and will have rock-solid conservative credentials.  Who'll be next, you think:  crony?  Or wingnut?

Either way, I don't think Bush will be able to nominate someone tomorrow to draw attention away from Fitzmas.  So....what'll the diversion be, you think?

Kellar, the Great Magician, originally uploaded by Chico Bangs.

On Tuesday, Chico and I went to the Swann Galleries auction house, which was hosting a talk by the amazing Ricky Jay. (Jay is a magician, collector, and historian of magic...and as I told him when he signed his new book for me, he was responsible for the single most astonishing evening I've ever spent in the theater. Also, check out this New Yorker profile.) Jay was, as always, witty and erudite and illuminating.

But the real revelation to me was the art; this reception was set up to promote the auction of the Christian Fechner Collection of English and American Magic, which goes under the hammer at 1:30 this afternoon.

You know, I lead a reasonably comfortable life. I don't want for much, and there's not much in the way of material things that I really wish I have but don't. However, seeing the wonderful posters on exhibit here (and the catalogue for Swann's upcoming sale of travel posters) made me wish I had serious money. There were many striking images and gorgeously printed lithographs.

Alas, my camera's batteries gave out after one measly shot, but Chico's was working...so feast your eyes on this set of pictures. And the online catalogue for the exhibition yields still more gems, like this poster and this one, which was possibly my very favorite. (Though the wonderful details of this poster were fun to examine as well.)

Now I think I'll save my pennies for next year's sale...

Wow, step away from the keyboard for a day or two and all kinds of stuff happens.  If you'll allow me some shameless ego-massage:

• I got BoingBoinged on Monday (see below post.)  I want those designs on a T-shirt, dammit.
• I've got a picture in the upcoming NYC Photobloggers group show at the Chrystie Street Gallery -- more info to come when I know it.
• And, coolest of all, public radio program "Marketplace" is using a bunch of my photos for their "Marketplace Takes Manhattan" project, where they're doing a week of NYC-themed shows.  That main "Marketplace" link has a button on the right side linking to the "Marketplace Takes Manhattan" page...if you reload, you'll see they made a few versions, all with my shots.  Also, the header on the Manhattan page uses a skyline from one of my photos, and that night shot of the Empire State Building on the same page was taken in February from Madison Square Park.  And, best of all, they're going to be posting a Flash page later in the week with audio from Robert Caro (author of The Power Broker), using 22 of my photos (from the George Washington Bridge to Nathan's Hot Dogs.)  Side note:  I would be remiss if I didn't thank Creative Commons here, which let me easily license these photos for free non-commercial use...and it's also how the Marketplace folks found my shots on Flickr.

More posting to come soon, wedged in between my stereo-wiring and apartment-shoveling-out projects.  Some interesting things happened this weekend, and I'm looking forward to writing about them.

UPDATE:  That slideshow is up now, and I'm still trying to find the time to write about last weekend.

Check out this great collection of retro poster designs, from the website of a printing company that seems to specialize in carnivals.  (Found when I visited the URL at the bottom of this poster, which I saw a week ago on the Lower East Side.)

Some more that I especially liked:

Will Scooter Libby be the fall guy?

Ex-Parrot, originally uploaded by Vidiot.

It's joined the bleedin' choir invisible!

Just two of the reasons why I love Jessamyn (in what she will hopefully perceive as a friendly, totally non-creepy way):

• When she has a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, she posts a picture of it;
• Her blog includes the phrase "In other news, I got a bicycle award for my work on the Wikipedia midget wrestler article."

The Names of the President and the Members of the Presidential Cabinet According to the Etymological Backgrounds of Their First and Last Names, and of Their Middle Names Where Available.

In the "People Are Crazy" Department:  Man Requests Longer Prison Term to Honor Larry Bird.

(Good thing he wasn't a Gretzky fan.)

Leave it to Monk to find this Craigslist gem:  Non-conformist Guy Seeks Like Minded Female Companion - m4w

Winning hearts and minds:

US soldiers in Afghanistan burnt the bodies of dead Taliban and taunted their opponents about the corpses, in an act deeply offensive to Muslims and in breach of the Geneva conventions.

An investigation by SBS's Dateline program, to be aired tonight, filmed the burning of the bodies.

It also filmed a US Army psychological operations unit broadcasting a message boasting of the burnt corpses into a village believed to be harbouring Taliban.

According to an SBS translation of the message, delivered in the local language, the soldiers accused Taliban fighters near Kandahar of being "cowardly dogs". "You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burnt. You are too scared to retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be," the message reportedly said.

"You attack and run away like women. You call yourself Taliban but you are a disgrace to the Muslim religion, and you bring shame upon your family. Come and fight like men instead of the cowardly dogs you are."

Big, big news from (of all places) the Daily News:  President Bush knew what Rove did.  None of this "if a crime was committed" or "if someone is convicted" stuff that he's been peddling the last couple years:

WASHINGTON - An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily News.

"He made his displeasure known to Karl," a presidential counselor told The News. "He made his life miserable about this."

And Bush's problem with Rove, we should note, wasn't that he was leaking.  It was that the smear job wasn't up to his standards:

Bush has always known that Rove often talks with reporters anonymously and he generally approved of such contacts, one source said.

But the President felt Rove and other members of the White House damage-control team did a clumsy job in their campaign to discredit Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, the ex-diplomat who criticized Bush's claim that Saddam Hussen tried to buy weapons-grade uranium in Niger.

A second well-placed source said some recently published reports implying Rove had deceived Bush about his involvement in the Wilson counterattack were incorrect and were leaked by White House aides trying to protect the President.

"Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that they handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way," the source said.

Incidentally, Josh Marshall notes that the article's author is a Bush pal...looks to me like the relationship might be souring.  Marshall goes on to observe:

For almost two years, Scott McClellan insisted that neither Karl Rove nor Scooter Libby had anything to do with the leaks. He knew because he asked them, he said. He was very categorical.

Now it seems that at least with reference to Rove, the president knew McClellan's statements weren't true. And yet he allowed McClellan to make them. Come to think of it, I guess this one really isn't even a question. It speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Very telling.

ADDENDUM:  Scott McClellan gets his head handed to him in this morning's gaggle.

With such an important, serious story as the Plame investigation, no wrinkle should be left unexamined.  Who knew what, and communicated it to whom?  When did which piece of information become public?  What was Karl Rove's involvement?  (After all, this is the deputy White House chief of staff and chief political operative we're talking about here.)  And, most importantly of all, what's in his garage?

Fortunately, we can rest easy, knowing that the AP is on the case.

More on Judith Miller's saga, the responses to her account and the Times' takeout:

• Jay Rosen has updated and added to his great mega-post, adding in reactions and analysis from all over -- and even broken some news.  Do a Ctrl-F search for "Mathis" -- in short, Rosen e-mailed NYT spokesperson Catherine Mathis, asking her to reconcile the WaPo story saying Miller was cooperating with reporters with the Times graf saying that Miller would not discuss events with her editors or show her notes to fellow reporters.  Mathis essentially stands by her statement to the Post that Miller was cooperative.  All evidence, including the Times' reporting, to the contrary;
• As a matter of fact, Judy was cooperating so much that her delays made the story miss the Times' bulldog edition;
• FishbowlDC:  "Judy doesn't think anything's her fault. Her faulty reporting on WMD in Iraq was the fault of her sources. Her trip to jail was Libby's fault. And her lackluster reception upon leaving jail was her editors' fault."
• Mickey Kaus, writing in Slate, argues that Miller's actions actually hurt the cause of reporters protecting secret sources:  "[Miller's jailing] worked for the prosecutor exactly as intended. After a couple of months of sleeping on 'two thin mats on a concrete slab,' Miller decided, in her words,  'I owed it to myself' to check and see if just maybe Libby really meant to release her from her promise of confidentiality. And sure enough-- you know what?--it turns out he did! The message sent to every prosecutor in the country is 'Don't believe journalists who say they will never testify. A bit of hard time and they just might find a reason to change their minds. Judy Miller did.' This is the victory for the press the Times has achieved. More journalists will now go to jail, quite possibly, than if Miller had just cut a deal right away, before taking her stand on 'principle.'";

• Kevin Drum makes an excellent case for why Miller is lying when she says she can't remember her source's name;

• All this seems to ignore a big question:  Who was Bob Novak's original source?  From Time: "Fitzgerald, says a lawyer who's involved in the case, 'knows who it is—and it's not someone at the White House.'"  But that would seem to contradict Novak's original column from July 2003, which points to "two senior Administration officials."

Judith Miller (who apparently calls all the shots at the Times) has published -- finally! -- her account of the whole Plame imbroglio.  It accompanies the 5,800-word takeout that is, I guess, the Times' definitive account of what happened.

My four-word reaction?  Too little, too late.  The Times has seriously damaged its credibility over the past few months with its coverage (or scandalous lack thereof) of its own and Miller's role in this story.  Pulling punches doesn't make for quality journalism.  Neither does an out-of-control reporter.

"We have everything to be proud of and nothing to apologize for," Ms. Miller said in an interview Friday.

Au contraire, Judy. 

NYU J-school professor Jay Rosen has been en fuego with this story lately, keeping on top of it and analyzing developments.  I agree with him that the takeout was nicely written and "superbly edited", not least in the juxtaposition of facts in key grafs:

Claudia Payne, a Times editor and a close friend of Ms. Miller, said that once Ms. Miller realized that her jail term could be extended, "it changed things a great deal. She said, 'I don't want to spend my life in here.' "

Ms. Payne added, "Her paramount concern was how her actions would be viewed by her colleagues."

On Sept. 29, Ms. Miller was released from jail and whisked by Mr. Sulzberger and Mr. Keller to the Ritz-Carlton Georgetown for a massage, a manicure, a martini and a steak dinner. The next morning, she testified before the grand jury for three hours. Afterward, Ms. Miller declared that her ordeal was a victory for journalists and the public.

And, most devastatingly, at the very end of the story:

The Times incurred millions of dollars in legal fees in Ms. Miller's case. It limited its own ability to cover aspects of one of the biggest scandals of the day. Even as the paper asked for the public's support, it was unable to answer its questions.

"It's too early to judge it, and it's probably for other people to judge," said Mr. Keller, the executive editor. "I hope that people will remember that this institution stood behind a reporter, and the principle, when it wasn't easy to do that, or popular to do that."

Nice.

Man, next Saturday brings some tough decisions.

Like, for instance, "ZombieCon or Lebowski Fest?"

Separated at birth?

Take a look at the page designs: CNN.com vs. FEMA.gov.

Except, of course, one of these is substantially more likely to respond quickly to a disaster than the other....

Great shirt:

ha!