Timb's Blog

(I can't post a video in comments, but this is prompted by Icy's post.)

8/31/08 Reminder! I'll trigger the auto-draft tonight. I could go through immediately, or take a couple of days (it has, in the past). Make sure you have your draft orders set!

Read more! »

Sen. John McCain picks Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate on GOP ticket for White House

As predicted, the fundies love her.

What did ya'all think?

I thought several speakers knocked it out of the park. Hilly, Billy, and most of all Barry.

My favorite line, which I'll paraphrase, was "we need to make them own 8 years of failed ideology". Combined with "this isn't about me", it's exactly the message, "GOP policy doesn't work", we need people to hear.

(And yes, he went on to be as specific as I expected in a national acceptance speech.)

Unsurprisingly, I agree with Billmon again on just about everything he wrote here.

For better or worse, the Democratic Party is the rock; all else is the sea -- to steal Frederick Douglass's old line about a different (very different) Republican Party. It's the only political organization in the country that offers even a remote prayer of advancing a progessive agenda.

But that's pretty weak beer most days: More of an apology than an argument.

snip

I know I shouldn't make too much of this, but I sure the hell am not going to make too little of it, either. Not coming from where I come from. The gates of heaven haven't opened, the Red Sea hasn't parted, the Millennium definitely isn't at hand (I hope), but win or lose in November, this country is never going to be the same again. Nor will my assumptions about what is or is not politically possible.

Maybe the old lie that anyone can grow up to be president is still just that -- an old lie. But now we know that any child (man child at least) can grow up and become the presidential candidate of one of the country's two main political parties -- because the Democrats just proved it.

It's occurred to me more than once that we're still fighting the race wars of the 50s and 60s, and that if the goal is to make heads explode in red states (maybe we should call 'em "pasty white" states) all across America, we're one step closer to the goal.

Until we can end that war with a victory for what's right, it's silly to believe we're going to solve the rest of our problems. We need to get this man into the White House.

DENVER, Colorado (CNN) -- Sen. Hillary Clinton released her delegates Wednesday afternoon, allowing those who had been pledged to her to vote for whomever they choose in a roll call vote later in the day.

Seems like anybody who's still bashing Hillary isn't stylin'...

It's too bad George the Third won't ask her to be his veep. I'd love to hear what she said when she turned him down.

Billmon, again.

Via Greg Sargent at Talking Point Memo, I see the McCain campaign (a.k.a. the kinder, gentler lynch mob) is ramping up the volume on its guilt-by-association campaign linking Obama to retired Weatherman Bill Ayers -- and dispensing with its false flag operation in the process.

From McCain spokesperson Brian Rogers:

"The fact that Barack Obama chose to launch his political career at the home of an unrepentant terrorist raises more questions about Senator Obama's judgment than any TV ad ever could . . ." etc. etc.

More of that "civil," "respectful" campaign McCain promised -- respecful as in, "we will respectfully tear that uppity you-know-what's face clean off his head."

But, unlike most of McRove's spitball volleys (like his vapid Obama-is-a-celebrity ads) this one actually interests me, because I'm curious to see if a slur so hopelessly retro still has some juice left in it.

I mean, I doubt if one American in 20 could correctly identify who the Weathermen were and what they did back in the '60s -- an era that, like McCain, is fading fast into the mists of pre-history (prehistory, in an American context, being anything that happened before last Tuesday). Unless the McCaniacs are going to spend a LOT of time filling in the back story, I wouldn't be surprised if voters think the message is that meteorologists, like hot chicks, dig Obama. Which doesn't seem like such a bad thing, even if the meteorologists are white.

What's next? Will some young speechwriter at the RNC come up with the bright idea of dubbing Obama the candidate of "acid, amnesty and abortion"?

To me it's a vivid reminder that the Republican Party is essentially frozen at a moment in time -- roughly, 1972 (or at the latest, 1984). The politics of the culture war are all it knows, and, here in the twilight of its long ideological dominance, all it really wants to know. And maybe all it has left.

More at the link.

Thanks to those who posted kind comments, and others who called me. It's always good to know you're not alone.

I wanted to post a picture with that post, but I lost most of my pictures in that hard drive crash a few months ago. When my good buddy ICarol found out, she sent me back some of the pictures I'd sent her. One of them was this one, of Tina (the gray one), Whiskers, Bandit, and Bluie (full name "His Majesty Prince Blue Floyd") all laying together.

Thanks, ICarol!

Good memories are worth keeping.

It looks like the Democrats aren't afraid to let him talk.

(Blatantly ripped off from Kos)

McCain does have some regrets about Vietnam. As Moore points out, in his memoir Faith of Our Fathers, McCain called it "illogical" and "senseless" that he was limited to bombing only military targets.

"I do believe," McCain wrote, "that had we taken the war to the North and made full, consistent use of air power in the North, we ultimately would have prevailed."

In other words, McCain believes we could have won the Vietnam War had he been able to drop even more bombs.

When McCain was shot down, on October 26, 1967, he was busy bombing what he would describe as a "heavily populated part of Hanoi."

What follows is a a rather entertaining passage in which Moore then asks what you would do to a man who "fell out of the sky" after dropping bombs on you or your children. But the most important question comes at the end:

John McCain is already using the Vietnam War in his political ads. In doing so, it makes not just what happened to him in Vietnam fair game for discussion, but also what he did to the Vietnamese … I would like to see one brave reporter during the election season ask this simple question of John McCain: "Is it morally right to drop bombs and missiles in a 'heavily populated' area where hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians will perish?"

Cat Heaven

There's a thin strip of woods behind our house. It runs through every back yard on our side of the street. The ground is hard under a layer of leaves, so not much grows there other than the trees.

My wife put a park bench there. We can sit there in the shade and look back at the house and deck and think about what life means to us. We have a few cats, and they'll always stop by to see what we're up to.

Read more! »

This is hilarious.

First up, the GOP contender.

The United States military could stay in Iraq for "maybe a hundred years" and that "would be fine with me," John McCain told two hundred or so people at a town hall meeting in Derry, New Hampshire, on Jan 3. And U.S. troops could be in Iraq for "a thousand years" or "a million years," as far as he was concerned.

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Created in January 2008 in support of the Obama/Biden '08 ticket!

"If I lose or I win, I'm doing it my way."

I honestly like this man.

Some are disappointed and turning away from Obama because he picked Biden. If anything, this makes me, someone who was (shall we say) "less than enthusiastic" about Obama, lean more toward supporting him.

The greatest line of the Democratic debates:

Biden is a genuine working class guy who, even when you may not agree with him, has principles and isn't afraid to stand up for them. Fact is, he was probably higher on my list of candidates than Obama, although my first pick was (usually) Dodd.

Man, if Obama had picked Dodd I might actually be excited!

Update to add a (partial) response to whatta's concern:

Lenny Bruce:

"If Jesus had lived 50 years ago, Catholic girls would wear electric chair necklaces."

Bill Hicks:

"A lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus comes back he ever wants to see a fucking cross? It's like going up to Jackie Onassis wearing a rifle pendant."

(Sung to the tune of "boys will be boys".)

Obama Campaign Sets Timing of VP Announcement; Kaine Out

Barack Obama plans to notify the country of his vice presidential pick Saturday — possibly sometime late morning — before Obama and his chosen one appear at a 2 p.m. campaign event in Illinois, FOX News learned Friday night.

I'm sure the choice of words is just a coincidence.

Show of hands, please. How many of you think that the most recent incarnation of the religious right wrong began with Roe v Wade? Hatred and bigotry toward gays?

OK, you can put your hands down. You're all wrong.

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From "(a)n interview with Shalva Natelashvili, the founder and chairman of the Georgian Labor Party, and a veteran leader of the Georgian opposition."

Why did President Saakashvili order Tskhinvali to be taken by force?

He probably had hopes of receiving some kind of external support. Someone must have lied to him to give him these false hopes—whether it was from the West, South, or North is uncertain. Someone was deceiving him.

Also, Saakashvili had real delusions of grandeur, and saw himself as the Napoleon of Asia, which is a psychological disorder for an individual and a tragedy for Georgia.

Third, he wanted to speed up the entry of Georgia into NATO, but this is a mistake: the issue of the Abkhazia region would still remain unresolved.

Fourth, he’s committed crimes against democracy—he established a one-party dictatorship in Georgia in all the elections held in Georgia during his reign (local, presidential, parliamentary), closed the free flow of information, seized TV companies and dozens of innocents died.

(FYI, Alvy lives in Madrid, but said he was going to Mallorca, not the Canaries. I hope he's OK.)

MADRID, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Grieving relatives and medical staff on Thursday tried to identify the badly burned bodies of victims of the crash of a Spanish jet in which 153 people were killed as it took off on a holiday flight from Madrid airport.

Bush Covered up Musharraf Ties with Qaeda, Khan
Analysis by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON, Aug 19 (IPS) - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's resignation Monday brings to an end an extraordinarily close relationship between Musharraf and the George W. Bush administration, in which Musharraf was lavished with political and economic benefits from the United States despite policies that were in sharp conflict with U.S. security interests.

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Justice Dept. Files Motion To Prevent Investigation of the Justice Dept.
By Matthew Blake 08/19/2008 03:01PM

The tension between an investigation into politicization at the the Justice Dept. and the agency's duty to weigh in to Congress on constitutional matters has come to a head. The Justice Dept's vested interest in executive privilege became an issue last night when the department filed a motion in a U.S. district court saying that a federal judge should reverse his recent decision that executive privilege doesn't give White House officials immunity to testify before Congress.

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"Russia is a state that is unfortunately using the one tool that it has always used whenever it wishes to deliver a message and that's its military power," (Kindasleazy) Rice told reporters en route to an emergency meeting of NATO foreign ministers set for Tuesday. "That's not the way to deal in the 21st century."

McClatchy

This from the one-button head of Bush's one-button foreign policy, in a one-button nation that thinks McCain just might be peachy keen 'cuz he's more willing to keep pushing that one-button than his opponent.

"Do as we say (and give us your oil) or we'll kill you."

For no apparent reason, we're voting for a President, not a VP, here are my best guesses for the VP slots on the Democratic and GOP tickets.

D - Daschle
R - Cantor

Anybody else wanna go on record before Friday?

If not, you forfeit the right to make fun of how wrong I was...

Some of you may remember from the Yahoo "titty board" days that I used to post a lot of links to "The Whiskey Bar". Billmon is a "Kos Alumnis" who had his own blog, then got tired of it. Lately, he's taken to posting an occasional diary on Kos, again. I read them whenever I see them.

Today, he explained why what's happened in Georgia is a symptom of the disease that will end America, or at least American domination.

We live with the illusion of democracy.

Welcome to post-Reagan, union-hating America.

Cinderella, others arrested in Disneyland labor protest

ANAHEIM, California (AP) -- Cinderella, Snow White, Tinkerbell and other fictional fixtures of modern-day childhood were handcuffed, frisked and loaded into police vans Thursday at the culmination of a labor protest that brought a touch of reality to the Happiest Place on Earth.

The arrest of the 32 protesters, many of whom wore costumes representing famous Disney characters, came at the end of an hour-long march to Disneyland's gates from one of three Disney-owned hotels at the center of a labor dispute.

Those who were arrested sat in a circle on a busy intersection outside the park holding hands until they were placed in plastic handcuffs and led to two police vans while hundreds of hotel workers cheered and chanted.

The protesters were arrested on a misdemeanor count of failure to obey a police officer and two traffic infractions, said Sgt. Rick Martinez of the Anaheim police. They were cited and released, Sgt. Chris Schneider said.

BBC News

A muslim nation with nukes and an alliance with the United States will soon be under new leadership. How will this affect their relationship with the rest of the muslim world, and specifically Afghanistan?

Has Bush's foreign policy (which amounts to "I've got my finger on the button. Do as I say or we'll kill you.") succeeded *anywhere*?

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Faced with desertions by his political supporters and the unsettling neutrality of the Pakistani military, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan is expected to resign in the next few days rather than face impeachment, Pakistani politicians and Western diplomats said Thursday.

His departure from office seems likely to unleash new instability in the country as the two main parties in the civilian government jockey for his share of power. It would also remove from the political stage the man who has served as the Bush administration’s main ally here for the last eight years.

Things are changing. Fast.

The neos are trying to re-start the cold war, now Mooshy's stepping down, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been completely out of the headlines, the precious metals markets are down and absolutely chaotic, oil's coming down in price despite all the insanity...

The nightmare years of the Bush administration are coming to a close, but no one seems to be all that certain about the future.

I've been trying to decide which is more troubling: That our two candidates for president are making their first joint campaign appearance at a church, or that the pastor of that church has put himself in the position of campaign moderator.

I'm leaning toward the pastor.

Politicians will be politicians, after all. John McCain and Barack Obama are running for office and everything they do is calculated to win votes. They both want and need the evangelical Christian vote and they have shown they are willing to do just about anything to get it. We expect that, and so far we seem to be OK with that. What if their host Saturday evening wasn't Rick Warren but Pat Robertson? Or Jeremiah Wright? Or Louis Farrakhan? Imagine the uproar.

Rick Warren's role in this made-for-TV event is even more distressing and possibly just as calculating.

Since all but endorsing George W. Bush in 2004, Warren has wisely and commendably avoided getting involved in partisan politics. "I have never been considered a part of the religious right, because I don't believe politics is the most effective way to change the world," he told Time magazine.

Neither did Warren's Lord and Savior.

I'm not "OK with that". Fuck the religious right. They *hate* this country, and everything about it, starting with "the constitution isn't subservient to the Bible.

Obama lost me when he not only didn't speak out about ending "faith based funding", he wants to freaking expand it!

I'm going to vote for Obama, because John "civilized nations don't invade other nations" McCain is either senile or batfuck insane. But I'm not happy that the response to the lie that "Obama is a muslim" isn't met with "so the fuck what? we don't have 'religious tests' in America", and I'm not happy that the Democratic candidate for President is giving any concern at *all* to what these ultra-right wing religious nutcases want.

You don't compromise with the guy on the street corner who thinks that "God told me that..."

You realize he's a lunatic, and move on.

My wife and I were talking and when she said something about the new Speedos the swimmers are wearing giving them better times, I said I recalled that in the original Olympics in ancient Greece the athletes were naked.

We should ask John McCain if that's true.

Judge says UC can deny religious course credit

(08-12) 17:25 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal judge says the University of California can deny course credit to applicants from Christian high schools whose textbooks declare the Bible infallible and reject evolution.

Rejecting claims of religious discrimination and stifling of free expression, U.S. District Judge James Otero of Los Angeles said UC's review committees cited legitimate reasons for rejecting the texts - not because they contained religious viewpoints, but because they omitted important topics in science and history and failed to teach critical thinking.

Cool.

Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining, and don't preach superstition and call it science.

Yes, a depression. Spelled: D-e-p-r-e-s-s-i-o-n. Wake up America, recessions don't work any more. Why?

Get serious folks. We had a 30-month recession not long ago. Eight years later the market's still barely at its 2000 peak, a loser. Worse, we're back in a new recession. But Washington politicians are keeping it a secret, feeding us doctored feel-good statistics as legendary political historian Kevin Phillips wrote in "Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know."

So we blindly refuse to bite the bullet and stop our out-of-control spiral into collapse. America needs a big wake-up call ... and it's coming soon, whether you like it or not!

Last November we posted "17 reasons America needs a recession." Today it's far worse, and getting worse still.

Read it here.

Weeks before bombs started falling on Georgia, a security researcher in suburban Massachusetts was watching an attack against the country in cyberspace.

Read more! »

This is supposedly happening now, but there are also reports that the bombing is ongoing.

Russia's position is Georgian forces can't be positioned to threaten S. Ossetia.

As near as I can tell, Georgia's position is on it's back, leg's raised to ward off further attacks.

If nothing else, I think we've just seen that Russia's response to our threat to put NMD along their borders will be similar to the threats we (and Israel) continue to make toward Iran, which could be paraphrased as "go ahead, make my day".

Bush (and our latent paranoia) may succeed in bringing back a more active cold war, yet.

That was the headline when I flipped CNN on, this morning. Thankfully, the story was just ending so I missed their "inciteful analysis", but caught enough to understand they're referring to the US and Russia having some sort of stand off over the S. Ossetia thing that will lead to a situation similar to what we endured for 40 years or so after WW II ended.

My first thought was "What? Isn't 'the war on terra' working out for the MIC?" I pondered, for a moment, the possibility that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could be coming to closure and those who profit from the US spending more than the next 20 nations combined need a new Emmanuel Goldstein, a new cash cow.

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We currently have 7 teams. I don't think we'll have a problem filling the last slot for an 8-coach league (speedy, does your buddy want to play again this year?), but there's actually room for 3 more coaches.

I'd prefer to include only people who post here, or used to post on the Yahoo titty board, but we need an even number of teams and already have an "outsider", so that's not even close to a hard and fast "rule".

Does anyone else want to join? Do any of you know how to get ahold of, for example, wanebell, or anyone else who's played before? If not, feel free to invite a friend. I'm in one of those "hellish" times at work, and don't have a lot of time to devote to filling out the league. (I'll most likely be leaving home soon to spend a few hours at work, today, which sucks donkey balls.)

Here's the link to the sign-up info.

I also set up the Pick 'em, again (because I REALLY fucking rock at that.) Sign up info is below the fold. Peen, feel free to advertise this game on cold's board, if you think anyone might want to join. It was fun the year the soresians did it with us.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards has admitted to having had an extramarital affair with a woman he met in a New York City bar in 2006, ABC News reported on Friday.

Not much to say about this. I supported Edwards' candidacy, but he seemed relegated to the dustbin of history, already. Sure, I supported him as AG and that's not likely to happen, now, but I never really believed it was likely yesterday, either.

If he ever made a statement condemning other people for having an affair I'd call him a "hypocrite", but as of now I'm unaware of such a statement.

Not sure about the timing. I think the affair came before Elizabeth re-discovered she had cancer, so there's no real parallel with McGoo dumping his disfigured wife for a younger, prettier woman, or Gingrich leaving his wife "on her deathbed" for a younger, prettier woman. Besides, he (says he) told Elizabeth shortly after it happened, and they worked through it. They're still married, at which point I'd say "it's none of my business" except for one thing:

If this had come out about "candidate Edwards" a few days before the election, it would have helped McGoo a great deal.

He shouldn't have run for President with this secret in his closet. That's hard to overlook.

It's a shame that this country would consider a politician having an affair more important than the outbreak of war between Georgia and Russia, but they do. Sometimes I wonder if I really fit in, here.

As described in the right wing WaPo blog:

Barack Obama's takeover of the Democratic Party is nearly complete.

A draft of the Democratic National Committee's 2008 platform was sent this morning to platform committee members, and aside from some nods to the losers, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards, the 54-page document reads like a compilation of Sen. Obama's stump speeches. There is a section on fatherhood, a definition of patriotism (not only to declare our love of this nation, but to show it), a section detailing Obama's newly rejiggered economic stimulus plan, a call for more service, through an expanded AmeriCorps and Peace Corps, and a whole lot of hope.

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How the Bush administration botched the 'war on terror' by overreaching.

The Bush administration needed a big win in the Salim Hamdan case at Guantánamo. It didn't get one. By convicting Osama bin Laden's former driver—the first "terrorist" to be tried under the first U.S. war-crimes tribunal since World War II—only of "material" support for terrorism, and absolving him of conspiracy to commit terrorism, the military judges provoked questions about what Hamdan was doing there in the first place. Is driving a car a war crime? The appeals court may decide not—in which case even this meager verdict could be thrown out.

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(Wherein a wingnut tries, and fails, to convince us that Obama has a chance to woo a fundie.)

OAKLAND, California, Aug 4 (IPS) - For the past three decades, the religious right has dominated the religio- political dialogue in the United States. The right’s growth, and its agenda -- which revolved around so-called traditional family values issues including, but not limited to, opposition to abortion and full equality for gays and lesbians -- was pursued on two tracks: they built multi-million dollar political and media enterprises, and they made themselves an indispensable force within the Republican Party.

snip

A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press, a sister project of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, found that while McCain has a smaller lead among white evangelical Protestants than Bush had at a similar point in the 2004 campaign, Obama has not benefited from evangelicals’ concerns over McCain’s religious authenticity.

snip

Some conservatives believe that the religious left is an oxymoron. "The annunciation of a religious left, like the heralding of the religious right’s demise, has become a growth industry," Manuel Miranda, the Chairman of the Third Branch Conference, a centre right coalition, told IPS in an e-mail. "It will not succeed for one simple reason: the religious left is really a political agenda speaking to Christians, just as the religious right are religious people influencing politics."

Anyone who's courting the religious right is either "with them", or bugfuck nuts. Which, when I think about it, is the same thing.

...an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush's Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

As an anniversary gift:

"The Pentagon must be very proud of itself today. It was able to obtain a conviction of arguably the least-culpable among the 80 detainees it intends to prosecute as war criminals. It convicted a truck driver of being guilty of driving a truck.''

-- John Wesley Hall, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers

So much for the trial that was going to showcase the effectiveness of Bush's suspension of the law to "keep us safe".

But hey! An unsecured beaker containing liquid anthrax, that at least 10 people had access to, was on Ivin's desk at one point. The anthrax case is closed! Absolutely zero evidence has been presented that Ivins did it, much less that he acted alone, but we're all "safer", now!

Republicans are starting to distance themselves from Bush. There's something pathetic and unprincipled about that, given that they were complicit in the policies that have made him unpopular. If the Republicans truly stood for sensible conservative policies, they would have ditched him six or seven years ago -- and we'd be better off for it.

The tragedy of the Bush presidency is twofold. First, we've dug ourselves into a huge fiscal hole with essentially nothing to show for it but IOUs to the rest of the world. That's not conservative, and it's not a big-government liberal either. I'm not even sure we have a word for it.

Second, the Republicans are now intellectually adrift. (To be clear, the Democrats have been intellectually adrift for at least 20 years.) The Republicans jumped on the Bush train because they wanted to back a winner, even as that train lurched in directions that cannot possibly be described as conservative.

I know conservatives. Conservatives are friends of mine. You, George Bush, are no conservative. And shame on the Republicans for not recognizing that sooner.

The Republican Party's nominee for president, John McCain, will address the Republican National Convention at the close of its ceremonies in early September.

The party's candidate for vice president - fill in the blank - will address the convention the night before.

The party's retiring president, George W. Bush, will address the convention in the Twin Cities of Minnesota on the opening night.

The party's retiring vice president, Dick Cheney, is still working on his schedule.

snip

The idea that Cheney might go fishing that week, the first week of September, could have something to do with his own ranking in the opinion polls - with an 18 percent approval rating in the latest Harris Poll. The Democratic National Committee also is going out of its way to raise Cheney's profile in the weeks leading to its own convention in Denver, billing McCain's running mate as "TheNextCheney.''

I'm not so sure having Bush speak is a great idea, either. Of course, they've got to let the grinning skull (McGoo) speak, so how much worse could Bush or Cheney make it?

Paris Hilton has finally responded to the taunting attack ad which so insensitively compared her to Barack Obama.

(See video at FunnyOrDie.)

Paris shows that unlike either Obama or rival John McCain (to whom she refers herein as "that wrinkly white-haired guy"), that she can gracefully and eloquently explain complicated matters of energy policy...while wearing a bikini and heels and looking at magazines.

"I'm not from the olden days and I'm not promising change like that other guy," she explained. "I'm just hot."

But though her aspirations may have been limited before, that all changed when McCain exploited her image in his ad. "Which I guess means I'm running for president," Hilton pledged.

Hilton then explains her energy plan, an incredible feat unto itself, as the heiress explodes all prejudices against her intellectual prowess by saying like 25 big words in a row without messing up.

If no one else has done so yet, I would like to be the first to endorse Paris Hilton for president of the United States.

LA Times

How's the weather?

It's (almost) unbelievable that this could happen to anyone under American law.

The first person to be tried in a military tribunal at Guantanamo will remain incarcerated no matter the verdict. Concerns remain about the procedure's fairness.

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 4, 2008

Excerpt below the fold.

Read more! »

Three Vital Questions for ABC News About its Anthrax Reporting in 2001

1. Sources who are granted confidentiality give up their rights when they lie or mislead the reporter. Were you lied to or misled by your sources when you reported several times in 2001 that anthrax found in domestic attacks came from Iraq or showed signs of Iraqi involvement?

2. It now appears that the attacks were of domestic origin and the anthrax came from within U.S. government facilities. This leads us to ask you: who were the “four well-placed and separate sources” who falsely told ABC News that tests conducted at Fort Detrick showed bentonite in the anthrax sent to Sen. Tom Daschle, causing ABC News to connect the attacks to Iraq in multiple reports over a five day period in October, 2001?

3. A substantially false story that helps make the case for war by raising fears about enemies abroad attacking the United States is released into public debate because of faulty reporting by ABC News. How that happened and who was responsible is itself a major story of public interest. What is ABC News doing to re-report these events, to figure out what went wrong and to correct the record for the American people who were misled?

Link to Greenwald's column

Interview

John McCain can't stand sucking up to the Christian right.
Is this the end of the GOP's unholy alliance?

Matt Taibbi

Phoenix, July 13th, Sunday morning. Thank God John McCain has declared that he wants to wallpaper the continent with new nuke plants, because now the chances are better that this wretched slab of hot, birdshit-covered asphalt they call a state will be blown to hell in an accident someday. I hate this place. Once the sun comes up on an Arizona weekend, nothing moves except the occasional elderly-piloted Buick floating boatlike in the direction of some hideous megachurch.

snip

The Republican party returned to power at the beginning of this decade thanks to a brilliantly innovative political hybrid represented in its most advanced form by the Bush-Cheney ticket — a high-tech engine of ruthless neocon capitalism wedded to a half-literate aristocrat dunce hiding his alcoholism in born-again Christian platitudes. Add corporate money to fundamentalist-Christian demographics in a country as dumb and superstitious as America, and you can vaporize a century's worth of Al Gores and John Kerrys.

GOP and URW churches parting ways?

I'd guess "no".

The mistake is made in referring to megachurches as "christian". They are slick political organizations, not churches.

The goal is a SCOTUS that will dismantle the BOR, not arguing about who will nominate them.

McCain promises to help.

Sorta makes me want to puke when I see things like this. It's no wonder we're slaves to our jobs and our mortgages. We're all "workin' for the man."

Source

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A senior U.S. government scientist who helped investigate a series of deadly anthrax attacks in 2001 has died from an apparent suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to charge him with carrying out the attacks, the Los Angeles Times reported on Friday.

The newspaper identified the man as Bruce Ivins, 62, and said he had worked for the last 18 years at government biodefence research laboratories in Maryland. It quoted people familiar with Ivins, his suspicious death and the FBI investigation.

It said Ivins had been informed of his impending prosecution shortly before his death on Tuesday after swallowing a massive dose of pain killers.

"Libruhls" targeted. Nation panicked. Innocent until proven guilty. No charges ever filed. No court proceedings. No evidence presented. No suicide note. Bush justice department in charge. Case closed!

I'm sort of surprised he didn't die in a "small plane crash".