Still believes that it is the fault of Clinton’s penis, and that people are “afraid” of Bill Clinton going back there.
While there are legitimate concerns about dynastic succession, ones that Broder ignored with Bush and ignores now, people are cool with Bill being back at 1600.
Moron.
In the past few weeks a number of senior Thompson campaign staffers have left. Just a few weeks before a formal announcement.
This churn has been going on for some time.
This campaign is looking to be more of a fiasco than John McCain’s.
There is now a report saying that that the Iraqi Police are so compromised that they need to be disbanded and reformed.
They are in essence wings of the Shiite militias.
Does it surprise anyone that Bush and His Evil Minions™ have screwed this up too?
When Nixon was nominated in 1968, my father said, “Those idiot Republicans, there is no way we can lose now”.
My dad still has a few hundred sheets of McGovern stationary in the house.
I supported Howard Dean, and went to the meetups, and worked on a campaign for state house where the candidate finished 6th.
While I do have a preference on who gets the Democratic nomination, I have this feeling that my explicitly endorsing a candidate would jinx that individual.
So, for right now, I’m being held hostage to these superstitions, and I am quite well aware that this is stupid.
So, Moqtada al-Sadr orders a freeze in operations of his militia, but the US Military is continuing to aggressively raid his offices.
Sadr’s message came the day after he issued a public statement to his Mahdi Army to cease its operations for up to six months so he could restructure the group. But Sadr was forced to reconsider after a raid Thursday by U.S. and Iraqi forces on his office in the southern city of Karbala led to the deaths of six Mahdi Army members and the arrest of 30 others, the officials said.
It’s almost like someone in the White House or Pentagon is looking for a fight to excuse the failure of the surge or to have an reason to attack Iraq.
Oh
My
God
So, let me get this straight, a group of beer swilling runners are marking a trail for a run, and it gets treated as a possible terrorist attack?
If the goal of terrorism is to create terror and panic, Osama bin Laden has already defeated us.
Two people who sprinkled flour in a parking lot to mark a trail for their offbeat running club inadvertently caused a bioterrorism scare and now face a felony charge.
The sprinkled powder forced hundreds to evacuate an IKEA furniture store Thursday.
New Haven ophthalmologist Daniel Salchow, 36, and his sister, Dorothee, 31, who is visiting from Hamburg, Germany, were both charged with first-degree breach of peace, a felony.
Story continues below ↓advertisementThe siblings set off the scare while organizing a run for a local chapter of the Hash House Harriers, a worldwide group that bills itself as a “drinking club with a running problem.”
We are a bunch of scared rabbits, aren’t we?
Rich Karlgaard, who thinks that comparing a Democratic candidate with Franklin Delano Roosevelt is somehow a slur.
It isn’t, not in the general election, and particularly not in the Democratic primary.
It’s easy to see why he’s so profoundly misinformed, as he tells us with self assurance that only comes from being an economic knuckle dragger, who are in no short supply at Fortune magazine, that the investment class “went on strike” in 1937*.
I guess that would explain the soaring mattress sales at the beginning of that year, they had to put their money somewhere.
While it is clear that criminals bury their money in low return investment when the heat is on, most investors are law abiding and moral individuals, who continue to invest. Tax and regulatory policy can determine where they invest, but not how much.
*In reality based economics, what happened was that Roosevelt thought that the depression was over and he backed off the new deal, for example cutting the WPA funding by half.
Well, it looks like “the Dean” is at it again. He writes about how he longs for 3rd party candidates for president, specifically a Hagel-Bloomberg ticket.
The idea is that the American public longs for “post partisan” politics.
He thinks that candidates who differ on abortion, gun laws, gay rights, taxes, public schools, and role of religion in the public sphere, can somehow find common ground. This is like the bite of a dog into a stone, it is a stupidity.
What he derides as “partisan” politics is actually the legitimate give and take of differences in policy, but sitting where he does, living in the continuous cocktail party known as Sally Quinn’s Washington, it’s all too inconvenient.
These differences get in the way of a pleasant party, and the policies have very little effect on him, being paid to pontificate being one of the lifestyles least effected by significant policy decision.
He is not effected when other people’s children die in Iraq, or when other people’s children lack medical care and die because Bush and His Evil Minions™ believe that it’s worse to provide government funded health care to one relatively well off kid than it is for 1000 poor children to to have no access to health care.
He is the personification of what is wrong with the culture of Washington, DC.
Or, as David Axe, of War is Boring puts it, Reason #817 Why the Air Force Sucks.
This a real quote from the real Air Combat Command chief Ronald Keys, “The hardest wars we fight are not on the battlefield, but the wars we fight in the halls of Congress. They are fought in the Pentagon, they are fought in these programs, to make sure the money is paid and eventually the program is operating.”
That’s our problem. The air force is not a bunch of soldiers, it’s a bunch of f&^%ing K-street lobbiests.
Go read Axe’s stuff…It has the some quotes from Air Force’s counter-insurgency manual that are so stupid, you would think that Alberto Gonzalez would remember them.
One quote from Axe:
The Air Force bailed out of the potentially revolutionary UCAS killer drone program in order to buy a big new fleet of big new manned bombers for much more money. The service wants to prepare for an imaginary high-tech air war with China instead of fighting the dirty, low-tech wars we’re actually in. Why? Because high-tech superpower showdowns are what the Air Force knows. They’re easy. The low-tech approach to warfare, by contrast, requires patience and smarts, two things today’s Air Force lacks.
The independent air force was a bad idea.
Ironically, I considered joining the USAF, despite my myopia after I left high school.
And here we have a future Darwin award winner. The 14 year old who had overheating problems with his XBox*, and decided to cool it in a bowl of water.
He did survive, but was taken to the hospital with burns.
I might suggest that this kid not be given another video game console, and that perhaps he be sent outside to play.
*This is not a unique problem. The XBox has a reputation for thermal problems.
Because the public access policy of the NHTSA certainly appears to be implementing what Orwell warned against.
Under the new access policy, no one is allowed to speak for attribution to the press under almost any circumstances. They have to get advance permission for the most routine things. This means that the press office cannot tell a member of the press who the director of the HTTSA is:
If you want to know something as simple as who heads the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, don’t bother to ask the safety agency’s communications office. Without special permission, officials there are no longer allowed to provide information to reporters except on a background basis, which means it cannot be attributed to a spokesman.
Without such attribution, there are few circumstances under which most reporters will report such information. This makes for interesting dealings with the office charged with providing information about the nation’s top automotive safety agency.
So, I will end the suspense about the boss’s identity. The administrator is Nicole R. Nason, who took over on May 31, 2006, after she was appointed to the post by President Bush.
And it is she who put the big hush on one of the government’s most important safety agencies.
…
H/t to the Carpetbagger Report
FWIW, a schmuck is uncircumcised. A putz is more generic.
That is all.
Here’s another story on the disastrous nuclear deal that the Bush administration has cut with India.
Money quote:
India’s leftist parties object strongly to the accord. They say it undermines the country’s sovereignty and its right to conduct nuclear tests. They insist the government stall negotiations, scheduled with the International Atomic Energy Agency and others, until their objections are met.
So, what are the consequences of this deal?
This is quite literally a bigger blunder than invading Iraq.
Well, actually Atlanta, Georgia, where some moron city councilman in Atlanta wants to ban baggy pants that allow underwear to show.
The embarrassing part is that he’s a Democrat.
Would the good people of atlanta please make him a former coundilman?
Well, it appears that an Astroturf group loaded with money from Bush contributors, Freedom Watch, is doing its bit to try to extend the war in Iraq: It’s running attack ads against Republicans who are going weak kneed on the war.
Seriously, this is being run through either current, or former, or soon to be former *cough* Rove *cough*Bush political operatives.
“For those who believe in peace through strength, the cavalry is coming,” said former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, who is a founding board member of the group.
The big ad buy, funded by high-profile Republicans who were aides and supporters of President Bush, reflects a furious public relations battle that will unfold as Congress debates the crucial progress report by Gen. David Petraeus, which is due Sept. 15.
BTW, there is no Petraeus report. The Bush White House is writing the report with “input” from Petraeus.
FWIW, Tom Matzzie of Americans Against Escalation in Iraq has written their spokesman, Ari Fleischer, a thank you note, in which an analysis of the first ad buy is made, 37 targeting Republicans vs. 4 Democrats, and only one of the Democrats is not sharing a District with a Republican.
BTW, one of the people that they are targeting is Mitch McConnell, Republican leader of the Senate.
This is truly a WTF moment, and typifies Bush’s idea of loyalty. Even if it does not backfire, and I think that it will, because it shows how narrow and petty Bush and His Evil Minions&trade are, it gets these folks voting pro-war, and makes them vulnerable.
He’s crossing a line, a very big one, and it might be enough to shake some Republicans loose from mindlessly goose-stepping with him.
It appearsthat a seven-year-old Muslim boy was flagged as a terrorist, and prevented from visiting the US.
Why?
A 39-year-old Pakistani man of that name was arrested in New York two months after the terror attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001.
He was never charged with any terrorism offences, although he was convicted of fraud for having false papers and deported.
He is seeking compensation from the U.S. government, claiming to have been beaten up by guards during more than a year in detention.
It’s reasonable for a name to be flagged. What’s is unconscionable is that they cannot distinguish between a 7 year old from with a British passport, and a 39 year old Pakistani.
Considering the nature of the 911 terrorists, they were all fairly well to do, one wonders if might have just created a future terrorist.
Think Progress has the video and this remarkable quote from Gen. Casey:
A questioner asked, “What are the prospects in Iraq and how will this war end?”
Casey responded: Right now, there’s so much residual mistrust left over from the time under Saddam Hussein that they’re not quite ready to go forward. But they have an educated population, they have oil wells, they have water, they have some of the most fertile land I’ve ever seen. In a decade or so, this will be a remarkable country, if we stick with it.“
Bush and His Evil Minions™ (Karl Rove) has succeeded in poisoning almost every branch of government by purging competent reality based people, and replacing them with those who are insane.
It appears that Bill O’Reilley, or one of his evil minions™ at Fox News, hacked Wikipedia.
It’s much less amusing than when Stephen Colbert hacked Wiki.
Scratch that….It’s just as funny, but we are laughing at at Billo, not with him.
He/They got caught because a tool has been developed to allow for easy searches of Wiki edits and IP addresses.
Here is the edit:
Original:
The lawsuit focused a great deal of media attention upon Franken’s book and greatly enhanced its sales. Reflecting later on the lawsuit during an interview on the National Public Radio program ”Fresh Air” on September 3, 2003, Franken said that Fox’s case against him was “literally laughed out of court” and that “wholly (holy) without merit” is a good characterization of Fox News itself.
Fox News edit:
The lawsuit focused a great deal of media attention upon Franken’s book and greatly enhanced its sales. Reflecting later on the lawsuit during an interview on the liberal National Public Radio program ”Fresh Air” on September 3, 2003, Franken said that Fox’s case against him was the best thing to happen to his book sales.
Busted.
The Armchair Generalist an article by the Deputy Judge Advocate General of the US Air Force, two star General Charles Dunlap.
Gen Dunlap would give Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper on a rant about “purity of essence” a run for his money.
Dunlap is calling for the United States to bomb Iranian Oil Refineries in order to conduct counter-insurgency in Iraq.
Specifically, despite huge reserves of crude oil, Iran nevertheless must import about half of its gasoline, largely because of a shortage of domestic refinery capacity. Targeting what refinery capacity Iran possesses could directly and concretely erode its ability to support Iraqi insurgents.
Oil refineries are ideal targets for air and missile attack. They are large, relatively “soft” facilities that are difficult for even the most modern air defense to protect. At the same time, they represent wholly lawful targets generally subject to attack with a minimal risk of collateral damage.
Besides reducing the fuel available to support insurgent activities in Iraq, the further cutback in refinery capacity could influence Iranian leadership, as the nation has already seen civil disturbances as a result of gasoline rationing.
This is just plain nuts. The Iranian government is increasingly unpopular, but one only has to look at Saddam’s attack on Iran in 1980, which cemented Khomeni’s rule in Iran, to prove that wrong.
What’s at the core of his arguments is that the new Pentagon counter-insurgency doctrine places the Air Force in the position of being a service to be used at the digression of the ground forces, and this is not acceptable to the general officer corps of the USAF. (I noted that this attitude by the Air Force is why the British want US operations to end in their operational area of Afghanistan.
Blowing S%$# up just generates more insurgents.