low culture

(AP Photos/J. Scott Applewhite)
Ok, all right, all right…fine, you caught us manipulating the context in which these photographs were taken. Yes, quite simply, it’s hot down there in Crawford, Texas. From the glare of all those lights and cameras!

A screen capture taken from last night’s edition of Fox News Live (August 2, 2005, 11:35pm)
Good God! A mere three years until the mullahs of Iran develop nuclear weaponry?
Meanwhile, from the rest of the news-reporting world, various accounts of this same news seemed to imply something entirely different. Not that Roger Ailes is fabricating news rather than spinning it as is customary, but, hey:
The following news, also reported yesterday, comes via “Iran Is Judged 10 Years From Nuclear Bomb; U.S. Intelligence Review Contrasts With Administration Statements“, the Washington Post, Tuesday, August 2, 2005:

A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand knowledge of the new analysis.
The carefully hedged assessments, which represent consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful public statements by the White House.

From Bush: Rove has ‘my compete confidence’ despite leak, Reuters, August 1, 2005:

“Karl’s got my complete confidence. He’s a valuable member of my team,” Bush said in his strongest defense yet of Rove, the architect of his presidential campaigns.

From Palmeiro Suspended for Steroid Violation, the Washington Post, August 1, 2005:

“Rafael Palmeiro is a friend. He testified in public and I believe him,” Bush said in an interview with the Knight Ridder news service. “He’s the kind of person that’s going to stand up in front of the klieg lights and say he didn’t use steroids, and I believe him. Still do.”

RELATED: We shot dead an innocent man, admit terror police, Daily Mail (UK), July 24, 2005
AND, OF COURSE: First Rule for a Mitchum Man? Don’t Read the Subway Rules, the New York Times, July 21, 2005

Hey, guess what? It’s getting closer and closer and closer and closer to the White House’s expected announcement of their nominee for the recently-vacated Supreme Court seat.
Whew! Just in time!
GOP Allies Say Bush Is Close to Court Pick; Choice May Be Announced This Week, the Washington Post, July 18, 2005

Yesterday Morning:
Mr. Bush displays his inability to grasp the irony of his statements in addressing his War on Terror™, collateral damage, and dead Iraqi children, as indicated by remarks taken from “G-8 Meeting’s Focus Shifts to Terrorism”, the New York Times, July 7, 2005:

“The contrast couldn’t be clearer between the intentions and the hearts of those of us who care deeply about human rights and human liberty, and those who kill, those who have got such evil in their hearts that they will take the lives of innocent folks,” Mr. Bush said in remarks to reporters. “The war on terror goes on.”

This Morning (after less than 24 hours had passed):

In this handout photo provided by the White House, President Bush shares a light moment with Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa during the morning session of the G8 Summit Friday, July 8, 2005, at Gleneagles Hotel in Auchterarder, Scotland. (AP Photo/The White House, Eric Draper)
“Aw, Ben, ‘Mind the Gap’, huh? That is funny…but don’t tell my boy Tony over there, OK? We all need to appear to be publicly grieving so as to justify our continued actions.”

From Richard W. Stevenson’s “G-8 Meeting’s Focus Shifts to Terrorism”, published hours after the subway bombings in London, comes this egregious renewal of the Bush adminsitration’s age-old canard:

And it seemed perhaps fitting that the American and British leaders were together at the moment when Britain confronted its version of the 9/11 attacks that transformed the national security policy of the United States and ultimately led them to send their militaries together into Iraq.

RELATED: The Downing Street memo (a primer)