INTIMIGATE Novak's Duplicity
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| Tue, 09-14-2004 - 12:57pm |
On the Capital Gang, Novak, who has strenusously claimed his right as a reporter not to reveal his sources to law enforcement officials in the leak of an undercover CIA agent, said, “I'd like CBS, at this point, to say where they got these documents from.†He then repeated himself: “I think they should say where they got these documents.â€
The Wall Street Journal's Al Hunt was perplexed, asking Novak, “You're saying CBS should reveal its source?†He replied, “Yes.â€
Hunt asked again, “You think reporters ought to reveal sources?†Novak, then embarrassed said, “No, no. Wait a minute...I'm just saying in that case.â€
Hunt summed up, “So in some cases, reporters ought to reveal sources?†Novak replied, “Yes.â€
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0409/11/cg.00.html
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000591250
Hilarious. Mr. "I'll never reveal my sources" now tries to intimidate CBS into revealing their sources. This defines chutzpah. The White House must be in a 4-alarm panic if they risk making Novak look so ridiculous.

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I highly doubt it's thw White House in a panic over this, and as far as I know Robert Novak is a journalist, not a robot whose speech is controlled by the White House. It is interesting though, that CBS has deviated from the usual journalistic practice of delineating the GENERAL source of info, i.e. stating something like the documents came from "sources within the National Guard chain of command" or "sources within the Kerry campaign". Not only have they not NAMED their source for these documents, which no one would really expect them to, they won't even give some idea of the origins of that source for the sake of credibility, as is usually done.
Looks like a lot of heads may roll in the near future.
Oh, I doubt that! Remember this is a "news show", hence entertainment and in this field there is no such thing as negative publicity. Whatever generates interest will bring up the ratings.
As far as DNC politics, well it's putting the issue & questions about the president's National Guard obligations back on the front page and why wouldn't they want that?
C
The more Bush's ANG service is talked about, the more people talk about Kerry, Vietnam and what he did afterwards, which will hurt Kerry in the end more than Bush.
Probably not as much as we would all like to have happen.
Kerry can't afford to pay for everything he promises, at least not unless he is going to have the largest tax increases across the board in the history of the US, and Bush cannot balance the budget unless he is able to stop the spending in Washington, and get them to concentrate on the necessities, such as health care, education, and leave the pork out of the bills.
Even when the budget was balanced, and we had projected surpluses, these surpluses were not sufficient enough to pay the interest on the debt, so how are we supposed to pay the actual debt? The other thing is that the surpluses were projected, meaning that if the economic conditions remained the same, and spending remained the same, the surplus would have been $X.
The estimated surplus did not take into account pre-set increases in certain things such as Medicare premiums, which were built into the program a few years ago.
It is extremely complicated, which is why no politician ever addresses the issue. It is a losing proposition. In reality, everyone would love to have the debt paid off, and the only way to do so is to raise taxes so high, and cut spending in Washington to the bone. Even then it would take a very long time to pay off the debt, and by then the economy would have fallen apart, unemployment would be well into the double digits, etc.
It is a very strange cycle of events.
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