Lately it seems that everyone on MSNBC wants Rachel Maddow. She's been on Countdown almost every night, even holding over into Dan Abrams Hour O'Crap. Last night, she was even allowed into the Hallowed Sanctum Into Which Almost No One Is Permitted:



Meanwhile, in other Progressive Talk Radio Personalities news, Liberal Talk Radio reported this week on comments made by the latest utterly clueless jerk to manage programming at The Network That Used To Be Awesome But Now Only Serves Up Pablum, David Bernstein. Sayeth The Guy Who Decided that "Lionel" was better than Sam Seder:

"I do think the liberal programming that has occurred here has been far too extremist… It's not our job to get a Democrat elected to Congress. We need to be funny, we need to be enjoyable, and I don't think that existed at this company three years ago."

No? Three years ago the best damn radio show since Jean Shepherd went off the air was just starting to hit its stride. It was funny and it was entertaining. Yes, it was topical, but it was funny and it was entertaining, and its held its audience nearly two years after going off the air. But rather than try to atone for Danny Goldberg's Mistake during morning drive-time, we have the last remaining Young Turk Cenk Uygur and a rotating array of sidekicks consisting of whoever happens to be walking down the street that morning.

At least the pathetic New York affiliate, WWRL, is doing something to make morning radio more tolerable for those of us who have been reduced to plugging our MP3 players into the Bose Wave in the morning and listening to Morning Sedition shows from 2005 and noting with dismay at how current they still sound. Having realized that Armstrong Williams, that Bush apologist, useful idiot, and pocketer of a few hundred grand of taxpayer cash to shill for No Child Left Behind wasn't exactly an appropriate face for "the flagship station of Air America" and that Sam Greenfield is neither funny nor entertaining, WWRL owner Rennie Bishop has actually done something smart. He's decided to team up Marc Maron's old sidekick, Mark Riley, with former WABC host and Iraq war radio casualty Richard Bey, to do the morning show.

No, it's not Morning Sedition, but then, what else could be? But while Riley founders on his own, he plays well with others, and while Richard Bey's song parodies can wear thin after a while, he's one of the good guys, and after wandering in the radio wilderness for four years, subbing for Lynn Samuels on Sirius every now and then, before snagging the eight-to-ten PM slot on WWRL in September (when the station's signal is at 5000 watts), it will be nice to hear him at a time when WWRL has something vaguely resembling a radio signal.

Meanwhile, Marc Maron and Sam Seder are continuing to refine both the format and the technology behind their (for-now-titled) "Unshaven" VODcast. Perhaps when Rachel Maddow jumps to MSNBC, David Bernstein will decide that two smart, funny Jewish guys might be a good fit for the six-to-eight timeslot.

Labels: Keith Olbermann, MSNBC, Rachel Maddow

"Are you happy with FEMA's response, so far?"

"I'm very happy with FEMA's response so far. This is a FEMA and a federal government that's leaning forward, not waiting to react. And you have to be pretty pleased to see that." - FEMA to FEMA, October 23, 2007

We've all heard the stories of Richard Nixon muttering to himself and to portraits of past presidents in the last days of his term. Little would even the most cynical of us ever imagine that the same thing would happen to an entire agency that effectively had sealed off the media and the American public from its soliloquy.

Last Tuesday, FEMA had literally staged a press conference that was intended to impart information about the wildfires in Southern California. The nerf ball questions put to FEMA Deputy Administrator Harvey Johnson were not from the press, as FEMA would've had you believe, but from FEMA staffers themselves.

The reason they were able to get away with this is that they gave the press 15 minutes to arrive before they had to answer these urgent softball questions. Plainly, 15 minutes wasn't enough time for them to get there. So FEMA staged their shadow puppet play while giving the press an 800 number (they weren't allowed to ask questions). So it beggars the question: What was FEMA hiding this time around while California was burning down and what were they afraid the real press was going to ask?

Dana Perino's take on this, typically, was priceless:

“It is not a practice that we would employ here at the White House or that we -- we certainly don't condone it.”

I guess Dana didn't get the memo about the Bush administration a couple of years ago literally paying to have fake news stories planted in Iraqi newspapers or the one about the Pentagon six years ago starting up the supposedly disbanded OSI (Office of Strategic Influence), which job it also was to fabricate news to be passed off as the real thing. But that's OK, Dana Bash the Liberals: We understand there's a high learning curve over at the Ministry of Propaganda.

If nothing else, this "news" story perfectly delineates the hermetic insularity of a White House that steadfastly refuses to listen to anyone but Yes Men insiders. It also flawlessly represents the contempt that the White House and its agencies feel for what is nonetheless an endlessly criminally compliant press (and Noron O'Donnell's apparent amusement at this whole thing alone would almost justify such contempt) and an equal contempt for the intelligence of the American people.

It also captures in a candid snapshot the sheer superficiality of an administration made of tinsel, one that guided people to food tables when they were in need of clothes and then had the food and water aid stations broken down and, later, lights getting shut off the minute George W. Bush was out of camera range.

In case you had any doubts that the run-up to the Iraq war was repeating itself in the Bush Administration's lust to attack Iran, those doubts were dispelled yesterday. Less covered than the Administration's trotting out yesterday of Condi Rice to put a "moderate" face on Cheney's insane war policy is the fact that tucked away into the latest Iraq supplemental is funding for so-called "bunker-buster" bombs that are have no practical purpose in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

Steven at Booman Tribune explains:

When the the Pentagon and CENTCOM were contacted about this "urgent need" ABC's reporters were given the run around by military spokespersons. However, it seems quite clear that the oinly reason to modify Stealth bombers to carry these large bunker busting bombs would be to attack Iran. Doesn't mean an attack is necessarily imminent, but it also stronly suggests that Bush intends to attack Iran before his term of office is up. If Congress allows this funding to go forward without questioning the need for this particualr item they will be enabling our "Decider in Chief" to take matters into his own hands whenever he feels like it. So, maybe you should contact your Congressional Representatives and inform them about this peculiar request, and remind them that the last thing we need or desire at this time is another "preventive war" in the Middle East against a country that currently poses little if any threat to our security.

The path to war with Iran is clear, as this article from Der Spiegel (via Alternet) explains:

In the scenario concocted by Cheney's strategists, Washington's first step would be to convince Israel to fire missiles at Iran's uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Tehran would retaliate with its own strike, providing the US with an excuse to attack military targets and nuclear facilities in Iran.

This information was leaked by an official close to the vice president. Cheney himself hasn't denied engaging in such war games. For years, in fact, he's been open about his opinion that an attack on Iran, a member of US President George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil," is inevitable.

Given these not-too-secret designs, Democrats and Republicans alike have wondered what to make of the still mysterious Israeli bombing run in Syria on Sept. 6. Was it part of an existing war plan? A test run, perhaps? For days after the attack, one question dominated conversation at Washington receptions: How great is the risk of war, really?

In the September strike, Israeli bombers were likely targeting a nuclear reactor under construction, parts of which are alleged to have come from North Korea. It is possible that key secretaries in the Bush cabinet even tried to stop Israel. To this day, the administration has neither confirmed nor commented on the attack.

Nevertheless, in Washington, Israel's strike against Syria has revived the specter of war with Iran. For the neoconservatives it could represent a glimmer of hope that the grandiose dream of a democratic Middle East has not yet been buried in the ashes of Iraq. But for realists in the corridors of the State Department and the Pentagon, military action against Iran is a nightmare they have sought to avert by asking a simple question: "What then?"

The Israeli strike, or something like it, could easily mark the beginning of the "World War III," which President Bush warned against last week. With his usual apocalyptic rhetoric, he said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could lead the region to a new world war if his nation builds a nuclear bomb.

Conditions do look ripe for disaster. Iran continues to acquire and develop the fundamental prerequisites for a nuclear weapon. The mullah regime receives support -- at least moral support, if not technology -- from a newly strengthened Russia, which these days reaches for every chance to provoke the United States. President Vladimir Putin's own (self-described) "grandiose plan" to restore Russia's armed forces includes a nuclear buildup. The war in Iraq continues to drag on without an end in sight or even an opportunity for US troops to withdraw in a way that doesn't smack of retreat. In Afghanistan, NATO troops are struggling to prevent a return of the Taliban and al-Qaida terrorists. The Palestinian conflict could still reignite on any front.

In Washington, Bush has 15 months left in office. He may have few successes to show for himself, but he's already thinking of his legacy. Bush says he wants diplomacy to settle the nuclear dispute with Tehran, and hopes international pressure will finally convince Ahmadinejad to come to his senses. Nevertheless, the way pressure has been building in Washington, preparations for war could be underway.

When Senators like Hillary Clinton voted "Yes" on the Lieberman Kyl amendment, they were giving tacit approval to war with Iran. As John Edwards noted in the last Democratic debate, the man that the Bush Administration has named as its latest "Second Coming of Hitler" isn't even popular in his home country, and that there is a lesson to be learned from the way George Bush handled the 2002 AUMF vote -- and that lesson is NOT to give him ANY leeway to start another war:



It's enough to make one believe that where the 2008 election is concerned, the fix is in -- and that fix is that we will have a choice between a president who will continue to expand the U.S.-initiated conflagration in the Middle East, and a president who will continue to expand the U.S.-initiated conflagration in the Middle East. Hillary Clinton has made it clear, despite her preposterous rhetorical bones thrown at the netroots that she will end the Iraq war the day she takes office, that she is going to out-tough talk the tough guys. Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani, he who doesn't know that waterboarding is, in fact torture; and blind people carrying guns, has as his foreign policy advisor the neocon nutball di tutti neocon nutballs -- Norman Podhoretz.

There is still time to prevent this 2008 Matchup From Hell, but only if Americans start paying attention. That's probably too much to ask, and so this country will Dancing With the Stars itself right into a global nuclear holocaust, and then wonder what went wrong.

Labels: Hillary Clinton, insanity, Iran, Rudy Giuliani

Crooks and Liars has a segment from tonight's Countdown that if this country were populated by thinking human beings instead of reptilian brains would topple any hopes Rudy Giuliani had of becoming the next president. On tonight's show, David Shuster showed footage of Rudy Giuliani outright lying about his pre-9/11 terrorism concerns -- lies that fly in the face of his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. Wayne Barrett gives the details, and his story in the Village Voice should be read by anyone even remotely considering voting for this guy.

As if Giuliani's judgment in hiring a corrupt criminal like Bernard Kerik as his police chief and recommending him for the post heading up the Department of Homeland Security and in having a pedophile priest working for his campaign weren't bad enough, he's now engaged in an appalling campaign of revisionism:

A 15-page "memorandum for the record," prepared by a commission counsel and dated April 20, 2004, quotes Giuliani conceding that it wasn't until "after 9/11" that "we brought in people to brief us on al Qaeda." According to the memorandum, Giuliani told two commission members and five staffers: "But we had nothing like this pre 9/11, which was a mistake, because if experts share a lot of info," there would be a "better chance of someone making heads and tails" of the "situation." (Such memoranda are not verbatim transcripts of the confidential commission interviews, but are described on the cover page as "100 percent accurate" notes taken by staffers, stamped "commission sensitive/unclassified" on the top of each page.)

Asked about the “flow of information about al Qaeda threats from 1998-2001,” Giuliani said: “At the time, I wasn’t told it was al Qaeda, but now that I look back at it, I think it was al Qaeda.” He also said that as part of one of his post-9/11 briefings, “we had in Bodansky, who had written a book on bin Laden.” Giuliani was referring to Yossef Bodanksy, the author of Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, which was published in 1999 and predicted “spectacular terrorist strikes in Washington and/or New York.” Giuliani wrote in his own book, Leadership, that Judi Nathan got him a copy of Bodansky’s prophetic work “shortly after 9/11,” and that he covered it in “highlighter and notes,” citing his study of it as an example of how he “mastered a subject.” Apparently, he also invited Bodansky to address key members of his staff.

Giuliani attributed his pre-9/11 shortcomings in part to the FBI, which was run by his close friend (and current endorser) Louis Freeh, and to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, an FBI-directed partnership with the NYPD. "We already had JTTF, and got flow information no one else got," he explained. "But did we get the flow of information we wanted? No. We would be told about a threat, but not about the underlying nature of the threat. I wanted all the same information the FBI had, and we didn't get that until after 9/11. Immediately after 9/11, we were made a complete partner." He added: "Without 9/11, I never would have been able to send an adviser to FBI briefings."

Tom Von Essen, who was Giuliani’s fire commissioner and is now a partner in his consulting company, Giuliani Partners, was asked at a confidential interview on April 7, 2004, what information he had “re terrorism prior to 9/11” and said: “I was told nothing at all.” Bernard Kerik, the police commissioner on 9/11, who also later joined Giuliani Partners, appeared to contradict Giuliani, insisting in his April 6 private appearance: “I never had a problem with the FBI.” Kerik, who did not become commissioner until August 2000, testified, however, that he did have a problem with his own department. “When I took over,” he said, “I was not happy with NYPD’s intelligence in general.” He said the intelligence division “had more to do with fighting criminal activity than terrorism” and that “within 3-4 months, I directed a total merger of NYPD intelligence.” In other words, Kerik indicated that he’d begun a reorganization of the department’s counterterrorism intelligence operations in 2001, as the Giuliani administration entered its final year—hardly a testament to its urgent understanding of the threat.

Rudy Giuliani is a charlatan, a snake oil salesman, and s complete poseur. That some readers of this very blog are considering voting for this aspiring fascist is sad -- and indicative that there is much more work to be done exposing the real Rudy Giuliani to American voters.

Labels: lies, Rudy Giuliani

I read this comment by Tata this morning in response to my post about how Republican voters seem to be perfectly willing to live their lives in a constant state of piss-in-yer-pants fear that Islamic terrorists are going to suicide bomb their homes or schools at the same time as those who DO live in target areas go about their business.

Then I started thinking about why it was that I shlepped down the Garden State Parkway Tuesday night to obtain a signed copy of Lisa's story: The Other Shoe -- "Funky Winkerbean" cartoonist Tom Batiuk's compendium of strips dealing with the Lisa Moore character's two battles with breast cancer. (videos here.) It isn't that I'm such a big comics geek. Sure, I read them every day, but I'm not like some of the people who were in line with me waiting to get their books signed who wondered what the 10-year jump in "Funky" would do to "Crankshaft", where Ed Crankshaft's granddaughter is dating "Mooch" from "Funky." (Do you have all this straight? Good...because there WILL be a quiz.) But I shlepped down there to get a book I didn't even particularly want, and all this after writing an obituary two weeks ago for a fictional character drawn in pen and ink.

And then I realized why "Lisa's Story" is so compelling -- because the storyline showed that the decision to stop chemotherapy that isn't doing anything other than compromising the quality of life one has less can be as empowering, if not more so, than continuing. I think many of us hope and wish that if we were stricken, we could approach our illness with the same realism, but not fatalism, as "Lisa" did -- and as Elizabeth Edwards continues to do in real life (though so far her story is going far better).

Every day we begin taking risks the minute we get out of bed in the morning. That egg may give us coronary disease. The hormones in the milk may give us cancer. The carpet is giving off fumes. The water we made the coffee with has PCBs. We could get broadsided at a red light and be killed on our way to work. And that's just before 9 AM. But you don't see millions of Americans demanding that their food supply be safe, or that their water be clean, or that bad drivers be removed from the road, or that their air be clean.

And yet, there is a subset of American voters that demands guarantees that terrorists will never, ever come here and attack this country again -- and they don't seem to want efforts that actually work; they're content with tough talk. They don't care that the TSA asked passengers in San Diego to try to smuggle fake bombs on planes. They don't care that U.S. port cargo remains uninspected. And they don't ask why, after six years, Osama Bin Laden is still out there, making videos that conveniently surface every time the Administration wants to give the American people another Fear Injection. As long as Rudy tucks them in at night, just as George W. Bush has for the past six years, and tells them that he won't let the bogeyman come and get them, they'll sleep like babies -- despite the fact that Rudy didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the terrorism risk prior to 9/11, not even after the World Trade Center was attacked in 1993. As long as Dexter reassures the terrified little Cody that the Bay Harbor Butcher won't get him, the fact that Dexter IS the Bay Harbor Butcher doesn't matter.

It's appalling that the very same people still putting those ribbon magnets on their SUVs that they drive in as armor against auto accidents -- the ones that say "Land of the free, home of the brave" -- are neither free nor brave. Nor do they care to be free or brave. They are perfectly willing to live lives of quiet desperation, never once forgetting the Scary Brown Men that are surely watching and waiting to get them.

And when the next attack occurs on U.S. soil -- and it will, given that the Administration is about to take the next step in ensuring that everyone in the world hates our guts in preparing to attack Iran -- these people will be willing to give up even more of their freedom and become even less brave. And when their time comes to leave this plane of reality, they will ask themselves, "What did I do with the time I had?" And no matter how hard they try to kid themselves, the fact that they spent it in fear instead of enjoying the time they had will haunt them as they exit.

Labels: fearmongering

The media may have already anointed the 2008 race a matchup between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, but this is clearly not a prospect that makes Americans in either party happy:

Comedian Stephen Colbert is not a threat to win the presidency, but the odds are that that his satire will win plenty of laughs and maybe even some votes.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that Colbert is preferred by 13% of voters as an independent candidate challenging Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Rudy Giuliani. The survey was conducted shortly after Colbert’s surprise announcement that he is lusting for the Oval Office.

The result is similar when Fred Thompson is the Republican in the three-way race. With Thompson as the GOP candidate, Colbert earns 12% of the vote.

Labels: 2008 election, Stephen Colbert

I have to admit that even I fell for the "Whatever is being done right in dealing with the California wildfires is because Governor Ah-nuld has his act together" meme.

But today, Miriam Raftery over at BradBlog has a different take on the Governator and why his policies have interfered with the state's ability to fight these fires:

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and local officials have made media appearances claiming credit for swiftly responding to the disaster. “There is much more equipment available, more manpower is available, quicker action,” Schwarzenegger said, according to the Associated Press.

What the Governor failed to mention is that he vetoed four bills that would have increased staffing and fire resources after the Cedar Fire, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. A fifth bill, signed by Schwarzenegger, requires local governments to first submit safety plans to the California Department of Forestry and will not take effect until 2010, the Los Angeles Times reported in a May 20, 2007 article titled “Fire danger acute as 2003 lessons fade.” That article has since disappeared off the newspaper’s website, but a copy is here.

The same story cited Dallas Jones, former director of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and current official with California Professional Firefighters union. Jones damned Schwarzenegger for failing to provide additional firetrucks. “How many years are we since the ’03 fire siege?” he asked, “and so far, nothing.”

Other unfulfilled recommendations made to Schwarzenegger by his Blue Ribbon Fire Commission include replacement of aging fire helicopters, increasing staffing to assure four person crews on each state fire engine sent to major wildfires, and nighttime air drops.

A national contract fleet of heavy air tankers has fallen from 41 to 16 in the last five years, with aging aircraft deemed unsafe and grounded. The state firefighting fleet has not replaced two air tankers that crashed, the L.A. Times reported.

More here.

Last week I linked to Sara Robinson's terrific post from August about the dynamic behind the frightened little children who talk like tough guys but see al-Qaeda around every corner and long for a Big Tough Daddy to protect them from the bogeyman. It's what created the Worship of the Codpiece and it puts this nation in real danger of continuing this madness with the aspiring fascist dictator Rudy Giuliani. Yesterday Lower Manhattanite over at the Group News Blog weighed in on this syndrome:

There is a term that right-wingers, particularly right-wing men like to toss around about the Left, and Dems in general, referring to us as “The Nanny Party”—a pejorative intended to feminize the idea of caring and empathy, using “nyah-nyah” sexism and chauvinism to denigrate those humanistic traits. Allow me then, to counter that with an analysis about our obviously machismo hung-up buddies on the right. The odd lust for a brusque, iron-handed, emotionally remote and psychologically and sometimes physically abusive “father” figure on their part is undeniable. The projection of infallibility of those figures is well-documented, particularly in the case of the knee-jerk defense of the most heinous actors on that red-lit stage—namely the sexually abusive Catholic priests involved in the vile church sex-abuse scandals. The Catholic League's odious William Donohue has been known to spin that evil on its ear by asking questions of victims like, “Why didn't you just smack the clergyman in the face? After all, most 15-year-old teenage boys wouldn't allow themselves to be molested. So why did you?”

This fealty to the rough daddy figure manifests itself again and again in the above-shown and easily Googled additional shilling for Rudy by Matthews, via his constantly going on and on about Rudy's appeal to those who share in his and Giuliani's hyper-paternalistic religious beliefs—those “northeastern ethnic suburb-dwellers” he keeps citing as key to the Rudester's taking a couple of big states electorally. Note the references to manly-man, tough guy stuff like “Who'd win in a street fight?” The almighty, two-fisted “Father Infallible.” We saw it in Giuliani's vile defense of his post-death abuse of police-murder victim Patrick Dorismond, where he fell back on those old, “Big-Man-o-centric”, good vs. evil tropes when he said of the dead Dorismond that “he was no altar boy”. It doesn't take a Freud to note the quasi-religious fervor these nitwits have for the brute-as-father/leader trope. Matthews however, is a brilliant example of the right's addiction to these in the end, empty size-48 suits full of angry hot air. He and many of his co-horts in their eternal idiocy go right back for more “punishment”, even after “moving away from home” and leaving Papa Bush behind, only to shack up with another blustering, over-compensating, mean daddy in their backing of Rudy.

It goes again to that feminization of “feeling” again. Bill Clinton was mercilessly ridiculed for saying “I feel your pain”—evidencing empathy and care. And that was so anathema to the activist right that rose up against him that they opted for the evil, root opposite of Clinton's phrase.

Not “I don't feel your pain”, but rather, “I shall cause the pain you feel.”

It's why the hatred for Clinton and Gore is so virulent and never far from the surface for them. Thought has never been a selling point for wingnuts. Anti-intellectualism is the coin of their realm. Bush's down-home stupid, and Rudy's thoughtless yammering on this and that plays better for them than thoughfulness.

I used to say in the 1990's that the right's hatred for Bill Clinton was a function of them still being angry at the guy in high school who got all the girls. And there is certainly an arrested development aspect of this yearning for a Big Tough Daddy figure -- even if he's a bully. But then, most bullies are really frightened children underneath anyway, aren't they? That so-called "toughness" is all bravado.

As I keep pointing out, people in New York and the surrounding suburbs go to work every day in the city. They go through the tunnels by car or train or bus. They take the elevators in skyscrapers, descend into the subway, cross the bridges. It isn't that they've "forgotten 9/11"; after all, many of them pass the big hole in the ground every day where the towers once stood. But when faced with a REAL risk, you have a decision to make: you become a recluse and never leave your house (in which case the bank will foreclose because you have no way to pay for it), or you suck it up and accept that this risk is an unfortunate part of life.

But out in the early-primary states and the Republican strongholds in the south -- in the communities too insignificant for al-Qaeda to bother with -- there are those ripe for the picking for a fearmongering fascist like Rudy Giuliani. These are the people living in fear that Islamic terrorists are going to bomb their kids' school, or the local Wal-Mart, or the multiplex. These are the people clamoring for the Tough Daddy to assuage their nightmares. I'm not sure if they just want a piece of the fear-action, or if there's something in the very makeup of the socioreligious structure in these places that makes them want to remain as five-year-olds forever.

But it's also these places from whence Faux Noise draws its audience, and they are ripe for the picking for the Fox Fearmongers to find al-Qaeda's fingerprints in the California wildfires -- even after Glenn Beck all but called Californians al-Qaeda sympathizers:

DOOCY: You’re looking live at pictures from San Diego — Santiago, CA, where the wildfires continue. We were talking earlier in today’s telecast with Adam Housley and apparently police officers in a hovering helicopter saw a guy starting one of these fires. And Allison Allison Camerota, an FBI memo from late in June of this year is popping up this morning and it is ominous.

CAMEROTA: This actually has happened for many years in the past as well. An FBI sent out to local law-enforcement said that an al Qaeda detainee had given them some information that the next wave of terrorism could be in the form of setting wild fires. Adam Housley said lots of people on his block were asking him about it. Obviously this is something the FBI has looked into. They will continue to investigate it.

CARLSON: If they have this person in custody it probably won’t take long to be able to develop a link if there is one.

KILMEADE: A June 25 memo from the FBI’s Denver offices reported three days ago, excuse me, five days ago, by the Arizona Republic, that is a newspaper, they have been carrying the story and they continue to expand upon it.

DOOCY: Brian, the plot they say, according to this detainee, and they don’t know if the detainee is telling the truth. The plot was to set three or four wildfires. But they don’t mention California. They mention Colorado, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming. We do know for a fact that a number of the fires in southern California are of a suspicious nature and they are investigating arson.

Raw Story picked this up yesterday for the ridiculous nonsense that it is:

Later Wednesday, Fox anchors returned to fanning the terror fears, digging up a four-year-old FBI memo and presenting it as new information relating to an al Qaeda link to the fires.

In June of 2003, FBI agents in Denver detailed an al Qaeda detainee's discussion of a plot to set forest fires around the western United States, although investigators couldn't determine whether the detainee was telling the truth, and his plot did not include setting fires in California.

Such small discrepancies in dates and details proved to be no obstacles for Fox anchors, who reported that the memo was from "late June of this year" and "is just popping up this morning."

The memo was first reported by the Arizona Republic in July 2003, although a Fox anchor said it was reported "five days ago." That confusion seems to stem from an inability to read the date on an Associated Press account of the memo from the time it was first reported.

A July 11, 2003, AP story, still available online via USA Today, reported, "The contents of the June 25 memo from the FBI's Denver office were reported Friday by The Arizona Republic."

On Fox, that information became, "The June 25 memo from the FBI's Denver offices was reported three days ago, excuse me five days ago, by the Arizona Republic."

Further distorting the report, Fox failed to mention a key caveat from the 2003 AP story they appear to have ripped from.

"Rose Davis, a spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, told The Associated Press that officials there took note of the warning but didn't see a need to act further on it."

But as is typical of Faux Noise, why bother with things like facts, when you can serve the agenda of turning the U.S. into Soviet-era Russia by citing four-year-old articles as current?

And like Pavlov's dogs, Faux' audience eats this stuff up, refuses to expose itself to anything that might FACTUALLY debunk its fears, choosing instead to look towards the Big Strong Daddy. And Daddy trumps everything, which is why the same self-righteous morons who decried the Clintons for going to counseling instead of divorcing, are now willing to look past Rudy Giuliani's marital peccadillos because they believe he is the Big Strong Daddy who will keey the bogeyman at bay...even if the bogeyman has no interest in them whatsoever.

Labels: California wildfires, Fox News, utter horseshit

The images coming out of California of crowds of people taking refuge in a sports arena and of Michael Chertoff and people from FEMA going to "survey the damage" are eerily reminiscent of the images we saw two years ago coming out of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The main difference in these images from those of two years ago is the skin color of those who have been displaced.

The Bush Administration is clearly hoping that it can redeem its own image over disaster preparedness by handling the California wildfires and those displaced by them far better than it did the evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. And of course those of us not living California hope so too. However, the socioeconomic difference between those displaced now and those displaced two years ago has already affected how they are treated:

Like Hurricane Katrina evacuees two years earlier in New Orleans, thousands of people rousted by natural disaster fled to the NFL stadium here, waiting out the calamity and worrying about their homes.

The similarities ended there, as an almost festive atmosphere reigned at Qualcomm Stadium.

Bands belted out rock 'n' roll, lavish buffets served gourmet entrees, and massage therapists helped relieve the stress for those forced to flee their homes because of wildfires.

"The people are happy. They have everything here," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared Monday night after his second Qualcomm tour.

Cue the race-baiters to talk about uncivilized black people, right? Except for one thing:

At Qualcomm, thousands of tents, many set up by relief organizations, provided temporary roofs, while hundreds of people slept on open-air cots. Some elderly evacuees were housed in stadium club boxes.

Aggressive efforts by disaster-response officials to bring supplies helped ensure civility. A heavy police contingent and National Guard troops with automatic weapons stood by just in case.

The New Orleans evacuees had dragged themselves through floodwaters to get to the Louisiana Superdome in 2005, and once there endured horrific conditions without food, sanitation or law enforcement.

But these evacuees drove to the expansive parking lots in the San Diego suburbs. The worst that most endured in their exodus was heavy traffic and smoky haze.

[snip]

Most people seemed happy for the free food and drink. A Hyatt hotel catered one buffet, offering chicken with artichoke hearts and capers in cream sauce, jambalaya and shredded-beef empanadas.

And as Melina notes below, there are perhaps thousands of farm workers, many of them illegal, who are probably hiding in the hills around San Diego, too terrified to seek help. Many of these people will be the casualties of these fires -- and no one will ever know about them, because Chris Matthews will once again wax rhapsodic at the phallic mastery of George W. Bush if the latter manages to do something that vaguely resembles his job.

I'm in no way trying to minimize the horrors being experienced by Californians watching their homes and everything they own go up in flames. Nor am I saying that displaced people shouldn't be helped as much as possible. Many of those we know in Blogtopia(™ Skippy) are affected at least peripherally by these fires -- people like John Amato, Hoffmania, and Digby.

But as you see if you read the link to Digby, the wingnuts are trying desperately to find a way to paint what is happening to California as being deserved, because people in California "hate America." Presumably Glenn Beck, who uttered these words, thinks that everyone in California is liberal -- a surprising assumption given the revival of the Republican Party's attempt to win the 2008 election in the only way it knows how and in pure George Bushian fashion -- by changing the rules in midstream.

So herein lies the dilemma for the Bush Administration: Does an effective response to those displaced by the California wildfires redeem their dismal one when the victims were disproportionately dark-skinned and poor? Or is it just another sign that Kanye West waas right? Or will it be perceived by the denizens of Wingnuttia as a diversion of efforts to America-haters? This, friends, is the catch-22 that happens when you opearte according to the kind of divisive politics that has been the Republicans' bread and butter for a generation.

I hope that the Administration doesn't fuck this up. I hope that those who have lost everything aren't fucked over by their insurance companies. I hope these fires stop soon, and I hope everyone is OK.

Labels: California wildfires

Its gonna be alot harder to ignore and under-serve the people of San Diego and LA in this deal than it was to screw the people of New Orleans, but it sure sent a shiver down my spine to see Skeletor Chertoff on TV today, mouthing the disaster talking points, just as Brownie did once before....
yeah, its chilling...and not even in as much as the search, rescue, and help can even start because the thing remains out of control...half a million people are currently displaced, and I expect that number to grow exponentially as the days go on. There is no way to fight this fire except to hope that the winds don't come back as strong as they have been and to keep on fighting. Its definitely not under control.
According to 1010 WINS in New York City, some big stadium is offering gourmet food and massages. Who knows if that's true, but they are definitely being very careful to keep the people as comfortable as possible and to have Chertoff right on the scene to report the exact number of cots that they've got. Of course these people are a slightly different hue and class than the majority of the people who were housed and then shipped off from in and around NOLA.

It turns out that , tragically, many of the neediest people wont go to the stadium and shelters, because they are illegal and living in the hills. The fact that immigration raids in San Diego were suspended when the fires broke out aren't likely to make many of the illegal people ask for or accept help, considering how rabidly illegals are under fire in the area. So far only around 50 illegals have "turned themselves in" due to the fires. With thousands living in the area, this is what could be the big humanitarian toll in this thing.

As the fires spread into Mexico there is also a question about the conditions there and if the workers on farms will even be allowed to evacuate. I'm looking for this to be the big story in this thing...and I only hope that it brings to light the real plight of the illegal immigrants who are searching for a better life and will risk everything for a chance to be productive Americans and try to help their families back home. Im not in a place right now to discuss how globalism and outsourcing has hurt local economies even as they helped in some other ways, but having the local balance upset in favor of large American corporations, as opposed to foreign aid to help with a country's development, surely has not done much for the people.

...And like clockwork, Bush's people said that it was "premature" yesterday for the man to visit the area....are they crazy? I know he doesnt give a shit anymore abotu what anyone out here thinks, but as far as his legacy goes, I would think that he would want to strap on a parachute and jump! This is the worst fire ever out there, and its destroying, not only some of the most beautiful and important parts of our country, but many, many houses and lives. I can only imagine what its going to be like when this is all over.....

Rule of thumb for the White House: By the time that Schwarzenegger and his crew have been over to the stadium...by the time that the networks are on their way and Charlie Gibson is on the ground delivering talking points from the embers, its too late!
I can imagine that they're eventually gonna send Bushy in his cowboy boots and jeans to talk about the finer points of clearing brush....Because its all about clearing brush.


My father is just north of LA, but he still has a house down there that he rents out...its all probably safe in that area because its an upper class area...but he said that the air is so bad that its sickening to even go out in it. The place where he lives now is pretty fancy and the big move there has been to cut back all the dry brush from anywhere there are houses, and in recent years communities plan brush cuts so as to prevent big fires. I don't know if anything like that works, but clearly, you can't cut all the brush from everywhere. You also cant make it rain...maybe locusts and frogs, but apparently god has no water for the west.

The drought out west is another tragic example of how fast climate change is effecting us. What was previously something that might effect our children's children, seems to be speeding up, as if its gaining speed as it rolls downhill. We had been pleasantly surprised at how quickly the ozone hole repaired itself and how quickly the Clinton-Gore administration was able to begin to get a handle on emissions from trucks and plants...the levels of deadly, environment damaging poisons were reduced significantly, before the Bush-Cheney administration came in and canceled all of the programs and pending lawsuits...just like that. This was done in favor of big business, just like almost everything they do. How quickly things returned to where they were and got worse, is illustrative of just how bad this administration has been as a steward of this country's health and in keeping America's part up as a part of the world community.

Meantime....I feel like Im Dorothy in Oz and the shiny bubble is floating down..."Heres someone who can help you!" Who has moved up to #4 in the Democratic presidential race?...who is that man?...and is it wholly possible that a brilliant clown can sweep in and become our candidate for president?...well, we know that a chimp could do better than Bush/Cheney...so, take it as you will.







Ok, so the Sunday Tim Russert Interview wasn't all that great, but put him with Jon Stewart and you've got a little slice of magic. The really funny thing is that I already had the bumper sticker and the buttons from last year....As Colbert says, all I've got to do is to cut off Stewart's name...

C/P RIPCoco

Labels: immigration, Stephen Colbert, The Daily Show

“I hope that with this apology I will become as insignificant as I should be.” - Rep. Pete Stark, October 23rd, 2007

It’s really as simple as that. Yet, this simple truism in never shying away from the truth and even disavowing it seems to have been lost on virtually every Democrat who has ever laid their hand on a Bible to swear to tell nothing but. The latest example is Rep. Pete Stark, who felt it necessary to apologize today for saying that we were spending obscene amounts of money blowing up the troops for George Bush’s amusement.

How is this in any way not true and why should he apologize for it?

Now, to recap: On one side of the aisle, you have scumbags of one political party who are in a constant state of denial regarding their own corruption, hypocrisy, incompetence and general, overall shortcomings.

On the left side of the aisle you have nervous, gulping Democrats tugging at their collars and ties like so many Rodney Dangerfields and quickly apologizing for barking a little too viciously on those rare occasions when they themselves aren’t denying the truth. If you can’t bear to watch Stark’s stammering, painfully self-effacing apology on video, here’s Mary Ann Akers’ coverage of it (Tip o’ the tinfoil hat to regular reader Diva for the link).

Now, let’s review for a minute another vignette offered up by Mary Ann Akers in today’s Wa Po, one about Tom DeLay’s chummy little book signing party on Capitol Hill earlier this week. I’m sure you all remember “the Hammer”, don’t ya’ll? He’s the one who’d, along with Duke Cunningham, elevated meanness and corruption to Olympian levels unimagined in the annals of true crime. That would be the same Hammer who’d been censured three times by the Ethics Committee but only under difficult circumstances. That would be the same Hammer who’d benefited from enough cover from his Republican cronies and henchmen on the Hill to protect the Soviet and Nazi empires combined.

But John Boehner, himself one of the most corrupt and tainted scumbags on Capitol Hill, thought that Stark’s “despicable” comments were worthy of censure, a fate that has been skillfully avoided by our Commanderin’ Thief and his own Republican cronies. That would be the same George W. Bush who thought looking for phantom WMD’s for which many hundreds of US troops had gotten their heads blown off was amusing enough to make a slideshow about showing himself looking for Saddam’s long-ago destroyed weapons and getting uproarious laughs from other Republicans.

That would be the same son of a fucking bitch who’d melted the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians lost in this bloody, illegal war down to a mere comma.

Bringing attention to these inconvenient truths infuriated Republicans and Democrats alike.

OK, there’s one time and one time only to apologize for telling the truth.

You’re sitting in Lane Bryant with your wife’s purse perched in your emasculated lap. She comes out of the dressing room for the fourth time, already looking like she’s going to give up on that new pair of slacks. She asks you if they make her look fat. If you have a death wish and say that they make her ass look like two pit bulls fighting under a collapsed tent, then you apologize if you still have a tongue and a pulse.

Yet when you tell truth to power and say that your so-called President is blowing people up and getting the troops’ head blown off for his amusement, when you say that this administration is the worst in American history, you stick by it, without any heed to political fucking correctness. You don’t then immediately apologize for it like Jimmy Carter and now Pete Stark (and Carter’s capitulation was all the more puzzling since his career has been dead for over a quarter of a century and had nothing to lose).

Whatever truth is worth saying is worth sticking to.

People ask me why I don’t run for public office. This is why. Even if I could somehow get Diebold to swing an election my way, I’d never last a day on Capitol Hill because I cannot and will not suffer fools, especially overpaid fools who are ruining our country. I’d refuse to refer to people as “the honorable gentleman from…” If they were a worthless cocksucker, I’d call them a worthless cocksucker right there on CSPAN.

And, if I had my Stark moment, I certainly wouldn’t knuckle under pressure by my own party leaders and be forced to apologize. Oh, I’d take the floor, alright but not to apologize:

“For what purpose does the gentleman from Massachusetts rise?”

“Madame Speaker, first off, I’m no gentleman and I aim to prove that right here and now, once for all. Secondly, while I refuse to apologize for my remarks, I will say that I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I have to be allied and associated with the most notorious lying, thieving pack of upholstered jackals in American political history in the Republican party.

“I’m sorry that I’m also obliged to work with the most inexplicably spineless, invertebrate eunuchs in human history in the Democratic party. Between these two parties, straddled by an egomaniacal scarecrow like Joe Lieberman, a man who thought so little of Vice President Gore’s chances of election that he ran for the vice presidency and the Senate simultaneously, the 534 other members of this body might as well hand the keys to the city to Almighty fucking Lucifer for all the damage it's done.”

“The gentleman from Massachusetts is out of order!” (Banging gavel)

At this point, I’d rip the fucking microphone out of the podium and wheel around to face that other treasonous scarecrow, Nancy Pelosi.

“No, Pelosi, you know what’s ‘out of order’? This entire fucking country. You got elevated to the highest post in this chamber, and some 31 more Democrats were brought into this selfsame chamber at the same time in the obviously naïve and misplaced hopes that you people would help end this war.

“Instead, you’ve perpetuated it with one spending bill after another and cannot even muster enough votes to override a veto when the man you should’ve started impeaching long before today had a big problem with non-binding resolutions. Pelosi, Dennis Hastert used that Speaker’s gavel to better effect when he used to crack walnuts with it during the 110th session of Congress.

“You are more worthless than testicles on a priest, than a sandbox in the Sahara, than an ice cube tray in Alaska. You were administered an oath to uphold the Constitution and by not impeaching George W. Bush and not supporting Dennis Kucinich’s Resolution 333, you are doing anything but. And why did you ask for my apology, Madame Speaker? So we could get the co-operation from a minority GOP that openly despises us and stabs us in the back the second we vote on things they want, which is every Goddamned day?

“Now shut the fuck up unless you’re introducing articles of impeachment…”

At this point, I’d be dragged off the floor of the House of Representatives by the Capitol Police and shot in the back of the head in an alleyway on K Street, Soviet style.

And that, boys and girls, is why I would make a lousy legislator. My only fans would be the janitors and the busboys in the Congressional cafeteria. And I’d never apologize for saying something that I knew to be true.

Just like Michael Moore’s never apologized for Fahrenheit 9/11, just like the Dixie Chicks didn’t apologize for calling George Bush an embarrassment. Because real liberals don’t apologize. Pete Stark ought to turn in his liberal card where it can then be shoved up his ass and burned with a blowtorch, in that order.

Speaking truth to power and then apologizing for it is bad enough.

But speaking truth to powerless entities like George W. Bush, a man who makes Gerald Ford on his worst day look like Abe Lincoln, and powerless entities like the Democratic party, a majority only in a technical sense…

…well, that, Leader Boehner, is “despicable behavior.”

For that matter, what does the Administration have on members of Congress? Have we been completely off-base in this domestic spying business? Is the Administration not so much interested in spying on citizens as in spying on those in a position to actually put the brakes on their crimes? What else could explain the capitulation again and again, on EVERYONE's part, to further the Bushcheney march towards a police state?

Yesterday Bill in Portland Maine over at Le Grand Orange speculated on what it could be:

What Do They Have On You, Dems?

I figure it must be some sick perverted sex thing. Involving sheep or chickens. Maybe horses.

Sure, it could be some money scandal or shady land sale or quid pro quo campaign-contributions-for-favors deal. But I doubt it.

I suspect the gutless and the gullible Democrats in Congress gather at one of their apartments every night, strip down, grease up, and have orgies with hookers, barn animals, toys of every shape and size, and each other. And if they don’t keep doing what Republicans tell them to do inside Congress, their "little secret" will be leaked to the press and that'll be that: rehab for everyone.

As you may have heard (it was on the teevee), Congress is at eleven percent approval. Eleven percent---hockey sticks. That's less than half the approval of the worst president in U.S. history, who stands at a mind-blowing 24 percent (as bad as Nixon's numbers got during the darkest days of Watergate). But eleven percent? That's even worse than the last congress, in which the GOP literally banged their gavel and then called Bingo for a whopping 23 days out of the year. How hard could it be to top that??

There must be something pretty twisted going on behind closed doors, because raising their approval rating is as easy as getting off their trapezes, removing their fur-lined handcuffs and spiked collars, sending Bessie the "wonder mule" back to the stable and doing something as simple as saying the magic word: "No."

In today's New York Times Jed Rubenfeld comments on the change in Michael Mukasey's tone in regard to executive branch power from the one he held as a judge:

AT his confirmation hearings last week, Michael B. Mukasey, President Bush’s nominee for attorney general, was asked whether the president is required to obey federal statutes. Judge Mukasey replied, “That would have to depend on whether what goes outside the statute nonetheless lies within the authority of the president to defend the country.”

I practiced before Judge Mukasey when I was an assistant United States attorney, and I saw his fairness, conscientiousness and legal acumen. But before voting to confirm him as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, the Senate should demand that he retract this statement. It is a dangerous confusion and distortion of the single most fundamental principle of the Constitution — that everyone, including the president, is subject to the rule of law.

It is true that a president may in rare cases disregard a federal statute — but only when Congress has acted outside its authority by passing a statute that is unconstitutional. (Who gets the last word on whether a statute is unconstitutional is something Americans have long debated and probably will always debate.)

But that is not what Judge Mukasey said. What he said, and what many members of the current administration have claimed, would radically transform this accepted point of law into a completely different and un-American concept of executive power.

According to Judge Mukasey’s statement, as well as other parts of his testimony, the president’s authority “to defend the nation” trumps his obligation to obey the law. Take the federal statute governing military commissions in Guantánamo Bay. No one, including the president’s lawyers, argues that this statute is unconstitutional. The only question is whether the president is required to obey it even if in his judgment the statute is not the best way “to defend the nation.”

If he is not, we no longer live under the government the founders established.

Democrats noted how his tone changed between the first and second days of his appearance, which makes me wonder what information he didn't want to get out that the Administration showed him they had between those two days.

Is this how they've gotten away with it over the past six years? Compiling dossiers on everyone, including guys like Arlen Specter and John Warner, who look like they're going to do the right thing and then cave at the last minute? And if that's the case, then Washington is an even bigger cesspool than we imagined.

Labels: Democrats, Michael Mukasey

I wouldn't hold my breath, though. Still, considering that when George W. Bush took office, the prevailing wisdom ran the gamut of "Thank God the grownups are now in charge" and "Don't worry, his father will be running everything anyway", all that insistence on suits and ties and sexual restraint looks like just so much window-dressing now:

A pair of new reports have delivered sharply critical judgments about the State Department’s performance in overseeing work done by the private companies that the government relies on increasingly in Iraq and Afghanistan to carry out delicate security work and other missions.

A State Department review of its own security practices in Iraq assails the department for poor coordination, communication, oversight and accountability involving armed security companies like Blackwater USA, according to people who have been briefed on the report. In addition to Blackwater, the State Department’s two other security contractors in Iraq are DynCorp International and Triple Canopy.

At the same time, a government audit expected to be released Tuesday says that records documenting the work of DynCorp, the State Department’s largest contractor, are in such disarray that the department cannot say “specifically what it received” for most of the $1.2 billion it has paid the company since 2004 to train the police officers in Iraq.

It amazes me that while wingnuts are calling talk radio shows demanding audits of the Frost family finances so they can determine whether Graeme and Gemma Frost "deserve" to be in the SCHIP program, they don't care one bit about the $9 billion that went missing in Iraq or the $1.2 billion that DynCorp was paid to train police officers -- an expenditure that has yielded no results and isn't even documented for accountability.

Labels: Bush Administration, incompetence, Iraq

Your tax dollars at work: Meet the CIA's new "Terrorist Busters" logo:



John McCloskey at More, Better Lies thinks it evokes the Ghostbusters logo, and that's true. But the first thing I noticed was how much the brandished gun resembles the Heroes symbol:

Labels: CIA, Heroes, marketing, pop culture

I've got a couple of friends who entertain 9-11 conspiracy theories...constantly...and they send me email crap all the time. When I try to reason that we need to choose where to spend our time right now, they say something to the effect of that I just don't understand that there really is no government in this country, no choice, and that everything is preordained, so I am actually wasting my time by looking at the politics that are shown to me...here in the Matrix....

Y'know, I'm probably one of the first people who would believe anything at this point...I have no doubt that there is information out there that points to shadow governments and secret cabals....murderers and area 51 housing aliens in jars.... But I also can't live in an action film....If those things are true, I don't think that Kiefer Sutherland or, better, John Cusack , is gonna crack the plot and blow up the warehouse where the warhead codes are stored....or come and arrest Bush and Cheney and sent them straight to jail....for blowing up the WTC ! Even if that were true, the lack of hard evidence would mandate going with a lesser charge to get a conviction....if that were even possible at all. Don't you see? They would just pass a law or point to a wartime law that would get them off. I'm not saying not to believe what you believe, but get your priorities straight!

I have to go forward, as I always have in my life, doing what I can with what is in front of me and I can guarantee any of you conspiracy "nuts" out there that the thing that someone is going to jail for is not the explosion or implosion of a building, but hopefully for something like the outing of a covert agent who was working on weapons of mass destruction in IRAN!! Now, that is something that we should all be able to sink our teeth into....and something that has become a runaway train for this administration...and it may be something with some real emerging evidence, that this administration would prefer that we would not look at.
And...really guys...the logical left, who want to reclaim some semblance of what this country was before this mess started, have so little accessible airtime, and so few opportunities to have someone like Bill Maher comment on what is happening now and what we can really do something about, why oh why would you want to interrupt that and make you and your co-nuts look worse than you already do?

In my opinion, the 9-11 conspiracy theory is one of those last refuges for cowards and lazy folks...It is much easier to sit around and try to unravel a mystery that doesn't really put you in the line of fire. Easier to theorize and extrapolate than to have to take a hard look at the cold disappointment and despair that rolls out of DC,along with every revelation, every day, day after day.... Its easier to be a nut-case and written off, repeating the same theories over and over....and where is the theory...the truth... that Rudy Giuliani had enough fuel stored in the buildings to blow up blocks? What about the fact that the radios didn't work? And what about the slack cut to the Port Authority?...what about our friends who were told to go back to their desks, that everything was under control...even when bodies were falling by the windows? Is that conspiracy or just plain old boring low bid cronyism?

Why not go after the very real things that have to be brought forward? This guy, Rudy Giuliani, who is responsible for alot of what went wrong that day, (not to mention before that for a long, long time in NYC,) could be your next president! Isn't it more important to ensure that the democrats have a toe hold at least, before we halt all discourse and focus on this one thing?

The real conspiracy here is that which would have any of us take our eye off the ball for even a second to watch the shiny things that the neocons are throwing our way. Its hard enough to stay focused and not to slip into despair, without people who go around like nuts talking about stuff that is only designed to distract us from the necessary work that we have to do right now. lets agree to revisit this thing in a few years, OK?

C/P RIPCoco

Labels: 9/11, Bill Maher, conspiracies, Rudy Guiliani, tinfoil

You are more likely to be killed in a midair collision than by terrorists while flying -- but rather than do something about it, let's just play "Hide the Report":

Anxious to avoid upsetting air travelers, NASA is withholding results from an unprecedented national survey of pilots that found safety problems like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than the government previously recognized.

NASA gathered the information under an $8.5 million safety project, through telephone interviews with roughly 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots over nearly four years. Since ending the interviews at the beginning of 2005 and shutting down the project completely more than one year ago, the space agency has refused to divulge the results publicly.

Just last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers.

[snip]

Among other results, the pilots reported at least twice as many bird strikes, near mid-air collisions and runway incursions as other government monitoring systems show, according to a person familiar with the results who was not authorized to discuss them publicly.

The survey also revealed higher-than-expected numbers of pilots who experienced "in-close approach changes" — potentially dangerous, last-minute instructions to alter landing plans.

So why hide this report? Here's why:

A senior NASA official, associate administrator Thomas S. Luedtke, said revealing the findings could damage the public's confidence in airlines and affect airline profits.

And after all, what's a few hundred people when compared against airline profits?

Just in case you didn't already know for whom this country is being run.

Labels: air safety, corporatism, greed

It's worse than you thought. Larry Johnson, who worked with Plame, explains how:

In 2004 the FBI received intelligence that Al Qaeda hit teams were enroute to the United States to kill Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Valerie Plame. The FBI informed Valerie of this threat. This was just more “good” news piled on the fact that her intelligence career was in shambles, that intelligence assets she had recruited/managed were destroyed, and that she was unable to rebut publicly false and malicious smears of her character and reputation by a bunch of partisan Republican hacks. As the mother of two pre-school children, her first thoughts were about protecting her kids. She took the threat seriously and asked for help.

When the White House learned of these threats they sprung into action. They beefed up Secret Service protection for Vice President Cheney and provided security protection to Karl Rove. But they declined to do anything for Valerie. That was a CIA problem.

Valerie contacted the office of Security at CIA and requested assistance. They told her too fucking bad and to go pound sand. They did not use those exact words, but they told her she was on her own.

Before learning of this I credited George Tenet with doing a good job of restoring morale at the CIA but criticized him strongly for playing politics with the White House and helping set the table for scamming the American public into the Iraq war. Now, in light of this revelation, I realize the man is a despicable coward. He refused to come to the aid of one of his CIA officers who faced a specific death threat. In fact, Georgie boy never once reached out to Valerie to provide any comfort or encouragement. He wanted to stay on good terms with the White House so he effectively cut her loose.

So if you have wondered why Joe and Val are a little pissed off, this might help shed some additional light on the matter. Not only did the Bush Administration out a covert intelligence officer working on the most sensitive national security issues in a time of war, but when that officer faced a direct threat to her life and her family’s safety because of that public exposure, they did not do a goddamn thing to help. I don’t know about you, but that fries my ass.

And don't talk to me about the Vanity Fair photo. The threat to Valerie Plame wasn't a result of a magazine photo, it was a result of the Bush Administration's cheap political payback against a public servant whose husband, another public servant, dared to call the Administration on its lies. By the time of that photo shoot, Robert Novak, Karl Rove, Richard Armitage, and Scooter Libby had already done the damage to both Plame's career and to her work on keeping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Yes, Katie Couric did her best in last night's interview, being the good, corporatist, Viacom hack that she is, to play the "Joe Wilson Outed His Own Wife" card, but it didn't fly. Allowing the photo shoot may not have been the best judgment in the world, but let's not forget that Plame's career was already over and her assets already compromised by the time it took place.

The vitriol that the right has had towards the Wilsons has always reminded me of Clinton hatred, and I suspect it's for the same reasons, having less to do with policy disagreements and more to do with jealousy. Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame are smart, telegenic, sexy as hell, and successful. It seems just another manifestation of the Republicans' behaving like the kid who got beaten up every day in high school and then went home and masturbated to the Playboy centerfold while the captain of the football was getting all the girls -- and they're still angry.

Labels: Valerie Plame

First it was Rupert Murdoch. Now Hillary Clinton is sucking up to Matt Drudge:

As Senator Barack Obama prepared to give a major speech on Iraq one morning a few weeks ago, a flashing red-siren alert went up on the Drudge Report Web site. It read, “Queen of the Quarter: Hillary Crushes Obama in Surprise Fund-Raising Surge,” and, “$27 Million, Sources Tell Drudge Report.”

Within minutes, the Drudge site had injected Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s fund-raising success into the day’s political news on the Internet and cable television. It did not halt coverage of Mr. Obama’s speech or his criticism of her vote to authorize the war in 2002, but along the front lines of the campaign — the hourly, intensely fought effort to capture the news cycle or deny ownership of it to the other side — it was a telling assault.

Mrs. Clinton’s aides declined to discuss how the Drudge Report got access to her latest fund-raising figures nearly 20 minutes before the official announcement went to supporters. But it was a prime example of a development that has surprised much of the political world: Mrs. Clinton is learning to play nice with the Drudge Report and the powerful, elusive and conservative-leaning man behind it.

It ought to tell you something that outside of the Republican candidates themselves, everyone's trying to make nice about Hillary. Yesterday's appalling all-female guest panel on Press the Meat, which had among them enough botox to kill an entire city and enough "girly"-colored suits to make one vow to wear nothing but navy blue forever, had nothing bad to say about her. Even the odious Kate O'Beirne, who can usually be relied on to do something snarky, was restrained.

This means one of two things: either the right wants Hillary to be the nominee because she is the candidate that can best rally the Republican base to show up to vote against her, or else they're confident that she'll completely abandon her own base and play nice with the conservative, screw-the-middle-class-and-the-poor, Corporations Über Alles, Christofascist Zombie Brigade agenda.

And no, the two are not mutually exclusive.

Labels: Hillary Clinton

I meant to put this up yesterday, but I'm down with some kind of Office Crud and just never got to it.

Steve Benen on how the media equate Republican lies with Democratic truth.

In case you missed it, Crooks and Liars as the video of Stephen Colbert's appearance on Press the Meat. It was hilarious, surreal, oddly disturbing. I can't wait to see what he does with his one delegate at the Democratic National Convention. We may yet wish we hadn't laughed so hard at his White House Correspondents' Dinner appearance. This is no longer comedy, it's performance art; it's skydiving without a parachute. No one can predict where this might go next.

Play that Funky Music White Boy: Today is the day Funky Winkerbean fans have been eagerly anticipating since October 4 -- the 10-year jump. Check out how beautifully the transition was handled, and meet the new and aging cast. Tom Batiuk is signing copies of Lisa's Story: The Other Shoe Tuesday night at the Barnes and Noble in Clifton, NJ.

Our friend jurassicpork on how the Boston Police Department managed to suck all the joy out of Beantown over the Sox' pennant win over Cleveland last night. (Go, Rockies!)

The hell with the Republican hatefest last night. Dave Johnson liveblogged the San Mateo County Democratic straw poll.

Larisa Alexandrovna on how the U.S. has been flying over Iranian airspace all year. Also...she notes that it seems Valerie Plame's role in preventing Iran from developing or obtaining nuclear weapons has been scrubbed from the final 60 Minutes interview.

Labels: bloggers

...because we had no idea that blogging wasn't just something we do, it's a commitment:

Labels: comics

It's easy to think that The Daily Show has gone soft, given the pure gonzo Subgenius weirdness that The Colbert Report has become. But TDS has become the M*A*S*H of the current century, continuing to work as smoothly, reliably, and hilariously as a good old reliable toaster.

Exhibit A:



Viacom seems to have finally realized that having the best TDS videos permanently archived is a GOOD idea. So all the TDS video you can eat will soon be here.

Labels: The Daily Show