O'Reilly Misfires In "War On Christmas" Attack On Crate & Barrel

Last night, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly took aim at the retailer Crate & Barrel in his latest "War on Christmas" segment. O'Reilly cited a recent article in which Crate & Barrel spokeswoman Betty Kahn is quoted saying, "We would definitely not say Merry Christmas."

O'Reilly claimed to have "confirmed" the quote was accurate. As a result, he said he would no longer shop at the store, and alleged that the six Muslim imams removed last week from a US Airways flight "wouldn't get handcuffed in Crate & Barrel if they started chanting and stuff."

But in an interview with ThinkProgress, Kahn said her quote was misconstrued. Crate & Barrel has no policy encouraging or discouraging store employees from saying "Merry Christmas" or any other greeting. Kahn said she was trying to communicate that the store does not actively require employees to say "Merry Christmas."

Kahn's explanation is supported by the fact that Crate & Barrel's website features various Christmas promotional materials, including a special Christmas section (located at CrateandBarrel.com/Christmas), pictured below:

Think Progress w/video

"We will continue to be flexible, and we'll make the changes necessary to succeed. But there's one thing I'm not going to do. I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete."

"One of his frustrations with me is that he believes that we've been slow about giving him the tools necessary to protect the Iraqi people," Bush said. "He doesn't have the capacity to respond. So we want to accelerate that capacity."

There was no explanation from either side of how that would happen, beyond support for the long-standing goals of speeding the U.S. military's effort to train Iraqi security forces and to give more military authority over Iraq to al-Maliki.

(snip)

"I know there's a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there's going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq," he said. "This business about a graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all."

At a dinner honoring the First Amendment, Newt Gingrich reportedly suggested a "different set of rules" might be necessary to stop terrorists using freedom of speech to get out their message. Keith Olbermann discusses the constitutionality of this with Jonathan Turley.

NEWT GINGRICH, FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER: My view is that either before we lose a city, or if we are truly stupid after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that we use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us, to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us.

OLBERMANN: If you're going to destroy freedom of speech, bub, you've already lost all the cities.

(snip)

TURLEY: Well, what these guys don't understand is that the best defense against bad ideas, like extremism and terrorism, is free speech. That's what we've proven. That's why they don't like us, is that we're remarkably successful as a democracy, because we've shown that really bad ideas don't survive in the marketplace, unless you try to suppress them, unless you try to keep people from speaking. Then it becomes a form of martyrdom. Then you give credence to what they're saying.

Kim Jong-il to lose iPod privileges

Kim Jong-il is to have his access to iPods and other desirable gadgets cut off as part of US efforts to target sanctions directly at the North Korean leader and his power base.

Aside from his own personal use, Kim is said to use gifts of Western consumer goods to reward loyal government officials.

So, the apparent US logic goes, restricting his access to such goods will help to erode his power base.

Aside from iPods, a list of items targeted by the US and obtained by the Associated Press, includes Rolex watches, cognac, luxury cars and plasma-screen televisions.

LMFAO

Amid a growing barrage of front-page headlines, U.S. embassy officials "strongly suggested" President Bush's twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara Bush, cut short their trip to Buenos Aires because of security issues, U.S. diplomatic and security sources tell ABC News.

But the girls have stayed on, celebrating their 25th birthday over the weekend and producing even more headlines about their activities.

MICHAEL WARE: Well, firstly, let me say, perhaps it's easier to deny that this is a civil war, when essentially you live in the most heavily fortified place in the country within the Green Zone, which is true of both the prime minister, the national security adviser for Iraq and, of course, the top U.S. military commanders. However, for the people living on the streets, for Iraqis in their homes, if this is not civil war, or a form of it, then they do not want to see what one really looks like.

This is what we're talking about. We're talking about Sunni neighborhoods shelling Shia neighborhoods, and Shia neighborhoods shelling back.

We're having Sunni communities dig fighting positions to protect their streets. We're seeing Sunni extremists plunging car bombs into heavily-populated Shia marketplaces. We're seeing institutionalized Shia death squads in legitimate police and national police commando uniforms going in, systematically, to Sunni homes in the middle of the night and dragging them out, never to be seen again.

I mean, if this is not civil war, where there is, on average, 40 to 50 tortured, mutilated, executed bodies showing up on the capital streets each morning, where we have thousands of unaccounted for dead bodies mounting up every month, and where the list of those who have simply disappeared for the sake of the fact that they have the wrong name, a name that is either Sunni or Shia, so much so that we have people getting dual identity cards, where parents cannot send their children to school, because they have to cross a sectarian line, then, goodness, me, I don't want to see what a civil war looks like either if this isn't one.

"We have areas that people of one sect cannot enter for fear of immediate execution by another sect. You drive on a minibus on your way to work, suddenly there's a checkpoint, if you're of the wrong faith, you are dead.... If that's not civil war, if we don't have two sides of a nation going face to face then honestly, I don't know what is."

After six years of technological research, more than $4 billion spent by Washington on new machinery and a widespread overhaul of the nation's voting system, this month's midterm election revealed that the country is still far from able to ensure that every vote counts.

Tens of thousands of voters, scattered across more than 25 states, encountered serious problems at the polls, including failures in sophisticated new voting machines and confusion over new identification rules, according to interviews with election experts and officials.

In many places, the difficulties led to shortages of substitute paper ballots and long lines that caused many voters to leave without casting ballots.
NY Times

A renowned black magic practitioner performed a voodoo ritual Thursday to jinx President George W. Bush and his entourage while he was on a brief visit to Indonesia.

"I don't hate Americans, but I don't like Bush," said Pamungkas, who believed the ritual would succeed as, "the devil is with me today."

He said the jinx would send spirits to possess Secret Service personnel guarding Bush and leave them in a trance, leading them into falsely thinking the President was under attack, thus eventually causing chaos in Bogor Presidential Palace."

The United Nations said Wednesday that 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October, the highest monthly toll since the 2003 U.S. invasion.

U.N. officials blamed the death toll increase on the growing influence of armed militias and rampant torture "despite the government's commitment to address human rights abuses."

"Hundreds of bodies continued to appear in different areas of Baghdad handcuffed, blindfolded and bearing signs of torture and execution-style killing," the officials quoted the report as saying. "Many witnesses reported that perpetrators wear militia attire and even police or army uniforms."

The mission's human rights office continues to receive reports that the police and security forces are either infiltrated or act in collusion with militias, the U.N. said, noting, however, that the government had recently removed 3,000 employees of the Interior Ministry alleged to have been guilty of human rights abuses or corruption.

White House lowers economic projections

WASHINGTON - The White House on Tuesday lowered its forecast for economic growth this year and into 2008, reflecting the drag from the housing slump.

Even with the downgrade, though, the Bush administration is predicting that the unemployment rate will turn out to be slightly lower than previously thought.

Under the administration's new forecast, gross domestic product will grow by 3.1 percent, as measured from the fourth quarter of last year to the fourth quarter of this year. That's down considerably from a projection of 3.6 percent made during in early June, but would still represent decent growth, especially given the strain on overall economic activity from the housing slump.

GDP measures the value of all goods and services produced within the United States and is the best measure of the country's economic standing.

Top 2%

International business travellers to the US fear mistreatment at the hands of border officials more than they fear terrorism, according to a survey published on Monday.

Focusing on the type of respondent most likely to hold a favourable view of the US, it found that two-thirds of the 2,011 people questioned thought the US "the worst country in the world" in the way it treated foreign visitors at the border.
MSNBC

Rude immigration officials and visa delays keep millions of foreign visitors away from the United States, hurt the country's already battered image, and cost the U.S. billions of dollars in lost revenue, according to an advocacy group formed to push for a better system.

Travel Industry Association statistics show that the U.S. share in world tourism declined from 7.4 percent in 2000 to 6 percent last year. A one-percentage point increase, according to the association, would mean 7.5 million additional arrivals, $12.3 billion in additional spending, 150,000 additional U.S. jobs, $3.3 billion in additional payroll and $2.1. billion in additional taxes.
Reuters

IRAN has invited the Iraqi and Syrian presidents to Tehran for a weekend summit with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to hash out ways to cooperate in curbing the runaway violence that has taken Iraq to the verge of civil war and threatens to spread through the region.

The Iranian move was also a display of its increasingly muscular role in the Middle East, where it already has established deep influence over Syria and Lebanon.
Irish Examiner

Influential figures in Washington have urged the Bush administration to talk to both countries in hopes of gaining their help to bring the violence in Iraq under control. But many of President Bush's advisors oppose the idea.

White House policy has been to isolate Iran to compel the government to abandon its nuclear enrichment program and to refuse to talk with Syria until it drops its support for what the United States considers terrorist groups.
LA Times

It is a shame - and it is embarrassing to us all - when President Bush travels 8,000 miles, only to wind up avoiding reality, again.

And it is pathetic to listen to the leader of the free world, talk so unrealistically about Vietnam, when it was he who permitted the "Swift-Boating" of not one but two American heroes of that war, in consecutive Presidential campaigns.

But most importantly - important, beyond measure - his avoidance of reality is going to wind up killing more Americans.

And that is indefensible - and fatal.

Asked if there were lessons about Iraq to be found in our experience in Vietnam, Mr. Bush said that there were - and he immediately proved he had no clue what they were.

WALLACE: Well, I must say - and we told you before you came on that we were going to talk some about the joke. I agree there's things to talk about after, but there are questions people have, and I'm going to ask you about them, sir.

KERRY: Chris, let me again say to you - I mean, let's be serious about this. This was a bad joke. And I own it. And I apologized for it.

But the full measure of the Republican attack machine knew exactly what I had said, and they set out to make it a distraction.

(snip)

And I've offered - you know, I called Condoleezza Rice, and I said, "Look, let's find a way to work together, because the country needs us to move on." They don't want to talk about a joke that's old news.

WALLACE: But, Senator, in fairness...

KERRY: Only you do.

You want to know what the insult to the troops is? The insult to the troops is sending them to war for false reasons. The insult to the troops is sending them to war without the equipment that they need, without the armor, without the armed Humvees. The insult was having the secretary of defense who, for month after month after month, refused to listen to the Congress and listen to his own advisers. The insult is having troops who have a strategy that has them mired without the diplomacy necessary to resolve what everyone has said cannot be resolved militarily.

And on it goes. When Wallace plays a clip of PART of what Kerry said, taking it out of context, Kerry finishes the rest of what he said, and calls Chris out on the carpet demanding "why didn't you play the rest?"

Read the FULL TRANSCRIPT
Watch the VIDEO

President George Bush suffered his most visible diplomatic setback since his party's defeat in mid-term elections yesterday when Asian leaders failed to back Washington's call for robust action against North Korea.

The rebuff - the second for Mr Bush this weekend on North Korea - underlined the president's diminished powers in the wake of his election defeat. So too did the muted response to Mr Bush's presence in Hanoi, a shadow of the tumultuous reception for President Clinton, when he visited Vietnam six years ago.

Unlike Mr Clinton, who ate lunch in a noodle shop and waded into a rice paddy to look for the remains of a US pilot missing since the war, Mr Bush has largely viewed Vietnam through the windows of an armoured stretch Cadillac limousine, flown in from Washington.

Howard gets a laugh out of James Carville

Thanks to Crooks and Liars for linking the video and providing the relevant part of the transcript. I got this screen cap of Howard laughing--which is at the point where the interviewer says "you can see where I'm headed with this".

Q. The election results were barely in when a top democratic strategist, James Carville - you can see where I'm headed with this - a former advisor to Bill Clinton, started going after you. Let's take a look at what he had to say. (Clip: The RNC did a better job than the DNC, that's the republican national committee and the democratic national committee, this year. He says, the house and senate campaign committees made up for your shortcomings and that Congressman Harold Ford should replace you as chairman of the DNC. First of all, what do you make of his criticism and do you have any intention of stepping down?

DEAN: I have to say I get a laugh out of that one. Here we have - let's leave the federal races aside. The DCCC and the DSCC did do a wonderful job. The truth is we got six governors. We got nine additional legislative chambers. New Hampshire now has a democratic House and senate for the first time in a century. We did great. I think the time really has come now, now that we're in power, at least in the Congress, to pull together, to be unified. We've got a lot to do in t two years. We have a elect a democratic president.

Q. Do you have any intention of stepping down?

DEAN: No, I talked to Harold last night. He doesn't want the job. This is some kind inside the beltway silliness.

Click here to watch the video. (Thanks to Crooks & Liars)