Killer Fact! Reading the Following Post May Save Your Life!

As Buffy would say, Your logic does not resemble our Earth logic.

Death squads in the United States? Yet again the 1600 Crew are using the ticking bomb approach to amend or create executive orders. Newsweek reports that during a closed-door Senate intelligence committee meeting last week Steven Bradbury, acting head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, suggested that in certain circumstances the President could "order a killing on U.S. soil".

"Dianne Feinstein asked Bradbury questions about the extent of presidential powers to fight Al Qaeda; could Bush, for instance, order the killing of a Qaeda suspect known to be on U.S. soil? Bradbury replied that he believed Bush could indeed do this, at least in certain circumstances... Current and former government officials said they could think of several scenarios in which a president might consider ordering the killing of a terror suspect inside the United States. One former official noted that before Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, top administration officials weighed shooting down the aircraft if it got too close to Washington, D.C. What if the president had strong evidence that a Qaeda suspect was holed up with a dirty bomb and was about to attack?"

Apparently this was an "academic discussion of theoretical contingencies", but are there not multiple levels of policing and law enforcement services from the local to the federal that can respond to any situation where there is reasonable suspicion of immediate danger? Certainly the Patriot Act has given all federal and local enforcement agencies broad powers. When the police encounter situations where they have evidence a crime is about to be committed or they catch someone in the act of committing a crime they are authorized to respond. There are procedures in place; they are permitted to use force if they believe a suspect to be a danger and they can use deadly force if the situation warrants. Why would the police not be able to cope with the theoretical terrorist bomber about to unleash a dirty bomb on the unsuspecting populace? Why should our government require death squads instead?
As for Flight 93, from what I understand, our Air Force could have been ordered to shoot those hijacked planes down on 9/11. The President would indeed have issued that tragic order but he does not need any special extra-constitutional privileges to give such an order. Well, I'm relieved that someone had the cojones to tell us what the 1600 Crew are likely already up to anyway--would we have known about the FISA go-round if someone hadn't blown the whistle?

(No lights-out this evening--Fixer and Gordon will be live-blogging during the Super Bowl--;P I think they intend to discuss the underlying structures of our society and the need to spend millions of dollars glorifying violence etc. They will also tell us which team has God on its side.)

Crying 'wolf'

So we all see the escalating tension between Iran and the West. It's been documented here and many other places. My question to you, inspired by this post from John Emerson.

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I do not believe that the Iran crisis is what Bush says it is. There's something there that we have to deal with, but we cannot take anything Bush says at face value.

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Are you of this same opinion, like I am, that this is just more Chimp rhetoric or do you believe Iran is a real, credible, and most of all, an immediate threat?

Update:

Atrios sees the same thing.

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But note how a central part of the propaganda campaign works: several months ago, the usual estimate for the time Iran would need to develop nuclear weapons was about ten years. Then it got reduced to five years. Now, people speak as if Iran will have nuclear weapons in the next few months.

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The Valley's Not So Civil War

This is a long article in today's LATimes Magazine. It's well worth a read.

In Central California, Mark Arax sees what fear--over terrorism, over our commitment in Iraq--can do to a community. Hatred between Right and Left. Hawk and Dove. Too bad they aren't listening to one grieving parent, who found some peace.

That subhead doesn't begin to cover it. A lot about christian-zionists, neocons, self-hating lefty and right-wing Jews, communists, Okies, Mexicans, raisin farmer Victor Davis Hanson and his pal the frog farmer, dead Marines, in short, all the crap Bush has got us into and how it's being exploited. Oh, yeah, there's a little about how Israel figures into the picture.

A strange symbiosis

Chicago Tribune, and about time too...

A dozen days before the 2006 State of the Union Message, Osama bin Laden reached out from some cave halfway around the world to give the president a much-needed public-relations boost for the second time in about 15 months.

This new appearance by the leader of Al Qaeda came as the president's polling numbers are at a low ebb and he is under serious pressure to pull at least some troops out of Iraq. Bin Laden's earlier appearance helped re-elect Bush.

Bush and bin Laden each will get exactly what they want from the latest message, reinforcing the view that both halves of this odd couple really need each other--and neither wants to quit the other.

The fact is, each plays the role of organizing symbol for the other, strengthening respective political bases. Nothing helps a political leader rally his troops more than having a clearly defined enemy.

Bin Laden understands that by attacking Bush he enhances him and by seeming to support American war critics he discredits them in many quarters. In short, he wants Bush around as long as possible, he wants Bush to have public support and he wants the occupation to continue for all the reasons stated above.

Why do you think he made a video public on Oct. 29, 2004, fully aware that it was only four days before the presidential election, reminding us that he was alive and kicking and still mighty dangerous?

Because he, and most of the world, knew that the so-called war on terror and U.S. security were Bush's strongest suits, and his appearance would outrage Americans and enhance Bush on Election Day.

On the Friday the video aired, Democrats' Democracy Corps poll showed John Kerry ahead by 3 points and possibly growing. On Saturday the tracking poll showed an immediate drop of 1.5 points and the next day an even race. We know what happened on that Tuesday.

Bin Laden denounces him, and Bush once again can rally his troops, shout "stay the course" and denounce the Democratic peaceniks. Most of all he can again echo bin Laden's threat to attack us on our homeland and reassure us all that only he can keep us safe and secure.

Bin Laden's re-emergence was so perfect it might as well have been staged by Bush strategist Karl Rove.

I don't doubt for a second that all these bastards are in cahoots.

Silencing science

I wrote about this last week. Today, PZ Myers shows us how deep the rot really goes.

More Iran

So you heard the rhetoric from the Chimp and now the Iranians have raised the stakes. The U.N Security Council has the issue. Fine, it can go a lot of ways from here, most of it not good unless the Iranians are given the opportunity to back down gracefully and save face. I think the Chimp is too myopic to give them that opportunity, to even recognize the option is open to him, if the Iranians even want one by now. Remember, this situation is one of our own making.

When the Chimp, with his grandiose vision of 'remaking the region', branded Iran, Iraq, and North Korea the 'Axis of Evil', he put them all on notice they were in the U.S.' gunsights. He backed that up by attacking Iraq. The Iranians countered by electing a radical, reactionary government. They see what's going on in Iraq, are probably funding some of the insurgency along with an intelligence gathering network, and they know there is not much we can do against them. There is little we can do diplomatically either. Quoting Taylor Marsh (take the time to read the whole post):

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Because of our situation in Iraq and the lack of credibility of President Bush, which has spilled over to brand America, this is going to be a very long month, with what lies at the end presenting a very ugly scenario. For some of us, the country of true malevolence has always been Iran, and because of Bush's preoccupation with preemption and his naivety on Iran, not to mention the lack of real intel inside that country, today, our options are between Israel and a U.S. airstrike.

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With all due respect to the lovely Taylor, I doubt airstrikes will seriously disable the Iranian nuclear initiative [short of a Linebacker I & II campaign; i.e. carpet bombing and all the collateral damage and bad press that comes with it]. Personally, I don't think the Iranians would have raised the rhetoric to this level if they weren't pretty certain they were immune from conventional attacks against the infrastrutcure. I mean Good lord, we have air bases all around them.

Remember this: A guy doesn't go waving his prick around with the expectation of getting it cut off. Iran wouldn't put all that money at risk of being bombed into dust so easily. So that means we'll have to put boots on the ground to ferret out the labs and processing facilities. Where will we get the troops from? Are we gonna use nukes? Are we gonna let Israel use them? Are we prepared for the Armageddon that will surely follow such actions. And what about the Iranian oil? We are addicted after all.

How did we paint ourselves into this corner? We put the Republicans in charge.

Update:

The Russians might be the key to diffusing the situation. This would be a good time for the Chimp to back off the rhetoric and allow the Iranians the wiggle room to accept this offer.

Joe-mentum

Let's bomb Iran whle I French-kiss McCain.

Shades of yesteryear

You see what my friend Lurch and the rest of us old vets do, don't ya? You know the rhetoric by now, don't ya? Fool me once...

Putting it out there

A couple days ago (the last time I was pissed at the Dems), one of the regular commenters here suggested I run for office of some type. One reason is because there are too many pictures floating around of me doing embarrassing shit. When I used to drink a lot, I'd do it more often. Mrs. F, after close to 16 years of marriage (God bless her), doesn't embarrass at all anymore. I could stand on my head in public and make sparks shoot out my ass and she'd just carry on without missing a beat. So I was laughing my ass off when I read PZ Myers is worried about facing his students on Monday. Been there and done that, pal. Hold your head up and be proud, my friend, wear it like a badge of courage.

Contrasts

Scout Prime (another gem I've found recently by the way):

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King of Jordan-- recognized Katrina'a impact immediately

King of America--never thought levees would break even when his Palace had been told they would.

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King of Jordan--glued to TV

King of America--got the DVD 5 days later

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King of Jordan--Visited the 9th Ward

King of America--Bypasses unwashed to meet with landed gentry

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Jack Bauer is a Democrat

To quote the lovely Roxanne:

If You're Not Reading Taylor Marsh ... you should.

I wasn't. I will be now.

More candidates

Progressive Texans seem real fired up about this guy. And Atrios gives us a link to others.

Feingold takes a stand

Go see my pal Ed.

Women haters

I run into a lot of guys like this in the course of my day. Guys who have to make up for their insecurities by treating women like shit. I'm not talking about violence toward women, but guys who dislike and feel castrated by capable, intelligent, opinionated women. Women that turn me on, by the way.

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Ugly as it is to state bluntly, a lot of men enjoy power-tripping on women, and there's evidence for this everywhere you look-from sexual harassment and rape to bizarre inventions like breast implants that function primarily as a signal that the woman owning them will go so far as to mutiliate her body with a painful surgery in order to please men. That breast implants are actually ugly is beside the point-that women suffer so much for men's pleasure is the important message. Take these common cultural attitudes and place anti-choice attitudes, where sex is treated, like PZ said, like a game of Russian roulette where the gun is always pointed at the woman, and I think it's pretty fucking clear what the appeal of "moral" imperatives against contraception is to the bizarro minority of men who believe them. If a woman can't use contraception, every time you fuck her, you're putting her at risk. Pregnant bellies are the fundie version of breast implants-proof to the power-hungry, woman-loathing men that they are the ones with power, that they have so much power over women they can change their bodies.

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Great thanks to Coturnix for the heads up.

Matthews is off his meds...

...Batshit crazy, or on somebody's payroll.

On his TV show tonight Chris Matthews suggested, without any proof at all, that maybe liberals or gays were responsible for a series of terrible church burnings last night in central Alabama.

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Details. Does NBC want him to be the next O'Reilly or do the Rethugs make his lips move?

Braintip to C&L.

Words I never thought I'd use

In the same sentence. Radical. Militant. Librarians. At least somebody is standing up for free speech. Thanks to Mark for the pointer.

About time

The Angry Old Broad got back to ranting.

Ineptitude

This is what represents our nation.

Nixon - brain = Bush

The new MoveOn ad.

State of Delusion

Paul Krugman on Bush's oil 'policy'. Via Lettrist.

Here's the story on oil: In the State of the Union address Mr. Bush suggested that "cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol" and other technologies would allow us "to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East."

But the next day, officials explained that he didn't really mean what he said. "This was purely an example," said Samuel Bodman, the energy secretary. And the administration has actually been scaling back the very research that Mr. Bush hyped Tuesday night: the National Renewable Energy Laboratory is about to lay off staff because of budget cuts. "A veteran researcher," reports The New York Times, "said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol."

Why announce impressive sounding goals when you have no plan to achieve them? The best guess is that the energy "plan" was hastily thrown together to give Mr. Bush something positive to say.

What about the rest of the speech? The State of the Union is normally an occasion for boasting about an administration's achievements. But what's a speechwriter to do when there are no achievements?

One answer is to pretend that the bad stuff never happened. The Medicare drug benefit is Mr. Bush's largest domestic initiative to date. It's also a disaster: at enormous cost, the administration has managed to make millions of elderly Americans worse off. So drugs went unmentioned in the State of the Union.

There's a common theme underlying the botched reconstruction of Iraq, the botched response to Katrina (which Mr. Bush never mentioned), the botched drug program, and the nonexistent energy program. John DiIulio, the former White House head of faith-based policy, explained it more than three years ago. He told the reporter Ron Suskind how this administration operates: "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. ... I heard many, many staff discussions but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions. There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues."

In other words, this administration is all politics and no policy. It knows how to attain power, but has no idea how to govern. That's why the administration was caught unaware when Katrina hit, and why it was totally unprepared for the predictable problems with its drug plan. It's why Mr. Bush announced an energy plan with no substance behind it. And it's why the state of the union - the thing itself, not the speech - is so grim.

I just love that guy. Krugman, not Bush. I despise Bush. Go read the rest.