I heard this teaser a while back on MSNBC:

Harry Reid says the war is lost.

The White House says, “No way!”

Tune in for the showdown:

Keith Olbermann at 8 weekdays!

Those of us who watch cable “news” are so used to these teasers that we don’t even give them a second thought. I know that’s true for me, and I’m supposedly some kind of media watcher.

I’m just sayin’: that’s not “news.”

There is, of course, news—but you have to dig to find it.

I found some here today, written up by Jules Crittenden, so you know it comes with attitude.

Hey, check this out. Here’s an MNF-I press release from yesterday that suggests lower intensity, longer-duration sweeps can disrupt the enemy.  I scanned the wires last night and did not see this reported.  The Iraq day story by Richard Reid was about 7 U.S. killed, 55 Iraqis found murdered, explosions heard and political setbacks. Nothing about any success. Is this because the AP considers news of successful operations to be bullshit, or otherwise meaningless? Wouldn’t be the first time. But this doesn’t sound like meaningless bullshit to me:

Regimental Combat Team 2 and elements of the Iraqi Army’s 7th Division completed Operation Harris Ba’sil after eight weeks of interdicting and disrupting enemy routes and safe havens outside of the major cities of the Euphrates River valley in western al Anbar province.

The operation, dubbed “Valiant Guardian”, involved nearly 4,000 Marines, Soldiers and Sailors covering most of the 30,000 square miles of RCT-2’s operating area.

“We uncovered over 250 caches, arrested over 250 suspected insurgents and discovered over 100 improvised explosive devices,” said Lt. Col. Michael Manning, operations officer for RCT-2. “We clearly surprised them, the number of caches and detainees attest to that but more importantly, we let the enemy know that they can’t hide from us.”

There’s more at MNF-I.  Terrorist safe house destroyed in Baghdad. 20 armed locals rush to aid of Iraq police in Duluiyah … a dead al-Qaeda bigshot’s hometown described as a Sunni insurgent stronghold. That’s pretty impressive. I’m guessing its the local Shiites trying to defend themselves, but who knows. Why can’t I find it in a Google news search?

Good question.

ETP’s Jason Linkins is just now coming around to discovering ABC’s Charlie Gibson. I’m a longtime fan. Once upon a time I used to watch ABC News and I always preferred his subbing to Jennings’s achoring, and Good Morning America with Charlie and Diane (remember her? nah, I didn’t think so) used to be my staple morning show to have on in the background as I started my day.

So, yeah. Charlie is easy on the ears and nerves. Also: He’s a newsman who knows how to ask tough questions. He’s great.

But, guys? That picture you posted of him is at least 15 years and 30 pounds ago:

Here’s a more recent picture:

p.s. I love the title of the post, though.

Word Is Starting to Get Out About This Charles Gibson Fellow

It sounds just like something Charlie would say. (He can get a little corny at times.)

No, not him

LAWRENCE OLIVIER AS ARCHIE RICE, LONDON, 1957, photo by Snowden

I mean him:

Really, it’s too delicious. First, in May 2006, Andrew Sullivan introduces America to the crisis of “Christianism”:

 So let me suggest that we take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist. Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. And I should underline that the term Christianist is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all. I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.

 (though I note that the concept was introduced a year and a half earlier, in November 2004, on the Daily Kos)

However, there is another movement in this nation, which I refer to as Christianism.  The term is dervied from “Islamist” — or those people who claimed to be followers of Islam, but are nothing more than terrorists who do not follow the principles of Islam.  There are those “Christians” who do not seem to be following the principles of Christianity — thus the term “Christianist”.

Then today, having hysterically hyped a bogus concept for more than a year, Sullivan, finding himself uncomfortably off-message, asks: “Is Christianism Peaking?” His lede is a closeup of this dude,

the Big Bad Wolf who stared down the “Christianists” who got Sullivan’s knickers in a twist.

I won’t bother to copy and paste anything from Sullivan’s furious backpedaling. Just five days ago, he was claiming that Christianists were taking over the military and preying on innocent Orthodox Jewish kidney-stone sufferers—the horror! the horror! (I made fun of him here.)

He is left to bleat incoherently about his politics, religion, and moral code—not that I’m paying attention. I’m fascinated by the fact that he abandoned his year-long anti-Christianist crusade just like that. Stopped on a dime.

Yglesias slapped him about it. But it looks like the very influential Frank Rich is the one who made him back off.

The new bosses are not quite like the old bosses, eh?