August 2006 Archives

Keith Olbermann responds with eloquence and passion to Rumsfeld's recent ghastly speech:

From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire "Fog of Fear" which continues to envelope this nation - Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies, have - inadvertently or intentionally - profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer's New Clothes.

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight?

With what country has he confused... the United States of America?

Contact MSNBC management and express your support and thanks for Mr. Olbermann.
The email addresses: viewerservices@msnbc.com and letters@msnbc.com .

For Countdown in particular, the contact address is countdown@msnbc.com.

Anyone wishing to express their thanks directly to Keith can write to him at KOlbermann@msnbc.com.

Another useful thing to do: Go to Keith's blog, scroll down to the bottom, and rate up the importance of the story.

Last, and most important of all, watch Countdown tonight (8pm EDT, 7pm CDT). Network executives do, after all, pay attention to ratings.

Guy Kawasaki has a blog. It's pretty good -- you should read it, especially the posts about what they should (but don't) teach you in college and how (not) to do PowerPoint presentations.

Anyway, his masthead has this wonderful definition for the word "blogger:"

"Someone with nothing to say writing for someone with nothing to do."

Perfect.

by Mark Adams

So, let's recap shall we . . .

The entire liberal conspiracy-theory coalition of leftist blogtopia is reeling from the "revelation" that our suspicions from last March were confirmed:  Richard Armitage was the leaker described as "no partisan gunslinger" by Novakula in October of 2003.

We're beyond shocked, dismayed, chagrined, disappointed or disa ... ponied that the original source turned out to be (ta dah!) exactly as advertised -- someone with no axe to grind.  Although the fact that he's a Kool Aide drinking neo-con boob with an Iran/Contra skeleton in the closet is no surprise.  (My personal torture remains that Elliot Abrams's name still hasn't surfaced in this case.)

The news content of this story ranks right up there with how many prawns John Mark Karr had for lunch.

The collapse of the case against John Mark Karr illustrates, again, what we should already know by heart: the only thing the traditional media beieves in is ratings.

Garrison Keillor says we're sticking the next generation with debt and an unjust war. Solution: Cut healthcare for people with "Bush/Cheney" bumper stickers.

So what's the big deal here? I mean, Libby is still accused of perjury, false statements and obstruction, right?

NPR Commentator Chris Rose captures what it's like living in New Orleans one year later.

And, although I have no idea if Ry Cooder has a New Orleans connection, I love this performance of Jesus On The Main Line so much that I'm including it here. It's from the Catalyst In Santa Cruz, c. 1987, with Jim Keltner (dr), Van Dyke Parks (key), Flaco Jimenez (acc), George Bohanon (tb), and who knows who else. Check out that tiny guitar!

For extra credit: Read about the history of the "Main Line" and the "Second Line" in New Orleans lore.

I won't be able to hear the wind again, here in Baton Rouge, without thinking of the day Katrina hit Louisiana.

I shot this video in my back yard at about 7:30 am on August 29, 2005. Less than half an hour later, one of these trees came down on top of another one, snapping it off about 5 feet from ground level, making a loud cracking sound like a massive gunshot. The broken tree then fell on the power lines taking them all down. We were without power for five days after that.

In the front yard, an 80 foot water oak tree popped out of the ground and fell parallel to the house. When it came down we felt the impact come across the floor, up through the soles of our feet, causing our stomachs to bounce in a sickening way. It crushed the sidewalk, demolished our neighbor's cars and took out part of his carport. Somehow, no one was injured.

The tree lay in the driveway blocking our way out. Miraculously, we were able to get a man to come out nearly right away and cut a pathway for us. The rest of the tree, including its 10-foot diameter root ball and 4-foot diameter trunk, lay in the front yard for many days. We became quite the tourist attraction, as cars would stop and people took snapshots and videos. I told my neighbor we should make postcards and sell them at the curb for $1 each. Eventually, the rest of the tree was cut up and moved to the street where a truck with a giant claw came and took it away, but not before we got a chainsaw and cut ourselves a season's worth of fireplace logs.

The worst part? Rita hit us less than a month later, causing even more damage. A couple of trees hit the back of the house damaging the roof and burying the backyard in tree limbs. More on that another time -- I'm exhausted just remembering it all.

I just wanted to say "Thank You" for being loyal readers of this blog. You make it all worthwhile. Thanks again.

(Cross posted at Daily Kos)

These are troubling times for those who believe in government of the people, for the people and by the people. Around the world, those who believe that God's word is law are in control of the crucial mechanisms that control war and peace.

But it's discouraging to hear those Democrats, liberals and progressives  who reflexively frame this struggle as "David versus Goliath," who back the "underdog." By doing so, we progressives further muddy the intellectual waters and sow the seeds of our own defeat in election after election.

(Cross posted at Daily Kos)

"Follow the money."

That's what Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein. For good or bad, I think it has almost always been true about politics.

That said, there are more than a few "prediction markets" that track buying and selling of contracts that predict outcomes in political races.

Intrade is one such prediction market. It is a trading exchange for politics, current events, financial Indicators, weather & other unique contracts.

Here's an example of how it works:

I moved to Baton Rouge about a year before Katrina; I've lived here a year since Katrina. And I have to say Wil Haygood gets it mostly right:

If the hurricane forever changed New Orleans, it has also permanently transformed Baton Rouge. Katrina has demanded realignments, shaken this city's sense of order and left it struggling to cope with a range of new, daily problems.

UPDATE: Apparently Anya Kamenetz resents what Baton Rougians have to say about New Orleans:

A more assertively provincial, narrow-minded, anti-progressive, anti-New South place you could not hope to find. The people who choose to occupy its many lifeless, cookie-cutter subdivisions are defined by the fact that they hate New Orleans and everything that it represents: crime, culture, city life writ large.

In any case, Miss Julie wrote a response to Kamenetz which I posted using my HuffPo account. Go look for it...it hasn't appeared yet, but it'll be there soon, I guess, once the moderator checks it out.

Click to see the full-size pic.

P.S. X marks the spot -- That's us in the top-left.

Now that Plan B is available, right-wingers are calling it -- surprise! -- the same as getting an abortion.

In other news, researchers have shown that an embryo may not be damaged when stem cells are extracted. The reaction from the right? Mealy-mouthed equivication.

What is it with these people?

P.S. I'm reminded of Stalin's rhetorical question about the Pope: "How many divisions has he got?"

And he meant it in a nice way. I kid you not.

Click to see full cartoon...

No matter what I say, Larry Sabato keeps trying to forecast the future. Today, he admits surprise that 40 (not 30) Congressional seats are now competitive in this election cycle:

Where does the "Ferocious Forty" leave us? Well, for starters, 31 out of 40 are currently held by the GOP, which means Democrats would need only to win 24 of the 40 to seize control of the House--a much easier feat than previously estimated.

I have no idea if he's right. I thought the 2004 election for President was NOT going to be close and I was wrong, again proving that he who looks into the crystal ball is bound to eat broken glass.

iTunes is selling episodes of the Daily Show.

Would you pay $1.99 to watch an episode you missed the night before? I'm thinking a lot of people will do it -- more than the number that would watch, say, episodes of Lost.

by Mark Adams

And which dope is the liar?

George W. Bush, President of the By God U.S. of A., 8/21/06:

Now, look, part of the reason we went into Iraq was -- the main reason we went into Iraq at the time was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn't, but he had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction.

There it is, the final word.  Lest there be any doubt whatsoever, the President has pronounced that THE MAIN REASON for the war was to eliminate Iraq's non-existent WMDs.

Dean Esmay, blogger extraordinaire, defender of the "Liberal Tradition" (which includes liberally revising history, defining prejudice liberally, liberally indulging in incomprehensible frustratingly hate-tilled rants, a liberal use of the ban button to silence the voices with whom he disagrees -- including those in his head, and drinking liberally) 6/4/03:

As one who has, for weeks, not really given a rat's ass about the issue, I've tried to stay removed from the "controversy." Especially because I'm not at all convinced that the people who are making an issue out of this would be satisfied if we found them anyway.

The fact is that I never believed WMDs were our primary reason for war against Saddam Hussein. After more than a year of regularly arguing in favor of taking out the monster in Baghdad, I'm bemused by people who now think that was our main reason for going. I suppose that's not entirely fair, because the whole world doesn't read my weblog, but I know I'm not the only one who said the things I said.

Heh, "bemused."  You must be laughing your ass off now, Butthead.

But wait, there's more.  He went on to prioritize the "real" reasons he was so bloodthirsty to cripple 20,000 of his fellow citizens and sacrifice the lives of another 2,600 -- not to mention the uncounted tens of thousands of dead Iraqis.

D'oh!

Historians will note that Bush was a uniter and a divider. Simply put, Bush united our enemies and divided our friends.

Josh Marshall:

[Bush has concluded] we're in a war and that the enemy in this war ["Islamofascists"] is Muslims who subscribe to bad ideologies. This has the consequence of taking a set of institutionally and ideologically distinct actors -- Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, Iraq, Iran, Syria, al-Qaeda, the Mahdi Army, Iraqi insurgents, etc. -- and treating them as a single phenomenon. To do so would be a serious mistake...

[T]hey are different things. And the essence of sound strategy has long been to look at potentially hostile actors and try to divide them...The "Islamofascism" rhetoric is part of a continuing campaign to do the reverse.

Over at Daily Kos, diarist 'thereisnospoon' makes a crucial point: Democrats musn't argue points of law when opposing the warrantless wiretaps. They must say that, by avoiding the required warrants, Bush raises the suspicion that he is NOT surveilling terrorists -- he is surveilling his political enemies.

The technicalities of Constitutional Law are the realm of reason. Voters actually VOTE based on emotion. They don't really care if Bush is breaking the law; they care if he's doing something morally wrong.

The truth is that if Bush wiretaps a terrorist and doesn't bother with a warrant first, the public admires him [for being] a no-bullshit, Dirty Harry kind of guy.

But if he's hiding political Mafia tactics under the cloak of National Security, then they see him as the worst kind of villain you can imagine.

The key is getting them to entertain the unthinkable notion of what we all know is undoubtedly true: that Bush isn't Dirty Harry; he's the corrupt cop Dirty Harry has to bring to justice.

And another thing...

We know that a government based on "trusting" Dear Leader is not what the Founders had in mind:

The founding fathers didn't set up a government based on trust. They could've designed a government based on trust and our ability to govern fairly but they knew that power corrupts. So they invented checks and balances. That was genius. The founding fathers did not want me to trust you and they did not want you to trust me. Every White House forgets about checks and balances, you guys are no different.

Whether it is from prior cocaine abuse or from a hereditary heart condition, is it possible that Bush has suffered a series of mini-strokes in the recent past? Is it possible that Bush is so at risk for sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) that he has now (or in the recent past) donned a wearable defibrillator?

Every president ages in office. Sometimes the effects are more pronounced than others. Some presidents look older, developing grey hair, lots of wrinkles, bags under the eyes, and so forth. Others show alternate symptoms.

Which brings us to a topic I've addressed before -- Bush's cardiovascular health.

I'm bringing it up again because there is renewed talk about the marked change in Bush's demeanor since the days when he was governor of Texas. Joe Scarborough is just the latest person to observe that Bush's mental acuity has gone into a sharp decline since the early 90's.

Shouldn't the American people be fully informed about their President's health? This issue surfaced very briefly during the 2004 campaign when some observers noticed that strange bulge under Bush's suit jacket during all three debates (and other times as well). Many thought it was a portable radio receiver, but I (and many others) thought otherwise -- that the evidence was clear that he was wearing a wearable defibrillator.

And now, because talk of Bush's mental deterioration is not subsiding but growing louder (think of his performance at the G8 conference), it might be time to raise the issue again.

Don't click away until you've looked at the photos...

Every so often you come across something that you'd only imagined might happen and -- wow! -- someone actually went ahead and did it. This is one of those times.

C'mon, be honest: who amongst us has NOT worn a headset while walking on a treadmill and ... oh, you get the picture.

P.S. This is Ok Go, doing Here It Goes Again.

If you are the parent of a teenager, you might as well see this now so you can do something about it before it's too late:

Consider yourself forewarned...

P.S. Xeni says there's another term for this: "natural selection."

Connecticut: Lamont and Lieberman (yes, he's a Republican), neck and neck.

Virginia: Webb and Allen, neck and neck.

Tennessee: Surprise! -- Ford and Corker, neck and neck.

Bush:

We'll complete the mission in Iraq...I can't tell you exactly when it's going to be done, but I do know that it's important for us to support the Iraqi people, who have shown incredible courage in their desire to live in a free society. And if we ever give up the desire to help people who live in freedom, we will have lost our soul as a nation, as far as I'm concerned.

But wait there's more:

While acknowledging that raging sectarian violence and mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq are "straining the psyche of our country," Bush said that withdrawing U.S. troops before the nation is stabilized would be disastrous.

Simply put: the majority of Americans now realize that our work in Iraq is done. Our soldiers have done all that they could be asked to do:

• Disarm Saddam? Check.
• Topple him from power? Check.
• Killed al-Zarqawi? Check.
• Set up democracy? Check.

But nooooo:

[T]he president...was puzzled as to how a recent anti-American rally in support of Hezbollah in Baghdad could draw such a large crowd.

Puzzlement!

Think about that for a moment and tell me that doesn't speak volumes about how weak this man really is.

(HT to Bill in Portland Maine)

Here is a partial listing of some of the TV programming about Katrina that will be airing on network and cable TV. All times are Eastern Time:

Aug 21-22 & repeat on Aug. 29 - "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts," 9-11 p.m. Monday, Aug. 21, and Tuesday, Aug. 22, HBO. This Spike Lee film will then be repeated from 8 p.m. to midnight Aug. 29, the anniversary of Katrina.

Aug. 24 - "Hurricane Katrina Babies," 8 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 24, Discovery Health.

Aug. 25 - Dateline NBC, 8 p.m., Friday, Aug. 25, In-depth report documenting how Katrina affected the Lindy Boggs hospital staff, NBC.

Aug. 27 - "True Life" episode focusing on four young storm survivors, returning to their lives, 7 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 27, MTV.

Aug. 27 - "Postmark Katrina," 8 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 27, Weather Channel. That's followed at 9 p.m. by the "It Could Happen Tomorrow" episode that was made prior to Katrina, then shelved after the real storm.

Aug. 27 - "Surviving Katrina," 9-11 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 27, Discovery.

Aug. 28 - "Katrina: The Long Road Back," 8 p.m., Monday, Aug. 28, Brian Williams hosts a commercial-free documentary culled from network coverage that captures images of the hurricane and its devastating aftermath.

Aug. 29 - "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts," 8 p.m. to midnight, Aug. 29, HBO

Aug. 29 - "Katrina: Send in the Guard," 8 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 29, History Channel. (Previously announced as "Katrina: 7 Days in September.")

Aug. 29 - "Assembly Required: Operation Home Delivery," 9 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 29, DIY Network.

Aug. 29 - "Saving Jazz" 9 p.m., "In the Sun: Michael Stipe and Friends" 10 p.m., focusing on a fundraising six-song record) and "In His Own Words: Brian Williams on Hurricane Katrina" (11 p.m.), all Tuesday, Aug. 29, Sundance Channel.

Contrary to what I've urged previously, it now looks more likely that the Israel-Lebanon war really might be the undercard to the main bout: US-Iran. Meteor Blades tells it.

The Economist (no link, sorry):

Lebanon's prime minister is in a fix. Lebanese patriotism obliges him to celebrate Mr. Nasrallah's great victory. But most of the coalition government over which he presides wants to seize the opportunity, enshrined in [U.N. Resolution] 1701 (and made possible by Israel's deplorable bombs), to turn Lebanon into a normal country, not one in which Iran and Syria maintain the Hizbullah fief.

Hey Seniora -- was it worth it, making nice with terrorists?

(HT to Slate)

Jonathan Turley:

If this court is upheld or other courts follow suit, it will leave us with a most unpleasant issue that Democrats and Republicans alike have sought to avoid.

Here it is: If this program is unlawful, federal law expressly makes the ordering of surveillance under the program a federal felony. That would mean that the president could be guilty of no fewer than 30 felonies in office. Moreover, it is not only illegal for a president to order such surveillance, it is illegal for other government officials to carry out such an order.

After that, what future president would look at this incident and not conclude that s/he could violate the law with impunity?

(Cross posted at Daily Kos)

Proceed with caution: emotional hotspots ahead...

Digby:

The Republicans are counting on the fifth anniversary to remind people of Bush's Bullhorn moment, which was sold as a moment of potent muscular leadership when in fact it was what he had been training for since his days on the sidelines at Andover prep ...

That brings us to the other big pageant this fall. A few days before 9/11 we are going to memorialize another day of national horror: the death of a huge swathe of an American city, while the president and John McCain shared a few laughs over birthday cake.

Besides, you have to be careful here because the dueling anniversaries will inflame that part of the Republican base that believes that the lives lost to a hurricane in New Orleans are, in fact, less than the lives lost to turban-wearing terrorists. After all, everyone knows that those people were too stupid to get out of the way, right? Serves 'em right. Every man for himself. If you rely on the government, you deserve what you get.

Oh and by the way: "macaca." Vote Republican.

No, the real lesson is that we're all residents of the state of Louisiana because when the next disaster hits, y'all be just as vulnerable to it as we were, even now, five years after 9/11.

So go ahead and bang the drum slowly, Republicans. Enjoy the dirge. As for the rest of us, it is time to rise up and throw the rascals out because if we don't, we're just sitting ducks, waiting for the next disaster.

by Mark Adams

One thing Democrats should keep in mind during election season is never take the opposition's "advice" too seriously.  More specifically to this election, Democrats cannot stop fighting on every single issue, every day.

The grievances are piled high and deserve attention.  Call it whining if you must, but the litany of mistakes and malfeasance committed by our current crop of Republican rulers can be used as a club to frame the debate on every single issue at stake this November.

Ara bullet-pointed the MyDD braintrust's six-part formula to get a Democratic win this fall.  While even Digby, whose insightful perspectives never fail to inspire, has a "gut" feeling that their "common sense" approach is "uncomplicated and obvious."  I think that their six points have five too many.

Everything they say makes perfect sense, and should be internalized.  However, the last piece of advice, to "pick a fight, any fight" is the sine qua non of the strategy, and they acknowledge that "a resolute willingness to not back off in the face of criticism is key."

Pick a fight, any fight. Voters need to be convinced that Democrats can credibly challenge Bush. Whether the fight is over [choose your battle in the list of administration failures and overreach] Democratic candidates must demonstrate strength through aggressive confrontation where the term "accountability" is more than just an abstraction . . .

Swopa boils it down to bumper-sticker size, getting a "second opinion."  The idea being that on any issue, one party rule has so botched things up that getting a second opinion: a bi-partisan legislative consensus, a judge issued warrant, a meaningful international coalition; is more than reasonable after years of WMDs, "mushroom cloud[s,]" "turning corner[s]," and "We never anticipated the levees would break."  We're not the al Qaeda party.  No one is running as a terrorist, there are no Iranian plants running for Congress or belongs to IFFY (the Islamic Fascists Fraternity of Yankees.)  All we want is a second opinion before George goes off on another attempt to make a sweeping transformation of the world we live in -- like destroying Social Security or Teheran.

I think I've reduced all this fine wonkery into something even a rattled, tired, distracted candidate can call on in the middle of a debate when s/he's put on the spot by remembering one word -- whine.  Any old hack can remember to whine as long as they're coached on how to do it without sounding like a baby.

Bruce Reed and Rahm Emanuel have written a book, The Plan: Big Ideas for America:

Strip away the job titles and party labels, and you will find two tribes of people in Washington: political Hacks and policy Wonks. Hacks come to Washington because anywhere else they'd be bored to death. Wonks come here because nowhere else could they bore so many to death.

[...]

Throughout history, Hacks and Wonks have been the yin and yang of politics. But in the last few years, something terrible has destroyed our political equilibrium. The political world suffered a devastating outbreak of what might be called Rove Flu -- a virus that destroys any part of the brain not dedicated to partisan political manipulation. Now, Hacks are everywhere. Like woolly mammoths on the run from Neanderthals, Wonks are all but extinct.

Trick question: Who was the last Wonk Democratic President? Trick answer: Al Gore. Real answer: Bill Clinton. But that's another trick answer because Clinton was both a Hack and a Wonk. A better answer might be Jimmy Carter. Hack Democratic presidents include Johnson (who was also a Wonk), Harry Truman and FDR (also a Wonk). Hack Republicans? Take your pick.

Discuss.

MJ Rosenberg makes an interesting, but flawed, observation about the situation in the aftermath of the Israel-Lebanon war:

by Mark Adams

Andy Young should know better, but when you lie down with dogs . . .

The civil rights leader Andrew Young, who was hired by Wal-Mart to improve its public image, resigned from that post last night after telling an African-American newspaper that Jewish, Arab and Korean shop owners had “ripped off” urban communities for years, “selling us stale bread, and bad meat and wilted vegetables.”

In the interview, published yesterday in The Los Angeles Sentinel, a weekly, Mr. Young said that Wal-Mart “should” displace mom-and-pop stores in urban neighborhoods.

“You see those are the people who have been overcharging us,” he said of the owners of the small stores, “and they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they’ve ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it’s Arabs.”

To be fair, he did walk the statement back, but according to the article he merely tried to narrow it down to Atlanta's locality and distance the statement from his civil rights record.  But the "retraction" lacked an outright apology or denouncement of the offensive statement.

“It’s against everything I ever thought in my life,” Mr. Young said. “It never should have been said. I was speaking in the context of Atlanta, and that does not work in New York or Los Angeles.”

I almost expect this kind of glib, almost casual racism from Wingnuttistan, which is no more endearing than a Louis Farrakahn or David Duke screed, just more subtle.  I expect a lot better from someone who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and represented this nation to the world as our UN Ambassador.

Yeah, he's like Latka but how bad could that be?

In brief: Face the most important issue of all -- Iraq. And face it by promising to exercise your constitutional authority.

In detail:

This is big news:

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the government's warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it. The White House said it "couldn't disagree" more with the ruling.

Glenn Greenwald has the particulars:

Cenk Uygur explains.

Talking to Americans reveals how little Americans know about Canada and the rest of the world by asking regular Americans, university students, professors, celebrities, and even famous politicians questions about their neighbours to the north.

Mercer: As you're probably aware, it has been widely reported that the mining rights to Mt. Rushmore are held by a Canadian company. They say they want to do preliminary explorations to see if there is any plutonium in the mountains. They want to do precision blasting in the off-season, but some people are saying that is not acceptable, they should be forced to drill into the heads from behind. What do you think?

Tourist: I think probably from the back.

Here's Part 1:

Here's Parts 2, 3, 4, & 5

The audience for the premiere of Spike Lee's Katrina film arrives with a mix of curiosity and anxiety

...can't be all bad.

And Any Given Sunday is, in fact, a terrific movie -- probably the best football movie ever made, one of the best sports movies ever made, Oliver Stone at the top of his game and just an all-around classic movie in its own right. The story is great on so many levels -- youth vs. age, black vs. white, underdog vs. overdog, corporations vs. the little guy, footballers as modern gladiators, old school vs. new school, jazz vs. hip-hop. And given all that, it avoids the cliche, it avoids the expected. It's got action and intensity as well as sublety and surprise.

And, of course, Al Pacino and Jamie Foxx:

And if you're a football fan, you're in heaven when you watch Pacino look across the gridiron at the opposing coach and you see that it is, holy cow! Johnny Unitas.

P.S. If you watch this film clip all the way through, you'll want to know that Al Pacino's speech ends with this: "You're very, very young and you're very, very stupid."

...flogging, what else? Snakes On A Plane!

Interesting: the producers wanted to make a PG-rated movie and fired the original director, kung fu movie-master Ronnie Yu.

Jackson: Knowing that the blogosphere was already happenin...
Stewart: On fire! They were already on fire for this!
Jackson:...you start to sneak in there at night (pretending to keyboard) "they makin the movie a pussy movie, c'mon now, help us out here, help us out." Not to mention, "they tryin to change the @#&*# name!"
Stewart: They wanted to make it "Pacific Air 121."
Jackson: Yeah. (crowd booing).
Stewart: (shrugs) I don't see that movie....You know who's in that movie? Meredith Baxter Birney.

P.S. Jackson's take on the sequel is hilarious.

Our favorite Bush loyalist is casting around for strategies to help Republicans keep control of Congress. Isn't it kind of late in the game to bust out of their role as the do-nothing, rubber-stamp Republicans? I mean, never mind that they wouldn't be IN this position so close to the election if only they had, you know, DONE something during their tenure as the majority party.

Whatever.

Regardless, I'll offer some suggestions (in no particular order) for how they can keep their majority:

1. Get every state with a majority-Republican state legislature to reduce the number of voting machines in Democratic precincts on election day. You know -- one machine per precinct is plenty.

2. Get churches to aggressively recruit new voters. Tell them that Democrats are queer-lovers who favor teaching our children about man-on-dog sex in the public school while plotting to impeach President Bush.

3. In each Congressional race, accuse the Democrat of being "the al-Qaeda candidate."

4. Release another Osama tape on Nov. 2, 2006, which is the Thursday before election day. Or, if no such tape is handy, raise the terror alert to Orange or even Red.

5. 9/11, 9/11, 9/11.

Today was his birthday. He would have been 90.

What a wanker.

UPDATE: Digby and Wolcott recount the recent history of racist speech-code in this country (much of it refined as part of Republican party tactics) and how well Allen fits in with that tradition.

(Cross posted at Daily Kos)

[Note: This is the first of a series of posts on the topic of fourth-generation warfare (4GW).]

If you read the Seymour Hersh piece in the New Yorker, perhaps you remember him quoting John Arquilla:

"Strategic bombing has been a failed military concept for ninety years, and yet air forces all over the world keep on doing it," John Arquilla, a defense analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School, told me. Arquilla has been campaigning for more than a decade, with growing success, to change the way America fights terrorism.

"The warfare of today is not mass on mass," he said. "You have to hunt like a network to defeat a network. Israel focussed on bombing against Hezbollah, and, when that did not work, it became more aggressive on the ground. The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result."

I've been reading some on 4GW, starting with what many believe is the seminal work on the subject: The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation. But more on that another time.

Back to John Arquilla, from an interview at the Institute of International Studies...

Reuters is caught running faked photos from Lebanon and the evidence seems to suggest that it was just the tippy-top of an iceberg that's impervious to global warming.

And if that's not enough, CNN is caught presenting bogus facts in the form of what "some people say," as in "Some people say that Ned Lamont is the al-Qaeda candidate."

Is it any wonder that the traditional media's reputation continues to circle the drain?

UPDATE: Chuck Roberts of CNN has apologized on-air to Lamont for calling him the al-Qaeda candidate.

Darksyde:

One second Reagan is up there standing toe-to-toe with the Rooskis, negotiating cool as a cucumber with 20,000 nukes pointed at him, and the next thing I know, the likes of Limbaugh or the crew at Powerwhine and Freeperland, are all shrieking like a class full of tweaked-out, neurotic fifth-graders having a panic attack every time OBL pops up in a grainy video with a rusty AK in the background.

What the hell happened to the GOP I once knew?

by Mark Adams

Via Quaoar's KOS diary: quoting an LA Times story picked up by the Statesman (LA Times link not yet available).

In Fallujah, meanwhile, hundreds of newly recruited police officers failed to show up for work Sunday after insurgents disseminated pamphlets threatening officers who stayed on the job, according to police officials in the restive western city.

"We will kill all the policemen infidels," read the pamphlets, "whether or not they quit or are still in their jobs."

Fallujah Police Lt. Mohammed Alwan said that the force, which he estimated had increased to more than 2,000, has shrunk to only 100. Alwan said insurgents have killed dozens of policemen in their homes and also attacked family members in a weeks-long intimidation campaign.

A Fallujah police major, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that at least 1,400 policemen had left their jobs since Friday, 400 of them police officials above the rank of officer.

Marine Lt. Lawton King, who is stationed in Fallujah, called those figures "inaccurate and grossly exaggerated," saying that only 32 police officers had been assassinated since January and that "substantially fewer than the exaggerated 1,400" officers had failed to report for work.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad now has a blog. And crikey! There's even an RSS feed.

[looking]

Oh -- it's in Arabic.

[crickets]

But wait -- here's a translation!

UPDATE: Warning! Clicking certain links on that site might be harmful to your computer -- or not. You decide.

by Mark Adams

This KOS diary by Farmbo reminded me of the story I saw in this morning's Toledo Blade, way before coffee had reached my brain.  It makes me want to remind every Ohio citizen voting for Democrats this fall to remember to bring your ID and proof of residency.  And it wouldn't hurt to "misplace" your Republican uncle's driver's license the day before the election, not that it would matter if he "looks" like a Republican.

BWC tried to keep $215M loss under wraps prior to '04 vote: "COLUMBUS - Less than a week before the 2004 presidential election, Jim Conrad, then head of the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, took steps to ensure that a $215 million investment loss in an offshore hedge-fund would not become public, documents obtained by The Blade show."

The incomparable Bob Somerby should always be consulted when thinking about a meta-story about media bias, and the Daily Howler seldom disappoints.

For forty-plus years, they've yelled "liberal bias"--going all the way back to a time when the complaint might have been justified (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 2/14/03). And now, at long last, just this week, Mike Allen has written a "news report" so perfectly awful that we can finally, definitively say it--after reading Allen's "news report," you'd really have to be out of your mind to believe in that tired old cry.

There is "bias" in the media -- but I wouldn't call it "liberal."  It's not necessarily conservative either.  There's an institutional bias in favor of covering the publication's own ass.

(Cross posted at Daily Kos)

There are those who think that Israel is so immensely powerful that it needn't to bother itself with fighting back against the rocket attacks. There are others who think Israel committed war crimes and used "disproportionate force" in Lebanon. There are those who believe that Israel has become Goliath to Hezballah's David. There are those who believe that Israel is an oppressor and an occupier, an imperial power seeking hegemony in the region. These people see Israel as having committed a monumental mistake, i.e., settling Jews in a Muslim region. They see the Zionist enterprise as a failed state that is swimming against the tides of history.

Make no mistake -- there are those that agree that Israel is in trouble, but they believe it is for other reasons altogether. Ari Shavit is one of those people and his view will be debated hotly in the coming months:

In the difficult summer of 2006, the State of Israel is declaring in astonishment: They surprised us. They surprised us in a big way. They surprised us with Katyushas and they surprised us with the Al-Fajr rockets and they surprised us with the Zelzal missiles. They surprised us with anti-tank missiles. And they surprised us with the operational skill of the anti-tank squads. They surprised us with the bunkers and the camouflage. They surprised us with the command and monitoring. They surprised us with strategy, fighting ability and a fighting spirit. They surprised us with the astonishing power that a small death-army with low technology and high religious motivation can have.

However, more than they surprised us in Summer 2006 with the strength of Hezbollah, they surprised us this summer with our own weakness. They surprised us with ourselves. They surprised us with the low level of national leadership. They surprised us with scandalous strategic bumbling. They surprised us with the lack of vision, lack of creativity and lack of determination on the part of the senior military command. They surprised us with faulty intelligence and a delusionary logistical network and improper preparedness for war. They surprised us with the fact that the Israeli war machine is not what it once was. While we were celebrating it became rusty.

by Mark Adams

Never let it be said that when I make an error of judgment, I can't be persuaded I was mistaken.  More importantly, be it known that I am all too willing to acknowledge that the proper thing to do is to publicly admit my blunder.

So, here goes:  I should never have given the Roviavellians in the White House even the slightest benefit of the doubt that they were not purposely politicizing the "liquid bomb threat."  At the risk of violating Drum's Law, I'll do a little "nutpicking" on myself and retract this otherwise rational and reserved assessment.  They knew about this kind of threat long ago, and went after granny's nailclippers instead of the obvious.

WASHINGTON - While the British terror suspects were hatching their plot, the Bush administration was quietly seeking permission to divert $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new homeland explosives detection technology.  [HT-Cloverdale]

They politicize EVERYTHING.  It's pathological.  The only thing that makes me certain that they were not in complete control of the timing of the British round up of the terrorist suspects planning to blow up trans-Atlantic flights with exploding Gatoraide bottles, is that the arrests and subsequent alerts did not happen Monday -- in time to affect the Lamont/Lieberman election -- as O'Reilly and Hannity desired.  Had our British cousins been more trusting of Dick Cheney's ability to restrain himself from using classified information to political advantage (prudently, they were not), the White House certainly would have exerted irresistable pressure for Scotland Yard to move up their time-table enough to assist Joe Lieberman (which you can't spell without "lie").

(Click to see a larger version)

(HT to Motivator)

Keith Olbermann:

If today's events make you wonder whether we might again be accused of being too focused on yesterday's threats rather than anticipating tomorrow's, you would not be alone.

Five months ago, our senior investigative correspondent Lisa Meyers, wanted to find out how the government was dealing with the then-anticipated threat of explosive components smuggled on board. And, more than a decade ago, Ramsey Yousef concocted a plot of mixing his own liquid explosives in mid-flight and blowing up or crippling a series of airliners over an ocean.

None of this is new...

Future historians will marvel that Bush's words, not his deeds, were the only thing that gave him the reputation of being "tough on terrorism."

Thank you for keeping America safe so our president doesn't have to.

Bush rides his mountain bike at his ranch in Crawford, TX.

(HT to Bill in Portland Maine)

Michael Tomasky writes that one unctuous hawk's demise is not a trend:

At this minute, eight Democratic Senate incumbents who voted in favor of the Iraq resolution are seeking re-election: Cantwell, Hillary Clinton (N.Y.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Ben Nelson (Neb.), Bill Nelson (Fla.), Tom Carper (Del.), Herb Kohl (Wis.), and of course Joe Lieberman (Conn.), now as an independent. And of those eight, exactly one -- Lieberman -- faced or is facing a serious primary challenge because of the war.

It was about Lieberman's excessive fawning over the president. ... It was about anger... at the notion, widespread among the commentariat, that national-security "toughness" demands support for the mendacious and ruinous policies of the Bush administration in Iraq and elsewhere. And, of course, it was about other things besides Iraq, too.

[There are] eight Democratic Senate challengers to GOP incumbents who are within striking distance of unseating them (or in some cases ahead in current polls). ...[T]he long and the short of it is that if the Democrats manage to retake the Senate, their caucus will in all likelihood be more moderate and have more red-staters than the current one.

"Failed terror plot a reminder that everybody should stop complaining about how bad I screwed up Iraq."

Seriously, I heard Dick Morris tell Bill O'Reilly tonight that Bush's numbers will "go up 10 points" to the mid-40's and the Democrats chances will go down the tubes. "I'm tearing up my predictions for the November elections because of this," says Morris.

O'Reilly:"If this had happened on Monday, Lieberman would have won the election because he is tough on terror."

Well, sure. Next, we'll hear that Bush and Lieberman busted the terrorists' door down with a fireman's axe and handcuffed the bad guys themselves.

And in a related story, Republicans are talking up Joe Lieberman's candidacy, all the way from "Dick" Cheney and Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman on down to struggling GOP candidates for the Senate:

Minnesota Republican senate candidate Mark Kennedy, a dozen points behind Democrat Amy Klobuchar in latest poll (Rasmussen, 8/1), endorses Lieberman. So does McGavick in Washington state. He's down 11 points (Rasmussen, 7/17).

(HT to Josh Marshall)

This guy is really funny.

Bush loyalists point to a blogger who has doubts about escalating to Code Red. "I see nothing reasonable in these reactions," says Rosemary, with (unintended?) irony. "They are shameful and just a little bit sick."

Fair enough. But if you really want to talk about "shameful and sick," I'd like to refer you to Press Secretary Tony Snow's comments following the defeat of Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut primary yesterday:

...[T]he real question for the American people to ask themselves is, do you take the war on terror seriously, with all the developments going on around the world? And, if so, how do you fight it to win? There seem to be two approaches. And in the Connecticut race one of the approaches is ignore the difficulties and walk away.

But beyond that, Snow (translation: "Bush") is wagging his finger and scolding the 60% of this country who now believe that the war was not worth it.

If that's their strategy for November, then good luck with that. Like they say, "Bring it on."

But wait, there's more:

Now, when the United States walked away, in the opinion of Osama bin Laden in 1991, bin Laden drew from that the conclusion that Americans were weak and wouldn't stay the course, and that led to September 11th.

Now, you can rail against bloggers all you want. But when everything is said and done, this important question still remains: Is there a bigger bunch of morons around here than this current crew in the White House?

In late 1942, in the aftermath of what he called "The Battle of Egypt," Winston Churchill famously said, "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." If I'm Joe Lieberman, that's where I'm at this morning.

If I'm Ned Lamont, I'm telling everyone, everywhere, that Joe Lieberman and George W. Bush were separated at birth. Had enough of Bush? Vote for change, vote Democratic, vote for Lamont.

And the bloggers? Boo-yah!

To All Democratic elected officials, whether you be a mayor, a senator, a dog catcher, a president, a congressman, or a county commissioner:

Yesterday, Democratic primary voters went to the polls in...Connecticut. And what happened is what has been happening for the last sixty years or more. The party voters, the people who actually make up the rank and file of the Democratic Party, made their voices heard. They chose the candidate that best represents their beliefs, their ideas, their passion, and their policies at the polls and against the Republicans in November.

[T]hat candidate is Ned Lamont. He is now the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate...

So who the hell are you to question that choice?

If you are a Democrat this morning, you will ethusiastically support Ned Lamont in the fall. You will support him, campaign for him, contribute money to him. You will do for him what you do for other Democratic candidates across this land.

By contrast, Joe Lieberman, a former Democrat who left the Party last night because he could not abide democracy and the will of his party constituents, is to receive none of your hard work, encouraging words, or support, financial or otherwise. He is a party of one, a sore loserman if there ever was one...

If you dare to support Joe Lieberman, in any way, you are no longer a Democrat and we will seek to remove you from office. We will be watching. And we are not asking for much, only that support which you would give any Democrat who wins his primary.

Signed,
Delaware Dem

• If the Democrats are ever going to offer a clear choice to the Republicans, it'll be with Senators like Lamont, not Lieberman.

• If you've read anything I've written here over the last four-plus years, you'd think Lieberman would be my guy, right? But no. Lieberman lost me when he pounded that lectern and lectured me about backing the President during a time of war. Things haven't been the same since....

• ...and it isn't just about the war.
  • There was Lieberman playing footsie with Bush on Social Security;
  • there was his support of the energy bill;
  • there was his refusal to support the filibuster of Alito when it really could have made a difference;
  • there was his membership in that stupid "Gang of 14," when all it meant was that the Dems rolled over for the Republicans;
  • there was his support of the bankruptcy bill;
  • his support of the Republicans on the Schiavo affair,
  • and on and on and on.
  Apparently, to Lieberman, bi-partisanship means doing whatever the Republicans want him to do.

• Given his steadfast refusal to hold this president accountable for anything -- anything! -- his sanctimonious scolding of Bill Clinton in 1998 is now particularly infuriating.

• Isn't it ironic: Gore lost Tennessee in 2000 (because he was too liberal) and now Lieberman has lost Connecticut because he wasn't liberal enough.

• Does this mean that the Democrats are re-living 1968 and 1972 all over again? Listen -- I was around then and this is nothing like that. If you want details, I'll be happy to provide them in the comments.

by Mark Adams

Breeders

The Detroit Tigers are running away from the rest of major-league baseball, leading the next-closest teams by 10 games or more. They have three rookie pitchers who, between them, have a record of 27-7 and the team's won-lost record is, well, like Casey Stengel said -- you could look it up.

In fact -- go ahead and look it up. Then answer this simple question:

"As of Tuesday, August 8 at 2pm CDT, how many games over .500 are the Detroit Tigers?"

by Mark Adams

Where is the "tough on crime" crowd when this crap happens?

CLEVELAND -- Election officials in Cuyahoga County have replaced seven of the 13 electronic voting machines assigned to a church in suburban Cleveland because the seals were not intact. Elections director Michael Vu says the seals were in place when the machines were sent to the North Olmsted church, but they were either completely or partially removed when checked at the polling place.

Tuesday's special election is the county's first since a slew of problems in the May primary that led to delayed results and an outside investigation.

(Via Suburban Guerrilla.)

by Mark Adams

The mainstream press will lead tomorrow's conventional wisdom that bloggers must die.  It doesn't matter if Lieberman wins or loses, online activists will be blamed for the loss or blamed for leading the Democratic Party off the cliff.  We're evil, period.

An exhausted Chris Bowers sums it up:

Wednesday will be the worst day of press for the progressive netroots in years.  If Lamont loses, we will be branded as ineffectual, irrelevant, extremist, and destructive.  If Ned Lamont wins, we will be branded as powerful, relevant, extremist, and destructive.

The days of wealthy board-room execs deciding the fate of the planet are not over, yet, but you are witnessing the very, very, very beginning of their demise.

After the war is over, Hizballah will face three challenges: military, political and humanitarian.

Will the fabric of Lebanese society be able to hold together long enough to see if Hizballah can meet those challenges?

Michael Young:

This is the essence of Lebanon's dilemma as the war nears its fourth week. Does Hezbollah agree to integrate itself into the Lebanese political system and disarm? Or does it exploit its substantial reserves of men and weapons to bring all of Lebanon forcibly into line with the party's priorities? The first means the end of Hezbollah as we know it and is a suicide option; the second could bring Lebanon down around everybody's head in renewed civil war. Call it Hezbollah's Samson option.

by Mark Adams

Economic analysis can be a tedious chore, at least for me.  Number crunching was never my passion.  Fortunately Hale Stewart at BOPnews -- Complete Refutation of New GOP Economic Talking Points is more than willing to do my homework for me.

Raw Story is claiming it has obtained a copy of the GOP election playbook. All of the points made therein are crap -- as in pure crap. Assuming this is the true playbook, here are the basic rebuttals to the economic claims made therein. This information is free to all to use.

If you only take away one fact from Stewart's analysis, here's the clincher:

Even using the Republicans incorrect figures, the economy is only creating about 158,000 jobs/month.  The economy has to create 150,000/month to keep up with population growth.  In other words - using their numbers - the rate of job growth still stinks.

Other quick points?

by Mark Adams

He's so Funny, especially when he does a little research.  Here's the funny quote he found by a well known Senator:

"If I were President, I'd get a new secretary of defense."

Mind you this was some time ago, and this would only be shocking if the Senator were a Republican criticizing his own party's leadership, right?  I mean, back in 2003 the Democrats were in disarray about their opposition to the war, especially those who had voted to authorize the Iraq invasion.

It took a special kind of courage to oppose the administration on the war that early in the debacle.  What kind of die-hard liberal partisan could say these kinds of things on Face the Nation back then?

Look--look, the administration keeps talking--Ambassador Bremer, President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld, 'Everything's going great in Iraq.' We know everything is not going great in Iraq, even those of us who feel that what we did in Iraq was--was right, that the world is safer with Saddam Hussein gone feel even more intensely that the administration has--has really messed this up by its one-sided foreign policy which--which has kept other countries away from helping us and--and by its failure to have any kind of plan to secure post-Saddam Iraq.

What?  That wasn't Biden?  Kerry then.  Kerry was always saying this kind of thing:

Remember General Eric Shinseki, the head of the Army, earlier this year, said that we would need more than 200,000 troops, not just to win the war but more to secure the peace. He was right. Secretary Rumsfeld, the administration, all--they disagreed with him. They, in some senses, demeaned him. The fact is that if the--the administration had a more multilateral, open, cooperative policy, we'd have foreign troops in there helping American troops to keep the peace. We'd have foreign countries paying more of the cost of rebuilding Iraq than they were willing to pledge the other day in Madrid.

Not Kerry?  I dunno, I give.  Maybe Hillary was feeling her oats that Sunday and blurted:

Well, look, ultimately the buck stops at the--at the w--president's desk. He's the commander in chief. He has to take accountability if things don't work well. I'll--I'll--I'll tell you this, that Secretary Rumsfeld told the truth in that private memo, that they haven't been as trusting of the American people to tell us the truth about the fact that we're not doing as well as they--that we should be doing in the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq. And--and the worst thing about Don Rumsfeld's time at the Pentagon, the uniform military feel deeply that he doesn't respect them, doesn't listen to them. That--that's not the kind of relationship that we need between a secretary of Defense and the military. Judgment about whether he stays or not is up to President Bush, but if I were president, I'd--I'd get a new secretary of Defense.

Yeah, that sounds like Hillary.  It's obvious from the way she grilled Rumsfeld thursday then blasted him again to the press later, she's always had it in for Rummy.

Ah, WTF.  It wasn't Senator Clinton either?  I guess we'll never know unless we click to the rest of the story.

I've said right from the start that Israel's war should not be confused with America's war. Unfortunately that boat has left the dock.

But that doesn't mean that we can't explore the relationship between Israel and America -- and how America's war may be damaging Israel.

Daniel Levy:

Disentangling Israeli interests from the rubble of neocon "creative destruction" in the Middle East has become an urgent challenge for Israeli policy-makers. An America that seeks to reshape the region through an unsophisticated mixture of bombs and ballots, devoid of local contextual understanding, alliance-building or redressing of grievances, ultimately undermines both itself and Israel. The sight this week of Secretary of State Rice homeward bound, unable to touch down in any Arab capital, should have a sobering effect in Washington and Jerusalem.

Israel and its friends in the United States should seriously reconsider their alliances not only with the neocons, but also with the Christian Right. The largest "pro-Israel" lobby day during this crisis was mobilized by Pastor John Hagee and his Christians United For Israel, a believer in Armageddon with all its implications for a rather particular end to the Jewish story. This is just asking to become the mother of all dumb, self-defeating and morally abhorrent alliances.

Salma Hayek and Ashley Judd in Frida, as fine a film as was made in the last ten years.

by Mark Adams

There are many good arguments that the best Democratic election strategy this Fall is to wrap Iraq around every GOP candidate's neck and incessantly repeat, "It's the War, Stupid."  It's a similar suggestion to hanging the rubber-stamp label on the "Do Nothing" Congress, or just coming out and identifying the entire GOP as completely void of intellect as their leader, because "It's the Stupiidity, Stupid."  all variations on the "Had Enough" theme.

I cringe when I think of the arrogance it took for Bush to start the Iraq war.  The sheer naiveté it took for a man whose formal business degrees qualified him only to fail at every enterprise he undertook, whose life experience in no way prepared him to even suspect he was in any way capable of transforming the Middle East into a peaceful bastion of democracy -- settling decades of direct conflict and centuries of unrest with a simple promise of "one person, one vote."

Of course, as was always suspected, Bush had absolutely no understanding of what he was doing, how to do it right, or an appreciation of the consequences of the his actions.  The quote you're going to be seeing a lot of from former Ambassador Peter Galbraith's new book, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End, comes to the internetz via Raw Story (HT: SusanUnPC at No Quarter)

Galbraith reports that the three of them [Iraqi-Americans briefing Bush about the likely post-invasion political situation] spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam--to which the President allegedly responded,“I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”

by Mark Adams

Just one thought I'd like to pass on to our grandchildren.  Next time some Bozo decides to commit the US to an open ended war with no clear objective, learn the lessons from Iraq that we failed to remember from Vietnam -- pick on someone with a decent climate.  Jungle warfare, desert warfare; what bullshit.

It's bad enough to get shot at for no damn good reason.  The least we can do for our boys and girls in uniform is find them some decent weather to fight in.  How about France?  It's been a long time since we invaded Europe.

Seen outside my office window. Click thumbnail for larger image.

Love that Treo 600 camera phone.

This probably won't change any minds. But I think this needs to be said nonetheless.

Click below to watch.

David Wasserman and Larry J. Sabato:

Historical trends and big picture indicators--generic congressional ballot tests and approval ratings of President Bush's job performance in particular - have always been heavily stacked against the GOP in this "sixth year itch" cycle, but aggregations of more race-specific indicators are now suggesting that Republicans are headed for their most serious midterm losses in decades.

Pasteur surely wasn't thinking of American politics when he riffed on the Boy Scouts' Motto, "Be Prepared."  But chance may indeed be playing into "boy scout" John Edwards' hands -- and his One America Committee has been getting prepared.

With a tip of the hat to Kevin Drum we learn there are some extremely high stakes power-players working to load the dice in favor of the former Senator and Vice-Presidential nominee's chances for a successful run at the '08 Presidential election.

The Washington Note's Steve Clemons reports, "Some high level Democratic Party political insiders," are whispering about Hillary Clinton taking over Harry Ried's leadership position as he moves down to "'whipping' the Party from behind," a role with less lime-light that he would allegedly prefer.

That is, of course, if should she decide not to run for President.

It's possible that the netroots' and lefty distaste for her is showing up in polling, influencers, or folks her advisors talk with. If they realize she lacks solid support from the base and is too polarized to easily capture the center, she may back off. While those trends haven't yet manifested in polls, Kos's Washington Post op-ed and general online anger may be convincing her team that it's only a matter of time before she faces a full-out rebellion. And imagine the embarrassment if all their money and prestige and power fell to, say, John Edwards, whom the primary calendar now advantages.

I've been watching the "parade" every morning this week. It is all part of the 2006 Baton Rouge Hot Air Balloon Festival Championship (at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center which is within a a short bike ride of our house).

Later, one of these balloons went, um, slightly off course and had to land on top of a parking garage across the street. Never a dull moment!

More Baton Rouge balloon pix, from a different photographer.

(Updated below)

On Nov. 19, 2005 over a dozen Iraqis were killed in an incident at Haditha. The Marines initially said that they had been killed by a roadside IED and the subsequent crossfire between them and insurgents. But Time magazine later reported that the killings were a deliberate act by US forces. In May of this year, retired Marine Rep. Jack Murtha said that Corps officials told him the Iraqis had been killed in "cold blood." His statements ignited a firestorm of controversy, with various right-wing Bush loyalists accusing him of cowardice, lying, treason and worse.

Now, apparently it turns out that perhaps Murtha was right.

Evidence collected on the deaths of 24 Iraqis in Haditha supports accusations that U.S. Marines deliberately shot the civilians, including unarmed women and children, a Pentagon official said Wednesday.

Wonder who's paying this guy's lawyer?

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald has some more on Wuterich's lawsuit.

Jesus. Fucking. Christ. In the history of big steaming loads disgorged from the gaping maw of Michelle Malkin what could be more absurd than hearing this professional rage artist complain about racism, the very basis of her crapulent bottom-feeder career?

Some of the funniest Colbert material ever (and that is high praise indeed).

(HT to d-p-u)

This seminal work on 4GW can be downloaded here.

Another good sourcebook is The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century which I've put, ahem, on my wish list.

Charlie Cook sees the Democrats routing the Republicans in November.

Me? I avoid the crystal ball because I hate eating broken glass.

...including Connie Morris who once described evolution theory as a "fairy tale." The make-up of the board now swings from 6-4 creationist to 6-4 scientist.

Colbert tries to lure the Senator with a variety of incentives including a CD by Lieberman's favorite singer, Andrea Bocelli. Ack! The last time a politician admitted that Bocelli was his favorite, he lost the election.

Big-Eyed Beans From Venus by the incomparable Captain Beefheart.

This is an astonishing performance either despite (or because of) the fact that the video footage appears to be of a completely different song.

P.S. News reaches us that Captain Beefheart's former home is for sale in California.

HonestReporting calls on the media to examine the Qana tragedy in context:

• Some 150 rockets have been fired at Israeli cities from Qana over the past three weeks.
  
• Hezbollah has been deliberately hiding behind and operating from within civilian areas.
  
• While Israeli civilians in northern towns and cities have between 15 seconds and one minute to find cover after an air raid siren is sounded, Lebanese civilians have been forewarned of IDF operations, in some cases, by days.
  
• While it is still too early to draw any conclusions before the results of any official investigation are known, there are a number of questions and inconsistencies regarding Qana.

"[Ned Lamont] says Joe Lieberman is in bed with the President. I say they're in a menage a trois with America."