Howard Kurtz - Sheri Annis Pillowtalk

Howard Kurtz is probably -- and this is really sad -- the most high-profile news media critic in the USA. He has a column in the furiously oxidizing Washington Post and a weekly media criticism show on CNN.

I realize a media critic has to accept a paycheck from somewhere, but perhaps only one of the largest news organizations should be paying him and not two.

Wonkette noticed that Kurtz Twittered quite pissily about Obama's appearance on David Letterman's show Monday night. Some of his comments were unbelievably ignorant, churlish, and misplaced -- he seems to forget that Obama appeared on five hard news Sunday shows the day prior, and that Late Night with David Letterman is a comedy talk show. Here's Kurtz' real-time media "criticism" of a late night gabfest:




Hey, Howard, if the show regularly features "Stupid Pet Tricks," it's not likely going to include harshly interrogatory questions. Go figure, Mr. Media Critic.

I wonder if Kurtz' disappointment with Letterman's grilling of Obama was in any way related to the fact that Howard's wife is a Republican operative of long standing? I'm sure Sheri Annis was pulling for Letterman to unload on Obama, and perhaps her standard-issue Republican ire rubbed off on Kurtz a little bit?

Yes, Howard Kurtz' current (second) wife is Sheri Annis, a professional Republican operative now working at (running?) an outfit called Fourth Estate Strategies. She's written for National Review, was a spokesperson for the Arnold Schwarzenegger, and helped run anti-affirmative action, anti-bilingual education, and anti-immigration campaigns.

If she's also worked against gay marriage, Howard married the Full-Metal-Wingnut!

How can someone married to this person be one of the most important news media critics in the USA? It would be like having an oncologist whose husband was a pro-cancer lobbyist.

So, now I wonder if Sherri Annis and her Fourth Estate Strategies are dealing with any insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, or any health industry-related organizations of any kind. I wonder if I could trust Howard Kurtz to reveal his wife's client list accurately?

Iin the midst of a massive health care legislative push, it would be a real shame if Howard Kurtz's bank account depended in any way upon the outcome of legislation and if his healthcare coverage was slanted by his wife's pillowtalk. It's bad enough that his wife is a Professional Republican Operative.

Howard Kurtz and Sheri Annis were married in May 2003 [PDF file]. Purportedly Annis " gave up political work after their marriage. " But, if so, she only gave up working for specific political candidates, and continued to work advocating for Republican positions on public policy issues.

For instance, as recently as 2007, Sheri Annis was representing Americana Consumer Institute, with a push to kill carbon cap and trade legislation -- another hot issue in DC nowadays.

American Consumer Institute appears to be an astroturf organization (Surprise!) also fighting Net Neutrality.

That's what I could find with a quick Google. I presume all her clients wouldn't be so easily located. And Howard Kurtz hasn't always been sensitive when he's dealing with his wife's clients during his work.

If only David Letterman could have Howard Kurtz on and ask him how his family's financial future could be altered by whatever issues his wife may be lobbying for or clients she may be representing.

Bills are Long

Ezra Klein posts about the length of bills and why whining about it is a lameness.

Some weeks ago on The Daily Show (TDS), Jon Stewart even pulled this complaint out when questioning someone about Health Insurance reform (was it Howard Dean? Not sure.)

I thought a great way to answer it would be to ask Stewart a question in response:

"Jon, your contract should basically be a short sentence: 'I, Jon Stewart will host TDS for x years and Comedy Central will pay me Y dollars.'"

"Now, Jon, how many pages long is your actual contract?"

Our Gay Brothers and Sisters...

...really know how to do -- and mashup-- protest signs.

This guy is justifiably proud for covering up "SIN" with "Great."

"We can't ALL marry Liza Minelli," I presume David Gest isn't holding that one up.

Quote the Bible back at them. I'll have to remember this Bible verse.

More funny protest signs here about all kinds of political things (not just gay issues).

Difficult quiz:

Who said the following, and when:

Here's one of the most exciting and emulsified carboniferous acts that I've ever had the pleasure to introduce. She's hermetically sealed and egregious beyond my companionship. Miss Libby Morris.

Answer: 1966, and the "who" is in the linked video

Numbering the Teabaggers

Another datapoint about attendence at the Teabag event: DC Metro has released ridership figures for the weekend. Look on that page for most of the raw figures below.

September 12, 2009 - Rail ridership: 437,624 Bus ridership: 236,347
(I sum that to 673,971 total trips)

That is well lower than average workday rail/bus ridership (which is over one million: 700,000 rail and 450,000 bus on most weekdays).

But let's compare the Saturday of 9/12 to Saturday one week earlier:
September 05, 2009 - Rail ridership: 300,963 Bus ridership: 236,347 * see note below *
(Sums to 537,310 total trips)


This past Saturday was about 26% above the previous Saturday's rail ridership. Bus ridership was the same. Teabag day didn't even come close to ridership levels for a regular weekday with commuters.

There were about 137,000 extra trips (that would include both to and from trips) the past Saturday over the previous one, meaning probably around 68,500 excess round trips on the subway this weekend compared to last. I wouldn't attribute all that transit to the TeaBag event, and one would have to figure in the people who drove, but that seems in line with official estimates of around 60-70 thousand protestors on Friday. Also, there were other events that same Saturday 9/12 (American triathlon and Black Family Reunion), so ridership would have been up for them, too.

However, it's apparent there was no huge unparalled ridership surge on Saturday that would have come from more than 100,000 protestors.

Let's compare ridership with Inauguration day:

January 20, 2009 - Rail ridership: 1,120,000 Bus ridership: 423,000

About 800 thousand more trips for Obama's inauguration than on last Saturday.

To throw in a weekend day for a comparison without weekday workers, how about the Sunday two days before inauguration?
January 18, 2009 - Rail ridership: 616,324 Bus ridership: 152,108

So, even the Sunday two days before inauguration had more ridership (especially by rail, but even by rail and bus combined) than the teabaggers had on Saturday.

I wonder what university Beck got his figures from?

None of the above is meant to estimate the numbers of people there on Saturday. It' s just to show that those estimating some huge crowd of over a hundred thousand or even a million are smoking weed from another planet.

---
* I realize Metro gives the same figures for bus ridership on both Saturdays 9/5 and 9/12. I'm presuming that's an artifact of how they count their ridership and not an indication that the number of trips were precisely the same -- still it's the figure they give both days.

Not a Comedienne, Either

The invaluable Instaputz brought back joyous memories by posting this brief but compelling video of former Saturday Night Live performer Victoria Jackson on Fox before the election.



Lest we forget, the right was calling Obama a communist even before the election.

Victoria's whole schpiel is elegant but particularly this segment of her run-on sentence:

"I don't see why people are afraid to say the word Communist and I've done a lot of research and I've read the book 1984 by George Orwell twice ... "

Ahem. I presume she considered 1984 a cautionary tale, which is why it's assigned to pre-teens. But Orwell was certainly a socialist (Does Jackson know the difference?), another epithet hurled at the President.

Ah, memories. I recall Victoria Jackson, in her pre-Saturday Night Live days, as a kooky performer on late-night talk shows, particularly Johnny Carson. Her act, as I recall, was reciting poetry in her Betty Boop voice (or possibly singing a quite dopey song and playing ukulele) while doing a poor junior high school gymnastics pose.

That was her act.

Initially I assumed this was faux Dada or intended ironically. (What hath Andy Kaufman wrought?) After a few interviews it was apparent she was serious -- and therefore seriously un-self-aware, untalented, and vapid. Somehow she she extended her show biz career by getting the gig on SNL, left that and did a few tv and movie appearances, and finally disappeared until she ended up Tourretting rightwing non-sequitors on Fox News. Quite a sad career arc, even for second-tier SNL alums (though not quite as pathetic as poor Charles Rocket).

Now I see that she "writes" for Breitbart's "Rightwingers trashing Hollywood in hopes of getting jobs in Hollywood" site Big Hollywood. Scroll around there a bit in amazement: it's even worse than this blog.

The sad thing is, there were sixty or so thousand people on Capitol Mall this weekend talking like Victoria Jackson, sometimes with a lagniappe of casual racism.

Poop Show

David Mitchell has an amusing column in The Guardian that mildly disparages politicians of all sorts and David Cameron particularly. But at the end he points to something that those of us in America should despair of:

The solution is to tighten expenses rules but pay MPs more, but that's a difficult argument to win and politicians would have to be brighter to do it, particularly after they've all been caught pilfering House of Commons toiletries.

Ultimately, it's not in Cameron's interests. He doesn't need the money – many Tories don't. Lower pay and cutting things like each MP's communications allowance, which they'll then have to find from political funds, will always tend to benefit the right wing, the advocates of the rich. What sounds like selfless parsimony for those who aspire to govern translates as voicelessness for people without private wealth or contacts in big business. It turns out he's not stupid.

That's utterly sensible and, while communicated with a humorous tone, solid advice for the UK, I think.

Here in the US this week, it's pretty apparent from Supreme Court argument that the justices nominated by Genius George W. Bush will gut campaign finance laws. This means that corporations will not just be able to dump ungodly amounts of money into some parts of the political process, but that there will be no area of political discourse that will be even slightly off-limits to their sewage.

Expect the Bush Supreme Court to soon rule outright bribery "protected political speech," so long as Republicans are the ones raking in the payoffs.

Why are lower-middle class and poor southerners screaming in anger for the right to die bankrupt and untreated rather than have insurance companies regulated? Because some of the richest people in the world are pumping their heads full of rank bullshit.

Hard to believe, but expect it only to get worse, until the USA is a premodern state with a microthin gilded upper crust seperated from poorhouses, workhouses, and a seething underclass of Dickensian proportions: but an underclass that loves rich corporations bankrupting and killing them. Scrooge will never have to change his ways.

I appreciate David Mitchell's amusement at the irrationality of what Cameron is doing. I wish we had that problem here.

The Shah and Orchestral Tuning , from Slonimsky's Book of Musical Anecdotes.

More Media Maron

I wrote about Marc Maron's new podcast the other day, and since then he's added two more: One with some angsty entertainment industry inside ball, movie chatter, and the insanely funny Jim Earl (Episode 2), and another with the also insanely funny Patton Oswalt (Episode 3) and a visit from Kent Jones' alter ego Lawton Smalls.

Give them a try. They're free on Itunes and not on Itunes. He plans on doing two a week, which will be great.

Republicans: Putting Government between you and your emergency care

Wingnuts such as Joe (The Palmetto Prat) Wilson are worried that immigrants will get coverage under health care reform.

That is false. It is false.

Illegal immigrants won't be covered--that condition is not only in various reform bills but it's also in pre-existing statutes the reform will conform to. Since that can't be true, maybe they are concerned that, whether covered by insurance or not, immigrants might receive care from physicians and hospitals?

I presume so: I think what they're indicating is that if anyone is brought to an ER injured badly after an auto accident, the Doctors will have to determine whether the patient is an illegal immigrant or not -- be forced to check papers -- before delivering care.

You can't tell merely from looking at an injured human being what country they are citizens of.

Which means that as we American citizens lay injured and bleeding in the ER, medical personnel won't be able to give care until they've checked our citizenship and immigration papers. If we don't have papers, we don't get treated. If you, as even a native-born American citizen, have papers but they were destroyed in the car crash and fire you barely survived, the hospital won't be able to treat you because you can't prove you're not an illegal immigrant.

I'm not sure how Republicans expect to deny emergency care (again, we're discussing mere medical care, not insurance coverage, which will not be part of the reform plan) other than immigration-checking every injured person in every emergency room in the USA. I can't figure out any other way of denying all medical care (not coverage) to immigrants besides this except for tattoing or implanting 'US CITIZEN" on every citizen of the USA. Of course, even tattoos and implants can be removed in traumatic injuries, so that wouldn't be foolproof either.

I would like to ask Rep Wilson and every other Republican trying to demagogue this issue: Why will you prevent my doctor from treating me if I don't have my citizenship papers on me at the moment I need life-saving emergency care?

PS: Rob Miller is running against the wingnut Joe Wilson who shouted "You lie" during Obama's speech. Send Miller some money.

Media Maron

A little more comedy now-- but for a change, it's about an American. The main news, should you want to skip the rest, is that Marc Maron has a new Podcast and it's great. It's called WTF and it's free on iTunes or not on iTunes

I didn't know of Marc Maron much before he started the ill-fated morning program Morning Sedition on Air America way back when. The show was a revelation: smart and powerful hilarity. There was plenty of satire, but very little of "let's have someone imitate a given politician" or "let's write a gag that's not funny but is remotely topical" that passes for satire nowadays, and none of the "Wow, lesbians and midgets are hilarious" that has bizarrely become a standard of unfunny "funnymen." He's left-of-center but I'd be hard-pressed to call him a "political comedian" because most people who do that are about as funny as Jay Leno with chin cancer, and Maron's stuff and that of his writer/performers is usually much more oblique than just reformulating headlines.

Someone has kindly put up an archive of the comedy bits from Morning Sedition, and they are still funny. Especially if you can cast yourself back to the very dark days when Bush was running things but it was somehow treasonous to mention you were ashamed the President was from Texas (unlike now, when the preferred term is for a sitting President is "Stalinist African-born Hitler" -- get right on that Diane Sawyer).

Give these bits a listen -- they're still hilarious. (also they feature Kent Jones, who appears as Rachel Maddow's sidekick now, the multifarious Jim Earl, Wyatt Cenac, and a lot of other good comics).

Maron parted ways with Air America (meaning they shafted him several times), but he's kept a unique and darkly hilarious take. Here's an hour-plus long standup set he did a few weeks ago. It's great how relaxed and natural he is. I'm not a fan of mere "Setup. Punchline. Repeat" comedians and he's certainly gone way beyond that. It's theatrical in the most basic sense, and had me roaring with laughter.

Go check out Marc Maron's new WTF podcast, either on Itunes or not on Itunes. He tells a few stories, rants a bit, and has a long and interesting conversation with Jeffrey Ross (who I respect a lot more after this interview).

There's a lot of Maron's history I've left out-- I've just put up mostly what drew me to his work. If you want to read more, you can start with Wikipedia and visit his website.

BBC America, Hear Our Plea

Regular readers will know that I'm a hardcore fan of British media -- especially comedy. Here's an American who knows which radio sitcoms are airing on BBC4 most weeks -- and often who wrote them. BBC (radio and TV and even their website) is a world treasure. So much great stuff.

But even for those not so involved, if you asked most Americans what entertainment forms you think of when prompted with "British," it's worth a wager that in the top five responses would be "comedy" (even higher if you eliminate music and musical groups).

This is to point out that BBC America for the past few weeks has aired no comedies -- no sketch shows, no sitcoms, no Monty Python, no comedy quizzes no news parodies, no historical comedy-dramas. There are a couple talk shows with comedy caulking (Graham Norton and Jeremy Ross), but no straight comedy. Here's a paste of the lineup for today:

BBC America Schedule, Wed. Sept 2

01:00:00 AM  You Are What You Eat
02:00:00 AM  Dragons' Den
03:00:00 AM  The Graham Norton Show
04:00:00 AM  How Clean Is Your House?
04:30:00 AM  How Clean Is Your House?
05:00:00 AM  BBC World News
06:00:00 AM  BBC World News
06:30:00 AM  BBC World News
07:00:00 AM  BBC World News
08:00:00 AM  Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares Revisited
09:00:00 AM  Cash in the Attic
10:00:00 AM  Antiques Roadshow
11:00:00 AM  Bargain Hunt
11:30:00 AM  Bargain Hunt
12:00:00 PM  You Are What You Eat
12:30:00 PM  You Are What You Eat
01:00:00 PM  How Clean Is Your House?
01:30:00 PM  How Clean Is Your House?
02:00:00 PM  Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares Revisited
03:00:00 PM  Gordon Ramsay's F Word
04:00:00 PM  Hotel Inspector
05:00:00 PM  Gordon Ramsay's F Word
06:00:00 PM  Kitchen Nightmares
07:00:00 PM  BBC World News America
08:00:00 PM  Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares
09:00:00 PM  Gordon Ramsay's F Word
10:00:00 PM  BBC World News America
11:00:00 PM  Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares

BBC News is great, and I'm glad they expanded it. Some of the other shows are okay timewasters, but there's nothing there which would make me say "I have got to see that." Much of it is just dross of the drossiest sort.

On other days they have more interesting programs in the evening, and I don't hate Gordon Ramsay -- I'm just not that interested and he's on every day it seems.

There's tons of great entertainment on BBC and other UK stations: please, BBC America, air some of it in America.

One example is QI, which is Stephen Fry's entertaining, bizarre, and interesting (Quite Interesting) comic quiz show. There's a bit of a push to get it aired somewhere on US TV, and that's a cause to get behind. Here's a Facebook page devoted to getting QI aired in the USA. Go pitch in and read about the program. It's great that John Hodgman will be a panelist this season!

I'd love to see QI on BBC America, but there's a lot of other stuff that would be wonderful to see, too. I've often wondered if some shows they are airing (e.g. How Clean is your House?, You Are What You Eat?, and The Hotel Inspector) get much viewership, or if they're just nearly free to license.

I'd be extremely interested -- and, of course, surprised -- to see ratings for BBC America's various programs, but there is no way their current strategy is the strongest lineup they could put forward, even giving viewership, licensing, and pecuniary issues. If IFC can air The IT Crowd and Graham Duff's wonderful pot-dealer sitcom Ideal, with those Mancunian accents that regularly cause even an anglophile like me to use Closed Captions (I love you Johnny Vegas, but Moz's slurred rasp can be a bit hard to decipher), then surely BBC America can run some of the many great shows that are on offer on UK TV nowadays.

Adult Swim is airing The Mighty Boosh, fer chrissakes, which is as funkily British as Melton Mowbry pies with gooseberries, jellied eels, Stilton, and HP sauce.

[I'm sure competition from stations like IFC and Adult Swim--and of course PBS for the tonier productions-- is a challenge to BBC America. But BBC A weren't airing Ideal anyway and it's been years since they aired The Boosh, so that can't be the driving force behind their odd programming choices.]

Please!

Danger!

I've been saying things like this for some time, and it appears it's catching on.

Today, Michael Waldman (KagroX) at Dailykos.com:

You're going to force me to pay an insurance company for shit insurance that as a free market actor I decided not to even try to buy?

Fuck the hell out of that.

Amen.

I started out presuming that Baucus, Conrad, and the conservaDems actually wanted health care reform that would work -- meaning it would work for citizens, not just for insurance companies. Then Baucus managed to diddle and delay a Finance Committee bill: delay serves nothing but killing good aspects of the bill.

Of course, wingnuts and astroturfers have spent the delay killing the public option, leaving the bill with a mandate which will shovel money to insurance company CEOs. It will changes some of their past abuses but will inevitably not consider the next wave of abusive practices that will make health insurance a hated commodity (i.e., insurers will plant--or find -- new loopholes to screw consumers).

Pre-existing conditions and lifetime caps will be gone, to some extent--but how will they work around that when they want to boost quarterly profits? And what about recission? (Supposedly it will be banned, but individuals will have to appeal the recission -- lovely during a medical crisis.) What about the next as-yet-unnamed scam the insurance companies come up with to screw people out of both their premiums and their life-saving care?

Think that'll get fixed before you die? Considering how hard taking on insurance companies proves to be, don't bet on it. Just mandatorily pay your money to Stephen Helmsley (2008 compensation: over $3 million) and prepare to get screwed.

People will end up hating their insurance and the Democrats -- not just the insurance companies -- will get blamed for it.

The stupidity of this scheme is just incredible.

At least keep a public option so one isn't a criminal if one doesn't reward Stephen Helmsley for his stock-dating scam.

Note to the unnamed White House official who included individual mandates in the list of so-called "goodies" that progressives will love: you are so utterly full of shit.


As Atrios put it: "mccain attacking obama on both corporatist and noncorporatist stuff. neat trick, they'll pull it off too."

They sure will. If people don't like their health insurance, they will blame Obama, and the Democrats. The Republicans will campaign against it, win, and rip out every change that was made. Welcome back, recission! Welcome back refusal due to pre-existing conditions! Welcome back, annual and lifetime caps! With half-measures, the Dems will apparently put together a healthcare system that people will hate. In a few years, Republicans will change it back to the current one!

Funny, and possibly not perfectible

Twitter / Peter Serafinowicz. A simple quote: "'He was revolting, yet mysterious; like a circular turd.'"

I find this sublimely hilarious.

But while I'm laughing, I have to be a pedant and say that while "circular" communicates the impression for most people, I'd think that some would prefer "torus" or "toroidal." "Toroidal" and "turd" would have the same first letter. Better for funny!

So, to belabor it beyond all reckoning, "toroidal turd" is the ideal rendering for the sense of the phrase, but it drains the joke for those without understanding of the topological term "toroid."

Still, as it stands, it's a friggin' funny line.

Peter Serafinowicz may be the funniest Twitterer I've seen.

Thank you Peter Serafinowicz, who spans the Atlantic as a funny person. He will be known to all funny-seekers here and there soon.

Roger Ebert: Smart Guy

I have come to understand Roger Ebert's take on movies more as years go by.

Nowadays Roger Ebert has had serious cancer, and has been treated in the US system. He's also a smart guy -- and not dead.

Roger Ebert's Journal: I'm safe on board. Pull up the life rope

His prior entry on health care "Death Panels." A most excellent term. is itself excellent: with graphics from one of the most powerful silent movies of all time.

I've come to like Ebert as a movie reviewer more and more. I don't always agree with him totally -- I generally don't disagree but may quibble. He's both empathic and analytical. He loves cinema. He gives movies a break, especially if they're trying to do something interesting.

In this legislative health insurance scrum, he's fighting a battle he isn't getting paid for, and he'll get screamed at by Cracker Nation. He's one of the good guys. Yet again.

Political Idiots?

Jed at Daily Kos quotes some anonymous WH person: "The president continues to operate under the belief that liberals will warm to the bill when presented with a goodybag that includes an individual mandate...."

I can't believe the administration has a leading political idiot who would call the individual mandate part of a "goodybag."

What part of "pay a mandatory tax to a private health insurance company with a CEO who makes five million dollars a year -- or be a criminal" is a "goody?"

Without the public option, there should be no mandate. Even with a public option, I'm not sure there should be a mandate.

I keep hearing DC politicians, the President included, who say we need a "uniquely American solution" to health care.

Forcing the middle class and poor to enrich private insurance companies who are already making outrageous profits is "unique." It sure isn't American to me.

And an individual mandate is political suicide, to boot.

I Wish

Where people are carrying guns near a Presidential event, I wish some folks would stand with signs that read "Book Depository."

What Digby Said

About insurance "reform" with a mandate that individuals buy health insurance from insurance companies:

Hullabaloo: "Insurance 'reform' will end up being defined as the government acting in concert with the insurance companies to force Americans to buy their expensive product --- and it will play perfectly into the right wing populist argument that's gaining currency. Without a public plan as a low cost option, this thing looks a lot less like reform and a whole lot more like a shake down. I could see the new Newtie Populist Republicans using that against all these Blue Dogs and Corporate Senators in their districts next time and taking them out. Personally, I'd be hard pressed to say they were wrong."

Force me to buy private insurance-- hand over cash to Aetna -- or be a criminal?

Fuck that. Forget it. I'm a progressive and want health care reform, but Congress putting in a sluice from my wallet to an insurance company? No way.

If I had a car I'd have to buy auto insurance -- but I don't own a car. What do I have to do in order not to be forced to purchase insurance: stop breathing?

It's an unfunded mandate on every person in the USA. Add the public option and it's not so bad.

Halperitinitis

Shorter Mark Halperin:

The agitated lunatic waving the assault rifle and the bystander trying to reason with him are similarly responsible for the spray of bullets.

That is a metaphor. It's probable this will cease to be metaphorical before August is over: I wonder what Halperin will think then?

Halperin is the unscrubbed taint of journalism.

Alastair Campbell watches In the Loop

Yet more In the Loop blogging and re-blogging.



It's an open secret that the character of Malcolm Tucker (played by Peter Capaldi) in In the Loop is based on Tony Blair's main advisor, Alastair Campbell.

In March, just before the movie opened in the UK, Campbell watched the movie and discussed it with critic Mark Kermode for BBC2's The Culture Show.

Oddly enough, Campbell isn't flattered by the portrayal. Go figure. Though he did laugh at the "Shitting Forecast" joke.

Alastair Campbell writes about the circumstances of this viewing and interview.

====

Also, The Onion AV Club has a long and wide-ranging interview with Armando Iannucci. The whole thing is worth reading. Here's one exchange of interest:

AVC: In that case, it’s almost more poignant than funny, because the abruptness just increases how pathetic it is.

AI: I wanted this to be about people who are several rungs down, and all the decisions are being made through there. The guy I met from the CIA said he spent his first year at the CIA doing desk paperwork, and dreaming that someone would tap him on the shoulder and say, “Listen, you’ve done very well, we’re going to move you through that door and show you the real CIA. Go through there, that’s where all the big screens are, all the equipment and the surveillance.” It never happened. There is no “over there.” It’s just this. Marker pens. He said they got a lot of their intelligence from the Baghdad newspapers, because they were actually more accurate than what they were getting back from their operatives.