Things the President Left Out of His Big Speech

In italics, from Michael Collins at The Agonist:

THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. Tonight, I’d like to talk to you about the end of our combat mission in Iraq, the ongoing security challenges we face, and the need to rebuild our nation here at home. But before I do that, we need a moment of truth. The Iraq war was based on a deliberate lie involving the White House distorting the National intelligence estimate on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). The report got it wrong on WMD. There were none. But it concluded that the only way the nonexistent WMD would be used against the United States was in retaliation for a US attack on Iraq that threatened Saddam Hussein. By deleting this information, the Bush-Cheney White House justified a preemptive invasion without any basis, a crime under international law that our nation helped establish after World War II.

We’re treating the signature wounds of today’s wars -- post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury -- while providing the health care and benefits that all of our veterans have earned. These veterans and all those lost and injured would be here today, never have needed treatment were it not for the illegal invasion. As a result, I'm appointing one of the nation's greatest prosecutors, Vincent Bugliosi, to prosecute those responsible for the injuries and deaths of all U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq.

More.

I think we learned something very valuable from Bush's Criminal War: If you're going to lie the nation into an an unnecessary war of criminal aggression, it's important to fearmonger the citizenry into a stinky lather, yes, but it's much more important to scare the crap outta the politicians whom they vote for, very few of whom will do the right thing when their seat on the gravy train might be put at risk.

One question for President Obama about something else that was noticeably not in his speech: Besides staggering debt, the deaths and suffering of hundreds of thousands of people, and the unbridled scorn of the rest of the world, what did we GAIN from the Iraq clusterfuck?

[Crickets]

Update:

A word about the final outcome of the monumental neocon blunder of Iraq as I see it.

The 50,000 American troops still in theater are there ostensibly to 'advise and assist' and will no doubt do that to the best of their considerable ability, but they remain there as a tripwire to try to keep Iran from waltzing into Iraq right now as the victor claiming its spoils, much the same function as our troops in South Korea have had for 57 years.

Once they are gone at the end of next year, the best we can hope for is that Iran will wait a decent interval so that the fall of Iraq will not be blamed directly on us, though it will be and rightly so. The mostly Sunni Arab world will not be happy when the Persian Shiites are strengthened by 20-something-million more Shiites. Your guess is as good as mine about what may happen next. It will not be pleasant.

Note to the American embassy in Baghdad: build more helipads in anticipation of the final comparison of Iraq to Vietnam. See Fall of Saigon.

‘Why Has He Fallen Short?’

Daddy Frank in The New York Review of Books with a review of Jonathan Alter's The Promise and some comments on Obama's Presidency, leans toward the economic side. Worth a read. A coupla ¶:

His achievements so far have been accomplished in spite of obstacles that would fell most mortals—the almost uncountable messes he inherited from Bush-Cheney, a cratered economy, a sclerotic Congress in thrall to lobbyists and special-interest money, and a rabid opposition underwritten by a media empire that owns both America’s most-watched cable news channel and its most highly circulated newspaper. Indeed it could be argued that the matrix of crises facing Obama would have outmatched any Bush successor, no matter how talented. (They certainly would have drowned John McCain, whose utter cluelessness about the economic crisis alarmed even his Republican allies in 2008.) But Obama knew what he was getting into when he ran for president, and the question that matters now is how he can do the job better.

Can Obama self-correct? He remains the same driven, smart, psychologically balanced leader we saw in the campaign, and to these familiar attributes, Alter adds another quality that is less frequently displayed in public—an utter lack of sentimentality. He’s “the most unsentimental man I’ve ever met,” says one aide, summing up for many of his peers. That trait may be the most useful of all if Obama undertakes the ruthless course corrections that are essential to the realization of his promise.

I think Obama's biggest mistakes so far are a) trying to achieve bipartisanship with pols who want him to fail at all costs so they can regain power, and b) putting people in charge of the economy who helped cause the problem in the first place.

Lack of sentimentality? Who the fuck cares? Ruthless? He'd better.

And she said "yes" ... again!

For our 20th Wedding Anniversary, we retook our wedding vows aboard Queen Mary 2. We're 2 days out from New York and it looks we'll meet up with hurricane Earl just as we reach the Ambrose Lightship. We had great fun for the past three weeks, but it will be good to get home.

The Speech Glenn Beck Meant to Give

Arthur Blaustein

I have a dream that the Yalie son of a Houston oil magnate can walk hand in hand with the daughter of a Wall Street hedge fund operator on the white sands of Southampton while evading inheritance taxes.

I have a dream that the young white guys playing with rifles at survivalist retreats in northern Michigan, that the middle-aged white guys playing Minuteman with guns at the Arizona border, and the older white guys frolicking at the Bohemian Grove, playing with whatever they play with, will keep people of different races or religions in their place.

I have a dream that the Supreme Court will vote 5 to 4 to revoke the statehood of Hawaii—but not Alaska—vindicating you Birthers out there.

May corporations get the American people and “government of the people, by the people and for the people” (Lincoln had it wrong) off our backs.

From the newsroom of Fox to the boardrooms of our corporate masters, let freedom ring.

Thanks to Justice Roberts Almighty, the tea party and the GOP, we’ll be free at last!

That would be "straight, non-immigrant, rich white christians will be free at last, thank the Blessed Dollar Almighty and activist wingnut judges".

Christians put out welcome mat for new mosque

The Commercial Appeal (Memphis TN)

When pastor Steve Stone initially heard of the mosque and Islamic center being erected on the sprawling land adjacent his church, his stomach tightened.

Then he raised a 6-foot sign reading, "Welcome to the Neighborhood."

The issue for Stone and the 550-person Heartsong Church in Cordova, came down to one question:

"What would Jesus do if He were us? He would welcome the neighbor," Stone said.

While the 4,000-square-foot worship hall is being completed, Heartsong has opened its doors to its neighbors throughout the monthlong observance of Ramadan.

Under a gigantic cross constructed of salvaged wood, nearly 200 area Muslims have been gathering each night to pray.

I think religion causes most of the trouble in the world. Bad people's agendas pervert the Word of the sky monster of their choice and innocents suffer. As it was and as it will be, forever and ever. Amen.

That said, the people who walk the walk and actually live by their chosen Word aren't the problem. Too bad there aren't more of them who speak out like this preacher.

The right-wing congressman made for the Obama age

Will Bunch in Salon shows us a prime example of what we're up against.

Paul Broun is the perfect embodiment of the right-wing backlash that has greeted Barack Obama's presidency

Except that the gala was held to celebrate the notorious, conspiracy-minded right-wing political group the John Birch Society, the band of Commie hunters made famous in the early 1960s, who’d seemingly vanished, only to burst back onto into the newly mainstreamed paranoid fringe within months after the election of Barack Obama as president. Rather than back away from its divisive views -- most notably that popular U.S. president and World War II hero Dwight Eisenhower was somehow an agent of international Communism -- the Birchers were doubling down in the age of Obama, still maintaining that a planet-wide conspiracy hatched some 200 years ago by the ultra-secret Illuminati in search of a so-called "New World Order" continues to flourish today.

The rise of cable TV-friendly-but-governing-averse pols like Broun and Bachmann has become a hallmark of the backlash against the Obama presidency. After the GOP lost control of the government over the second half of the 2000s, the party’s direction and indeed its very life force has been seized by a new breed of political huckster -- who saw that the paranoia and anger of the extreme political right is the only thing passing for a pulse in the modern conservative movement these days (my em). This cynical ambition of high-ranking elected officials not to tamp down the paranoid style but to adopt its latest fashions was a successful strategy ... for the politicians who might have been unknown back-benchers if they had acted more responsibly. Their mainstreaming of the political fringes made them into darlings of cable television and helped ensure reelection within their deep-red conservative districts.

A family doctor who treated Jimmy Carter’s relatives in South Georgia for a number of years, Broun declared bankruptcy in the early 1980s. A federal judge ruled -- according to news accounts in Athens -- that Broun "falsified financial documents in an effort to obtain a loan and misrepresented his assets and debts during bankruptcy proceedings" and ordered him to pay nearly $70,000 to an Americus bank. According to a bankruptcy complaint, the young family doctor "has a reputation of having an extravagant lifestyle evidenced by the acquisition of a number of expensive rare hunting books, expensive rare ceramic items related to hunting, safari to Africa, expensive gun collection and the acquisition of the very best in everything purchased." He had to pay more than $61,000 in back taxes to the IRS, and one of his ex-wives even took him to court for alimony and child support. There was a time when that kind of résumé would have sunk a would-be politician, but the 21st century has proven to be remarkably kind to past sinners who adopt the language of 12-step recovery -- just ask Glenn Beck how that works -- and even awards bonus points when Christianity is involved.

Another dry drunk like Bush, and a Tali-born again phony christian who can't handle his money or his life and is against taxes because the IRS caught him and made him pay. Another miserably failed human being who turned to right-wing politics.

There are more of these on the way this November unless WE sober up.

Quote of the Day

From a piece by Christopher Hitchens entitled "White Fright". Good short read.

Glenn Beck's rally was large, vague, moist, and undirected — the Waterworld of white self-pity.

Heh.

Note to Hitch: I hope you beat the big C, bud. I don't always agree with you but I always read you.

Becky as MLK? More like Malcolm X

I don't agree 100% with Reihan Salam, particularly about anything Becky says as "spiritually uplifting", but he makes some good points.

Glenn Beck's weekend speech was reminiscent of the radical 1960s black separatist leader: Both terrify mainstream liberals and shed politics for a message of spiritual uplift.

If white separatism is supposed to be 'spiritually uplifting' I want no part of it. Also, being caught between two 18-wheelers terrifies me. All Becky y ilk does is piss me off.

[...] Palin, like Beck, was talking about a spiritual restoration, a return to time-tested virtues that had been celebrated by the more homogeneous America of the past, in which non-traditional families were stigmatized and relatively rare, church attendance was far more common, and the dominance of Anglo-Protestant culture was unquestioned.

But as most of those who attended Beck’s rally(*) understand in their bones, that world is gone. And President Obama, for all his efforts to expand the reach of the federal government, has had very little to do with this deep transformation. Rather, the country has long since been transformed by powerful demographic and economic forces that very much threaten what we might call Glenn Beck’s America.

*"Whitestock". Apt.

Instead of accepting or embracing this transformation, a large and growing number of white Americans are, knowingly or otherwise, taking a page from minority protest movements of the past by asserting themselves and demanding recognition from political and cultural elites. Many on the left find this sense of anger and alienation risible, seeing in this movement of “are-nots,” as opposed to “have-nots,” a class of ignoramuses duped by Fox News into acting against their supposed economic interests.

And your point is...?

So in this very strange and very fluid political moment, Glenn Beck has emerged as the white Malcolm X. Whereas Malcom X embraced militant black separatism, Beck marries a stridently emotional style with political views that wouldn’t have been out of place at a 1950s Elks Lodge event. [...]

Most of Becky's crowd probably attended those.

And though Beck is scrupulously inclusive — I was particularly struck by his reference to “our churches, our synagogues, our mosques” during his lengthy address to the crowd — his people are overwhelmingly white and old. Among Americans over the age of 65, 80 percent are non-Hispanic whites, an artifact of an earlier era in which the number of Latinos was negligible and African Americans were the only minority population of any significance. This over-65 population, well represented at the rally, has tended to be the most hostile to President Obama’s agenda. Not coincidentally, the average age of Fox News viewers is 65, a shade older than CNN’s 63 and MSNBC’s 59.

[...] With each passing year, the cultural mix of the United States is growing more Latin and Asian and black. Non-Hispanic whites are just 56 percent of the under-18 population, a reality reflected in an increasingly pan-ethnic youth culture that seems baffling to older white Americans. Imagine how elderly viewers of Glenn Beck must feel when they accidentally catch themselves watching an episode of Jersey Shore.

I don't watch Becky, but I can dig the reference to Jersey Shore. I don't get it either. Perhaps Snooki and I could take a sweat lodge and she could esplain it to me...

I like the 'Malcolm X' comparison. I hope it holds.

Update:

Also see "The Glenn Beck Crazy Tracker".

The punk took a half day off from his message of hate and racism and some are calling it a 'transformation'. Yeesh.

Op-Ed of the Day

This is who `we' really is, Glenn

The we to which Glenn Beck belongs is the we that said no, the we that cried "socialism", "communism", "tyranny" whenever black people and their allies cried freedom.

The fatuous and dishonorable attempt to posit conservatives as the prime engine of civil rights depends for success on the ignorance of the American people. Sadly, as anyone who has ever watched a Jay Walking segment on The Tonight Show can attest, the American people have ignorance in plenitude.

This, then, is to serve notice as Beck and his tea party faithful gather in Lincoln's shadow to claim the mantle of King: Some of us are not ignorant. Some of us remember. Some of us know very well who "we" is.

And, who `"we" is not.

Read this.

It's Witch-Hunt Season

Paul Krugman

Anyone who remembered the 1990s could have predicted something like the current political craziness. What we learned from the Clinton years is that a significant number of Americans just don’t consider government by liberals — even very moderate liberals — legitimate. Mr. Obama’s election would have enraged those people even if he were white. Of course, the fact that he isn’t, and has an alien-sounding name, adds to the rage.

By the way, I’m not talking about the rage of the excluded and the dispossessed: Tea Partiers are relatively affluent, and nobody is angrier these days than the very, very rich. Wall Street has turned on Mr. Obama with a vengeance: last month Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire chairman of the Blackstone Group, the private equity giant, compared proposals to end tax loopholes for hedge fund managers with the Nazi invasion of Poland.

And powerful forces are promoting and exploiting this rage. [...]

Dupe the sheeple, wreck the country, get the money.

And where, in all of this, are the responsible Republicans, leaders who will stand up and say that some partisans are going too far? Nowhere to be found.

They're as scared of the teabaggers as the Democrats are of everything.

So what will happen if, as expected, Republicans win control of the House? We already know part of the answer: Politico reports that they’re gearing up for a repeat performance of the 1990s, with a “wave of committee investigations” — several of them over supposed scandals that we already know are completely phony. We can expect the G.O.P. to play chicken over the federal budget, too; I’d put even odds on a 1995-type government shutdown sometime over the next couple of years.

It will be an ugly scene, and it will be dangerous, too. The 1990s were a time of peace and prosperity; this is a time of neither. In particular, we’re still suffering the after-effects of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, and we can’t afford to have a federal government paralyzed by an opposition with no interest in helping the president govern. But that’s what we’re likely to get.

Except for the investigations, it's what we've got now.

Every coupla years, a lotta Liberals get all pissed-off, petulant and whiny as well, at the Dems for not doing what they want and threaten to stay home from the polls or throw their vote away by voting for some candidate without a snowball's chance in hell of getting elected. The gasbags are calling it 'the enthusiasm gap'.

This time that will be fatal.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Ex-Sen. Simpson: Social Security “A Milk Cow With 310 Million Tits”
Declined to characterize his lifetime taxpayer-funded pension quite as colorfully.

Plan to Build Mosque in Southern California Draws Protests
Opponents say proposed building in Temecula “too close to Ground Zero.”

Thousands of Cars Snarled in 60-Mile-Long Traffic Jam in China
Another sign they’re moving ahead of us.

Porn Goes 3-D Imax
Ad boasts “Puts the 'imax' back in climax.”

Oy...

No smoking ...

It's gotten ridiculous.

Update:

My last post from Scandinavia ... finally.

5 Years

This is about the fourth or fifth time I've put this video up. I think it symbolizes the failures of Katrina as well as anything.

Never forget. Repugs do not care a goddam thing about you, less if you're The Other.

Old Crow Medicine Show ~ I Hear Them All

Thanks to NettwerkMusic.

Who ya afraid of, Becky?

Symbol of Fear: Glenn Beck Wore a Bulletproof Vest at Restoring Honor Rally

Politicususa has the photos to prove it.

Glenn Beck delivered a powerful symbol to America today during his Restoring Honor rally, but it had nothing to do with his words or the crowd. If you looked closely at Beck during his “I Killed a Dream” speech, you could see that he was wearing a bulletproof vest. Beck was afraid of his own fans. [...]

Glenn Beck is so paranoid that he could not face his own fans without wearing a bulletproof vest. This fact not only speaks volumes about Beck, but also the mental stability of his fans. Ironically enough, Beck claimed that he is not a fear monger.

Today’s Tea Party rally disguised as charity was a typical right wing event. They wrap themselves in Patriotism, God, and Country, but beneath this thin veneer of bluster is cowardice and fear. The blue hairs who were attending Beck’s white power festival live in terror. They are terrified of the black man in the White House with the funny sounding name. They are terrified of Muslim people and think that every Islamic believer had a hand in 9/11. They are terrified of progress, and they are most terrified of change.

When they talk about taking America back, they are not only referring to political power. These people literally want to take America back in time. Their goal is to undo all progress. The message is that things were safer before they changed. Of course, in the time before things changed, black people were enslaved or segregated against, women had no rights, the poor could only believe in the American Dream, white people had all the power, and there would have most definitely never been a black man in the White House.

Glenn Beck is no Martin Luther King, and those people who gathered in DC today, were no civil rights marchers. Those involved in the civil rights movement risked their lives for equality, where as Glenn Beck is such a coward that he feels unsafe facing his own supporters without a bulletproof vest. Martin Luther King stood on that same ground 47 years earlier today and offered up a dream for a better America, but all Beck offered up was fear wrapped in Kevlar. Just as the March on Washington was a symbol for all that America could be, Glenn Beck’s bulletproof vest is a symbol of all that the Tea Party isn’t.

Hey, Becky, who the fuck ya afraid of? Lefties don't do that shit and the righties love you. Maybe there's some militant fringe righties that are after you because you're not enough of a batcrap crazy lying racist fearmonger. OK, I get it.

Note to Miss Becky: Have you considered suicide? You can say liberals drove you to it. That would be a great career move! It might restore some honor to this country as well.

The last thing we should want in the world is for someone to shoot Miss Becky and make her a martyr to a phony corporate cause. She needs to be humiliated somehow that will last and drive her off the public stage, but it's unlikely given that her own despicable spew hasn't done it already. The suckers eat that shit up. Sigh.

The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party

Daddy Frank on the Koch Bros and Rupert Murdoch, links at site:

All three tycoons are the latest incarnation of what the historian Kim Phillips-Fein labeled “Invisible Hands” in her prescient 2009 book of that title: those corporate players who have financed the far right ever since the du Pont brothers spawned the American Liberty League in 1934 to bring down F.D.R. You can draw a straight line from the Liberty League’s crusade against the New Deal “socialism” of Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission and child labor laws to the John Birch Society-Barry Goldwater assault on J.F.K. and Medicare to the Koch-Murdoch-backed juggernaut against our “socialist” president.

Only the fat cats change — not their methods and not their pet bugaboos (taxes, corporate regulation, organized labor, and government “handouts” to the poor, unemployed, ill and elderly). Even the sources of their fortunes remain fairly constant. Koch Industries began with oil in the 1930s and now also spews an array of industrial products, from Dixie cups to Lycra, not unlike DuPont’s portfolio of paint and plastics. Sometimes the biological DNA persists as well. The Koch brothers’ father, Fred, was among the select group chosen to serve on the Birch Society’s top governing body. In a recorded 1963 speech that survives in a University of Michigan archive, he can be heard warning of “a takeover” of America in which Communists would “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the president is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us.” That rant could be delivered as is at any Tea Party rally today.

The Koch brothers must be laughing all the way to the bank knowing that working Americans are aiding and abetting their selfish interests. And surely Murdoch is snickering at those protesting the “ground zero mosque.” Last week on “Fox and Friends,” the Bush administration flacks Dan Senor and Dana Perino attacked a supposedly terrorism-tainted Saudi prince whose foundation might contribute to the Islamic center. But as “The Daily Show” keeps pointing out, these Fox bloviators never acknowledge that the evil prince they’re bashing, Walid bin Talal, is not only the biggest non-Murdoch shareholder in Fox News’s parent company (he owns 7 percent of News Corporation) and the recipient of Murdoch mammoth investments in Saudi Arabia but also the subject of lionization elsewhere on Fox.
...

[...] As Jon Stewart summed it up, the protestors who want “to cut off funding to the ‘terror mosque’ ” are aiding that funding by watching Fox and enhancing bin Talal’s News Corp. holdings.

When wolves of Murdoch’s ingenuity and the Kochs’ stealth have been at the door of our democracy in the past, Democrats have fought back fiercely. Franklin Roosevelt’s triumphant 1936 re-election campaign pummeled the Liberty League as a Republican ally eager to “squeeze the worker dry in his old age and cast him like an orange rind into the refuse pail.” When John Kennedy’s patriotism was assailed by Birchers calling for impeachment, he gave a major speech denouncing their “crusades of suspicion.”

And Obama? So far, sadly, this question answers itself.

Sadly.

Shorter: Obama just stands there and watches these assholes work the teabaggers like a rented garden tool.

A little North Mississippi blues, please, Maestro...

After today's Beckifuck we need to get down to the river and wash...

Mississippi Fred McDowell ~ Goin Down to the River

Thanks to NaOH123.

Taking One For The Team

The Rude Pundit is couch-tweeting the Beckture ("I have a scheme!") from C-Span:

No, seriously, this is like the shittiest Amway convention ever. The Beckture is a failure.

I'm keeping The Rude One open and minimized and referring to it every few minutes. It's a hoot. Don't miss it.

Related:

Pensito Review

Why Is Glenn Beck, Who Did Drugs Instead of Serving in the Military, Smearing Purple Hearts to Promote His Million Moron March?

Actually, Beck has invented a new “badge of merit” (not, mind you, a merit badge) to replace the Purple Heart which he dislikes, he says, because it rewards people for being victims, which is Beck’s Orwellian newspeak for being wounded in the line of duty.

However, what is perhaps most insulting is the idea that a Beck’s Badge of Merit will somehow mean more than a “progressive” Purple Heart because it rewards “honor and integrity.” For many, the mere fact that someone is willing to sacrifice their life and limb for country, and is in fact wounded, symbolizes their “honor and integrity.”

The Purple Heart is awarded to those who shed blood due to enemy action, whether a nick from a stone chip thrown up by an RPG or blown to bits. It's not an award anybody wants.

Like all of us who didn’t serve in the military, Glenn Beck should show a little respect for the service, especially those who have been wounded in the line of duty. He seems to think he’s attacking liberals in general and FDR specifically when he derides the Purple Heart by denigrating it as a reward for being a victim. That is really despicable — especially so in Beck’s case, because, instead of serving his country, Beck spent his teen and young-adult years laid up smoking pot and doing coke.That is really despicable — especially so in Beck’s case, because, instead of serving his country, Beck spent his teen and young-adult years laid up smoking pot and doing coke.

A lot of soldiers would have rather done that than go to war, but they did their duty as they saw it, the necessity or futility or criminality of the particular war notwithstanding.

Beck has every right to say the despicable things he says, largely due to the efforts of servicemen who defended his right to say them, but he's gone way too far on this one. He has no standing whatsoever to disparage anyone's service. Some old Veteran needs to cold-cock the sonofabitch.

Imagine if a liberal commentator smeared the meaning of the Purple Heart — the media would be all over it, and the right wing would be calling for the commentator’s treasonous head.

But when Beck does it, no one notices. Once again: I.O.I.Y.A.R.

El Rude-o Update:

Post-Beckture: I need a 15 martini lunch, three hookers of various genders, and a donkey.

Dude, go straight to the donkey. Don't waste yer money on the hookers. After 15 martinis you'll never notice the difference...

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

composition by Daniel Lanois

Willie Nelson & Emmylou Harris ~ The Maker

Thanks to peters332home, Netherlands.

Saturday Homebrew Music Video Blogging

I'm so bored with the same old same old today that I jumped this one up the queue a day early just for something to do.

I lost track of this band (bio) after their first two CDs. I found 'em again thanks to the magic of the internets.

This song has everything - young love lost, lifelong obsession to beyond the grave, ridin' the rods, train whistles, but mostly it has the amazing pipes of Kim Fox and some great family harmony.

I gotta get me one'a them train whistles for my 'sickle. I could have a lotta fun with one of those on these mountain roads...

This is From the Fox Family 1995 CD "Follow My Lead". Composed and lead vocal by Kim Fox. This band has since reformed as '3 Fox Drive'. That's a lot easier to look up on YouTube than 'Fox Family' unless you like looking at families of foxes. I mean, they're cute and all, but most of 'em can't sing...

Navy Drone Violates D.C.!

Navy Lost Control of Drone Over D.C. Due To "Software Issue"

Thankfully, the incident has prompted the Navy to ground all six of its Fire Scout drones while they figure out what happened. The Times says that "the Navy did not describe the scene inside the ground control station as operators sought to re-establish communication with the drone," but I'll bet they were all like "oh shit oh shit oh shit." [NYT]

That sound you hear is enlisted men's stripes hitting the deck at Pax River. As usual, no officers or civilians will be affected in the flurry of scapegoating.

Too bad this couldn'ta waited 'til tomorrow and ran outta gas right over the Lincoln Memorial and fell on Miss Becky. A sign from Above.