It began yesterday and kept on rolling when I was directed to yet another vile spewing Republican anti-veteran blog.
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I want to follow up on the "Dumb Terrorists" story from yesterday, and an exchange I had with Bagley of all people in the comments thread from yesterday. Bagley's point, as I understand it, was that these types of investigations and prosecutions are just as valuable if they stop dummies like these guys because it may prevent killings. Fair enough, but five years after 9/11, billions of dollars wasted and my privacy thrashed, all in the name of protecting me from terrorists here at home, I was hoping for a little more from our government tha[n] entrapping morons whose only link to Al Qaeda was through federal informants and agents who lied to them. We admitted as much yesterday when the Justice Department stated they stopped this case as soon as they had enough to prosecute these guys not for actually being tied to Al Qaeda, (which they weren't except for our phony informant) but for being stupid and sounding like they were wannabes. [my em]
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TVNewser is reporting scuttlebutt that the Fox News Channel is prepping a satiric news show to compete with Comedy Central's "The Daily Show, with Jon Stewart." According to the TV news blog on the Media Bistro website, the host of the show is radio talk show host and professional Clinton-hater, Laura Ingraham:
But seriously, to be a conservative means being born missing a funny bone, a handicap that renders them unable to perceive irony. Besides, as defenders of the status quo, it is the role of the rightwing to be the targets of satire. When they try to turn it around and take aim at the liberal establishment, they inevitably start taking potshots at minority groups or women, opening them up to charges of racism, homophobia and paternalism. As comedy goes, they might get away with it - if only it were funny.
Time will only tell whether Laura Ingraham is our next Jon Stewart - or just another Tucker Carlson flaming out in slo-mo on cable news.
Most of the mainstream media ignored the important news and fell for the bait the Bushstapo threw them. It was a brilliant day for media manipulation and spin for Karl Rove.
Yesterday two major news developments emerged. The important one was that the CIA has spied upon millions of financial transactions, which is outrageous evidence of further abuses of power by the Bush administration. They are throwing the constitution down the toilet.
But Bush's team masterfully played the media, almost totally wiping the real story off the front pages, dropping it to minor news on TV, by electing to arrest, using major entrapments, a group of silly, incompetent misfits, who might have had fantasies of being terrorists.
The reason this ragtag band of bozos was arrested was because the Bush administration needed a cover for the real news that was leaked, to the great consternation of Dick Cheney, that Bush and his people were doing even more spying in another area of our lives.
If we look at the terrorists who the Bush administration has arrested and prosecuted so far, they have two characteristics in common; most are eventually released for lack of an iota of evidence, and the ones who are held are idiots or nut jobs-- not a hardened, tough, serious terrorist among them-- NOT ONE!!
Tragically, these "terrorists" are being used by the Bushstapo to act as a foil for their further assaults on the constitution and American rights to privacy. This "terrorist arrest" was massively orchestrated with the mainstream media, with talking head experts on Terrorism jumping through hoops to describe how safe the targets are, how brilliant the arrest was.
What then, is the "more" aspect of America's latest terror-scare? The more aspect is to convince Americans that their government really, really, really needs to spy on them. Never mind the country is overflowing with these bungling buffoon-type -- if not outright mentally ill -- anti-government groups. Never mind that this particular group of people couldn't blow their noses if their brains were nuclear warheads -- be AFRAID America! Domestic terrorists lurk behind EVERY corner. Or, in this case, and for all the world to see, stand guard wearing ninja outfits.
All this, of course, fits in with the Rove election-year 2006 game plan: America and all Americans need to be AFRAID -- VERY AFRAID! The new big threat to their security isn't the guy Bush can't catch -- Usama bin-Laden and his al-Qaeda terror network -- because he is bogged down in Iraq, while the Taliban moves to retake Afghanistan. No, the REAL threat to EVERY American is a group of seven seemingly mentally ill and highly delusional "homegrown" terrorists and others just like them. People so simpleminded, unlike bin-Laden, that Bush and Rove can manufacture the ways and means to capture them.
The timing of this story, too, just happens to come as the administration has, again, been caught illegally infringing on civil liberties. This time -- spying on the peoples financial dealings.
In its entirety America, that is what this latest terror-scare is all about. Election year politics to be sure, but more than that: An excuse to justify you surrendering more of your civil liberties. Surrender them now, so Bush and Rove can keep you safe from seven, by all indications, mentally ill people in Miami. Seven people who -- yes, all seven of them -- were going to invade America through a ground invasion.
AUSTIN -- Independent gubernatorial candidates Kinky Friedman and Carole Keeton Strayhorn submitted enough voter signatures to get their names on the Nov. 7 ballot, the Texas secretary of state announced Thursday.
With the certification of 137,154 signatures for Friedman and 108,512 for Strayhorn, the race for governor begins in earnest. The independent candidates needed 45,540 signatures apiece to appear on the ballot with incumbent Republican Rick Perry, Democrat Chris Bell and Libertarian James Werner.
Friedman said that Texans are fed up with Republicans and Democrats.
"Not one but two viable independent candidates have made the ballot for the first time in nearly 150 years," said Friedman, an author and country western singer. "This tells us what we've long suspected: the two-party system has failed our state."
"We have a guy [Friedman] who is a trained comic, and who actually gives liberties to everybody else," said Kronberg, editor of the online Quorum Report. "Because Kinky is so quick to quip, suddenly everybody else has to be more graphic and more titillating. ... But Kinky is always going to be more scandalous and more outrageous."
Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter appeared on Fox News this afternoon to discuss the war in Iraq. Coulter derided the lawmakers who have called for a redeployment strategy from Iraq, questioning whether "FDR [had] to deal with this during World War II." She argued that the only type of politician she "admires" is someone like Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) because he "does want to defend America and fight the war on terrorism." Lieberman has argued "our troops must stay" in Iraq.
These are not the stereotypical librarians of the olden days, the ones who were a bit reserved but ready with a glare for anyone talking too loudly.
Instead, the employees of the Seattle Public Library have passed a resolution through their local union calling for President Bush to resign or be impeached because of the USA Patriot Act, the Iraq war and a host of other issues.
It's a resolution that doesn't mince words, and it will be introduced at the annual conference of the American Library Association that begins today in New Orleans.
The position to take is that it's not America's war at all. The issue is that it's George Bush's war. His own, personal, private obsession.
So much so that he was scheming and plotting for years, even before 9/11, to have that war. Then, after 9/11, he lied and misled us, he used members of his administration to lie and mislead, in order to convince both the congress and the American people to have that war.
Once he had the war, he and his people planned it ineptly and executed it disastrously.
It's his ineptitude and his disaster.
The Republicans will try, as they have in the past, to claim that it's everyone's war. That the Senate and House voted for it.
Fact #1 is that's not literally true. The war powers bill voted to allow the president to go to war without coming back to them if he determined that Saddam was an actual threat and there was no way short of invasion to deter that threat. There were ways. He didn't employ them. He avoided them. And went to war instead.
Fact #2 is they did so under false pretenses.
It's George Bush's war. It's not America's.
If he can win it, great. So far, George Bush has been losing it. That's right, so far George Bush has been losing George Bush's war. Not the army, not the liberals, not the media. Like Frank Sinatra, he got to do it his way.
After we accept that it was his war -- and that he lost it -- then America, led by someone better, can step forward and apologize on his behalf.
That's not cutting and running. That's America, taking the high road, to make up for someone else's mistake.
The last time New Haven saw Ned Lamont, he was rousing a ballroom of blogheads at the Omni Hotel. In the much quieter setting of a Chapel Street bookstore Wednesday, the candidate for U.S. Senate joined author David Sirota in an effort to take back the word "mainstream" from incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman.
Afterward, Ned fled (to later return), Sirota sold books, and campaign staffers sold the connection between the book's call and Ned's answer. "David's book helped define the driving issue of this campaign: The importance of a change agent being elected," said campaign chief Tom Swan.
In Hungary on Thursday, President Bush gave a speech comparing the 1956 Hungarian Revolution with his war in Iraq. Few people have accused Bush of knowing much about history, but one might have hoped his writers would have at least looked up the revolt on the internet before making such an absurd analogy. Followed through, Bush is actually advocating the insurgency against our troops.
(Miami -WABC, June 22, 2006) - A federal law enforcement official said seven people were arrested Thursday night in connection with a plot to attack the Sears Tower in Chicago as well as other buildings in the United States, including an FBI office in Miami.
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