West Virginia Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd admits that he placed a “secret hold” on legislation that would make uncovering the Byzantine world of federal contracting as easy as typing a Google search.
Tom Gavin, spokesperson for Byrd, confirmed to Cox Newspapers that the senator placed the hold on legislation introduced by Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., before voting on the measure.
I'm actually a little sorry to hear it, as Mike was one of the more entertaining hosts on AAR. A complete fruitcake ranter, but at least you weren't snoozing off listening to his show, unlike, uh, Al, uh, Franken.
As always, for the latest on the escapades at Airhead America, check in with the Radio Equalizer.
This one won't get plastered on the front pages of the New York Times for the next 31 days, but it's more typical of the conduct of our soldiers and sailors than Abu Ghraib.
For the time being, Hadael will continue to make regular trips to the Marine base to receive her weekly medicine.
For their part, the Marines say they will continue to visit Hadael’s family from time to time.
Hadael’s father says she doesn’t play with the other kids in her neighborhood and doesn’t smile much anymore, although when the Marines come around she smiles a bit more.
Staring at his daughter as she lies on a green stretcher, receiving medication inside the Marines’ medical facility in Al Qa’im, Ahmed says that now “all that is left to do is wait.”
She needs a liver and kidney transplant, but our folks are keeping her alive. Four of her siblings have died from a hereditary ailment.
Former Princeton professor Sean Wilentz announced today the conclusion of his 13th investigation of 2004 balloting in Ohio.
"John Kerry won the election, fair and square. It took us a couple tries, but when we compared Kerry's vote totals with those of Cleveland aldermen, a troubling pattern emerged."
President George Allen, reached for comment, said that the Democrats' continuing fascination with the 2004 Ohio election is matched only by their examination of the Wisconsin balloting in 2008 which resulted in his ascent to the Presidency.
Dateline 2020:
Robert F. Kennedy III announced today that his examination of Ohio ballots from the 2004 election had proven that John F. Kerry won.
"John F. Kerry should have been our 44th president, no doubt about it. We discovered 120,000 fraudulent votes for Bush. It took a little work, but there were dimpled chads for Kerry; apparently the poll workers changed incomplete votes for him into votes for Bush."
President Tim Pawlenty declined comment, but a spokesman noted that the Democrats continue to display their sore loser status by questioning the vote counts in Arizona, New Mexico and Iowa during his election in 2016.
Lest you think this prognostication is exaggerated, check this story.
Since the election, questions have been raised about how votes were tallied in Ohio, a battleground state that helped deliver the election to President Bush over Senator John Kerry.
The critics, including an independent candidate for governor and a team of statisticians and lawyers, say preliminary results from their ballot inspections show signs of more widespread irregularities than previously known.
Yeah, I'm sure. And get this lie:
The critics say their sole interest in the question is to improve the voting system.
“This is not about Mr. Kerry or Mr. Bush or who should be president,’’ said Bill Goodman, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York group that is part of the lawsuit. “This is about figuring out what is not working in our election system and ensuring that every cast vote counts.
Yes, of course it's a completely non-partisan issue, right, Bill? Except that when you surf over to the Center for Constitutional Rights' website, what do you see at the top left?
Ooooh, Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush. "See CCR Attorneys in the short documentary, How to Impeach a President."
Here's the video:
It's hilarious. The opening line in the film is "Since 9-11 it has been clear that the principal enemy of democracy has been in the White House."
Yes, you might have been duped into believing since 9-11 the principal enemy of democracy is Islamofascism, the ideology that was behind the attacks of 9-11. But the Center for Constitutional Rights knows better.
My favorite line--the laugh line you might say--is when one of the lawyers for CCR says, "This is a real grassroots campaign."
Yeah, a grassroots campaign led by a bunch of lawyers from a liberal thinktank--correction, it should be called a liberal "feeltank", as pointed out in the comments by XRayNova.
I've been sure that this was coming for awhile; it's a major reason why I've been much more tempered about my criticism of John McCain. That, and of course, because he hasn't given me as much to be angry about. Note: The reason Hynes' apparent enthusiasm for McCain made me tone my criticism is not because I worry about losing my treasured place on their blogroll, but because I respect Hynes' political instincts.
BTW, this absolutely means McCain is running in 2008. No surprise, but they can't plausibly deny it any longer.
I prefer McCain over Giuliani and Mitt Romney. George Allen's still a possible, but he's gotta keep his Senate seat to have a chance and while it's still likely, it's looking shakier than it did five months ago. I wouldn't mind seeing somebody like Pawlenty or Newt or Bill Owens.
I want first and foremost to win the election. For me, getting a true conservative as our nominee is desirable and I absolutely agree that McCain's not that. But he would absolutely win if he got the nomination, so he's very attractive on that score.
James Boyce, who used to spend half of his posts over at the HuffPo complaining about the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, decides that it's time to start sliming veterans and heroes like Paul Galanti.
But here's the best news. Evidently some reporters at The Washington Post have dug into Galanti's past over the last few years and perhaps now, with Galanti front and center in a top Senate race, they will share their findings with the rest of us. Could it be that Senator Allen, clearly a racist, has brought on board a sexist turncoat to shore up his vet status? It just keeps getting better and better.
Galanti's military decorations include the Silver Star, Two Legions of Merit for combat, the Meritorious Service Medal, the Bronze Star for combat, nine Air Medals, the Navy Commendation Medal for combat and two Purple Hearts.
He spent seven years in the Hanoi Hilton, with John McCain, Bud Day, Admiral Stockdale and others. He's a living legend, who did his part to make sure that twerps like James Boyce could spout his offensive claims.
As I mentioned on Constitutional Public Radio the other day, I have not covered the Duke Lacrosse rape case much since about April, since I was convinced the story was entirely bogus and that the young men charged in the case were guilty of nothing worse than poor judgment.
Slate takes a look at the NY Times' recent attempt to shore up the faltering case against the players.
The Wilson-Glater piece highlights every superficially incriminating piece of evidence in the case, selectively omits important exculpatory evidence, and reports hotly disputed statements by not-very-credible police officers and the mentally unstable accuser as if they were established facts. With comical credulity, it features as its centerpiece a leaked, transparently contrived, 33-page police sergeant's memo that seeks to paper over some of the most obvious holes in the prosecution's evidence.
This memo was concocted from memory, nearly four months after the underlying witness interviews, by Durham police Sgt. Mark Gottlieb, the lead investigator. Gottlieb says he took no contemporaneous notes, an inexplicable and indefensible police practice. Gottlieb had drawn fire before the alleged Duke rape—perhaps unbeknownst to the Times—as a Dukie-basher who reveled in throwing kids into jail for petty drinking infractions, noise violations, and the like, sometimes with violent criminals as cellmates.
The sergeant's account is indeed curious, since it contradicts contemporaneous accounts, in ways that support the prosecutor's case. It certainly seems convenient, if not outright fraudulent. As we've discussed, the dancer stated that her attackers were "chubby", which Slate notes certainly rules out Colin Finnerty. Indeed, they note that this description resulted in him not being included in the first two photo lineups:
Gottlieb's police team did not include a photo of Finnerty—the only team member who fits Gottlieb's account of a "baby-faced, tall, lean" rapist—in the 36 photos shown to the accuser later on March 16 and on March 21.
Like many stories this one features a narrative that fits the NY Times' biases. Wealthy white men versus a poor black woman; surely the men must be guilty. And even if they aren't, shouldn't they pay the price for centuries of slavery followed by 140 years of discrimination?
As many as 14 people were injured this afternoon by a motorist who drove around San Francisco deliberately running them down before being arrested by police, who believe the same driver struck and killed a man earlier today in Fremont.
Michael Moore, reached for a comment, said, "If he was trying to get back at Bush, he picked the wrong city! San Francisco voted overwhelmingly for Kerry!"
The suspect is reported Afghani and upset about his new wife being held up in a visa snafu. There is some concern that the incident ended near the San Francisco Jewish Community Center; that is, that he was heading there on purpose. Considering that the spree started in Fremont, on the other side of the Bay, it certainly seems more that coincidental.
The SUV hit two people in front of the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco on California Street, just blocks from where the rampage ended.
Blood covered the sidewalk in front of the center's gift store entrance, and 50 feet farther down the sidewalk lay a mangled bicycle. Security cameras in front of the center captured images of the incident, which happened at 1:12 p.m., said to Aaron Rosenthal, spokesman for the community center.
As some of you know, I used to live in San Francisco, for three years. It is certainly my impression from the stories I've read that this rampage occurred in a wealthy section of town.
He's got a lot of baggage, certainly, and his views don't fit well with the base of the party. But he is a proven leader who gets results as well. I'd certainly support him in the general election if he becomes the nominee, but he's not my first choice in the primaries. At this point I'm leaning towards George Allen, but he's got a real dogfight in Virginia this year, and he seems gaffe-prone.
Gaius Arbo has the details. Apparently British readers can't read the article I linked a couple of posts below.
Visitors who click on a link to the article, published Monday, instead got a notice explaining that British law "prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial." The blocked article reveals evidence authorities have in the alleged plot to use liquid explosives to down U.S. airliners over the Atlantic.
Maybe the concern was that with all the hand-wringing the Times did, the article might make it tougher to get a conviction?
The International Socialist Organization has rescinded its sponsorship of Cindy Sheehan's upcoming 17-day anti-war protest in Washington, D.C., according to a spokesman for the event.
As Cybercast News Service previously reported, the ISO had been listed on news releases as a sponsor of "Camp Democracy," a protest and convention scheduled to take place on the National Mall Sept. 5-21.
Since the report was published Monday, the website promoting the event has removed the ISO from its list of sponsors, although the group is still listed in a sample news release that supporters are encouraged to send to local media outlets.
And this is one of those days. Talking about an appearance by Walt & Mearshiemer he notes:
Yesterday, at the invitation of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), they held a forum at the National Press Club to expand on their allegations about the Israel lobby. Blurring the line between academics and activism, they accepted a button proclaiming "Fight the Israel Lobby" and won cheers from the Muslim group for their denunciation of Israel and its friends in the United States.
Whatever motivated the performance, the result wasn't exactly scholarly.
Walt singled out two Jews who worked at the Pentagon for their pro-Israel views. "People like Paul Wolfowitz or Doug Feith . . . advocate policies they think are good for Israel and the United States alike," he said. "We don't think there's anything wrong with that, but we also don't think there's anything wrong for others to point out that these individuals do have attachments that shape how they think about the Middle East."
"Attachments" sounds much better than "dual loyalties." But why single out Wolfowitz and Feith and not their non-Jewish boss, Donald Rumsfeld?
NY Times' Schizophrenia in Article On British Terror Plot
You can sense the warring narratives in this article on the planned plane bombers. At first we hear of the seriousness of the charges and the plot:
The ominous language of seven recovered martyrdom videotapes is among new details that emerged from interviews with high-ranking British, European and American officials last week, demonstrating that the suspects had made considerable progress toward planning a terrorist attack. Those details include fresh evidence from Britain’s most wide-ranging terror investigation: receipts for cash transfers from abroad, a handwritten diary that appears to sketch out elements of a plot, and, on martyrdom tapes, several suspects’ statements of their motives.
But they make sure to water that down with the message that the attack was not imminent:
But at the same time, five senior British officials said, the suspects were not prepared to strike immediately. Instead, the reactions of Britain and the United States in the wake of the arrests of 21 people on Aug. 10 were driven less by information about a specific, imminent attack than fear that other, unknown terrorists might strike.
Those are two consecutive paragraphs that basically send conflicting messages. We get the same throughout the article:
Later that day, Paul Stephenson, deputy chief of the Metropolitan Police in London, said the goal of the people suspected of plotting the attack was “mass murder on an unimaginable scale.” On the day of the arrests, some officials estimated that as many as 10 planes were to be blown up, possibly over American cities. Michael Chertoff, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, described the suspected plot as “getting really quite close to the execution stage.”
But British officials said the suspects still had a lot of work to do. Two of the suspects did not have passports, but had applied for expedited approval. One official said the people suspected of leading the plot were still recruiting and radicalizing would-be bombers.
It was serious, but not that serious. It was advanced, but not that advanced. They didn't have passports but they had requested expedited approval....
Get what the Times is doing? While they have to report the facts, they are making sure to color the facts in a way that the plot doesn't end up helping the Bush Administration.
Errr, that is, some form of life known as the 9-11 Denier. About a month ago, the Onion posted a gag about how Oliver Stone's World Trade Center movie posited the "single plane" theory for September 11, with the same plane responsible for all four crashes that terrible day.
Well, believe it or not, Morgan Reynolds, who gets pushed forward in the 9-11 Denial Movement because he's a former Bush Administration staffer (Economist with the Department of Labor), has endorsed this theory, along with something about a chameleon plane that went invisible so we wouldn't realize they hadn't actually crashed into the second tower.
Even more bizarre, he acknowledges the Onion story!
Here is more food for thought: the same chameleon plane could have appeared at all three events: 9:03a at WTC 2, 9:32-9:37a at the Pentagon, and 10:06a at Shanksville, PA. In truth, the perps only needed the disappearing plane trick at WTC 2 but it is a promising possibility for Shanksville too. The Pentagon event did not really need an airliner but the single plane theory proposed this month as a parody of the JFK single-bullet theory actually might make sense! The same disappearing act by the same secret plane could have been used at all three locations! We shall see if future work bears any of this out.
But it gets better. Steven Jones, who's sort of the rock star of the 9-11 Denial Movement right now, if one can describe a physicist and Mormon as a rock star, has invited Reynolds (DOC file) to post a paper at his "scholarly" Journal of Nine-Eleven Studies (aka JONES), which he has already announced will be both peer reviewed and published!
I could go on, but the fact is that as editor of the Journalof911Studies.com, I have invited Morgan Reynolds and whoever he wishes to join him, and another author to write papers on BOTH sides of this issue – did REAL planes hit the Twin WTC Towers, or not? Both sides agreed. In this way, readers will have two peer-reviewed scholarly papers side by side, both confronting the evidences presented above and whatever other evidences they wish to bring in – and then the reader can judge for himself or herself.
Uh, you know, I can already tell that the peer review process at the Journal of Nine-Eleven Studies is a joke.
The original million-dollar arm and ten-cent head returns to the Raiders. He used to be able to play, but was always a problem because he didn't want to put in the time studying film and learning to read defenses. He had a cannon of an arm, one of the five best arms I've ever seen--not quite up there with Favre or Jurgensen, but in the next grouping. But he's thirty-seven going on thirteen, hasn't played in five years and last played well in 1999. Davis has had success with these kinds of guys, but it was always when they were still young enough to prosper in the right system.
Jeff George is the last player I'd want on my team.
An Italian named Angelo Frammartino, 25, espoused the typical anti-Israel views of a far-leftist, as he expressed in a letter to a newspaper in 2006:
We must face the fact that a situation of no violence is a luxury in many parts of the world, but we do not seek to avoid legitimate acts of defense. … I never dreamed of condemning resistance, the blood of the Vietnamese, the blood of the people who were under colonialist occupation or the blood of the young Palestinians from the first intifada.
Actively to forward his beliefs, Frammartino went to Israel in early August 2006 to serve as a volunteer with ARCI, a far-leftist NGO, working with Palestinian children at the Burj al-Luqluq community center in eastern Jerusalem.
But on August 10, he was stabbed in a terrorist assault at Sultan Suleiman Street, near Herod’s Gate in Jerusalem, twice in the back and once in the neck. He died shortly after, only two days before his planned return to Italy. The killer, soon identified as Ashraf Hanaisha, 24, turned out to be a Palestinian affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A resident of the village of Qabatiya in the Jenin area, Hanaisha apparently planned to attack a Jewish Israeli but made a mistake.
I hate it when that happens! But not to worry, Frammartino's family forgives his killer (shades of Michael Berg).
Our old whipping boy gets another dose of the lash from Confederate Yankee, who finds that Mitchell admitted to making up quotes in an article he wrote many years ago.
Here's a silly little article about famous parents with offspring who put embarrassing things on their blogs or MySpace pages.
AS the leader of the Republican party in the US Senate and a possible presidential candidate, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee has a reputation for sober rectitude. The same cannot be said of his son Jonathan, a Vanderbilt University student who recently appeared on the internet wearing six cans of beer strapped to his belt.
Nor has Jonathan’s brother Bryan done much to help his father’s attempts to strike a reasonable note about US involvement in Iraq. “I was born an American by God’s amazing grace,” wrote Bryan Frist in an online profile. “Let’s bomb some people.”
Sounds like the tongue was firmly planted in the cheek on that one. But you'll notice as you read the article that all of the politicians and others mentioned have one thing in common: they're not liberals. Frist, Louie Gohmert (Congressman), Samuel Alito and Mike Huckabee are all conservatives.
So what's going on here? Oh, that's right, liberals can't be hypocrites, therefore it isn't news when their children do wild things, the way it is when Republican kids make silly mistakes. If RFK, Jr's son showed off his bong collection on his MySpace, the press would point out that it's just part of the continuing trials and tribulations of the Kennedys.
WALLACE: And, finally, Senator Biden — finally, we've got about 30 seconds left, but I can't let you go without some politics. As we've mentioned, you're in South Carolina right now, on the campaign trial. Thirty seconds or less, what kind of a chance would a Northeastern liberal like Joe Biden stand in the South if you were running in Democratic primaries against southerners like Mark Warner and John Edwards.
BIDEN: Better than anybody else. You don't know my state. My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state has the eighth-largest black population in the country. My state is anything from a Northeast liberal state.
In the short 15 months that the Huffington Post has been around, it's had more than its share of idiotic posts by idiotic people. But there can't be anything more stupid than this post by Russell Shaw.
I hope and pray we don't get hit again, like we did on September 11. Even one life lost to the violence of terrorism is too much.
If I somehow knew an attack was coming, I wouldn't pause for a second to report it in order to prevent it from occuring.
Note to terrorists: Don't let Russell Shaw in on the plot.
But the jaw-dropping part of this post comes later:
What if another terror attack just before this fall's elections could save many thousand-times the lives lost?
How could that happen, you ask? Well, according to Russell, the terrorist attack could peel just enough voters away from the Republicans to get the Democrats back into power, which would save millions of lives via stem cell research, support for mass transit, stricter gun control, etc.
There are quite a few problems with this analysis, starting with the notion that the Democrats would save all those lives. Second, who's to say that a terrorist attack would drive the voters away from the Republicans?
And third, yes, it's disgusting to root for something bad to happen to sabotage the Republicans. There are a lot of Democrats hoping that we have a bad hurricane season like last year, to drive down Bush's poll numbers. Yeah, it'll suck for those who lose their homes and their lives, but the rest of us will be better of with Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid.
(This post will remain on top until tomorrow afternoon. Please hit refresh and scroll down for newer content).
I will be appearing on Constitutional Public Radio tomorrow with my buddies Andrea Shea-King and Mark Vance at 3:00 PM Eastern time. CPR is broadcast on AM 1510 WWBC, Brevard County, Florida. For those not lucky enough to live on Florida's Space Coast, you can listen in over the internet.
There's also an online chat feature here so you can interact with us on the show. Just type in your name, city and state and submit query to get into the chat.
Andrea and Mark have their own blog, Radio Patriots, that I heartily recommend as well. That it happens to feature a post right now that is complimentary to yours truly is purely a coincidence.
BDP looks at the new evidence released in the case today and concludes that it's not going to help the prosecution.
I covered this story quite a bit back in April, but quickly came to the conclusion that the young men implicated were almost certainly innocent of anything other than being crude frat boys. It is disappointing that the prosecutor has not reached that point.
Note this point, actually from the New York Times article on the case:
In Officer Himan’s handwritten notes, the woman described all three as chubby or heavy. Adam: “white male, short, red cheeks fluffy hair chubby face, brn.” Matt: “Heavy set short haircut 260-270.” Bret: “Chubby.” The descriptions in Sergeant Gottlieb’s notes are more detailed and correspond more closely to the men later arrested: Collin Finnerty, 20, a slender 6-foot-3 and 175 pounds with light hair; Mr. Evans, 23, 5-foot-10, 190 pounds and with dark hair; and Mr. Seligmann, 20, who is 6-foot-1 and 215 pounds with dark hair.
Sergeant Gottlieb wrote: “She described the three men as 1) W/M, young, blonde hair, baby faced, tall and lean, 2) W/M, medium height (5’8”+ with Himan’s build), dark hair medium build, and had red (rose colored) cheeks, and the third suspect as being a W/M, 6+ feet, large build with dark hair.”
The difference? Gottlieb wrote his notes after the fact, while Himan wrote them at the time. Colin Finnerty is certainly not chubby.
Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson's lawsuit got off to a rocky start when they tried to get the judge to agree to leave their home address off the complaint.
In less than thirty minutes, the Court was able to ascertain plaintiffs’ residential address from multiple publicly available sources, including a database of federal government records.
Why The Republicans Will Win, Or At Least Have Limited Losses
Because the Democrats are too busy fighting other Democrats. Matt Taibbi displays the thin skin and bile that we've come to expect from the left wing blogosphere:
What exactly does self-appointed congressional mega-celebrity and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rahm Emanuel mean (says a friend of mine in Congress of him: "He's an amoral, showboating cock") when he says, "Do I think [bloggers] and Al Sharpton are the future of the Democratic Party?"
That's actually not hard to figure out; it's political hack-ese for the human sentence bloggers = Al Sharpton. As for what he means by that: Just think about the thought process that had to go into Emanuel's adding of the phrase "and Al Sharpton," when Al Sharpton wasn't even part of the question. Ask yourself if you really believe Emanuel isn't aware that he's addressing the mostly white, Upper West Side readers of New York magazine when he "offhandedly" ties bloggers to the legendary gold-medallion-wearing icon from forty blocks north in Harlem.
Taibbi perhaps overreacts a tad here:
What Emanuel appears to be saying here is that "bloggers" -- by which he really means "people who voted against Lieberman" -- are welcome to "contribute," but not welcome to actually decide elections. In other words, we'll take your votes, but we'll decide who you vote for. An admirable sentiment for an elected official. How is it that these people have avoided being pitchforked to death for this long?
I suppose because not enough bloggers have been suggesting it? And how about this explanation for Ned Lamont?
The surge in support for Lamont initially came from people motivated by two simple things -- a desire to protest the war in Iraq, and physical revulsion before the wrinkled, vengeful persona of Joe Lieberman.
We've certainly heard of a few 9-11 Denier Democrats running for public office, a couple Greens and some Libertarians. But this is the first Republican 9-11 nutbar that I can recall.
In an editorial board interview with The Telegraph on Wednesday, the candidate, Mary Maxwell, said the U.S. government had a role in killing nearly 3,000 people at the World Trade Center and Pentagon, so it could make Americans hate Arabs and allow the military to bomb Muslim nations such as Iraq.
Maxwell would not specify if she holds the opinion that the government stood by while terrorists hijacked four domestic airliners and used them as weapons, or if it had a larger role by sanctioning and carrying out the attacks.
Let me guess, she's just asking questions? And this is pretty wild:
She said this strategy “would be normal” for governments, citing her belief that the British government – and not the Germany military – sank the Lusitania ocean liner in 1915. The deaths of Americans on the cruise liner helped galvanize U.S. support to enter World War I, and benefited England, she said.
Interesting stuff indeed. Has anybody ever suggested that perhaps it was the French who bombed Pearl Harbor? Cui bono, indeed!
I did a little poking around on her website. She doens't have any issues page per se, but she's very much a nut. For example she hopes Bush dumps Cheney. Among her reasons:
The rise to best seller status of John Dean’s book Conservatives Without Conscience which paints a devastating picture of Cheney....
Well, hey, if John Dean doesn't like him, that's good enough for me! (sarcasm)
Over at Screw Loose Change we like to put up this Nutbar-O-Meter every now and then:
I don't watch a whole lot of TV, but I've watched Survivor off and on over the years. It's hardly highbrow entertainment but there's something very compelling about the show that keeps sucking me in.
This coming season, the castaways will be segregated by race, at least initially.
The announcement was made on CBS' Early Show. Host Jeff Probst says the idea "actually came from the criticism that 'Survivor' was not ethnically diverse enough." He says the twist fits in perfectly with what "Survivor" does, saying the show is "a social experiment. And this is adding another layer to that experiment." Probst says contestants had mixed reactions to the racial divisions.
Actually, this is not that big a deal. Last season (Exile Island), the contestants were divided into four groups--older men, older women, younger men, younger women. However, as I recall, the breakup did not last long. It was only a week or two, as the older women were in danger of being eliminated right off the bat.
First some background. Somewhere around 1967, Aunt Fran gave me a little brainteaser called Instant Insanity. It was a set of four cubes, with different colors on the six different sides. The idea was to combine the four cubes in a line so that each of the four outer sides contained one (and only one) of each color--red, green, yellow and blue. Sounds pretty easy but it was difficult because there was only one solution and many, many possibilities. When she gave it to me, she remarked to everybody in the room that they had given the puzzle to a computer to solve and it took 48 hours. Knowing what I do now, I suspect that's more like how long it took to design the program, but that was the mark I had to beat.
I did it in a little under 90 minutes. Like anybody, I fooled around trying some combinations before I realized it was too big a task to handle that way. So I did some observing. First, I noticed that there were seven red sides on the cube, and only four blue sides (IIRC there were 7 green and six yellow). That told me that three of the red sides had to be hidden (i.e. on the sides between cubes) and that all four blue had to be on the outside. This reduced the number of possible combinations by quite a bit and everybody was blown away when I announced I had completed the puzzle.
So when somebody handed me a Rubik's Cube at a party around 1980, I was completely set to amaze one and all again. And six hours later, everybody's leaving and I'm cursing at this evil cube and how difficult it is, having interacted with almost nobody at the party.
I didn't get a cube myself for awhile; it was my recollection that they were rather pricey at first. But I worked in New York and it wasn't long before street vendors were selling cheap knockoffs and I picked one up. I still could never quite solve it by my own efforts, but then a kid wrote one of those Mini Books you see at the checkout counter, entitled "The Simple Solution to Rubik's Cube", and I managed to plod my way through it. Of course, I had learned the easy way as well--pry apart the cube and put the pieces back in in the proper spot.
Update: Guest vlogger Brittany at Hot Air wears a Rubik's Cube tee shirt in today's segment on Dave Ramsey.
If you recall, we last encountered Ms Frisch in August, when she was forced to resign her teaching gig at the University of Arizona after leaving disgusting and vaguely threatening comments on Protein Wisdom.
AJ Strata looks at a recent poll which showed Lamont within striking distance and discovers that the undecideds in that pol are going to break heavily for Lieberman.
Clearly the undecideds broke for Leiberman in the Qinnipiac poll and the ARG poll did not ‘push’ this group into either camp. But details in the ARG poll show they will go to Leiberman because only 5% of Dems are undecided and cannot make up the gap. If the Rep and Indie undecideds follow the trend of their general groups then Lamont loses (he is behind now and will lose more Reps and Indies than he gains). But it could be worse than that. The undecideds in the ARG poll are heavily against Lamont....
Solid analysis. I am pleased that Lieberman remains in the lead, because it means that the netkooks will continue to pour time and money into the Lamont campaign to the exclusion of other races where the Democrats can pick up a seat.
As if on cue, Robert Scheer writes that this is a fight for the "heart" of the Democratic party (there of course being no soul).
“If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do — get out by a date certain — it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in England. It will strengthen them and they will strike again,” Lieberman said after his defeat in the Connecticut primary earlier this month, indicting not only his opponent but all those who voted for him.
In fact, Lieberman, along with the president and vice president, has become a full-blown McCarthyite smear artist, painting his political opponents with the tar brush of treason in an alleged apocalyptic battle for civilization.
Oh, boo-hoo-hoo, Joe's being mean to us! Make him stop, Mommy!
That's my suggestion to the Dixie Chicks, who are apparently the subject of a documentary that the writer seems to think could swing the election this fall. (Rolling my eyes here).
A release is tentatively scheduled for the fall, possibly right before the November elections.
The film revolves around the aftermath of singer Natalie Maines' statement at a 2003 London concert, where she said, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."
It chronicles death threats, political attacks and radio boycotts against the country trio, and that could make the film a political hot potato as well as potential ammo should longtime Democratic party supporter Harvey Weinstein become involved in the fall political campaigns.
And this is not exactly thrilling:
In addition to chronicling the lives of Maines and bandmates Martie Maguire and Emily Robison, Kopple said the documentary features clips from 15 of the Dixie Chicks songs and a new one written especially for the film, though no soundtrack is planned. "You definitely feel like you're in the front row of a Dixie Chicks concert," Peck said.
Hey, I hear scalpers are giving people money to take that ticket!
And how the guy who discovered a whole bunch of ones that were supposedly harmless, got his start.
One moment he was reaching for the telephone, the next he was out cold.
William Leo Smith, then a 20-year-old college student, woke up on the floor of the pet shop where he worked, blinking up at a ring of worried faces and feeling as if he’d been stabbed in the hand.
Actually, he’d been stung by a fuzzy dwarf lionfish — a dead one, no less. Someone had thrown it away, and Mr. Smith did not notice it when he tried to retrieve a telephone that had fallen into the same trash can. A row of spines along the fish’s back, armed with venom, jabbed him.
The British authorities charged 11 people on Monday in connection with a suspected plot to blow up United States-bound airliners, and said investigators had discovered “martyrdom videos” and bomb-making materials in a far-reaching search of homes, cars, woodland and other locations.
The decision to press formal charges followed days of widening public skepticism about the extent of the suspected plot, first disclosed on Aug. 10, when the police warned that conspirators had planned to commit mass murder on what one officer called an “unimaginable scale.”
But the credibility of the allegations will not be tested until the accused are taken before a jury — a trial not expected to begin for at least two years.
The extent of the charges raised new speculation about the plot, possibly suggesting that it was more limited than indicated by the sweep of the first arrests. Of an initial 24 arrested, only 8 were charged Monday with the most serious offenses.
They're trying desperately to keep the skepticism alive there, wouldn't you say? I wonder why. It couldn't have anything to do with this story, could it?
The arrest of terror suspects in London has helped buoy President Bush to his highest approval rating in six months and dampen Democratic congressional prospects to their lowest in a year.
In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, support for an unnamed Democratic congressional candidate over a Republican one narrowed to 2 percentage points, 47%-45%, among registered voters. Over the past year, Democrats have led by wider margins that ranged up to 16 points.
It's been awhile since I took a poke at MyDD's amazing 12-year-old blogger, but the Blog PI has a great post that I heartily recommend in its entirety. Stoller's one of those guys who really believes that Democrats are virtuous and Republicans are eeeeeevil. He's not really 12 years old, that's just the sophistication level of his commentary as you can see from Bill's post.
Say it ain't so! As we all know, there is a Senate race in the Northeast, where some Democratic party bigwigs have decided to support an independent candidate over a qualified Democrat.
What we don't all know is that the state is not Connecticut, but Vermont. Bernie Sanders, a socialist who is running as an independent, is getting no opposition from the Democratic Party, or the liberal blogs. In fact, the party honchos seem to be trying to make sure that no real Democrat gets on the ballot:
State Democratic leaders are spearheading efforts to gather signatures to put Sanders on the ballot as a Democrat, even though Sanders has repeatedly said he would turn down the party's nomination if he wins the primary. At least three other candidates have announced their intention to run for the Democratic nomination in the Sept. 12 primary, but party leaders prefer Sanders to any of them.
Where is the concern from Matt Stoller and Jane Hamsher about the fact that the party elite is trying to keep Democrats from having a real choice in Vermont?
I'm sure the NY Times will moan about this story. A bunch of passengers refused to allow their plane to depart until two Asians they suspected of being potential terrorists were removed. It starts out sounding like paranoia and racism, but note this detail:
Passengers noticed that, despite the heat, the pair were wearing leather jackets and thick jumpers and were regularly checking their watches.
Initially, six passengers refused to board the flight. On board the aircraft, word reached one family. To the astonishment of cabin crew, they stood up and walked off, followed quickly by others.
The Tory Party was quick to show why its lost three straight elections:
Patrick Mercer, the Tory Homeland Security spokesman, said last night: "This is a victory for terrorists. These people on the flight have been terrorised into behaving irrationally.
"For those unfortunate two men to be victimised because of the colour of their skin is just nonsense."
Of course, the passengers were not behaving irrationally. They assessed a risk and decided it was unacceptable. It appears that the men were not terrorists, since they were flown to England on another flight the next day (probably after checking through their leather coats).
Buffalo Bills: Kelly Holcomb is the official starter, with JP Losman in the backup role. Holcomb's a good player, with lots to like in his career statistics--65% completions and an even touchdown/interception ratio despite playing for some notably crappy teams. If you toss out his second year, where he had a TD pass and 8 interceptions, he's above average. On the other hand, he's 33 and has now started 21 NFL games. Losman did not play as badly last year as his 49.9% completion ratio would suggest; he was being asked by his coaches to throw for about 12 yards per attempt, which is pretty agressive for a 24-year-old QB.
Miami Dolphins: Daunte Culpepper goes back to Florida. He's a fine ballplayer, if a little inconsistent. In 2000 and 2004 he was among the best quarterbacks on the planet; in 2002 and 2005 he was mediocre. Backup is Joey Harrington; probably not bad in that role, but he's never going to live up to his promise.
New England Patriots: Tom Brady is the best player in the league and has put a substantial downpayment on The Greatest Ever mansion, currently inhabited by Joe Montana. Will the quest to become acknowledged as TGE take a toll? That's about the only question left for Tom Terrific to answer.
New York Jets: Chad Pennington's a fine player, obvious question mark is durability. The backup's Patrick Ramsey, which means Pennington has to stay healthy.
AFC North
Baltimore Ravens: Steve McNair is the starter; he's been a quality player but certainly appears to be on the decline. Kyle Boller is the backup. He's made some steps forward, some steps back over the last couple years. The Ravens have not stretched his arm yet, which is unfortunate, because they've gotta find out sooner or later whether he can really play in the NFL. Throwing for 10 yards per completion is a coaching decision, and it's a bad one.
Cincinnati Bengals: Palmer is apparently healthy, which means that the Bengals have a very promising young man playing quarterback. Last season he had 20 more TDs than interceptions, which is solid work indeed. Backup is Anthony Wright, former starter for Baltimore, who's marginal.
Cleveland Browns: Official starter is Charlie Frye; he actually looks like me might be able to play, but that's on the basis of a few games' performance. And he's probably the seasoned quarterback on this team, unless you count Ken Dorsey.
Pittsburgh Steelers. Will Roethlisberger keep from scrambling his brains on the pavement long enough to put up a challenge to Brady? That's the only question he's got left to answer.
AFC South
Indianapolis: Peyton Manning. This generation's Dan Marino? Unquestionably an excellent player, but still no championships. Has not missed a game in 8 full seasons.
Tennessee Titans: I've liked Billy Volek for awhile now, but this conference has a lot of established quarterbacks. Vince Young has to prove he even belongs in the league before we can begin to rate him.
Houston Texans: Carr looked like a player on the rise after a fine 2004 season, but last year the coaching staff did not stretch his arm. Whereas he had thrown for 12 yards per completion in 2004, he threw for only 10 yards per catch in 2005. I've said it before and I'll say it again; you cannot be successful throwing for 10 yards a catch. Sage Rosenfels on the other hand, throws for 14 yards per completion, but completes only 50% of his passes.
Jacksonville Jaguars. There's nothing not to like about Byron Leftwich's progress as a quarterback. He may get ignored in the AFC because of the opposition, but this is one player to watch. The backup, David Garard, looks like he can play as well, but this is Leftwich's job.
AFC West:
Denver Broncos: Plummer's an interesting QB. I've often said that he's as the greatest passer I've ever seen on the run, and one of the worst passers I've ever seen in the pocket.
Oakland Raiders: Aaron Brooks has been a solid player. He's got 120 TD passes in the NFL, which is a lot more than Chad Pennington or Carson Palmer or Ben Roethlisberger. It's almost as much as Tom Brady. Subjectively I'd rank all those guys above him, but he's no slouch.
Kansas City Chiefs: Trent Green's better than Aaron Brooks. But he's also 36 and hasn't won an NFL postseason game. Damon Huard's got some nice stats in limited playing time.
San Diego Chargers: Philip Rivers has thrown 30 NFL passes. Feeley seems a stopgap at best. If Rivers doesn't develop, this looks like a long year in San Diego, perhaps shorter for Marty Schottenheimer than the fans.
Okay, so let's rate them:
Champions: 1. Tom Brady 2. Ben Roethlisberger
What's not to like: 3. Peyton Manning 4. Carson Palmer 5. Chad Pennington 6. Byron Leftwich
Quality Ballplayers: 7. Jake Plummer 8. Daunte Culpepper 9. Trent Green 10. Aaron Brooks 11. Steve McNair
Question Marks: 12. Kelly Holcomb 13. David Carr
Unproven: 14. Billy Volek 15. Charlie Frye 16. Phillip Rivers
Elturk was headed to his mosque, the Islamic Organization of North America Masjid & Learning Center, on Ryan Road just south of 12 Mile. While in traffic on Ryan, he looked over and was greeted by a scowl from a man who seemed to disapprove of Elturk's presence in Warren.
"You can tell he's full of rage," Elturk of Troy said Thursday. "I wasn't surprised. You're going to encounter people who don't know and are ignorant of the situation. That has been very stressful."
You can tell he's full of rage, but do you know what about? Maybe Elturk failed to signal his intentions. Maybe the other driver's angry because he's running late and the traffic is slow. Maybe he's listening to a talk show host who just said something really stupid.
According to an affidavit and passenger accounts, Mrs. Mayo began pacing the plane from the front to aft lavatory and asked a flight attendant, "Is this a training flight for United Flight 93?" -- the flight hijacked on September 11, 2001, that crashed into a Pennsylvania farm field.
Mrs. Mayo demanded to speak with an air marshal, saying the contents of her bag would be of interest. Her bag contained a screwdriver, body lotion, several cigarette lighters and a bottle of water. The affidavit did not say how she smuggled the items on board, despite being screened twice at London's Heathrow Airport.
When confronted by the captain, Mrs. Mayo made a reference to bomb assembly, saying, "There are six steps to building some unspecified thing."
It does seem like the security was lax. But get this:
Mrs. Mayo told passengers she was an undercover reporter testing security to see whether she could sneak restricted items on board.
As a columnist for the Daily Times of Pakistan, Mrs. Mayo criticized President Bush -- calling him "a president not elected by the people"-- and the war in Iraq. "The folksongs of the 1960s will never be written again because of President George Bush. He has hampered the liberties of my country in the name of September 11. Songs now can only talk of patriotism they cannot mention peace," she wrote.
Here's an appalling article about boomer feminists, their obsession with sex, and the problems they've caused for their families.
Talking about Erica Jong:
The one who suffered the most was her daughter, Molly, the progeny of one of those husbands from whom she separated very early in the marriage. Jong appears to have had no interest in creating a coherent family life for her clearly troubled child. As she whiled away summers with her Venetian lover, her daughter, who has recently written an acid memoir describing those years, hung out at the Cipriani pool with her nanny and the neglected children of European celebrities. After divorcing Molly’s father, Jong wrote a smiley-face children’s book, Megan’s Book of Divorce, telling the story of a lucky child who can now enjoy two sets of presents, two sets of toys, and two sets of families—though the book fails to include the procession of men, some of them young enough to be Molly’s brother, traipsing in and out of her mother’s bedroom. So Jong got her orgasms and fed her muse, while—unsurprisingly—Molly became a depressed teenager with a serious drug addiction.
And Jane Juska:
And as in the case of Jong, Juska’s egotism turns out to have a long history that has badly hurt her child. Juska admits to leaving her son’s father without much thought—“I just sort of forgot my husband”—and to being so self-involved that she doesn’t notice when the child jumps into the deep end of a swimming pool without knowing how to swim. Inspired by the women’s movement, she refuses to cook dinner for him (though she does learn to masturbate “without guilt”), and she considers changing her name from Juska, the name of her ex-husband, until her quasi-orphaned child wails: “If you change your name, I won’t belong to anybody.”
By ninth grade, the child expresses his despair by shaving his head and becoming a drugged-out, petty-criminal runaway, living wretchedly on the Berkeley streets.
I presume this won't make Molly Ivins feel any safer, but it's pretty good news to me!
Rehman’s capture could provide the most important leads in months to the whereabouts of Al Qaeda’s top two leaders, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri. Rehman was believed to be in frequent contact with Zawahiri.
Rehman was taken into custody in the southern Punjab city of Bawalpur, the same town where alleged London plot ringleader Rashid Rauf was arrested last week. ABC News saw a copy of the police report on Rehman, with an attached copy of his photo.
The Transportation Security Administration reports that a passenger's water bottle screened positive for an explosive material around 9:15 this morning. A second test was confirmed at 11:25. TSA is waiting for further testing to determine the exact substance.
NBC News reports that federal screeners found four containers of liquids inside a woman's carry-on bag during the screening process this morning. Larry Salyers, Tri-State Airport Director, tells WSAZ the woman is of Pakistani origin, lived in Jackson, Michigan and most recently lived in the Huntington area. She is being detained for questioning.
I'm sure Molly's toasting the woman now, with a full glass of gin.
We have nothing to fear but fear itself, especially since fear is now being fomented and manipulated for political purposes by a bunch of shameless hacks. Who is trying to make you afraid and why? This Karl Rove tactic is getting quite threadbare, in fact, and so much so that it is getting dangerously close to comedy.
Hohoho, hehehe, hahaha, and a couple of tralalas! That's how we pass the day away in the merry old land of Oz!
Of the hundreds of prisoners, alleged terrorists all, who have been held at Guantanamo on the grounds that they were the worst of the worst, only about 10 have ever been charged with anything.
Yes, and among those who haven't been charged are the 20th hijacker. In fact, the Bush administration has not charged many of the terrorists because they don't want to reveal what they know about them. As many people have noted, information has a way of pointing to who leaked it.
In the latest episode, shortly after the announcement of a British-based plot to blow up American airliners, the United Kingdom and the United States were already airing their differences over when the perpetrators should have been arrested.
The Bush administration has put itself in the position of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. If, God forbid, a serious terrorist conspiracy is uncovered, there will be a tendency to dismiss it as a backlash to these overhyped "plots."
Molly, Molly, Molly. There may have been disagreement over when the airline bombers should have been arrested; so far I see no disagreement that they should have been arrested at some point.
Just another example of how some of the extreme libs are on the terrorists' side.
So I don't think it is either surprising or, from a political standpoint, unwise for the Democrats to turn to an antiwar figure like Feingold, or whoever else may emerge between now and the summer of 2008. And, while I would far prefer a Republican administration, or, failing that, a more moderate Democratic one, I think it is easy to overstate the practical consequences for our foreign policy should an antiwar candidate be elected.
It will be interesting to see how the Lefty blogs, who routinely demonize Power Line, react to this post. I suspect there will be three main currents:
1. Hinderaker underestimates how different Feingold would be. 2. He's waving the white flag and acknowledging that the Democrats will cruise to victory. 3. He's still a Nazi, for various other reasons.
As for me, I couldn't disagree with him more. Feingold will be accommodationist towards the terrorists, which will just embolden them, much as McGovern's election in 1972 would have emboldened the Communists.
If Feingold looks likely to get the nomination, this blog will endorse Senator John McCain for the Republican nomination, because I don't want to take a chance of losing to the idiot left. And anyway, I still say Hillary's the frontrunner; we often forget that Howard Dean looked unstoppable right up to the moment that the adults in the Democrats (who are most decidedly not the Lefty blogs) had to make a decision. Joe Lieberman, for all the crowing about his defeat, nearly came back and took the nomination away from Ned Lamont.
On Nov. 7, 2000, the day of the big election between Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Riley appeared at the polling place in Oconomowac, Wis., where he had registered to vote just the day before, voting records show. His ex-wife owned a home there.
"Then he drove down to Chicago where he was already registered and he voted again," said Michael Crooks, a Wisconsin attorney who filed a complaint against Riley with Wisconsin election officials. "This is about as blatant as it gets."
Riley is running for the State Senate in Wisconsin this year. Guess what his campaign slogan is?
Donovan Riley - A Democrat who will vote like one for the 7th District
As British police piece together the alleged plot to down airlines over the Atlantic, emerging details point to a troubling -- and growing -- strain in Islamic terrorism in Europe: the involvement of women and middle-class, university-educated young men.
They contrast this with loser Richard Reid, but really he's the odd man out. Mohammed Atta was middle class and well-educated. Looking back to the 1960s and 1970s generation of US terrorists--the Weather Underground, the SLA, many of their members were well-educated and came from middle to upper middle class homes. This is not all that surprising, since the poor are too busy scraping by, and the uneducated are probably harder to indoctrinate.
Eva Steele has a son in the military who is supposed to be fighting for freedom in Iraq, but sitting in a wheelchair in her room in a Mesa, Ariz., assisted-living facility, she wonders why it's so hard for her to realize a basic freedom back here in America: the right to vote.
Arriving in Arizona in January from Kansas City, weakened by four heart attacks and degenerative disk disease, Steele, 57, discovered that without a birth certificate she can't register to vote. Under a draconian new Arizona law that supposedly targets illegal immigrants, she needs proof of citizenship and a state-issued driver's license or photo I.D. to register. But her van and purse were stolen in the first few weeks after she moved to Mesa, and with her disability checks going to rent and medicine, she can't afford the $15 needed to get her birth certificate from Missouri. Her wheelchair makes it hard for her to navigate the bus routes or the bureaucratic maze required to argue with state bureaucrats. She's unable to overcome the hurdles thrown in her way -- and in the way of as many as 500,000 other Arizona residents -- by the state's Republican politicians.
I'm thinking of a dozen ways for Steele to get that $15 to get her birth certificate, starting with Salon.com giving her the money. Democrat Jim Pederson is a multimillionaire shopping center developer who's running a quixotic campaign against Jon Kyl; surely he'll pay to make sure that Mrs Steele's rights aren't abrogated?
I always love Draconian laws; they conjure up an image of Christopher Lee in mid-bite. But what is Salon.com complaining about? Folks who don't have a driver's license? How much would Missouri charge to reissue her driver's license? How many people will get trapped who should vote, versus those who will get caught who shouldn't? Salon's not interested.
Across the country, they will have to contend with Republican-sponsored schemes to limit voting. In a series of laws passed since the 2004 elections, Republican legislators and officials have come up with measures to suppress the turnout of traditional Democratic voting blocs. This fall the favored GOP techniques are new photo I.D. laws, the criminalizing of voter registration drives, and database purges that have disqualified up to 40 percent of newly registered voters from voting in such jurisdictions as Los Angeles County.
Okay, we get the idea, we're supposed to boo and hiss when the stage announcer indentifies somebody as a "Republican".
Oh, boo-hoo-hoo for the photo ID laws. Uh, the criminalizations of voter registration drives? What is he talking about?
And the article just gets worse. One woman recounts her effort to get a driver's license in Indiana:
An Indiana resident for 15 years, she'd never had a driver's license when she moved to the state to live near her son. So when she learned that the state required a state-issued photo I.D. to vote, her husband drove her down to the delay-plagued Bureau of Motor Vehicles to get a photo I.D. On her first visit, she brought her Social Security card, her voter registration card, two bills and a credit card, but that wasn't good enough. She had to return three more times, with BMV drones telling her successively she needed a copy of her birth certificate, then a $28 state-certified birth certificate from Massachusetts, and finally a marriage certificate because her birth certificate listed only her maiden name -- although all her various I.D.s carried the married name she has used for 53 years. "I was so angry, it worsened my blood pressure," she recalls.
That's just state bureaucracy. Somehow they've got pretty tight procedures for a driver's license. Good for them, but Salon is of course appalled.
They go through six states, with very optimistic appraisals of the likely Democratic prospects. For example, they claim that the Jon Kyl's Senate seat is competitive. No, it's not. They show two Republican congressional districts up for grabs; really only the former district of Jon Kolbe is open and even that is not a certain Democratic pickup.
Some real estate pros think she got taken to the cleaners on the land she bought in Crawford.
Even so, some real estate experts say they're not accustomed to seeing land selling for $10,500 an acre in Crawford.
When he heard that price, Bert Smith with Re-Max Greater Waco Realty said he wondered "why someone would pay so much." He's familiar with the Crawford area, even owns land there, and says five-acre tracts typically sell for $5,000 to $6,000 an acre.
Sheehan was hospitalized in Seattle on Thursday night and again at Providence Health Center in Waco on Friday and Saturday.
She was released Sunday and has divided her recuperation between Willie Nelson’s home in Austin and a hotel in McGregor so she can use the hotel’s wireless internet and stay close to peace camp associates, Burns said.
Jane Jackson, 70, was taken to Highland Hospital's emergency room Sunday after fasting for 41 days as part of the national Troops Home Fast action.
"She's doing OK," her co-faster, Ivan Olsen, reported Monday. They started their fast July 4 in front of the White House with a group that included Cindy Sheehan and Dick Gregory. Olsen and Jackson continued their fast and vigil in front of the federal building in Oakland.
Looks like Cindy was cheating with her Jamba Juice:
Olsen, 60, a Bay Area artist-activist, said this is his first fast.
"I feel wonderful physically. I had 35 to 45 pounds I could lose," he said. Fasters drink a mixture of water, lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne.
Alicia Colon starts us off this morning by talking about the supposed threat to Muslims of retaliation by Brits or Americans:
I thought of that afternoon the other day after hearing the news of the foiled airplane bomb plot and the capture of alleged terrorists in England. My source for international news is always lucianne.com, because there are articles posted from around the globe. Several indicated that the British Muslim community was worried about a backlash and reprisals. What balderdash. Britain lost 67 citizens in the World Trade Center on 9/11, and yet radical Muslims in 2002 felt safe enough to hold a convention lauding the attacks.
Of course, regular readers will know I've been an L-Dotter since way back. Indeed, the way I found out about 9-11 was through Lucianne. I got up about 6:00 my time (9:00 Eastern) and checked out the website. It was still early enough that there were no news articles up yet about the terrorist attacks, but in the first article that I checked the comments on were posts from fellow L-Dotters talking about a plane hitting the World Trade Center, then one talking about a second plane, and then a third post imploring us all to turn on the TV. I have to admit, I thought perhaps it was an elaborate gag until the television came on.
Anyway, the much-feared backlash against Muslims never materialized, but groups like CAIR are always treating it like an imminent threat.
Which brings us to this article, on a commonsense proposal by the British authorities to single out Muslims for greater scrutiny at airports.
The Muslim Council of Britain said the procedure, which includes "behavioural pattern recognition", would inevitably lead to discrimination. Inayat Bunglawala, its spokesman, said the government risked alienating "the community whose help it needs in combating the terrorist threat". He said: "Before some kind of religious profiling is introduced, a case has to be made; and we are certainly not convinced by the arguments for this kind of profiling. First of all, Muslims are not an ethnicity, as was shown by the arrests in last week's raids; there are many white converts to Islam."
Yes, but they had names which gave them away as Muslims. Hell, I'd even be willing to say at this point that Caucasians with names like Abdul and Sayeed need to be screened even more than Egyptians with the same name.
Then there are the inevitable calls to just lie down and accept Muslim hegemony.
Dr Syed Aziz Pasha, secretary general of the Union of Muslim Organisations of the UK and Ireland, said he had asked for holidays to mark Muslim festivals and Islamic laws to cover family affairs which would apply only to Muslims.
Dr Pasha said he was not seeking sharia law for criminal offences but he said Muslim communities in Britain should be able to operate Islamic codes for marriage and family life. "In Scotland, they have a separate law. It doesn't mean they are not part of the UK. We are asking for Islamic law which covers marriage and family life. We are willing to co-operate but there should be a partnership. They should understand our problems then we will understand their problems."
Sorry, but I don't get any sense that the terrorism is about the lack of Muslim family law. If anything, the Muslims in Britain need to be further assimilated into society, not given special treatment.
Last week Muslim groups criticized President Bush for referring to a “war with Islamic fascists.” In an item titled "U.S. Muslims bristle at Bush term Islamic fascists," Reuters quoted CAIR executive director Nihad Awad as saying, “We believe this is an ill-advised term and we believe that it is counter-productive to associate Islam or Muslims with fascism.”
I certainly agree, so stop letting fascists associate with your religion!
Mike Adams has a great suggestion. After getting an email where somebody threatened to come to his office and beat him up:
So, naturally, I wrote back to beg and plead with the man so he wouldn’t actually come to my office to fight me. Instead, I gave him directions to my house so I could fight him there.
And here’s where the little lie comes into play. Rather than giving the man my real home address, I gave him the address of a crack house I helped bust – it was about nine years ago - together with a friend in the vice and narcotics unit. I knew that the homeowner began dealing crack again – years after eighteen people were busted smoking it there - because I still have sources in the neighborhood.
I also know that the guys who live there hate white people like the guy who wanted to fight me. What I don’t know is exactly what went down when the poor white bastard knocked on the door of that crack house wanting to fight someone. I only know I never heard from him again.
Heheh. I haven't had too many problems here, but we've had a couple nasty-grams over at Screw Loose Change.
The LA Times does the sob-sister routine for former SLA member and attempted cop-killer Sara Jane Olson.
She fears falling ill and landing in the prison healthcare organization that experts say claims one life a week through malpractice or neglect.
She laments the absence of anything meaningful to do. She craves privacy. And she tiptoes nervously through each day while awaiting that moment in 2009 when she'll go home to her husband and daughters in Minnesota.
There's the usual "solid citizen" routine:
"I had a really good life," Olson recalled. She acted in community theater and taught citizenship classes. She volunteered for groups aiding African refugees, the poor and other causes, and recorded books for the blind.
And we hear moaning about how tough it is:
Surviving in prison meant accepting what she called "enforced idleness," with one monotonous day sliding into the next. The noise is ceaseless, the facility packed to twice its intended capacity.
No discussion on how tough was it for Myrna Opsahl's (the woman killed in an SLA bank robbery) children, growing up without their mother.
The two big stories I've been covering here are the airlines bombing plot and the Lieberman/Lamont race in Connecticut. Michael Barone makes the connection:
Our Left criticized George W. Bush when The New York Times revealed that the National Security Agency was surveilling telephone calls from al-Qaida suspects overseas to the United States. Now it appears that the United States surveilled the British terrorists, and that they made phone calls to the United States. The Left cried foul when The New York Times revealed that the United States was monitoring money transfers at the SWIFT bank clearinghouse in Brussels. Now it appears that there was monitoring of money transfers by the British terrorists in Pakistan. On Tuesday, the Left was gleeful that it was scoring political points against George W. Bush. On Thursday, it seemed that the supposedly controversial NSA surveillance contributed to savings thousands of lives.
Joseph Lieberman is being criticized for saying, "I'm worried that too many people, both in politics and out, don't appreciate the seriousness of the threat to American security and the evil of the enemy that faces us -- more evil, or as evil, as Nazism and probably more dangerous than the Soviet communists we fought during the long Cold War. We cannot deceive ourselves that we live in safety today and the war is over, and it's why we have to stay strong and vigilant."
Scotland Yard police are questioning a husband and wife who allegedly planned to hide a liquid bomb in their baby's bottle to bring down an airliner.
They are among the 23 suspects arrested over the plot to blow up airliners headed for the United States in mid-flight.
Mr Keelty today expressed dismay at the alleged plan to use a child in a suicide mission.
The word "evil" is scorned by many today, but I don't see how you describe a couple that would do that with their own baby as anything else.
But it does look like their civil rights were violated:
It has emerged MI5 agents launched covert intrusions on the homes of some suspects several weeks ago in "sneak and peek" operations to plant listening devices and gather evidence ahead of the arrests last week.
Glenn Greenwald will no doubt write an angry post about our lost freedoms.
Meanwhile Doug Riehl notes that many of the children killed in the Qana raid were physically handicapped and wonders if they were chosen by Hezbollah to die.
Shocking News: Dean Thinks Lieberman Should Drop Out
Yes, even though Dean's brother, who took over Democracy For America, campaigned and fundraised for Ned Lamont, Howie wants us to know that he thinks Joe Lieberman should bow out of the race. Why?
"I know how hard this is for Joe, and he is a good person, but the truth is I lost one of these races and I got behind my party's nominee and I think that is what you have to do if you want to help this country," Dean, former governor of Vermont, said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"The way to help this country is to limit Republican power."
But of course the Republican is doing nothing in that race, as the latest polls show, so there's no risk of a pickup by the GOP here:
Senator Joe Lieberman’s decision to run as an Independent sets up a lively campaign season for Connecticut voters. In the first General Election poll since Ned Lamont defeated Lieberman in Tuesday’s primary, the incumbent is hanging on to a five percentage point lead. Lieberman earns support from 46% of Connecticut voters while Lamont is the choice of 41% (see crosstabs).
A month ago, the candidates were tied at 40% each.
Republican Alan Schlesinger earns just 6% of the vote, down from 13% a month ago.
I do suspect that Schlesinger is experiencing a temporary low due to all the attention being focused on Lieberman and Lamont, but he'd need a miracle to get back into the contest.
The reason Dean wants Lieberman to drop out is that he wants a victory for the kook wing of the party, which he represents.
Some of the plotters in the airplane bombing campaign turn out to have been students. Worse, the universities they attended have been funding their extremist hatred:
Waheed Zaman, 22, a bio-chemistry student and the president of the Islamic Society at London Metropolitan University, was one of 24 people arrested last week. Material found at two portable buildings used by the society includes documents advocating jihad and a pamphlet on how to deal with approaches from the security services.
Prof Anthony Glees, the director of Brunel University's centre for intelligence and security studies, criticised university authorities for ignoring the threat to national security in their midst. "Institutions have not sought to address the problem: they have instead sought to undermine those who have raised the issue," he told this newspaper.
Extremist Muslim groups had been detected at more than 20 institutions, both former polytechnics and long-established universities, over the past 15 years, Prof Glees said.
The record of financial transactions, along with telephone and computer records, may help investigators trace more people in the alleged plot.
"Think of it as a river — you look upstream to find the source, and downstream to find out where the money is going," said Cliff Knuckey, former chief money laundering investigator for Scotland Yard.
American authorities were looking for any U.S. links in the conspiracy. Hundreds of FBI agents checked possible leads the past few weeks, including what two U.S. counterterrorism officials said, on condition of anonymity, were calls the British suspects placed to several U.S. cities.
But this part is a head-scratcher:
There were signs preparations stepped up recently. One of the houses raided by British police this week had been bought last month by two men in an all-cash deal, in a neighborhood of $300,000 houses, neighbors reported.
Daher, a member of the civil defense for 20 years, has been photographed with bodies of the dead in two wars now -- first in 1996 and most recently with the baby on July 30 __ both times after Israeli attacks in the village of Qana six miles southeast of the city.
For that reason, some Web sites have labeled him the "Green Helmet," and accused him of being a member of the Hezbollah guerrilla group, and of showing off bodies as propaganda.
"But that isn't true," he told The Associated Press. He is not affiliated with any party, he said. "I am just a civil defense worker. I have done this job all my life."
For the background on why Mr Daher is a little controversial, see here.
Don't know whether it's true or not, but this is too good not to blog about:
Cindy Sheehan packed her bags and left Crawford ,Texas, Tuesday afternoon and arrived home in Berkeley, Ca. late Tuesday evening. Sheehan rushed back to do damage control after explosive information became public today about an alleged affair that began while she was still married to her husband Patrick, and after her son Casey Sheehan died in Sadr City, Iraq attempting to rescue members of his trapped squad.
Sources are telling authors Melanie Morgan and Catherine Moy, (American Mourning, Cumberland Press) that Sheehan is furious that the news of her affair has gone public. Sources have identified the boyfriend as former right-winger Lew Rockwell of the Ludwig Von Mises think tank located in Alabama, who is himself married.
Rockwell's no right-winger; he's a libertarian wackadoodle. And to be honest, it doesn't mean a hill of beans. But it's funny, anyway.
We get a little information on them from this article:
The oldest of the named suspects is 35 and the youngest 17. Thirteen of them are from east London - nine from Walthamstow, one from Chingford, one from Leyton, one from the Limehouse and Poplar area and one from Clapton.
Four are from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and the other two are from Birmingham and Stoke Newington, north London.
The attacks were planned for next Wednesday. The plotters' funds have been frozen. But get this detail:
Today the Bank of England named and froze the assets of 19 of the 24 air terror suspects arrested. The bank was acting under the instruction of Chancellor Gordon Brown and on the advice of the police and security services.
It acted under powers granted by the United Nations to tackle the financing of terrorism in the wake of the September 11 2001 attacks.
It all began with a tip: In the aftermath of the July 7, 2005, suicide bombings on London's transit system, British authorities received a call from a worried member of the Muslim community, reporting general suspicions about an acquaintance.
Here's an interesting detail:
One U.S. intelligence source, however, said some of the British suspects arrested had made calls to the United States.
I certainly hope our government did not intercept that call without getting authorization from the UN!
Most of the plotters appear to be Brits of Pakistani descent, although there are a couple of "Taliban Johnny's" as well:
At least two of the suspects are believed to be British males who have converted to Islam, including Umar Islam, 28, from High Wycombe, who was born Brian Young, and Abdul Waheed, 21, from High Wycombe, formerly known as Don Stewart-Whyte, who is believed to be the son of a former Conservative constituency agent.
And there's this usual crap:
Some in the British Muslim community have voiced scepticism about the existence of the plot, claiming that the timing was too convenient in drawing attention away from the crisis in the Middle East.
Many outside the British Muslim community have made the same ridiculous claim.
