Evidence Emerging Of Cheney-Led Smear Campaign Against Pelosi Over Syria Trip

Posted by Faiz at 9:32 am
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Before Nancy Pelosi left Israel to travel to Israel earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s spokeswoman Miri Eisin said “Pelosi is conveying that Israel is willing to talk if they (Syria) would openly take steps to stop supporting terrorism.”


Pelosi delivered as requested, and this week received a thank you call from Olmert. So why then did the Israeli Prime Minister originally issue a statement of “clarification” about Pelosi’s message which became the basis for right-wing attacks against her?

The evidence of White House involvement behind the Israeli Prime Minister’s statement has been growing this past week. Middle East analysts have suggested Bush deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams — a close ally of Dick Cheney — may have been coordinating the attempts to undermine Pelosi’s trip. “‘It’s obvious the White House is desperate to find some phony criticism of the speaker’s trip, even though it was a bipartisan trip,’ said Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), a Holocaust survivor who is considered the Democrat closest to the pro-Israel lobby. ‘I have nothing but contempt and disdain for the attempt to undermine this trip.''


Rep. Henry Waxman suggested that the White House’s coordinated attempts to smear Pelosi were part of an effort to undermine her on Iraq:

Waxman said the administration is focused on building a case against the Democrats in preparation for a showdown over the Iraq War funding bill. The more they can paint Democrats as weak and irresponsible, the more likely the Democrats will knuckle under and let the president continue the war unchecked. It’s been known to happen.

So Cheney trashes the reputation of men like Lantos and Waxman (who, by the way, has doggedly pursued waste and mismanagement in Iraq by Halliburton, the company that made Cheney rich), and it’s politics as usual.

Newsweek Hides Global Warming Denier's Financial Ties to Big Oil

By Joshua Holland
AlterNet.org
Thursday 12 April 2007

A recent Newsweek op-ed by global warming denier Richard Lindzen claims the meteorologist has no industry ties, but his bio is as misleading as his writing.

So Newsweek is running an opinion piece about global warming titled: "Why So Gloomy?" The piece is authored by Richard Lindzen, a well-known meteorologist, and his thesis about the potential melt-down of our climate can be boiled down to this: Don't worry, be happy!

At the bottom of the article, is this brief biographical sketch of the author:
Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research has always been funded exclusively by the U.S. government. He receives no funding from any energy companies.

Sounds like he's on the up-and-up, no? After all, the guy's not one of those scientists who denies global warming and then cashes nice checks from a bunch of big energy firms, right? Maybe those wing-nuts are right when they deny that there's a scientific consensus about human activities contributing to global warming. Hmmm.

Oh, but wait. That name ... Lindzen ... sure does sound familiar.

Yes! From that excellent investigative piece in Harper's on the funding behind the climate skepticism "industry" ...

In the last year and a half, one of the leading oil industry public relations outlets, the Global Climate Coalition, has spent more than a million dollars to downplay the threat of climate change ...
For the most part the industry has relied on a small band of skeptics - Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, Dr. Pat Michaels, Dr. Robert Balling, Dr. Sherwood Idso, and Dr. S. Fred Singer, among others - who have proven extraordinarily adept at draining the issue of all sense of crisis.

Lindzen, for his part, charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels, and a speech he wrote, entitled "Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus," was underwritten by OPEC.

His research may be funded entirely by the government, but Lindzen himself - his kids' college tuition, his mortgage payments - have at least in part been funded by Big Oil and Big Coal, including OPEC for crying out loud!

But wait, it gets worse. The positions advocated by Richard Lindzen, the paid-by-OPEC opinion writer commenting in Newsweek - he's also written op-eds for a number of other publications including the Wall Street Journal - appear to be the diametric opposite of those held by Richard Lindzen, the serious meteorologist, when he's writing peer-reviewed scientific texts.

Specifically, Lindzen co-authored the 2001 National Academy of Science's report on climate change. It concluded that despite some scientific "uncertainties," there is "agreement that the observed warming is real and particularly strong within the past 20 years."

Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.

Kurt Vonnegut is The Resident's People

Gore gearing up for "Live Earth" charity concerts

By Ray Waddell
Fri Apr 13, 2007 5:53AM EDT

NASHVILLE (Billboard) - The executive producer of the Live 8 charity concerts, which refocused international attention on Africa in 2005, has joined forces with Al Gore to save the world.

Live Earth, set for July 7 on stages in all seven continents, will feature such artists as the Police, Madonna, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Concert promoter Kevin Wall came up with the concept after he saw the former vice president's now-famous slide show on global warming, and then his Oscar-winning film "An Inconvenient Truth."

"I was very deeply moved," he recalled. "This is not about the haves and the have-nots, this is about all of us."

Wall put a staff together, met with the networks and spent three months building the framework of Live Earth. Wall and the former vice president spoke about what is shaping up to be an unprecedented day of music and message.

Rove in new controversy over e-mails

By Steve Holland

Fri Apr 13, 2007 2:12PM EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House political adviser Karl Rove was embroiled in a new controversy over potentially missing e-mails on Friday, the latest twist in the firings of eight U.S. prosecutors last year.

The White House disclosed the Republican National Committee in early 2006 took away Rove's ability to delete e-mails sent and received through a party e-mail account.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino had no explanation for why the RNC, the governing arm of President George W. Bush's political party, would stop Rove from deleting e-mails.

Perino said a White House review showed up to 5 million e-mails to and from as many as 1,700 executive branch employees might have been lost when the administration converted from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook in 2002 and 2003.

Democrats looking into the Justice Department's firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year, which critics say appeared to be politically motivated, are seeking Rove's testimony and documentary evidence to determine whether he was involved.

The White House revealed this week Rove and 21 other White House officials have for years kept e-mail accounts through the RNC to conduct political business without violating the Hatch Act, which forbids government employees from using government property for partisan activities.

Democrats want to know whether Rove and the others conducted government business on the party's e-mail accounts as well to get around record-keeping requirements under the Presidential Records Act and avoid leaving a paper trail.