Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Steve Young: Bill O'Reilly Mocks Homeless Veterans Who John Edwards Fights For As Nonexistent. Bill O'Reilly who "doesn't have a dog in this race" yet unyieldingly scoffs at John Edward's candidacy mocking the fact that Edwards is "funnier than Rodney Dangerfield" because he speaks of "200,000 veterans who go to sleep on grates and under bridges," obviously could care less about veterans, if he even knows who veterans are, as he said on his Radio Factor today (1/16) that there are only about 750,000 veterans all told. If Bill cares about veterans or giving the Folks the actual news he says he does, perhaps Bill might have his and his cracked research staff take a look at the Veteran's Affairs numbers where they estimate approximately 200,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. Bill O'Reilly or John Edwards? Who do you think cares more about the veteran? Steve Young, is author of "Great Failures of the Extremely Successful" (www.greatfailure.com) and his "All The News That's Fit To Spoof" appears in L.A. Daily News opeds every Sunday(www.dailynews.com/columnists), right next to Bill's...really [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 11:42:13 AM    comment []

Oâo[dot accent]Reilly: âo[breve]Thereâo[dot accent]s not manyâo[dot accent] homeless veterans.. On last night’s O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly challenged John Edwards’ claim that 200,000 veterans “will go to sleep under bridges and on grates” because they are homeless. O’Reilly said, “They may be out there, but there’s not many of them out there. Okay? … If you know where’s a veteran, sleeping under a bridge, you call me immediately, and we will make sure that man does not do it.” The Washington Post checked into Edwards’ claim and reported that the Department of Veterans Affairs does indeed report that about 195,000 veterans are “homeless on any given night.” [Think Progress] 11:19:27 AM    comment []

White House ‘reused e-mail tapes.’. AP reports: The White House has acknowledged recycling its backup computer tapes of e-mail before October 2003, raising the possibility that many electronic messages — including those pertaining to the CIA leak case — have been taped over and are gone forever. The disclosure came minutes before midnight Tuesday under a court-ordered deadline that forced the White House to reveal information it has previously refused to provide. […] If the e-mails were not saved, the White House might have violated two laws requiring preservation of documents that fall into the categories of federal records or presidential records. [Think Progress] 9:22:18 AM    comment []

Chertoff Permanently Installs Hand-Picked DHS Staffers, ‘Overextending His Influence’ After 2008. Since its establishment in 2003, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been plagued by incompetent political appointees. As late as last year, ABC News noted that DHS was still “a political dumping ground,” with 350 White House-appointed staffers (compared to just 64 at the Department of Veteran Affairs). For the past five years, the Bush administration has refused to fire these cronies. Yet last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that all of a sudden, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff had decided to replace many political appointees with career staffers. The reason for the White House’s sudden turnaround? According to Chertoff, they want to create a smooth transition for the next administration: “We should not let ourselves drop the ball on the handoff,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in a recent interview, adding that his department has assembled “something unusual from a historical standpoint” in its plans to hand over a fully-functioning homeland-security operation to the next administration. Based on the administration’s track record, however, its real intentions may be less than magnanimous. The Wall Street Journal notes that the “transition planning may be perceived by the next administration as an effort by Homeland Security Chief Chertoff to overextend his influence.” Instead of being able to appoint new, competent officials, the next administration will be stuck with Chertoff’s last-minute choices. Government-bureacracy specialist Paul Light at New York University notes: The incoming administration may well ask whether or not the career person was appointed on the basis of merit or on the basis of political connections. That creates quite a bit of tension. Additionally, ThinkProgress spoke with a former Pentagon official who noted that at the end of many administrations, political appointees often choose to become career officials and continue their government work. By doing this, Chertoff’s cronies may be further entrenching themselves at DHS. Will Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-CT) Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee investigate this issue? (Given his track record, probably not.) [Think Progress] 9:16:03 AM    comment []