JC asks below what exactly there is to this Harry Reid land deal story. Subcommandante Markos puts it best – absolutely nada. Actually that is not completely true. The story here is the amazing toolishness of the AP’s John Solomon when it comes to Harry Reid. Let’s recap:
* First Solomon got the simple facts wrong on Harry Reid’s involvement with Jack Abramoff and the Marianas Islands. The correct answer: there was none.
* Then Solomon breathlessly reported a gift that broke no ethics rules. There the idea was to present a story whose tone suggested a career-ending scandal but whose substance contained not a single incriminating fact. Remember that because it comes up often in Solomon’s reporting.
* Next Solomon confused tickets with credentials, again tinting a non-story in the most nefarious possible terms.
* This time Solomon cannot seem to understand the basic principles of a limited liabiilty corporation (LLC), which in Reid’s case is treated by the IRS as identical to simple ownership. As far as the relevant authorities are concerned it doesn’t exist.
So, what is the story behind the stories? Did Reid run over John Solomon’s dog? Maybe John Solomon just serves as a convenient outlet for smear merchants who know that he won’t ask too many questions. Either way you have to wonder whether the AP is best served by keeping this guy around.
***Update***
The AP is a news service and not a news retail outlet (e.g., newspaper or television news division) so they don’t care what you think. Really. If you don’t like John Solomon’s serial asshattery then look for a local periodical that ran it and let them hear about it.
Mike
This is your “liberal” media hard at work.
tBone
Actually, Jack Abramoff accidentally ran over Fluffy while he was dropping off some boxing match
credentialstickets at Solomon’s house. Nevertheless, Reid, Nancy Pelosi, George Soros and Melanie Sloan should be immediately subponeaed and given lie detector tests to ascertain what they knew about Fluffy’s death, and when they knew it. Those leftwing fiends will stop at nothing to advance their devious agenda.Pb
Only four? These and more at AmericaBlog and Media Matters–I don’t know what Solomon’s deal is, but it seems pretty clear that he’s a hack with a grudge that badly compromises his reporting.
The Other Steve
It’s sad. I think Reid should probably have reported the transaction more transparently, even if there was nothing unethical about it.
But this John Solomon has a problem. I wrote a note to the AP telling them they should assign him to investigating Denny Hasterts dog.
Punchy
Word on the street is that Solomon’s been taggin’ Reid in his car, carefully monitoring and soon to be publishing the sordid details on EVERY TIME Reid went 43 mph in a 40 mph zone.
Details soon on Drudge. This could easy end Reid’s career.
DougJ
Well, if Harry didn’t do it, then Bill Clinton certainly did. This is worse than the page scandal — at least no one died in the page scandal.
Dug Jay
Hold on, folks. The AP story represents the least of Senator Reid’s problems when it comes to ethics, or the lack thereof. The deluge is about to start. For a small preview go check such blogs as Captain’s Quarters.
DougJ
Thanks for the links, dug. Though you didn’t provide any.
I was stunned to learn that Harry Reid killed Vince Foster, provided the fake memos to Dan Rather, and helped fake the data in all the bogus global warming studies.
Tim F.
So far the most of Senator Reid’s problems have amounted to precisely nothing. I won’t hold my breath.
Gold Star for Robot Boy
I’ve met Solomon, and know people who’ve worked with him.
By all accounts, he’s a showboating dick.
Paddy O'Shea
The only people who seem to care about this Reid story are the wackaloons over on USENET. Beyond that nasty little cistern of Rove squeezins’ this specious tale is DOA.
Anybody spend much time over there at alt.idiocy? Limbotomy central. Rather than mere Kool Aid, these special folks would seem to be receiving their psychoactive ingredients through the huffing of carpet cleaner.
Zifnab
Don’t worry. This will give the breathless right wing punditry years of talking points to slip through the cracks of conversation. I think I heard Rush bring up every one of those previous allegations in a frenzied ejaculation of rightousness a few days ago, claiming that Reid was just a Teflon Don of the Senate and the FBI is somehow part of the liberal agenda or something…
But Frist, Allen, Ney, DeLay, Cunningham, Foley, and the rest were… uh… setups. Damn this thing called “law”! It clearly catters only to the left-o-facists.
Tsulagi
Looked at the story yesterday. Best I could tell Reid was “guilty” of not updating his disclosure forms with the fact the property was later held in an LLC rather than personally. Reid still continued to list the property as an asset. Plenty of everyday people, even if they just own a rental property or two, will put it in an LLC for legal and tax reasons. Big whoop.
If this is the best the Pubs have after Foley, you gotta laugh. You know leading up to the midterms their opposition research was at speed, and after Foley, no doubt it’s gone to warp. C’mon Karl, you’re looking a little limp these days.
Andrew
Well, have we ever seen Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid together? Hmmm?
Given that Vince Foster was about to expose Harry Reid’s nefarious land deals in Nevada, the most logical explanation for why Hillary had him killed is that she is Harry Reid.
ThymeZone
Bingo. They are looking for anything that gains even enough traction to show up in a news cycle as “some Dem did something wrong.” They know from their machine operation that every news cycle that contains that bit of “news” is worth votes out there somewhere in a key district or among a key demo. You have to hand it to them, they have it down to a science.
Unless there is more to this story than we’ve seen so far, which doesn’t seem likely, they drilled a dry hole on this one.
The Hastert Prairie Parkway land deal, however …. not a dud. They’re all over it in Illinois.
Zifnab
hehe. Please tell me that was Bush the Younger joke you just slipped in there.
Punchy
Angry bastard wanted to slice a baby in half, from what my priest said…but then again, what do Catholic priests know about young people?
Rusty Shackleford
Speaking of DeLay and Ney (and Abramoff) – have you folks seen the PBS program Capitol Crimes?
SCS, Mac Buckets, Dug Jay, Darrell, et al, need to grab some popcorn, take a seat and watch.
tBone
So Hillharry is a hermaphrodite? That explains how he/she simultaneously carried on a torrid affair with Vince Foster AND dozens of random women. Not to mention both Plames. It’s all coming together . . .
ThymeZone
Would I do a thing like that?
Yes, I would.
Can we say Harken Energy?
ThymeZone
Bush restores honor and integrity to government.
Having failed to do so for the private sector …..
ThymeZone
CNN Money archives.
No matter where you look into Bush’s past, and I mean no matter where you look, you find piles of shit like this.
He’s an amazing, amazing story.
Jess
Some background on Solomon:
Looking over the list of articles he’s written, it looks like he’s primarily on the prowl for career-enhancing scandals more than targeting Dems specifically. Of course the two are not mutually exclusive.
Jess
Link to more info on Solomon (for some reason, I can’t get my links to embed properly–sorry. Is it because I’m using a Mac?): http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=John_Solomon
jaime
What I want to know is; Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense.
ThymeZone
Is this the best political ad ever?
Courtesy DKos.
All I can say is, wow.
Pb
Jess,
Thanks, the “External Links” are especially interesting.
First, this 2003 story:
Then, all the 2005 hackery. Do they have something on him? Also note that Solomon broke the Sandy Berger national archives story, that the wingers so love to distort–and he’s responsible for starting some of those distortions as well.
Tsulagi
Whine, whine, whine, TZ. And you didn’t even try to give more depth to the story as the Austin Chronicle did…
Now there was honor and integrity while he was governor. Not like that low-life that didn’t update his disclosure forms with the proper name for his asset.
ThymeZone
Okay, let me get this straight: He reached down into his pants with the forbidden pages?
So that’s what this Foley-Hastert thing is about.
Got it.
Pb
The GOP has been trying to get their story straight for a while, but they just can’t seem to get on the same page.
Tsulagi
Good ad. But still, it doesn’t compare with that brilliant Albright one at Red State.
Steve
OMG!
I have found scs. She’s kinda cute.
Pb
LOL. I thought we had already established that scs actually *is* Nancy Grace, but that’s pretty good too!
Jess
TZ,
That IS a great ad! thanks for sharing.
Sherard
Another exercise for you dopes:
Right. Kos says “nothing to see here” regarding Harry Reid and you act like that is the definitive truthiness to the story. I can’t even describe how infuriated you guys would be if the quote above were the story here instead of Kos poo-pooing Harry Reid’s coruption. Your stupidity is shocking.
Paddy O'Shea
Sherard – So the fact that the Reid story has no legs whatsoever (outside of the usual Loon circles), for you this would mean media c-o-n-s-p-i-r-a-c-y, right?
So what’s next? More Clinton bashing?
Frank Rich is doing quite a job on Punkass Georgie on Oprah today. Pretty cool stuff.
peteathome
I’m a sometimes liberal and hope teh Democrats take over this Fall ( mostly because I hate to see either party in power too long). But even given my predilection, I couldn’t figure out the big deal about the land thing. I read the whole history as presented in my local paper carefully. All I could figure out was a “possible” technical violation in not reporting the fact that the land went from being owned under Reid’s name to being owned under the LLC. Big deal, not. The LLC thing seemed very above board and with no unethical intent at all.
I’ve got to agree. I think Reid must have run over Fluffy.
Tim F.
As long we we’re playing madlibs. It would also infuriate me if a comet crashed into Stephen Colbert’s recording studio.
Punchy
I’m guessing easy blow jobs.
Tsulagi
Sherard, I could take the easy path and just say “projecting much?”, but really your punch is missing. You got to try harder. Put some steel into it. Your Republican Foley men base deserve no less.
ThymeZone
You found Michell Bachman, who speaks out about the Gay Agenda:
Steve
Uh, we actually had a pretty in-depth discussion yesterday, trying to figure out where the scandal is. We couldn’t figure it out. Nobody was like “Kos says there’s no story, so that’s the final word!”
If you think there’s a real scandal here, just make the case. Instead what we see is a lot of fevered linking to the breathless AP story, accompanied by “Ha! Look at the libs spinning THIS!” But nobody actually explains what THIS means or why THIS is a big deal – in the echo chamber, there’s no need for substantive discussion. Some article slung mud at a Democrat and that’s all the proof required, even if no one can actually explain what the mud consists of.
If something’s really fishy here, shouldn’t a conservative lawyer be able to explain the nature of this colossal scandal? Well, on my own initiative I took a look at Powerline:
This is pretty fair, except for the last paragraph, which inaccurately states that Reid only lent his “name and influence” to the deal, when in fact he paid cold hard cash for the land, to the tune of $400,000.
If he was supposed to disclose to the Senate that he jointly owned part of the land, though, and he didn’t, that would be wrong. People are entitled to know who your business partners are, in case you try to name a post office after them or something. But if the wackos at Powerline can’t point to anything stronger than this, then gosh, I’m not sure your cries of “libs are ignoring the HUGE Reid scandal” amount to much.
p.lukasiak
what i want to know is where were the AP editors who were supposed to read this story before it went out over the wires?
Tsulagi
Yep, Barney and Spongebob. Osama’s got nothing on those two in terms of destruction of America and its way of life.
How many lobes do you have to remove before that makes sense?
ThymeZone
Exactly.
James Dobson.
Pb
Yeah, that Barney, destroying American values and the American family with his seditious lyrics:
That bastard.
jaime
Of course they live in a world where the Foley scandal is a “hoax” because Drudge paraphrased a quote from a third party and put sirens on the headline.
ThymeZone
The main knock against Barney is that he sings in the voice of Wally Balloo.
Puddle Jumper
It’s just the AP trying to be fair and balanced. They’re have been so many Republican scandles that it just didn’t seem fair that the Democrats didn’t have any so they try to dig one up and this was the result. Stay tuned for the next scandle in which a leading Democrat Senator is found to have failed to turn the extra soda that came out of a vending machine.
Steve
I read that Cold Fury trackback so you don’t have to.
It’s basically just a rehash of the article in an exceedingly breathless tone, but it does include one major whammy: every year you fail to disclose something in your ethics reports counts as a new violation!
Oh man. What a scandal. The only question remaining is whether Nancy Pelosi and George Soros knew about this.
And the big windup:
Right, right. Republicans are getting indicted and convicted all over the place, Karl Rove’s assistant just resigned after her name came up 162 times in a congressional report on Jack Abramoff’s influence over the White House… but the AP ran a story about Harry Reid that sure SOUNDS shady, so can’t we just call it even?
I don’t even mind the disinformation at this point because it flows from nothing but sheer desperation, which is a lot of fun to watch.
Pb
I would, but I have a feeling that we’d then soon find out that it was actually a free coupon for a soda…
r€nato
The AP is a news service and not a news retail outlet (e.g., newspaper or television news division) so they don’t care what you think. Really. If you don’t like John Solomon’s serial asshattery then look for a local periodical that ran it and let them hear about it.
This has been tried before. The local publication simply points their finger back at AP.
Maureen O'Donnell
In all fairness, John Solomon is a person who has shown quite a bit of character. Don’t you think, no matter the party, Congress needs to start accepting responsibility for its actions? The mailman cannot accept gifts, and he works in the rain, and the sleet, and the snow, all hours of the day and night. Maybe it’s okay if members of congress think they might get caught and lose everything. Who among you actually trusts Congress today, and isn’t that where we all want to be? Let’s not kill the messengers. We’ll never get the messages.