How on earth did this Op Ed get published? That is what I want to know.

Here is Edward Luttwak, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a member in good standing of the Washington foreign policy establishment, all dues paid up, (which probably answers my opening question), speculating in this morning’s New York Times about the security implications of an Obama presidency, for Obama himself and for the country, unembarrassed to tell us that Obama’s conversion to Christianity makes him ripe for punishment by beheading, no less, or at best, by stoning or by hanging.  Read more 

I’m sure this may come as a shock to you, but military is hiring bloggers to work as moles, “verbally attack[ing] specific person[s] or promot[ing] a specific message.”

Wait, sorry, wrong link.

Here’s the article.  Read more 

In the red corner… Richard “Hillary Clinton Shot Vince Foster” Mellon Scaife.

In the blue corner… Hillary Clinton.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall…

via.

Lord..
You can just see the faux outrage..
After going on about Clintons legitimate complaint regarding biased media coverage: “Complaining about the refs apparently worked a little bit this week,” Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, told reporters today. “So in addition to my call to Lorne Michaels, hopefully now people think everything has evened out.”

Umm..
So, the Obamessiah may not have actually picked up the phone and called SNL..
but one has to wonder..did he also call MSNBC as well? You know…to complain about the bias that MSOBAMA shows as well?

Via the always excellent talkleft..  Read more 

via the great folks at talkleft:
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/3/4/1…

“As I entered my polling place wearing a Clinton button, Obama’s supporters (about 6 of them) literally gave me dirty looks and turned their back on me. Other voters were greated with hellos, good mornings, and hope you’ll vote for Obama. The attitude of Obama’s campaigners to me was rather nasty. It was a real turn-off to me, and if he’s the nominee, I’ll really have to think twice about voting in the general election.  Read more 

Via Digby:

Delahunt: You said if an opinion was rendered, that would insulate him from any consequences.

[Mike Mukasey, Attorney General of the United States, before the House Judiciary Committee today]: We could not investigate or prosecute somebody for acting in reliance on a justice department opinion.

…

Delahunt: If that opinion was inaccurate and in fact violated a section of US Criminal Code, that reliance is in effect an immunity from any criminal culpability.

MM: Immunity connoted culpability. [Well, is anyone culpable? -scar]

…

Delahunt: I find that a new legal doctrine. The law is the law.  Read more 

…and she was holding an iron. That’s the only conclusion I can draw from this headline:

“Clinton responds to seemingly sexist shouts”

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign stop was interrupted Monday when two men stood in the crowd and began screaming, “Iron my shirt!” during one of her final appearances before the New Hampshire primary.

Clinton, a former first lady running to become the nation’s first female president, laughed at the seemingly sexist protest that suggested a woman’s place is doing the laundry and not running the country.

Yes… That suggestion does seem awfully sexist… [strokes chin thoughtfully]

seeming[2,adjective]

Main Entry: seeming
Function: adjective
Date: circa 1557

: outwardly or superficially evident but not true or real  Read more 

Via John Cole:

Donnell Williams had just gotten out of the bath tub, wearing only a towel around his waist, when he turned the corner to see guns pointing right at him.

“I ain’t never been so scared,” says Williams.

Police forced entry into Williams home while responding to a shooting, but it turned out to be a false call. They had no idea at the time the call wasn’t real and that Williams is hearing impaired. Without his hearing aid he is basically deaf.

“I kept going to my ear yelling that I was scared. I can’t hear! I can’t hear!”

Officers were worried about their own safety because at the time it appeared Williams was refusing to obey their commands to show his hands. That’s when they shot him with a Taser.

Okay, so, I can understand what happened here. They thought they were dealing with a guy with a gun. Training, etc, etc. I’ve got one problem with this defense, though:  Read more 

Times, three minutes ago:

A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains on hold, contradicting an assessment two years ago that Tehran was working inexorably toward building a bomb.

Gee.

It’s almost like all the sabre-rattling and threats and bullying were designed to get Iran to restart its program, isn’t it?  Read more 

what do ordinary, everyday police officers do?
Herewith a random sampling from blotters, which gives you an idea:

When a Tonawanda motorcyclist struck a parked car, police were called. They found the driver sitting atop the bike, smelling of alcohol. When asked if he had
been drinking, he replied, “Way too much.”

Asked to check on a Town of Tonawanda resident’s welfare, upon entering the subject’s apartment police found several marijuana plants. The woman begged police not to confiscate them because “they were not big enough to smoke yet.”  Read more 

Get a load of this:

The head of the federal agency investigating Karl Rove’s White House political operation is facing allegations that he improperly deleted computer files during another probe, using a private computer-help company, Geeks on Call.

Scott Bloch runs the Office of Special Counsel, an agency charged with protecting government whistleblowers and enforcing a ban on federal employees engaging in partisan political activity. Mr. Bloch’s agency is looking into whether Mr. Rove and other White House officials used government agencies to help re-elect Republicans in 2006.

At the same time, Mr. Bloch has himself been under investigation since 2005. At the direction of the White House, the federal Office of Personnel Management’s inspector general is looking into claims that Mr. Bloch improperly retaliated against employees and dismissed whistleblower cases without adequate examination.

Recently, investigators learned that Mr. Bloch erased all the files on his office personal computer late last year. They are now trying to determine whether the deletions were improper or part of a cover-up, lawyers close to the case said.

So, to recap: Karl Rove is accused of retaliating against employees and then illegally deleting the evidence. The man in charge of investigating him is accused of retaliating against employees and then deleting evidence.

Fuck. This. Shit.

Wait, though, it gets better!  Read more 

The Air Force announced today 70 airmen are to blame for the August 29-30 “inadvertent flight” of six nuclear-tipped  Read more 

Someone, operating under a special chain of command within the United States Air Force, just stole a nuclear weapon www.abovetopsecret.com 9-12-7 Eech. Thought I’d mention this. Have a nice day.

Paul Kanjorski, D-Pennsyltucky Stupidified, denounced the cost of repairs to the I-35W Bridge which fell into the Mississippi river as “ballooning.” “They discovered they were going to get all the money from the federal government and they were taking all they could get,” he said. In essence they took the opportunity “to screw us,” he said of  Read more 

Terra terra terra! I think I’m getting the fear. Just the headline:

The Terrorists Next Door

Oh, please. This is all about those guys in New Jersey. NPR was all breathless about this story too, this morning.

Look, I’m absolutely sure that the timing of these new, exciting, and extremely legitimate indictments from the Gonzales Justice department is in no way politicized, nor could the timing have anything whatever to do with the Iraq supplemental or restoring habeas corpus, both of which are in the legislative mix this week.

Nor would these latest indictments have anything to do with habituating Americans to the FBI National Security Letters and NSA email surveillance that kicked in after—after, mind you—the dastardly scheme was uncovered—and I’m not making this up—by a not-yet-fired Circuit City clerk. Or with setting any kind of precedent for the expansive powers of the unitary executive when the cases reach the courts.

But how serious are these guys, anyhow? Didn’t they get the memo?  Read more 

Gaslighting:

Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse. It uses persistent denials of fact which, as they build up over time, make the victim progressively anxious, confused, and less able to trust his or her own memory and perception. A variation of gaslighting, used as a form of harassment, is to subtly alter aspects of a victim’s environment, thereby upsetting his or her peace of mind, sense of security, etc.

Gaslighting is a common tactic/symptom of some mental disorders such as Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), and other Personality Disorders. People having BPD will use gaslighting (conciously or unconciously) along with a wide variety of psychologically manipulative/abusive tactics to fend-off criticism of their own actions that they deem too painful to accept responsibility for.

The term was coined from the 1940 film Gaslight and its 1944 remake in which changes in gas light levels are experienced several times by the main character. The classic example in the film is the character Gregory using the gas lamps in the attic, causing the rest of the lamps in the house to dim slightly; when Paula comments on the lights’ dimming, she is told she is imagining things.

[view:timeline_gaslight_2004_campaign]

Yet another female Bush enabler, Dana “Lucretia” Perino, on Pelosi’s comment that Bush was rushing the surge to avoid oversight:

“Those particular comments were poisonous,” Perino said. “I think questioning the president’s motivations [Oh my goodness!] and suggesting that he, for some political reason [Shocked! Shocked!], is rushing troops into harm’s way, is not appropriate, it is not correct, and it is unfortunate because we do have did put troops in harm’s way.”

And without any armor, either.

Dana, it’s the poison you mixed and forced down our throats. It’s already killed 3000 American troops, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and a little thing called our Constitution.

You mixed the poison when you said of Iraq that you don’t “introduce new products in August”.  Read more 

Look, I read and watch too much sci-fi, I admit that. But is anyone else a bit disturbed by this “closed session?” Ahem, some people think Operation Dark Storm would be a very bad idea.

“May there be mercy on Man and Machine for their sins.”

Myself, I like sunshine, and I tend to think the answer is cracking down and getting serious about emissions and pollution, not tinkering with the frakking sky. But what do I know?

CJR:

As today’s page-one stories in both the New York Times and the Washington Post make clear, the Bush administration has begun to apply pressure on the U.S. intelligence agencies to pump up the threat that Iran poses.

Nor did those stories go far enough in putting this latest bit of White House maneuvering into its proper context. The country is less than three months away from a crucial mid-term election, and with the GOP facing the distinct possibility of losing its majority in Congress, the administration is desperately trying to play the only card that has worked repeatedly with the voters — fear of terrorism. It needs a new villain, and Iran’s persistent thumbing of its nose at the West over its nuclear program provides the perfect opening to elevate one.

Except this administration’s timing is off—they’ve been rolling out a new product in August, unlike Iraq before the 2002 midterms. They must, indeed, be “desperate.”  Read more 

Hear the words of Der Dëcider:

“[BUSH] America is safer than it has been, yet it is not yet safe.”

Translation: Be fearful enough to elect Republicans, but not so fearful that you elect Democrats.

It’s as if Rove is following a Goldilocks strategy: Keep the level of fear “just right.”  Read more 

Mere days after the increasingly desperate Bush surrogate Dick “Dick” Cheney called half the Democrats in Connecticut “Al Qaeda types”—oh-so-conveniently just before the extremely non-political “liquid explosives” terror alert story broke—it turns out that Al Qaeda has nothing to do with the liquid explosives plot at all.

First, the midterm-driven administration claims:

When American and Pakistani officials said this week that one conspirator in the foiled plan to bomb trans-Atlantic airliners was a “liaison” to Al Qaeda, they suggested that his arrest proved the group was linked to the scheme. Rashid Rauf, a Briton, had trained in the group’s camps in the 1990’s and was “a key Al Qaeda operative,” one [helpful] Pakistani official said.

Goodness, I’m surprised Al Qaeda’s number three man wasn’t part of it all!

Anyhow, that story is coming apart already. What a surprise.

Now, what they’re not telling you:  Read more 

OK, OK, I give. Exploding airplanes are really, really bad. That said, for me to take this UK “liquid explosives” thing as seriously as the press and Republican operatives want me to, I’d have to believe that:

1. The press is never complicit with the Republicans in playing the fear card;  Read more 

Weird that we get another terror alert right after the second round of midterm primaries— just like we did after the first round.

Or, um, not weird.  Read more 

Me-first, for-profit philosophy vs. old-fashioned ’common good’ and ’anti-evil’ media messages — do “Survivor” and its ilk push distrust? If so, why? (thanks, Lambert)

This just in from WaPo:

Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon’s initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.  Read more