Via Michelle Malkin, here's a great picture from Argghhh!, a milblog with extra sass.
Via Michelle Malkin, here's a great picture from Argghhh!, a milblog with extra sass.
Today's Washington Post article on a new intelligence report that Iran is ten years away from nuclear weapons is almost a burlesque of the mainstream media reliance on unnamed sources - there at least three, possibly as many as five (hard to tell) in the fifteen-hundred word story. But amongst the miasma of phrases like "Top policymakers are scrutinizing the review, several administration officials said..." (same people? different? who knows?) my absolute favorite for comedy value is:Simon goes on to say:"It's a full look at what we know, what we don't know and what assumptions we have," a U.S. source said.A U. S. source!? They actually printed that with a straight face. (I assume they did anyway.) What, pray tell, is a "U. S. source"? I guess they mean someone in the government, but it could just as well be your Aunt Fanny in Nome, Alaska. And they say bloggers don't have editors!
I find journalism of this sort to be repellent and dangerously close to pure disinformation. When I see a quote atttributed to something like a "U. S. source," I would trust my Aunt Fanny in Nome, Alaska over the speaker or the writer of the article - even though I don't have an Aunt Fanny in Nome or anywhere else. It's time for the Washington Post and the rest of the Mainstream Media establishment to put an end to this nonsense.
"The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."Hear, hear!
The top executive at a Bronx youth organization said yesterday that the former director of Air America Radio received more than $800,000 in loans for himself and the radio network from the nonprofit organization while serving as its development director.I don't like Al Franken or that wretched harridan Randi Rhodes, so if this sort of thing reflects poorly on their little operation, then I am glad to see it.
Some of the transfers, according to the president of the Bronx-based Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club organization's executive committee, Jeannette Graves, occurred when the development director, Evan Montvel Cohen, who for a time served simultaneously as the liberal radio network's director, appealed to the organization for two loans worth $35,000. Another member of the executive committee said Mr. Cohen told the executive director of the organization that he needed the money to pay for chemotherapy for himself and other medical expenses for his ill father.
Ms. Graves said that Mr. Cohen also received another $213,000 loan for Air America in a check that was approved without her authorization and stamped with an imprint of her signature, and that the club wired more than $400,000 to him without her knowledge.
Mr. Cohen, who no longer is employed by either Air America or Gloria Wise, and who has not been charged with a crime, could not be reached for comment.
You can kiss off one critical part of Rummy and Cheney's forward bases strategy. Gee, I thought these despots were all W's buddies.I asked Soto whether he was more a fan of Islam Karimov than he was a foe of our President, but received no answer.
Don't you love the line from Rummy that "we always plan ahead?"
Tell that to the 138,000 troops in Iraq and nearly 2000 dead because Rummy couldn't plan his way beyond his lunch.
The United States has a strategically significant base in Uzbekistan, which borders on Afghanistan. In May, Uzbekistan's hideous government opened fire on demonstrators and killed hundreds of innocent people, raising the ire of the civilized countries of the world. The United States, among others, threw a fit. Uzbekistan has now expelled the United States, ordering it out of the base within six months. Russia and China, neither offended by the thugs running Uzbekistan but both sorely annoyed by the U.S. presence in central Asia, are happy today.
The next time somebody tells you that the United States operates without principle, remind them that the Bush Administration walked away from an important base in central Asia because it stood up for political liberty in one of the most isolated places on the planet.
don't askFormer President Jimmy Carter, speaking at the Baptist World Alliance conference in Birmingham, England yesterday, said that the detention of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was an "embarrasment," and gives terrorists an "excuse" to attack the United States and US-allied nations.Isn't there some way for Bush to revoke this man's security clearance? Carter's probably no more than a couple weeks away from reading intelligence reports from the al-Jazeera studios.
Carter is simply voicing his dissent, and if a former US president can’t openly criticize his government—publicly, overseas, during wartime, and on the basis of a narrative of events that an investigative panel has already concluded simply does not represent the facts on the ground—well, then the terrorists have already won. After all, aiding the enemy in their propaganda war IS the highest form of patriotism, and nothing says “I love my country” more than “I love my country provided its run by people like me; otherwise, I don’t really much like it at all—or rather, I like it, I just don’t like all the stupid rubes who keep ruining it by voting for evil assholes.”
ITALY has banned Islamic burqas under tough terrorism laws that provide two-year jail terms and E2000 ($3200) fines for anyone caught covering their face in a public place.How dare those fascists try to stand up and defend their own country!
The counter-terrorism package, passed by Italy's parliament yesterday, doubles the existing penalty for wearing a burqa or chador -- traditional robes worn by Muslim women to cover their faces -- or full-faced helmets or balaclavas in public.
Police can extract DNA samples without a suspect's consent, detain them for 24 hours without a lawyer present, and deport foreigners suspected of terrorism under the new legislation. Soldiers involved in counter-terrorism have been given the same stop-and-search powers.
The changes, approved in a rare show of bipartisanship, came as Italian police arrested a fugitive hunted by British police over the bungled bombing attempt in London on July 21.
“The president and his right-wing Supreme Court think it is ‘okay’ to have the government take your house if they feel like putting a hotel where your house is,” Dean said, not mentioning that until he nominated John Roberts to the Supreme Court this week, Bush had not appointed anyone to the high court.Yeah, well, that's not the funny part of Dean's ignorant nonsense. This is (with Patterico's emphases):
Dean’s reference to the “right-wing” court was also erroneous. The four justices who dissented in the Kelo vs. New London case included the three most conservative members of the court - Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was the fourth dissenter.As I myself have found in talking to certain liberal co-workers, they do not know that it's their justices who issued this outrageous decision. They simply assume that it must have been those evil conservatives who've now given the green light to big shot developers to seize people's property for the corporate, er, public good.
The court’s liberal coalition of Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer combined with Justice Anthony Kennedy to form the majority opinion, allowing the city of New London, Conn., to use eminent domain to seize private properties for commercial development.
“We think that eminent domain does not belong in the private sector. It is for public use only,” Dean said.
I'm 100% behind it. Why? Because it resonates, and I'm perfectly willing to go for a false statement that illustrates a truth.Jesus, what a dumbass! How can you even try to reason with such a thing?
The GOP is the party of Big Business. Big Business (business in general) is who benefitted from the Kelo case.
So, frankly, I say it's a great line of attack. Screw accuracy -- remind people that now big business can take their homes away to make a shopping mall, and that's A-okay by the GOP.
I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged.Interestingly enough, the factoid in the first sentence is exactly what Wilson himself (wrongly) believed. In fact, Cheney didn't know anything about Wilson or the outcome of any trip the CIA had sent him on. Wilson simply wanted people to believe that the details of his little excursion were of great interest to the White House itself.
The former ambassador also told Committee staff that he was the source of a Washington Post article ("CIA Did Not Share Doubt on Iraq Data; Bush Used Report of Uranium Bid," June 12, 2003) which said, "among the Envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong" when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports. The former ambassador said that he may have "misspoken" to the reporter when he said he concluded the documents were "forged." He also said he may have become confused about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct and may have thought he had seen the names himself.The reporter that Wilson "misspoke" to above was Walter Pincus and this is the link to his 12 June 2003 story. Pincus wrote (my emphases added):
After returning to the United States, the envoy reported to the CIA that the uranium-purchase story was false, the sources said. Among the envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong," the former U.S. government official said.But in February 2002, Joe Wilson is looking at these documents? Who could have supplied them? Valerie Plame? Did she have some inkling of what these documents purported before they were officially turned over to the State Department (and, thence, to the CIA)?
However, the CIA did not include details of the former ambassador's report and his identity as the source, which would have added to the credibility of his findings, in its intelligence reports that were shared with other government agencies. Instead, the CIA only said that Niger government officials had denied the attempted deal had taken place, a senior administration said.
"This gent made a visit to the region and chatted up his friends," a senior intelligence official said, describing the agency's view of the mission. "He relayed back to us that they said it was not true and that he believed them."
Thirteen months later, on March 8, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, informed the U.N. Security Council that after careful scrutiny of the Niger documents, his agency had reached the same conclusion as the CIA's envoy. ElBaradei deemed the documents "not authentic," an assessment that U.S. officials did not dispute.
Knowledgeable sources familiar with the forgery investigation have described the faked evidence as a series of letters between Iraqi agents and officials in Niger. The documents had been sought by U.N. inspectors since September 2002 and they were delivered by the United States and Britain last February.
It wasn’t until February, several days after the State of the Union, that the CIA finally obtained the Italian documents (from the State Department, whose warnings that the intelligence on Niger was “highly dubious” seem to have gone unheeded by the White House and unread by Bush). At the same time, the State Department turned over the Italian documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which had been pressing the United States to back up its claims about Iraq’s nuclear program.Nota bene: if Isikoff and Thomas are correct, the CIA doesn't actually get these documents until February 2003 ---a full year after Wilson's Nigerien vacation.
Texas owes the United States for just about everything. Ever since American emigres helped to foment a rebellion against the Mexican government of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana, other American citizens have regularly come to the aid of Texas without so much as a demand for a quid pro quo. During this 1836 rebellion, American volunteers, many from Tennessee (including former US Congressman Davy Crockett) went to Texas to aid the Texian rebels with little more than the expectation that they would get to fight a little bit. Their efforts helped to create the Republic of Texas, not that they get much of the credit compared to 'real' Texans.I admit I'm not the student of my own beloved state's history that I should be, but I can't think of a single one of our Founding Fathers who wasn't a non-native. Can you?
"As regards my feelings, I know that I would love to be at home where I could have your company and see my little boy. But it was my desire to serve my country that influenced me to come. Therefore I have the fortitude to bear with my feelings."
In the wake of the terrible London bombing incidents, there has been a raft of official squirms from Tony Blair and US officials against the notion that insistent war policies pursued by the US and UK are one root cause of backlash terrorism. Use of an effective public relations phrase -- "stop making excuses" for the animals who commit terrorism -- is helping prevent principled public discourse on the extreme violence that emanates from the US-run Terror War itself.I have no idea what this means. Do you?
Police and Egyptian government supporters beat dozens of opposition activists with batons, sometimes kicking them as they lay on the ground, during a protest Saturday against President Hosni Mubarak days after he announced his bid for re-election promising greater democracy in Egypt.It would take a lot of effort for the average American to tear himself away from stories of missing party girls and whatever other salaciousness that sells and pay attention to the rumblings on the "Arab street," but it's going on, anyway.
Several hundred men and women were still gathering to begin their march toward Cairo's main square when men in plainclothes descended on them, swinging billy clubs and assaulting the demonstrators.
Circles of burly government supporters surrounded activists sprawled on the pavement, kicking them in the head and ribs and tearing at their clothes. Others lifted protesters in the air by the arms and legs, hauling them off to police trucks. One elderly man wandered in a daze, his head bleeding.
I try to respect the distinction between private and public figures as I think that distinction is important. I find it a shame when people suddenly find themselves being "internet celebrities" for whatever reason - sometimes the internet "mob" does inappropriately take someone out of the private sphere and put them in the public one.Touching. I guess this is why Black allows his blog to be an open forum where anonymous assholes can advocate the murder of people like myself.
on fireQuite simply, Islam is not in need of a reformation, but of a civil war in the Middle East, since the jihadists cannot be reasoned with, only defeated. Only with their humiliation, will come a climate of tolerance and reform, when berated and beaten-down moderates can come out of the shadows.If only there were some way to undermine the degenerate democratic ideals of Jews and their lackeys in Washington and London ---and keep the soft autocracy of Islam alive and well in the Middle East!
The challenge for the Middle East is analogous to our own prior war with Hitler who sought to redefine Western culture along some racial notion of a pure Volk long ago unspoiled by Romanizing civilization. Proving the West was not about race or some notion of an ubermenschen ruling class did not require an “internal dialogue,” much less another religious reformation, but the complete annihilation of Nazism.
surprised
