Go see the posters at Brief Intelligence. They're terrific.

According to the UN, Iraq has agreed to destroy those mighty, mighty Samoud II missiles, which have a range, what 15 miles over their reported design specs? The North Koreans on the other hand are testing anti-ship missiles that can probably hit a target over the horizon and have baby ICBM technology underway.

Asked about the Iraqi announcement, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he saw no change in Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s pattern of non-cooperation. “This is exactly what’s been going on for years,” he told reporters in Washington. “Only when finally something ends up as a possible problem for them in the United Nations does he at the last minute throw in the towel and say, ‘Well, maybe I’ll do that.’

Keep in mind, that this is the administration that can not negotiate anything, and loves to order up adverse consequences for all who don't toe the line. Just look at Ashcroft nullifying a plea-bargain with a defendant and bullying prosecutors, and they're on his team. We're tough and we don't have to talk at home to each other and certainly not to anyone in the international community.

Ever.

It's just more scary when they're American Fanatics.

Passed while we weren't looking like the other one. Allows drooling moron Chickenhawk idiots like Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and all the rest of The Drooling Moron Brigade (The DMB) to say whatever the fuck they want with no consequences at all. Oh, I forgot, it's called the First Amendment. See, I told you it was passed while we weren't looking. It's a shame that the DMB is so abusive, and so clueless. They might actually realize how bad they sound if they could actually think.

Now I better stop, or they'll come arrest me for what I don't have.

Respect for Chickenhawk Morons.

Former Air Force Chief of Staff Tony McPeak spoke out about the really, really bad job that President McHappyCrack has done in the world of diplomacy. Now it's saying something when a retired Air Force Four-Star General has something to say about the McHappyCrack foreign policy and it's not so good. Hmmmm, I think I might have mentioned that things like this might happen...even though he's retired, he's probably pretty still got a few senior officers who aren't retired yet who think pretty highly of him, and value what he has to say.

McPeak served four years on the Joint Chiefs of Staff advising Bush’s father and then President Clinton after flying 269 Vietnam combat missions and participating in the Thunderbirds, the elite aerobatic team. He is also a graduate of Grants Pass High School.

Despite his military career, McPeak questions Bush’s priorities as the president confronts terrorism, North Korea and Saddam Hussein. It makes him worry about a return to federal budget deficits and about declining goodwill toward the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.

“I pray that America will last another thousand years, and during all of that time we’re a pre-eminent power,” says McPeak. “To do that, you have to understand the world in a more sophisticated way. You make your friends many and your enemies few.” (emphasis added)

Obviously General McPeak gets it.

Obviously President 1st Lieutenant McHappyCrack doesn't.

sssssh. not a word from DE. but don't tell anyone.

thanks to skippy for pointing me here to Mother Jones. Great timeline on President TheG-ForcesSquishedMyBrain and his alleged "honorable" service. As sad as it sounds, I had the responsibility of administratively separating Men who were more productive than him. Their problems were usually related to drugs; oh yeah his was too. I forgot.

My favorite quote from the timeline:

"They could sense I would be one of the great pilots of all time." Houston Chronicle, August 1988

Bwhahahahahaha

If you are generous in figuring that President SquishedBrain flew 200 Hours per year for a total of about 400 hours in the F-102 after he got his wings, which would have meant that he actually had a stick in his hand other than the one in his pants, he would have had to have flown every drill weekend (once a month. two days long), and then his two-week commitment each year, let's be generous and give him one in each year 1970, 1971 and 1972 for a total of six weeks, 42 total days. So that gives him 102 total flying days since he was "winged" in March of 1970 and taken off flight status due to his lack of physical in August 1972, at 200 hours/year he would have had to have flown an average of four hours every time he showed up. Doubt it. Logbooks anyone? Or did they disappear with the DD-214?

Here's a story (scrolldown a bit) about SquishedBrain taking now-Commerce Secretary Don Evans up in a Cessna 172. Apparently SquishedBrain could hardly taxi the plane and the flight left Evans shaking. So much for being one of the greatest pilots of all time.

At least he's consistent, he's flying the economy the same way. And we're all shaking and the ride's not over yet.

Uggabugga has a great link to a House website with many, many of the Bush Lies on them, including pictures of President Deficit making his asinine statements. Wow. Caught in the act, on film and everything. What was Dan Bartlett thinking allowing those pesky media whores in there?

Picture + Statement + Reality. Are the Dems in the House growing a spine? We can only hope

Time to pipe aboard another fine blog, The Disgusted Liberal head over and check it out.

Comments are down, if you have one, email it to me at the address on the right-hand side, and tell me which post it's for, and I'll publish it with your info (if you want your info included) when Haloscan comes back up. Thanks --JF

Excerpted from Atrios' comments, Feb 25 2003, 02:59 pm in this post
...Why should we support those who volunteered to murder?

David Ehrenstein

I wanted to tell you about my feeling about what David said, so settle in it's gonna be a long one.

David is brilliant writer, and not someone whom I would ever argue with in a battle of words or wits, because I'd surely lose. I am not at all talented as a great logician, thinker or writer. I'm just a guy with a blog and some wild experiences in my life.

Surely one of those is my time spent in the Navy. I remember that all I ever wanted to be was a Naval Aviator, I grew up watching the big P-3's fly in and out of Moffitt Field, in what's now the heart of Silicon Valley. Their final approach course was right over our house and they were so low, I could see the pilot's helmets. I folded papers for my morning San Jose Mercury paper route and watched A-4's coming into Moffitt or Alameda occasionally as the sun was rising, and I remember wondering if they had just flown back from a carrier off the coast, and imagining what the pilot flying the plane was doing at that exact moment in time (as I learned later, through experience, his inner Aviator was happy as hell to be getting out of that tiny cockpit soon).

So why am I going into all this? On the day I was commissioned in the wardroom of our Naval Science unit at college, I was wearing a set of Tropical Whites (the ones without that stupid choking collar) that my friends popped my new Ensign shoulder boards onto, the CO shook my hand and I joined a long, long line of officers in the US Navy.

I could hardly bring myself to take that damn uniform off. I got on a plane later that day and flew home to a small town in the south via O'Hare, and went to the USO lounge in my sparking, new Officer-suit. I just could not get over myself, looking back on it, I was such an Ensign. I boarded the connecting flight, which was about two and a half hours long and as I settled in the seat, I began thinking about what might be expected of me as a Naval Officer and in the future as a Naval Aviator (I already had my orders to Pensacola, so now I just had to get through flight school...hell, I knew that would be a piece of cake). I clearly remember thinking that at some point in my life ahead, I might be told that my mission would be one that involved the unpleasant realities of war. Even though we were at peace, the future was just as cloudy for me as for anyone else, so who was to know what it might hold. War could be as inevitable as peace was. To me the realities of war meant that someone, myself included, could get seriously hurt or even killed, sometimes randomly, sometimes with a purpose. War could be sensible (in the meaning of a mission to accomplish) or it could be senseless, the death me or of a comrade at random when least expected. It could mean the death of innocents, or the death of someone who was trying their best to ensure that you had seen your last sunrise at the last sunrise. I thought about all those things. It was a bit disconcerting, because all of a sudden, my spankin' new white uniform with the Ensign boards now made all those options real, for the first time, in a way that I never, ever thought of before. There was no turning back, no walking away, no leaving it all behind. I could not say "Oops", and I never wanted to.

I was a volunteer. I was part of the first wave of the "all-volunteer military", which was the catch phrase of the '70s military. I was not a volunteer to murder, I was a volunteer to serve my country. To give back something for the years I had spent growing up in a country that gave me an opportunity to do something I had always dreamed of. No person I ever met in the Navy (which has pretty much always been all-volunteer) signed up to commit murder, if by murder you are counting armed conflict dictated by National Policy, right or wrong. They would be horrified to even think that they were going to deliberately, or maliciously inflict harm on people who had done nothing to them.

I oppose the war-makers in this administration who are seeking their own political ends through an ill-conceived invasion of a sovereign state. I see no good outcome of a conflict in Iraq and I believe that such a conflict and invasion will forever stain the honor of our military because it was used as an aggressive political tool by a cynical, dishonest group of men and women who used it for their own purposes. I do not believe that the individual soldiers, sailors, airmen or Marines who are put in Harm's Way by these men and women are murderers or the moral equivalent of murderers, or will be dishonored or are dishonorable for their part in the conflict, whatever it may be. They are being asked to perform a mission by people who should know that this is a fool's errand, and should not be undertaken lightly.

It's instructive to note, that the oath that officers and enlisted men take is subtly different. While both pledge to support and defend the constitution, only enlisted men are obliged to "obey the orders of the officers appointed over them". Officers are not, which is sort of like the "free will" arguments in religious dogma. How some Officers will choose to exercise it remains to be seen. I think that it's already happened to some extent within the Pentagon, but was shut down quickly by the pro-invasion civilians in the DoD. I think that there will be more dissent from within the senior ranks, and maybe one or more quiet "retirements/resignations/reassignments" as things get closer a head in the Iraqi Theatre.

Those are my thoughts. I do not know if they gave pause to DavidE and the rhetoric of murder or not. All I can do is present my point, that we do not volunteer to commit murder, but to serve our country, and to think such a thing dishonors us all.

I think that my fellow Navy Vet Michael over at the Renaissance Grouch has it about right. I can't top what he said about Mr. Rice of Indianapolis, Indiana's quotation. Also take a look at Michael's essay on National Service, I think he's on to something.

Columbia's FARC movement has claimed that the three surviving members of a flight crew from a downed aircraft are POW's and will be held for exchange. The FARC guerrillas have demanded the release of members of their movement being held by the Columbian government. Since these three are ostensibly "contractors" in the drug war, how much responsibility does the US government bear for getting them out and how much does the company who is the contractor bear?

Well, we've been indoctrinated over the last 35 years that this is a "War" on drugs, but as with the "War" on Terrorism, it seems that the government takes a pretty laissez-faire approach to it's prosecution unless they can bust a bunch of Bong Dealers, you know, go for the easy mark, get big publicity, and the hell with the ones who can fight or flee.

Somewhere all three of these "contractors" have families, and the families want answers, not just are their loved ones OK, but how did this happen. I'm thinking that if I'm a contract pilot or crewmember in South America right now, and I see the US government dropping this, it'll be time to get on the big silver bird northbound. The UCMJ and the Code of Conduct do not apply to "contractors", so the last words in Espanol they'd hear from me would be "Hasta La Vista, Baby".

Another fine blog to be piped aboard the blogroll from Kynn Bartlett of The Inland Anti-Empire fame...his new blog is called Shock & Awe. Stop over, drink his beer, watch a little TV...just kidding. It's a really good blog (it's two blogs in one!) and worth a click and a read.

via SKBubba

Looks like the Department of Overreachin' Justice has done it again. In an announcement today, our noble and kind Attorney General reported that they have busted a whole gaggle of folks for selling Bongs and other "druggie" paraphernalia. I never knew it was illegal to have a bong, but then I never knew I could be locked up without due process either. So once again, here on the other side of the looking-glass all things are possible, and Ashcroft is the Red Queen.

I guess it's a good thing Kevin Smith made the last Jay and Silent Bob flick when he did, I can see the DEA guys waiting on the set to bust the cast and crew for possession of ... whatever.

Maybe Ashcroft just needs to get laid.

A friend sent me this. I like it.

Karl Rove is happier too, no words come out

A federal court judge dismissed a suit brought by a group of soldiers (what were they thinking?), their parents and six congressmen saying that the court had no business interfering in international political decisions.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro ruled that a federal court can judge the war policies of political branches of government only when actions taken by Congress and the president are in conflict -- a situation that does not exist today

The desire to reach an outcome other than the invasion of Iraq using the US Military as our sole instrument of foreign policy is certainly a noble thing, but trying to use the courts is, I believe, pointless. The six members of congress should have been working harder to prevent language in the House and Senate that emboldened the 1600 Crew policies and rolled over at their every command like trained puppies, not bitching about these policies now in court. Changes of that magnitude will only take place when Congress begins to find it's voice in this and every other disagreement with the President McOil Slick, stops rolling over and starts acting like responsible, adult Representatives .

Newsday reports that yet another Nix_xon-ian droid has surfaced in the 1600 Crew Adjunct Retread Department. Fred Fielding, an erstwhile young lawyer about 30 years ago who was John Dean's assistant in the Nix_xon White House has apparently been quietly vetting candidates for Judicial nominations for President SockPuppet on behalf of of the evil, liberal ABA.

...While serving on the ABA's nonpartisan Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, veteran Washington lawyer Fred F. Fielding also worked for the Bush-Cheney Transition Team, accepted an appointment from the Bush administration and helped found a group to promote and run ads supporting Bush judicial nominees, including Estrada...

Guess who gets Mr. Fielding's highest recommendation? Ummm, three choices kids; can't guess? Here's a hint, Microsoft used his initials in an OS release, and it's not Xavier Paul...okay you got it, very, very good.

This brings up a point that seems to have surfaced in the comments about this over at Atrios, wasn't there some sort of de-Nixonification when he tearily left office in disgrace in that hot summer of 1974? Well, no.

"De-Nixonification" died/became moot when Gerry Ford pardoned the son-of-a-bitch, an act he is still proud of to this day.

Nixon on trial would have taken down many of the trolls who survived his administration and are running the government today. He (Nixon) knew how to play the system and would have offered up countless smaller fish to avoid (in his mind) prosecution and thus responsibility for what he did.

It's instructive that these trolls have mangaged to survive and thrive in the poisonous politics inside the beltway for all these years, only to reemerge supporting a true Puppet President and they play him like a fiddle. It must make them wince when he gets all "godly" on them, since they know that they are the true road to power.

I think if they looked at Nixon as their Leader, they look at Junior as their Sock-Puppet, they're way too smart and resiliant to not play him for all it's worth, and it's worth a lot, in terms of money and power.

but i could be wrong, it's happened before...

Oh my, I just heard the ghost of Sam Ervin scream

Suppose there is another terrorist attack? It seems to be a universally accepted fact (at least in the media, who will be fighting for ratings showing the aftermath) that such a thing however unthinkable, will occur. Are we any better off than we were before 9/11? According to Martin O'Malley writing in the Houston Chronicle, (dangerously close to the heart of Tommy "the Enforcer" DeLay country) we really aren't. Corporate profiteers, basic budgetary bullshit and refusal to confront the problem on many levels are playing a part in our un-readiness.

But one of the biggest threats has to be funding:

...There is another dangerous, undeniable truth here: The federal government can't invest in homeland security when the Treasury is bled dry by incessant tax cuts and the ensuing deficits they cause...

Every Wednesday Grover Norquist, a figure once marginalized for his views on taxation and government, now commands an audience with some of the most powerful policymakers in Washington. I wonder how he's going to feel when someone points out his obsession with tax-cuts has cost the lives of thousands of Americans because the money to fund responses was not there.

He'll probably offer another round of tax cuts to make the survivors feel better, and point out that someone should have repealed the "death tax".

What a shocker!

The Post in a article today details how Embassies around the world are reporting that people just don't like our Beloved Leader. Imagine that. I guess it's because he has not come to their country and wrecked their economy, turned world opinion against them and stripped them of their civil liberties yet. Well, you piss-ant citizens of the world, just wait he'll get around to you soon enough.

Meanwhile, the 1600 Crew spin machine has come up with reason #1015 or is it 1016, I get sooo confused as to why we are sending our soldiers off for their spring vacation at the corner of Tigris and Euphrates Ave in Baghdad.

This week, the administration plans to begin a coordinated effort to draw attention to what one official called "the plight of the Iraqi people, with a focus on human rights and freedom and Saddam's brutality." As part of that initiative, the administration has scheduled a briefing today on Bush's plans for humanitarian assistance and reconstruction in Iraq, with participants from the White House and the Pentagon

It's just a suggestion, but how about focusing on human rights here at home? The working poor, welfare and medicare recipients, Disabled Veterans, and those two guys sitting in the Brig in Charleston who are American Citizens seem like a good place to start.

Well there it is, in living color, President DUI and Mrs. Traffic Accident posing with the whole family of Sami Al-Arian in living color. What a sight. So, in the bestest Fish curiousity, I wanted to know, how did Sami Al-Arian and family get to pose with the candidate and his plastic spouse? Could it have been money? Influence? Were they buddies of Karl Rove's? So I went to the FEC site found nothing really intriguing and then Googled for other money numbers from the 2000 Election Cycle, which led me here, to OpenSecrets.org, where I should have started looking. Interestingly enough, it looks like a family of very split-ticket donors...note Bonior (Al-Arian's son was an intern in Bonior's office); Cynthia McKinney and Tom Campbell, and Henry Hyde, who were recipients of his wife's (?) largesse...strange.

Have to wonder about this, especially since it's been reported that Al-Arian's son had access to some places in DC that you might not expect the son of a suspected terrorist to get into.

I wonder if the Al-Arian's are going to get those telemarketing calls soliciting donations from Tom Delay to make them "Business Leadership Advisory Council members" since there is an MD in the family somewhere.

Marc Fisher, whoever he is, writes in an article datelined the 21st about the innocuousness of talk radio hosts like Limbaugh, Savage, O'Reilly etc... He seems to be preemptively striking on behalf of MSNBC for Slate in the Savage matter. I have to say that his column/op-ed/whatever is second only to Howard Kurtz's ass-kissing of Rush and all the others.

According to Fisher, as long as Limbaugh and his ilk continue to produce ratings and thus profits for the suits at Clear Channel and other media conglomerates, then everything they do is "entertainment" akin to the Top 40 schtick they did as "air personalities" ie. DJ's. Here's a quote from Fisher:

What talkers say hardly matters; how they say it is everything. Those who succeed follow the dictates of Top 40 radio: Move fast, connect with the essential minutiae of listeners’ daily lives, hit listeners’ emotional core, and never get in too deep.

What they say hardly matters? Really? So when Rush impugned my honor and patriotism and that of other Vets who oppose war with Iraq, it was a meaningless statement? How does Fisher reach that conclusion?

I think that Marc Fisher put words on paper (so to speak) to get paid for writing an article for Slate. No one could be that stupid or deaf, dumb and blind. Or maybe he's trying out for Howie Kurtz's job on his knees....who knows.

Barney Gumble over at MWO watch watch watch watch has more on this story.

The FAA has established the biggest Temporary Flight Rules areas (TFR's) for President Fratboy Coward ever, for any President. Every place that the Fratboy Coward goes is covered by bigger restricted and prohibited airspace than any president in history. And they said he was just trying to be safe on 9/11 as he jetted around in AF One.

Usually most Presidential residences, including the White House and any permanent private residences (like say, Kennebunkport) they live in/use are covered by airspace called "Prohibited Areas" and designated "P-something" on aeronautical charts. Prohibited areas used to be from the surface to 3000 feet and a radius of three miles around whatever Presidential Palace residence they were surrounding, pilots knew where they were and always respected them. Now, Fratboy Coward has them extending all over the place, and pilots need ATC exceptions to even fly close them, so their best bet is to avoid them all together. The FAA just published a TFR/Prohibited area for Crawford for this weekend with a 30-mile radius, and from the surface to 18,000 feet. To be with in the 10-30 mile radius area probably requires an act of the omnipotent cloud being, and permission of the FAA administrator. Personally, I'd go find another activity to participate in this weekend if I lived in the area, like changing the oil in my car, or grocery shopping, watching the grass grow, something that has nothing to do with aviation.

Pilots not complying will be intercepted and "forced down". Remember, that Unka Dick and Unka Donny already set up a protocol to shoot down suspicious airplanes, so be careful out there and stay away from Texas if you're going flying this weekend. If you do live in Texas and are going flying, check your NOTAMs (Notices to Airmen) before take off and talk to ATC. Alot. Be safe out there.

Do you suppose Fratboy Coward sleeps with a nightlight too?

I propose that all progressive bloggers should band together and buy a small island, establish a government and then declare some fictional group on the island as "terrorists" ("Mussels for Peace" or something) and then apply for millions in US aid for fighting terrorism on our island. We can use that money to establish an anti-terror organization dedicated to fighting the Mussels and of course, blog about it.

It makes as much sense as still being at Orange Alert based on bad informants or spending money on the Homeland Insecurity Department.

Looks like we found the Turk's price.

After weeks of hard bargaining and delay, Turkey signaled today that it is willing to allow U.S. troops to use bases on Turkish soil to open a northern front against Iraq in exchange for billions of dollars in aid and help for billions more in loans.

And in return, I guess that we screw the Kurds again, after all is said and done in Iraq. So we have yet another group of nascent America-haters to deal with at some point down the road because we once again did the politically expedient thing for all the wrong reasons. Going to war in Iraq being just one of them, giving the Turkish Government everything they want being another.

How many more times do we have to allow the neocons to endanger our long-term security with their short-sighted thinking? I guess until January of 2005.

Recently in Gabon an outbreak of Ebola led villagers in a small town to stone to death four teachers for casting an "Ebola Spell".

In Kelle, people continue to believe that the Ebola disease is a spell that has been cast on them by witches, and four teachers accused of being the cause of the disease have been beaten and stoned to death," said Dieudonne Hossie, a local official. He did not say when the teachers were killed

Town officials have been invited to speak at the Heritiage Foundation's annual meeting on the topic "Stoning: Tough Love for Occult Practioners", they will also be receiving the Ashcroft Award for Best Summary Justice in a Third World Country, and will appear on the 700 Club to discuss methods for identifying and removing occultists from modern society.

Join me in welcoming Calpundit to the blogroll.

Must be the season for redesign...Tiger Lily over at Brief Intelligence has a stunning new look and Pandagon is da bomb (or is it how the Homeland Security Site should be...actual information.) Not_sure_do_not_ask_hard_questions....

Usually I am pretty much pro-military in many things having (mis)spent the better part of my youth there, but there's something about this story about Female AF Academy Cadets who are charging that they were sexually assaulted (the nice word) or Raped, the not-so-nice word while they were at the Academy that just makes the hair on the back of my neck stick up.

It's not that such assertions are unbelievable on their face, they are certainly very believable especially given the numbers involved here. The thing that makes this so sickening is the cookie-cutter treatment these women received from the Air Force when they tried to bring up the problem: "Don't rock the boat"; "Don't make us take our heads out of the sand", especially from those who were supposed to help them.

Read the article and pay special attention to the two most senior officers at the Academy statements.

In response to the charges, Brig. Gen. S. Taco Gilbert III, commandant of cadets, said in a recent statement that the academy took "all allegations of misconduct, including sexual misconduct, very seriously." He said that every case "is thoroughly investigated" and that any suggestion that misconduct went unpunished was "unfounded and untrue. ... In an earlier interview with KMGH, Lt. Gen. John Dallager, the academy superintendent, conceded that sexual assault was a "hugely under-reported crime" and promised a full investigation and a new approach to dealing with complaints of sexual attack and rape.

"We are not going to sweep it under the rug," General Dallager told the station. "We don't tolerate and condone sexual harassment, much less sexual assault. So it's a serious issue. It's got all of our personal attention and involvement."

From reading the story, one or the other or both of them is full of shit, or those women would still be there. That many women, especially those motivated to make it to a Service Academy seldom know the meaning of the word "quit". It takes something else to make them walk, and I suspect it wasn't because Freshman Physics was pretty damn difficult.

Well, the thousands of creatures with typewriters rule has finally come to pass for me. I blogged on aWol and the school funding situation several weeks ago and look what shows up in the op-ed of today's NY Times by Bob Herbert. Doubt he ever saw my blog, but hey at least the story is getting more exposure, as it should. The whole school funding thing is pretty sad, and he makes that point too, with a lot louder megaphone than I have. Go Bob!

Always wanted to say that.

Here's another stealth blogroller The Inland Anti-Empire out in sunny SoCal...and the newest addition over there on the roll...and this one is sort of neat to introduce with a very cool story about...well go check it out and remember the number 7000 when you go...

I had no sooner had finished "In or Out" below, and went to check my Hotmail, and I found this from Slate:

Is Carol Moseley-Braun a Crook?

... Though she was never indicted or punished, Moseley-Braun had some close calls with the law. ...

It's just going to be just more and more relentless...why we need Carol Moseley-Braun's baggage being dragged out by BushRoveCo operatives is beyond me. Why she needs it either is also a stumper. Get Out Carol.

With the announcement of "Dick" Gephardt and a few others recently, I have only one thing to say:

GET OUT!

and I mean that in the nicest way of course. I love you all to pieces, I think you are wonderful human beings with great ideas, strong beliefs and valuable contributions to our party and certainly our Nation. But at a time when we are facing one of the most formidable PR machines an incumbent President and Party has ever had, each one of you does little more than offer the BushRoveCo ammunition to beat us (fairly or not) about the head and shoulders and put us in a position of constantly reacting to everything.

Bottom line: it's easier to be focused when you're not contending with having to explain what some bonehead just said to the likes of a Ceci Connely or Joan Vennichio (sp?) of the Boston Globe I believe. And every hat in the ring removes the ability of all of us (it's not about you you silly candidates) to concentrate on the target: Regime Change in '04. So in the nicest way: if you're there for vanity, checking it out, to be a deal-maker or breaker...wait for another election cycle, because if you Ralph on us no one will ever want to know you again.

The preceeding public non-service pronouncement applies to all candidates who are just now "exploring", "forming" or otherwise groping around for a reason to get some media attention. We won't mention braun names of people "chickenhawk" joe lieberman we'd like to see sharpton drop out kucinich of the gephardt race now and perhaps become players in other ways (VP's? well, except Chickenhawk Joe)

Via TBogg

Howard Fineman has to have hit the absolute bottom today. In an MSNBC column where he channels President AWOL's thoughts, he makes the case that AWOL is a fine, fine man. If President AWOL learned all the lessons that Fineman ascribes to him, why did he run out on his military obligation to the Texas Air National Guard and our country when we were at war? If he possessed the moral clarity to know that all the Vietnam protesters were wrong, then why did he not follow the examples of Bob Kerry, Max Cleland, Tom Ridge and and Chuck Hagel and get his stupid frat-boy ass to SE Asia, HOWARD? Or could you just be wrong and so enamored of your access to the AWOL that you can't see a coward when he's sitting across the room from you? What the hell else explains his flying around the country on 9/11 besides avoiding, yet again, being in Harm's Way?

Oh, I forgot, providing a Photo-Op for a fund-raiser. AWOL Looks Serious; I thought he was playing "Where's Waldo?"

p.s. I am sorry for insulting any ladies (or men) of the evening, it's just that it's that whole doing it for money thing that seems to fit here...

I wuz stealth blogrolled by The Lefty Directory and SouthKnox Bubba, and now I'm belatedly, and proudly adding them to my Blogroll. Welcome Aboard, y'all and thanks for having me over!!

Drop over and see what's cooking at their fine blogs!

If the war on Iraq goes ahead as planned, and it seems that no amount of discussion, reasoned or otherwise is going to change Smirky's mind since he's had it "made up" or made up for him since at least 2000 (maybe before, it's debatable). What happens when the war becomes the terrorists single biggest recruiting tool in the Islamic sphere of influence world-wide? We are facing the possibility that the same relatively apathetic young Muslim male (or even female in some places) who would normally discount the rhetoric of an extremist like OBL, or such rehetoric would at least fail to overcome their own self-induced lethargy might become galvanized enough to "rally to the cause". After all, isn't that what happened in Afghanistan when the Soviets invaded, and wasn't one of those disaffected, (not poor, just bored?) young men who was a faithful adherent to the tenets of Islam not a young Osama bin Laden?

I'm not sure if this is really an idle line of thinking, or if I'm way off-base here. Would an invasion of Iraq bring forth the next OBL? Now that would really be developing a Weapon of Mass Destruction and once again, the US would bear the responsibility.

For more than one reason, before heading into Iraq with guns blazing amidst the rockets red glare, I remind the 1600 Crew: Remember Afghanistan.

Does a Rupert Murdoch - owned enterprise (FX/Fox) running The Pentagon Papers , and hyping the hell out of the show, count as an exercise in Cognitive Dissonance or is it just my imagination? Just curious.

It's a good thing that it was all recorded for posterity in the courts, or FX/Fox would have us all believing that the evil Johnson and Kennedy administrations were being bad and the enlightened Nixonians saved our Democracy. Of course I have not seen the show yet, so for all I know that's going to be the re-write.

From the LA Times (login gorevidal/gorevidal). It seems that Terrell Dotson a WWII vet who was a proud homeowner somehow managed to not pay LA a tax bill of $546 dollars and had his house sold out from underneath him at a tax auction without even knowing that it had happened. Now he lives like a homeless person, and although everyone seems to admit he got screwed by the City/County/whatever of Los Angeles, he ends up with the short end of the stick.

The minimum bid for the one-bedroom, one-bathroom Inglewood condominium was just $4,287 -- enough to pay back taxes, interest, penalties and the costs of selling the property. The county was selling the condo because, seven years ago, Dotson failed to pay one $546.81 tax bill.
When the bidding hit $81,000, the auctioneer bellowed, "Sold!"
With that, Terrell Dotson, an Army veteran of World War II, lost the home he had paid for in full -- and all that came with it. "I bought this thinking I'd have lifetime security," said Dotson, a diabetic who also has cancer. "I got a big surprise." ... In an odd twist, the county now owes Dotson money -- the tax payments he made after the condo was sold, as well as the difference between the delinquent bill and the sale price. He stands to get at least $55,000, which in Los Angeles won't buy much.

Thomas and Taylor continue pushing, hoping for the return of his property, for compensation or at the least for an attorney who can assist them. They believe the sale should be revoked because of diminished capacity.

The proud veteran is not ready to surrender to age, to be defeated by need. He rejects suggestions that would place him in the care of others. There is much he can still do: He drives to doctor's appointments, gives himself daily injections of insulin, visits the senior center.
...
For Dotson, time is running out. Under state law, former property owners have a year to contest a tax sale in court. Dotson's year ends in March.

"I want my property back," he said. "Then, when I get it back, let me think about what I'm supposed to do."

A retired, hardworking WWII veteran misses out on the complexities of the property tax rules. Darn pesky cash-paying homeowners, if he'd just had a mortgage the bank would have been getting their fees to take care of those pesky payments. It's nice to see a government with a heart.

Any attorneys out in LA who can help this guy out, he did his part, can you do yours? It's not like there's a shortage of lawyers in this country and Mr. Dotson stepped up when he was needed, can someone do the same for him?

From today's Columbus (OH) Dispatch, this is a killer funny story, can you imagine heading up to the Smirky Motorcade and serving a subpoena for the National Debt? HA!

Failing to pay debts had dire consequences in the 19th century.

On Feb. 17, 1804, the Ohio General Assembly authorized the creation of debtors prisons.

The law read: ''There shall be erected in each county a good and convenient courthouse, and a strong and sufficient jail or prison, for the reception and confinement of debtors and criminals, well secured by timber, iron bars and grates, bolts and locks and also a pillory, whipping post and so many stocks as may be necessary for the punishment of offenders.''

However uncomfortable the imprisonment legislation might have read, in practice it was much worse.

Cincinnati's Western Spy newspaper reported in 1817: ''All (are) promiscuously confined in a single apartment, and without even the comfort of a bench to sit upon. Here is to be seen the disgusting -- the heart-rending -- spectacle of men and women, whites and blacks, murderers and debtors, all in one undistinguished group.''

People unable to pay loans or bills could be imprisoned for years.(emphasis added)

The prisons did not survive the century.

Suppose that you could lock up the Credit Card Conservatives for fiscal irresponsibility, would they ever wise up? Doubt it, beside, I think that there are some members of Congress who might pay big money for the "well secured by timber, iron bars and grates, bolts and locks and also a pillory, whipping post and so many stocks..." part.

Yet another gem from the NYTimes. Seems that the folks Rumsfeld in his big office in the Pentagon are is starting to think about what could go wrong, or are at least acknowledging that an invasion of Iraq might not be the same as say, oh, Grenada. The bad part is that the master list of things that could get hosed up is locked in Rumsfeld's desk, probably with his Hacks and Cracks for EverQuest and WarCraft. Seems Rummy takes out his list, checks it twice, fires a General or two, gets new weapons and adds some life-force to himself (well, he's been around since Nix_xon).

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has a four- to five-page, typewritten catalog of risks that senior aides say he keeps in his desk drawer. He refers to it constantly, updating it with his own ideas and suggestions from senior military commanders, and discussing it with President Bush

His list includes a "concern about Saddam Hussein using weapons of mass destruction against his own people and blaming it on us, which would fit a pattern," Mr. Rumsfeld said. He said the document also noted "that he could do what he did to the Kuwaiti oil fields and explode them, detonate, in a way that lost that important revenue for the Iraqi people."

That item is of particular concern to administration officials' postwar planning because they are counting on Iraqi oil revenues to help pay for rebuilding the nation.

Yeah, they'll get to buy their own oil back from Chimpy McDryhole's oil baron buddies at some discounted rate to resell (through McDryhole's buddies) to pay for their own reparations. The 1600 Crew has no aspirations to help anyone not rich enough to help them stay in power...forever.

On both sides of the Atlantic it seems that they want to go go go to beat up on everyone's fave evildoer, Sad - Am Hoosane. According to this story in todays NYTimes (fish01/fish1 to login if you don't want the spam) both President Warhardon and the Poodle really don't think they need to go back to the UN for any more advice and consent.

President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain have said a new resolution is not strictly necessary, since Resolution 1441, adopted by the Security Council on Nov. 8, explicitly declared Iraq in "material breach" of its obligations and offered the country "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations.

But given the building international opposition to a war, with millions of demonstrators taking to the streets of more than 300 cities around the world on Saturday, a new resolution from the Council could lend additional legitimacy to a possible war to disarm President Saddam Hussein.

Remind me again why anyone who is not a FReeper living in la-la land, or Ann Coulter trusts either of these two to tell the truth about this?

I don't think it's just to keep the Lunatic Right Wingers happy...Bush is truly obsessed, the problem is, he's going to drag the country down into a religious free-for-all

Seems that among other things a new Education Department rule is making getting Federal Money (yes our tax money) contingent on schools allowing religious practices to be encouraged. Am I being naive here, or do we also have Churches in this country to allow Religious Practices? Can I insist that since there is such a distinct cross-over, I'd like all church members who are taking advantage of this new rule in the public education system to now have an Evolution Class in their Church, you know, the equal time thing? I keep wondering when we start the Witch Trials again. I guess if Jenna or Barbie start blaming their alcohol problems on the devil, all bets are off.

Great Newsday article on the subject of Bush and his little obsession. Devotion is one thing, fanaticism is another. Between him and Jehovah Johnny we could have the Christian Evangelical Church of America (membership mandatory) before we know it. Non-members subject to dunking then burning. Inquisitions could be run out of a Carlyle Group subsidiary that specializes in selling torture equipment to Police State Countries or The School of the Americas (or whatever it's called now).

I wonder if President Prayerbook has ever even seen the Constitution. Doubt it.

Seems that our current Terra alert is due to some polygraphs that may have been a tad deceptive, and the fact that apparently the CIA waited about three weeks before sharing some of its information with the FBI. So much for the new intelligence community cooperation. On ABC's This Week this morning, Tom Ridge had this to say under the Stephanopolous grilling (not):

Ridge defended the Bush administration's decision last week to increase the level to the second from the top on a color-coded scale of five, even though the government later determined that some of the information which led to the upgrading was likely fabricated.

"The decision to raise it to orange was not based on one or two sources," he said on ABC's "This Week."

But wait, it gets better, and I thought that he was just going to answer questions about the terror alert. I guess he hasn't learned how to sing with the 1600 Crew Hymnal yet. Georgie was asking him about the bad polygraphs and then asked him about the "known" Al-Qaida suspects in this country and here's part of Ridge's response:

"We know that they've got a rather substantial network. But this is a country that operates under the rule of law. There are restrictions to what we can do and when can do it," he said. "When the rule of law and the burden of proof gets us to where we can take action, then I assure you we will."

I guess that he missed the part where Herr Reichsfuhrer Ashkroft was rounding up any swarthy immigrant with a parking ticket and holding them without benefit of counsel, where there are at least two American Citizens are being deprived of their due process rights and where the original Patriot Act allows some pretty un-American behavior, and the new one makes us look like Nazi Germany II.

If you read no other blog today, read this Seeing the Forest about the Diebold Machines in Georgia on the last election day. And I'll bet there's no way to 'check' the results now. Holy Shit this is a frightening turn of events in our Democracy. Did this give Chickenhawk Chambliss an unethical or even illegal advantage/edge?

Maybe it's really time to contact our legislators/legislatures and start telling them "NO" to exclusively computer-based voting unless Vendors start building full audit features, and allow code review as well as including a ballot print-out for the voter

From CNN

Yet another order of some sort. I think it'll be news when President Lies-at-the-drop-of-a-hat signs a bill that's not secret or something.

... The warning comes less than a week after administration officials confirmed that President Bush had signed a secret order allowing the government to develop guidelines under which the United States could launch cyber attacks against foreign computer systems. ...

Which of course means hiring 1600 Crew-friendly contractors (big contributors or Carlyle Subsidiary) at a zillion bucks, spending years writing code on and finally giving up because the targets are all running anti-virus software on their machines behind firewalls. But hey they tried and it was a secret, right?

It's bad enough that Powell has turned into a shill for a man whom he once indirectly leveled withering criticism in his book for his mix of affluence, influence and (tenuous) military service. But Powell has even become the man he never wanted to be, or maybe he's become exactly what he set out to be; a respectable zero. Looking up some other information on the Secretary of State led me to this two-year old TNR article on Colin Powell, absolutely fascinating reading, follows his career from start to finish and lots of emphasis on how he got where he is today, he too is a Nixon-era alumnus/retread (White House Fellowship in 1972).

Compare this quote at the UN Security Council yesterday

Waiting his turn, Powell sat impassively Friday at the horseshoe-shaped U.N. Security Council table, taking notes. When his time came, he used the notes but also spoke extemporaneously, saying the progress reported by chief U.N. weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei was "all process, not substance."(emphasis added)

"What we need is for Iraq to disarm," Powell declared.

To this:

Powell often disagreed with the Army or the government, or with the direction of the country. But he rarely spoke out. Rather, he made a point of keeping his head down and doing his job. "Issues come and go," he once told The Washington Post. "Process is always important." (emphasis added)

Then there's this little nugget which I think is kind of relevant given the imminent events in the Gulf:

When George (H.W.) Bush declared that "this will not stand," Powell thought the statement was precipitous and groused that the commander in chief had not consulted him first, Woodward reports. In October 1990 he privately told Britain's air chief marshal--but not the president--that a war with Iraq could trigger an anti-Western backlash among the Arabs or decay into a war of attrition that the public would not support, according to The Generals' War by Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor.

In the final hours of the ground war, Powell counseled the president to call off the fighting. It was the only "option" he proposed, even though the Republican Guard, which Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf had sworn to "destroy," had not yet been destroyed. The guard escaped to crush a rebellion by Shiites and to help Saddam remain in power. Confronted with an unexpected opportunity to rid the world of an evil dictator, Powell's instinct was not to improvise and exploit the opportunity. It was to quit while he was ahead. Pressed for answers afterwards, Roth writes, "Powell repeatedly reminded those who were disappointed that toppling Saddam was not part of the assigned mission

Now that's pretty interesting and certainly makes the case for being a shill. Maybe Powell ought to just get sandwich board that says "will abandon my principles for anything" on one side and just a simple "for sale" on the other, and stand out on the White House lawn on Mon-Wed-Fri and in front of the UN on Tue-Thurs. He can have Sunday off to go to church with President ReligiousZealotry, and go have Sunday dinner with his son (also available to the highest bidder..sort of a chippie off the old block, so to speak).

An aircraft that was being used for some sort of intelligence on some sort of mission in Colombia had mechanical problems and crashed somewhere in Southern Columbia. Of the crew of five onboard, an American Janis Thomas and another man, Sgt. Luis Alcides Cruz of the Colombian Army were found executed about a mile from the wreckage of the plane. The other three crewmembers are still missing.

Hell of a fate for one Columbian and four Americans in the losing "War on Drugs". Is the War on Terror going to go the same way ultimately? Obituary footnote stories buried on the inside of the paper or an occasional page one story when there is success in the War on Terror equivalent to the seizure of a ton of pot at a border crossing?

Mark Kleiman makes a point via Philippe de Croy about the Estrada nomination. It makes me wonder if judicial vetting by the Senate is similar to the popular conception of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: if you can't observe something, you won't affect it. In this case not being able to see or "observe" Estrada's work product at the Solicitor General's office, it will not affect that work product now that it's in the past. Heisenberg does not apply. However, will as Mark points out future nominees worry about what they do, write, and say with the thought that their future appointments may be affected by all those things. So Heisenberg does apply. And that's as it should be, there is no way that these folks have no opinions, no values and attach no significance to the world around them then all of a sudden gain consciousness upon gaining appointment to the bench. To believe that is just plain silly and stretches the credibility of the senators, the voters and the Republic.

To all physicists, please forgive my playing "fast and loose" with Prof. Heisenberg.

Several Congressmen have or are getting ready to file a lawsuit against the 1600 Crew, alleging that there was actually no authorization for a war in Iraq. Given the right's love of the the strict constructionism idea and their formation of that weird club, The Federalist Society (Skull and Bones Lite, perhaps?), you would think that this might be more meaningful in their debates. But then the Federalist Papers were just written by a bunch of dead guys with radical ideas, right?

As we head off into the fog of a conflict that seems to be driven by a group of men who for their own reasons are willing to set the globe on fire for motives as yet unexplained to many, many people on this small planet, it's worth it to look at the following words from Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers

Federalist 24 - Hamilton It has indeed been brought forward in the most vague and general form, supported only by bold assertions, without the appearance of argument; without even the sanction of theoretical opinions; in contradiction to the practice of other free nations, and to the general sense of America, as expressed in most of the existing constitutions. The proprietory of this remark will appear, the moment it is recollected that the objection under consideration turns upon a supposed necessity of restraining the LEGISLATIVE authority of the nation, in the article of military establishments; a principle unheard of, except in one or two of our State constitutions, and rejected in all the rest.

A stranger to our politics, who was to read our newspapers at the present juncture, without having previously inspected the plan reported by the convention, would be naturally led to one of two conclusions: either that it contained a positive injunction, that standing armies should be kept up in time of peace; or that it vested in the EXECUTIVE the whole power of levying troops, without subjecting his discretion, in any shape, to the control of the legislature.

If he came afterwards to peruse the plan itself, he would be surprised to discover, that neither the one nor the other was the case; that the whole power of raising armies was lodged in the LEGISLATURE, not in the EXECUTIVE; that this legislature was to be a popular body, consisting of the representatives of the people periodically elected; and that instead of the provision he had supposed in favor of standing armies, there was to be found, in respect to this object, an important qualification even of the legislative discretion, in that clause which forbids the appropriation of money for the support of an army for any longer period than two years a precaution which, upon a nearer view of it, will appear to be a great and real security against the keeping up of troops without evident necessity.
...
Federalist 69 - Hamilton
It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first General and admiral of the Confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the DECLARING of war and to the RAISING and REGULATING of fleets and armies, all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature.

It's amazing what they were thnking of back then. What do you suppose Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and the rest would think of the current adminstration?

I think they'd wonder who let BushRoveCo. into the government.

So while the INS is rounding up and jailing men over the age of 16 to wit:

non-immigrant males last admitted on or before 30 Sept 2002 male from pakistan or saudi born on or before 13 jan 87 and do not have an application of asylum pending on or before 18 Dec 2002 and not otherwise exempt as described in attached questions an answers and will be in the US at least until 21 feb 2003

So, come on down, get registered (photographed, fingerprinted, and interviewed under oath) or whatever. For those on the Feds list of "bad countries" who have voluntarily turned themselves in, but have INS-inflicted Green Card problems, it seems the future citizens are generating headaches and a PR problem the size of Alaska, since have done nothing but wait, wait wait and then get screwed by the the agency charged with helping them become taxpaying citizens. But hey, that makes the rest of us safer, protecting us from law-abiding immigrants unlike perhaps:

It seems that the FBI might have been watching some possible real terrorists, right here, and I'll bet not too many if any the folks "caught" in the net are not among the 600 or so that the FBI is watching. It seems very strange that they announced that they are watching these suspected terrorists now, coincidentally with the "orange" alert thing.

Can someone explain this to me? Or like all other crap coming from the Department of (In)Justice, is it just more bobbing-and-weaving, while trying to deflect any blame or shame?

FYI, I think that once again the arbitrariness involved in the latest sweep due to end next week is silly. According to the website are Pakistani and Saudi, males have until Feb 21st, 2003 to show up and be inspected.

Coincidence?

Not a question that I had given much thought to before. But an email from a fellow blogger whose writing I admire got me to thinking about this. Then sitting at the Bagel Shop this morning, there was a USA Today with an article with much the same theme, and as I recall a picture of Colin Powell on it. Of course it might have been Colin Powell talking about something else, since between him and Condi they seem to have become the two foremost shills for BushRoveCo these days...but I digress.

So the question is what to do about Saddam?

In the event of the war, like is that really a question anymore, should Hussein be captured, then I think he should be tried as a war criminal only if he has done things in this conflict that warrant such prosecution. As emotionally invested as some people seem to be in having his sorry ass served up an plate, he is still the sovereign leader of a Sovereign Nation and is only "answerable" to them, which means that unless he does something really stupid in a war like executing POW's out of hand, or some similar war-related insanity (first/sole use of chem/bio weapons would count too) he should not be tried for war crimes by any but other Iraqis or the Hague of they chose to exercise jurisdiction, by request of the IRAQI people.

Hussein, no war, but still there. In the less likely event that Hussein were to be overthrown or displaced by methods other than warfare (inside military coup, a little assistance from other Arab countries to his opposition), I still see this as an internal matter. However, there is a good model in some ways to follow here with what happened to the Shah of Iran. When the Islamic revolutionaries tossed him and his family out of Iran, he basically became an international Pariah. No country would take him in for more than days, even when he was terminally ill. Even though he was our "creation", we shunned him because of our fear of "terrorist" reprisals from the Islamists, and being worried how it would look to "harbor" such a man. Don't think that Hussein has forgotten this. I think it will put Saddam's back up against the wall even more, if he sees no options for getting out.

Which leaves the last question, Exile. I do not believe that Hussein would choose this option voluntarily, believing (correctly or not) that he can not be exiled and survive. As distasteful as it may be, just because he's a monster does not give us the right to execute him or even try him.

Exiling him seems on its face, like a reasonable solution, but again going back to the Shah of Iran, how viable is it really? And do we the people of the United States want to be responsible for guaranteeing his safety and security should he accept the terms of Exile?

I would have to say that the answer is no.

Wow! Could not have happened to a nicer guy. Pat Robertson has Prostate Cancer. I'm guessing the cancer started in his brain years ago, and worked its way down. But then again since he's all asshole anyway, maybe all it was just a matter or time before something else got cancerous (aside from his personality).

Question: if the surgeon screws up the operation, would Pat be happy with a $250,000 maximum award? Discuss among yourselves.

Cowboy Kahlil pulls apart some threads that connect the administration, to see what lies beneath. Worth the read. It's truly frightening how long this administration has actually been in power in Washington. I don't think that any of them can call themselves "outsiders".

You might also want to consider Kahlil's Red Alert.

Sure, most of us have. We did after all support them with either our time or money or both. We put their bumperstickers in our car windows, maybe distributed literature on at shopping centers, went to rally's you all know the drill. Then came Election 2000. Everyone did all those things and we had election day. Then came Florida. Within hours, many millions of us with campaign literature in our backseats, candidate's buttons on our jackets and that naivete that your guy can still pull it out began to learn about chad, hanging (the Republican's favorite kind); pregnant; and every other permutation and combination of paper-unable-to-be-poked-through a simple hole by a voter. Then we were treated to the ruminations of the discernment of Voter Intent. I was waiting for the OJ Jury Consultants to show up...wait, I think I did see JoEllen Demetrius once. Then blazing punditry, pronouncements, and finally the pontification of the unelected wise men and women in the Supreme Court in the un-election of the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Wow, that was a long way to go to get to...

...Voting Machines

I have a confession to make, I'm a sort of high-tech, geeky kind of guy. Sure, I'm a macho former Naval Aviator (I look much more like Zorro's fat mustachioed sidekick, whatzizname, than Tom Cruise), I disdain rollercoasters as "kid stuff" and hell, I'll even handle poisonous snakes. But ladies and gentlemen, for all that, I prefer my voting on paper, with old-fashioned auditability and accountability built into the system. After having worked in the technology sector for the last decade and a half, and staying in the relatively un-sexy hardware and networking side, I have come to value techie-inventions that make my life easier. But I value the ones that I can look into and see what makes them tick, where it's broken and able to be fixed, far more than stuff that has no user or even techie transparency.

Voting Machines

So now the move to put paperless, touchscreen voting machines out there is riding a swift almost crushing wave. What's wrong? The machines are only made by one or two companies, they are non-serviceable by your local county/precinct/parish whatever voting officials, in fact said officials can't even hire tech support to take care of them on election day. The machines produce no paper or auditable record of how you voted, and once you leave the booth, there is no way to dispute whether the vote was even recorded correctly. The manufacturers are refusing to release the source code for independant audit, claiming (wrongly, I think in the public interest) Trade Secrecy, and such. No, I think if we buy this software, we do not just get the license, we should at least get the source code too, and the rights to modify it if need be by other independent developers who agree to make the changes/do the work for the good of the voters, not the companies. I am not suggesting Open Source VotingWare, but code that's reviewable by us, the buyer to keep everything honest. IssuesGuy, at Seeing the Forest has several links to this here. If this is not a big deal to you, then consider this, if the election could be turned as much on it's head as it was in 2000, think about an election where the voting machines are controlled exclusively by companies that donate heavily to a political party (in this case the Republican party), or have former company officials in the Congress (Sen Chuck Hagel R-Ne) for example.

There is nothing inherently either evil or wrong about the introduction of electronic voting to our electoral process. There is something very wrong a bout making the process as secretive and inaccessible as these companies wish to do. A secret ballot is one wonderful thing, a secret ballot counter is an all-together different thing.

They should not be allowed to have a vote in their own future, until we can see the votes in ours.

So Patriot II shows up on the Post's Editorial page first? Pretty sad.

If I didn't know better, I'd say there was a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy @ work.

It seems recently that Glenn Reynolds has become less and less of a "smart read"...I don't know if it's because he has become PerpetualRoboPundit or if he just run out of things to say that are worth reading. I have a link to IP on my Equal Bandwidth blogroll, I doubt anyone has ever used it. My question is, should I keep it? I have actually corresponded with Tacitus via comments and Andrea Harris as well. Both seem to be intelligent, well reasoned defenders of the loyal opposition. I was thinking of replacing IP with PejmanPundit, who's pretty much of a rightie pundit, but a nice enough guy. ( I was hoping he was gonna get me into TBogg's contest by enlisting).

Thoughts? I know it's my blog and I can dump IP if I wanna...but I hate to seem, reactionary or anything. Leave me a comment if you care, I'll do something about it in the next day or so.

Would a war in Iraq destabilize Afghanistan?

No, really this is their headline on MSN, which you so obligingly get when leaving Hotmail. Now I once had a professor who oft-repeated that old chestnut: There are no stupid questions...etc...

He had no concept of the modern media. I guess that my obvious answer would have to be: "When was Afghanistan stable?". I mean the whole Afghan situation is sitting over there simmering while McHappySnort & Co. are trying to figure out if OBL is actually dead or alive, (maybe Peggy Noonan can channel him) and June Thomas of Slate asks a question like that.

I have to wonder what the solution BushRoveCo do have in mind for Afghanistan. It's become increasingly clear the the "hands-off" no-nation-building-policy preferred by the neocons/chickenhawks toward Afghanistan is beginning to breed considerable resentment among the current residents of the country.

Sucks to be them and have no subterranean oil reserves, eh?

Weren't there grand proclamations made by the 1600 Crew about the liberation of the Afghanistan and how we would "aid" them in their transition to democracy? Hmmm. Could it be yet more politically-inspired jaw-flapping by this administration, that keeps no promises except for tax breaks for their wealthy investors rich friends, the incursion of debt and the inevitability of a war that may prove worse than they expect?

I'm not sure I want to know the answer to that question.

to The Sentimentalist and the newly renamed To the Point (formerly known as MattS formerly known as the best most fun commentary...)

...what would you get, an annoying, virgin Chupacabra*?

TBogg has some musings on which bus the Virgin Ben rides to classes at UCLA and whether or not his editors went to school at all...

*Apologies to Atrios

Justin Raimondo over at antiwar.com has a great almost minute-by-minute synopsis of how the OBL transcription story went throughout the day. Check it out.

Worth a glance.

The best piece of news today. Well, I guess that he can get a gig at either the Heritage Foundation or The Federalist Society, a pundit gig on Faux and no kidding, he's set and having way more fun than on that stuffy old court! ...Let's hope this is the first of many filibusters in the next 24 months or so.

You know that maybe as pissed off as Smirky McHappycrack is acting, the fact that this statment came from that powerful press person Ashley Snee (I am not making this up) speaks to their ultimate goal, let it go down in flames, and then blame Daschle and Co. for "obstruction", like they did not do this to almost every one of the Big Dog's nominations for everything:

White House spokeswoman Ashley Snee said the administration objected to the Democratic demands. She said Estrada had responded appropriately to questions at his hearing and that handing over the requested documents would amount to an unwarranted intrusion into the deliberative process.

Ashley Snee? Is she serious about that statement, responded appropriately? No one in this entire administration knows the meaning of those words....

Now, Senators can we talk about Patriot II? If that proposal does not end up D.O.A. on the steps of the Hill, then why waste your time on the rest of this?

Even former cold-war adversaries see the risk.

French President Jacques Chirac, reading the declaration in the presence of visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Iraq's weapons capability must be neutralised as quickly as possible, but that waging war should be considered only as a last resort. ... "Nothing today justifies a war," he said. "This region really does not need another war. ... "We are against the war," Putin said. "At the moment, that's the view I have.

Will Perle and Wolfowitz be in the first string of Airborne troops out of the C-141 into Baghdad?

Sept 17, 2001 President Bush, vowing not to be "cowed by evil-doers," pledged a crusade against terrorists yesterday as top administration officials zeroed in on Saudi exile Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan's Taliban militia for possible retribution for last week's terrorist attacks.

Today, OBL starts with: We are following very carefully the preparation of the crusaders to invade the Iraqi land and take the wealth of the Muslims and install a regime that has Tel Aviv and Washington on its head to run you, in preparation for the establishment of greater Israel, God forbid.

Who says words have no meaning?

Jeebus

Update

The OBL translation was from an MSNBC translation provided at about 4PM eastern. When I went back to link to it, it had been pulled/changed so I left what I had intact. I can not vouch for it's veracity as an exact translation of OBL, but I'll stick with it, since it speaks to the effect of Smirky's original mis-use of the the whole crusade thing in 2001 (I gasped when I heard that one originally, as did many other actual, sentient Americans).

So OBL has sort of come out supporting Iraq, but not Saddam, whom he has always despised for being a secular leader. I think that OBL is to Islam what some politicians in this country are to Christianity, you can never be pure or virtuous enough for them.

What would the worst case scenario you can imagine being? President Colorforms rolls in on Iraq with all cannons blazing, and sets off a conflagration in the middle east, OBL now decides that the time is right for suicide attacks against either US installations overseas, and Western European governments or one big attack here in the US, and since we are now up to our collective asses in alligators trying to drain the swamp the North Koreans decide it's time to pile-on and cross the 38th parallel.

I don't think anything has made the less interested in sleep than when I was a kid and worried about the Russians lobbing an H-Bomb at my house.

I think that diplomacy is all we have left now, this has gone right to the edge and it's a real short step over. I personally might not feel this way now but these lying sacks of shit in Washington have NOT been either straight with us or too self-involved in playing politics with the International Affairs they did not take the time to understand, and figured that this stupid, ignorant macho Cowboy Crap would carry the day.

F***** Wrong Wrong Wrong.

Not that I would normally link to just link, in the style of {shudder} Glenn Reynolds, who even links to himself (well, that'll get your traffic up), but these two fine blogs need to be read. One is Brief Intelligence, and the other is Notes on the Atrocities. Some excellent writing, and well worth the time. I think Atrios linked to Notes today also...

Thanks to loyal reader T who points me to this article in the Christian Science Monitor about reservists who are actually going off with no public pressure -none- to fulfill their commitments as members of the Guard and Reserve. The most interesting (disturbing?) aspect of the article has to be the numbers of policemen/public safety types who are being called up. Replacing them is neither easy, cheap or quick, and as the article points out with the increased security efforts domestically, it makes for a rather interesting trade. Many of the these men and women have positions in the service that can not be easily filled by either a "newbie" or someone brought in to take their place , so staying home is not an option that most of them would not be offered, even thought their careers on the "outside" are pretty damn important.

via FindLaw/AP South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford accepted a commission in the USAF Reserve as an officer and now wants out claiming that he just can't do it, since he's governor. Hey, I thought that's what they had Lieutenant Governors for, fool.

"But now Sanford says he can't deploy if his squadron is called to action because he is governor. And he's deciding whether he will honor his military commitment at all..." ... Retired Maj. Edgar Gomez, a former chief administrator from Sanford's squadron, wondered why the issue had come up now.

"When the possibility of our country's finest being called to serve has never been more likely? Why, is he scared?" Gomez wrote in a letter to the editor in The State two weeks ago. "It occurs to me that now that he has the governorship, this distasteful move at resume padding has served its purpose."

What is it with these guys, do they not get it, that signing up means you leave and you go when they call? Picking and choosing is not part of the bargain, especially for 1st LT's. Oh, and LT Sanford, I doubt the Air Force will let you fly the Stars and Bars anywhere near a base for the whole time you're on active duty. Too Bad.

But hey 1/LT Sandford, if it makes you feel any better, we can now remove you from the "Chickenhawk Column" and put you in the "Gonna get Courts-Martialed Column" if you don't show or fail to go (it's that whole Missing Movement thing, see the military, are a bit touchy about it when your unit deploys and leaves your stupid ass behind). I understand that you can be with your family while on Appellate Leave, before they send you away to make big rocks into little rocks in Leavenworth. Have fun!

Update

Sandford says he'll serve. While not called up for Active Duty yet, and facing only the two-week "knife and fork" school required by most branches of the services for "Directly Commissioned" officers like Sanford to acquaint them with basic military customs, courtey, and laws/regulations, at least he's showing enough "spine" to get taken off the Chickenhawk list for now. His spine may very well get him back on, since he's got a "torn" disk...how he got through the initial pre-commissioning physical with that, is anyone's guess. Now it's time for 1/LT Sanford to learn how to salute.

Update II

According to the Palmetto Journal, which has an amazing amount of information on this very subject, Sanford will serve, sort of. In South Carolina. I personally know that there are billets for 1/LT Gophers on Diego Garcia, send his ass there, he'll learn all needs to and be much more useful to the Air Force actually taking a position that might cause him to do some actual work not related to his day job, and they do have an outstanding Officer's Club there. I'll bet there are lots of other reservists wishing they could get this deal, especially those who visited the Southwest Asian Missile Test Facility (aka Iraq) in Gulf War I.

Uggabugga has the chart and makes a great point about the numbers and their impact on any fighting that might occur:

The purpose of this exercise was to see how big (and bad) Hussein's domestic police is. From the looks of things, there aren't all that many people devoted to civilian control. Perhaps 20,000 in a country of 24 million. One in a thousand. (We strongly suspect that's a smaller ratio than that which prevailed in East Germany back in the Stasi days.) In any event, it may not be true that the Iraqis are wildly in favor of a regime change. Thus, the quick collapse predicted by administration hawks might not happen - and a longer, more difficult fight may be in store for U.S. troops.