Getting My Goat

By Keith R. Schmitz

Something to be said for a country that doesn't expect their politicians treat them like rubes, so sadly have to head out of Canada this morning, though there is no place like home.

Just shuffled through the line at the Montreal airport and going though the standard irritating security nonsense, which of course if there was a high speed train could be avoided (thanks Scottie and the rest of the libertarian herd for sparing us).

Sure Canada is doing this, but I'd bet they had to fall in line as in most things with what we here in the states instituted following the 9/11 attacks.

Of course sniffing a chance to keep us in the state of anguish that they so love, the right wing in the form of the Bush administration jumped on the chance of making every air trip a visit to a British holiday camp. In fact just read that some people have skipped trips because they are bugged by the security lines.

But it's for our safety.

Excuse me. But isn't this the same crowd that bellows at policies and proposals that help people out when they plunge into poverty, often as a part of a program to enrich our privileged sliver when it comes to job and wage cuts?

Providing the protection of a safety net, no matter how shredded it is in this country, is what they refer to as the "nanny state."

Isn't this the same crowd that every time their pull string is yanked, we hear passioned screaming about "freedom?" Let's go with Ben Franklin here -- "Those who sacrifice a little bit of freedom to get security deserve neither."

Well naaa.

Tell me please what is the difference of helping people ward off the every day threats of hunger and to our collective physical well being by denying access to health care, and of being wary of terrorist threats, which have all the frequency of lightening strikes.

Not saying of course that we have to leave ourselves vulnerable, but it amazes me when there is a political movement that want us to have one form of security but not that other, unless you of course rule out the usual political pandering and desire to keep us looking under our beds.

War on, Like, Terror and Stuff

By bert

Some situations need a word to describe them, and the English language can’t deliver the right one, so we purloin a foreign one to do the job. We’ve all heard “je ne sais quoi” applied or “schadenfraude” for example.

Here’s another situation in need of a term. It arises during some of those times when a right-wing pundit is attacking a strategic target. In these cases the attack rides on mangled facts and/or language that expose the ignorance of the pundit and so boomerangs back to self-inflict more damage on its source than on the intended recipient.

This is one example of what I am wrestling with. The famous Glenn Beck was months ago attacking the long-dead Margaret Sanger because she helped found Planned Parenthood. But Beck’s damaging zinger was that Sanger was among those in the early twentieth century who advocated eugenics, which is a reprehensible effort to improve the human race through promoting certain racial types or other characteristics and targeting those people deemed inferior.

Because bad people like the Nazis took the idea to an extreme, a cursory link between Sanger and eugenics might make her – and therefore Planned Parenthood, which is Beck’s strategic point – look bad. Poor Glenn though. He said on the air, more than once, that Sanger supported “genetics” when he meant “eugenics’.

Should we do another example of this situation without a name?

Take James T. Harris, the part-time right-wing talker on WTMJ (and now in Tucson too). Harris, who describes his product as “hip musings”, was trying during his show last Sunday to again mock Contessa Brewer of MSNBC and her comments on the failed attempt to bomb Times Square that occurred two weeks ago. Brewer said after a suspect was arrested that she had originally hoped the suspect did not have "ties to any kind of Islamic country."

Her point was that terror attacks perpetrated by Islamist radicals like those of Al Qaeda fertilize the fallacy widely held in the U.S. – which is first germinated in a widespread ignorance of the wider world -- that Muslims are murderers. And she was right.

Harris claimed on last Sunday’s show that Brewer and her statements are all wet because the suspect who was arrested was in fact “of Arab descent”.

In fact, as we all know by now, this suspect Faisal Shahzad is from Pakistan. That is a country kind of down there in South Asia, over on the other side of the old Persia from the distant Arabian peninsula. In Pakistan the national language is Urdu.

To spell it out more plainly: people from Pakistan are not correctly regarded as Arabs. They are among the millions in Africa, Asia , and the U.S. who are Muslim but not Arabs. (And many Arabs are not Muslim.)

So, as it turns out, Brewer would have been fulfilled if her wish had been that the perpetrator was not “of Arab descent”. And like Shahzad’s Nissan Pathfinder bomb, the verbal weapon that Harris attempted to inflict on Brewer instead just fizzled and made him look idiotic.

So what do you call what happened there? "Dumb-ruined attack" or "Oops, never mind moments"? I would suggest going south of the border for something better. In Mexico they have a word “pendejadas” that is a vulgarity but heard everywhere. The term describes the dumb things said by people in a way that mocks the people who said it.

Right now common usage has not watered down the crude punch of this Mexican slang enough to make it as commonplace as other foreign terms such as, say, "voilà". That’s unfortunate because your AM radio is producing pendejadas at an alarming rate.

They Call Me the Miranderer

by bert
You have the right to remain silent. But, if you want to, you can instead pipe up with some more lyrics here. Now that "mirandize" has become a new and (apparently) naughty word, I felt like updating the old Dion song.

Once it's done, we can submit it to Folkbum to perform. Maybe he can do a Johnny Cash-type-a-deal once the renovated prison opens in Illinois.

Oh well I’m the type of guy the right-wingers all oppose
'Cuz I don’t torture guys with would-be bombs hid in their clothes
I don’t copy that scene in Braveheart or the Fox show "24"
I don’t tap every call made from Abdul’s gas-station store

They call me the miranderer
Yeah, the miranderer
I roam around, around, around

I’m not so lily-livered that I freak out at this threat
so much so that I think the constitution we just forget
What if the panty-bomber talks even without water boards
Or hooking up his private parts to 10-gauge power cords?

they call me the miranderer . . .

Your reading for this week

by folkbum

The New York Times Magazine has a long article out today on "Obama's War on Terrorism." It gets to the heart of the difference between the pre-1/20/09 mentality and the post-1/20/09 mentality:

Obama, then, found himself in a place where he seems most comfortable, splitting the difference on a tough issue and presenting it as the course of reasoned judgment rather than of dogmatic ideology. Where Bush saw black and white, Obama sees gray. Where Bush favored swagger, Obama is searching for a more supple blend of force and intellect. Where Bush saw Islamic extremism as an existential threat equivalent to Nazism or Communism, Obama contends that that view warps the situation out of proportion and plays into terrorists’ hands by elevating their stature and allowing them — even without attacking again — to alter the nature of American society. [. . .] Bush felt it in his gut. Obama thinks about it in his head.

Welcome back to reality after the holidays, eh?

MJS Editorial Board happy to jump on take-her-out-of-context bandwagon

by folkbum

Here's the lede from this morning's top Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial:

Discussing the nation's air security system Sunday on ABC's "This Week," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that "The system has worked really very, very smoothly over the course of the past several days." Who is she trying to kid?

Flight attendants and passengers, not the security system, stopped an alleged terrorist's apparent attempt to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day. It was their watchfulness and refusal to become victims that won out, not the security measures at the airport.

The problem here is not that I think there was no failure. By any measure, last week's terrorism-turned-crotchburning was a significant warning shot, at least letting us know that the government STILL hasn't figured out that they should flag people who buy one-way transatlantic tickets with cash and check no baggage. I mean, duh.

The problem is that Janet Napolitano never claimed that the "security system" worked. She wasn't trying to kid anyone. Jake Tapper, the ABC talking head who interviewed Napolitano Sunday morning, headlined his blog post about their conversation, "Napolitano: System Like 'Clockwork ' After Attack, Not So Sure About Before." The transcript also shows Napolitano clearly talking about the system of reactions:

Once this incident occurred, everything went according to clockwork, not only sharing throughout the air industry, but also sharing with state and local law enforcement. Products were going out on Christmas Day, they went out yesterday, and also to the [airline] industry to make sure that the traveling public remains safe. I would leave you with that message. The traveling public is safe. We have instituted some additional screening and security measures, in light of this incident, but, again, everyone reacted as they should. The system, once the incident occurred, the system worked.

I can understand the desire to point fingers here--it's easier to blame an individual than a system--but Napolitano is not at fault, and wasn't trying to pull one over on anyone.

At the very least, point fingers at the people who designed the post-9/11 databases that are so unwieldy that a phone call from a father is lost in the weeds because literally thousands of other data points are given equal weight in a given week. Or point fingers at Republican senators who refuse to allow a vote on a leader for the Transportation Security Administration, not because the nominee is a terrorist sympathizer or anything, but because they fear TSA employees may want to unionize. Or blame Republicans--that would be pretty much all of them, including MJS darling Paul Ryan--who voted against funding the TSA altogether a few weeks back.

Napolitano? She's a convenient scapegoat if you want to take her words out of context. But to do so not only is sickeningly dishonest for the editors of the state's largest daily paper, but also deflects criticism away from where the real problems lie.

What's next?

by folkbum

Seems like the terrorists' ultimate plan is to make sure every airline passenger in the future flies naked, stuffed into individual dog crates, and forced to watch their stupid movie.

Also, homegrown: We can't let art students learn about Andy Warhol anymore, because they might put one of his paintings on a ball, which is also a terrorist win, or something.

"Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history—revisionist historians is what I like to call them."

--George W. Bush, June 16, 2003

"We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term."
--Dana Perino, former Bush spokeswoman, November 24, 2009

Land of the Little People

By Keith R. Schmitz

The terror trials are coming to New York City and there is a possibility that a prison in North Illinois (with the lusty urging of the locals) will take some of the Gitmo inmates. And like clockwork the exploitation begins.

This morning Politico.com tells us that in predictable fashion and like dogs salivating to Pavlov's bell, the GOP will look to exploit the ginned up concern in next year's midterms. And why not. They have little else to offer us and how can they when they hate government. Several GOP members in Congress have already jumped in on the panic.

So no surprise mistress-marrying, criminal crony promoter, 9/11 parrot Rudy Guiliani is whipping this issue like a rented mule. Locally one TV station did a 10:00 news promo the other night with the alarmist statement "are terrorists coming to Illinois near the Wisconsin border?"

The question is if we are the strongest nation on earth, how come those who spout that statement the most are acting like it the least?

What the wingnuts miss about the Lockerbie guy

by folkbum

Today Scotland set free the terminally ill Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who had been convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103. The warrenterror wingnuts are, of course, up in arms that a man who has maybe weeks to live will be living those weeks with his family rather than in a jail cell. (Or gaol cell, as the case may be.)

But here's the thing: al-Megrahi's release was conditioned upon his having dropped an appeal of his conviction, an appeal that his family could have continued on his behalf after his death; he has maintained his innocence all along and the family could well want to clear his name posthumously. And it seems like there was good reason for his appeal: The key piece of evidence against him, testimony that he bought the shirt the bomb had been wrapped in, may well be contradicted by evidence that was not presented at his trial, leading the appeals commission that ordered the new trial to say "there is no reasonable basis" to believe it was his shirt at all.

In other words: He may well have been the wrong guy.

By letting him go home to die as a convicted but humanely released man, Scottish authorities can bury any mistakes and pretend that they got justice, rather than face the embarrassing prospect of a re-trial that could show just how badly they screwed up.

UPDATE: More context.

Fact-free blogging on Gitmo continues

by folkbum

Unable to change course from the old standy of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt--as opposed to Füd, which is the restaurant inside the Shøp Ikea rip-off in Springfield), the Right has glommed onto President Obama's plan to close down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. This necessitates moving the 240-ish people left there to somewhere else.

James Wigderson offers the latest fact-free rendition of the talking point: "Nobody wants them here, but that seems to be part of the Obama Administration's plan. And you can't just release them to fight again."

The problem, of course, is that no one is talking about releasing them to fight again, and there is, in fact, at least one place in America that would love to have Gitmo detainees:

President Barack Obama has 240 terror suspects he has said will be moved out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year. The city of Hardin [MT] has a brand-new empty jail. [. . .] The development authority in Hardin, a city of 3,400 people bordering the Crow Indian Reservation, built the $27 million, 460-bed jail two years ago and has been looking for tenants ever since. Its construction loans are in default.

The City Council voted 5-0 Tuesday in favor of a resolution supporting a proposal to house terror suspects currently detained at the U.S. naval base in southeast Cuba while they await trial.

So it is and will remain false to say that there is "no one" who wants these detainees in their backyards.

However, for a full dispelling of the FUD crowd, I defer to Jon Stewart:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Guantanamo Baywatch - The Final Season
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Wow, how did I miss this story?

by folkbum

Investigators say [the men] were stockpiling a cache of weapons with plans to target local government buildings.

The FBI, in raids over the weekend, confiscated hundreds of weapons--including everything from hunting rifles, homemade bombs, rudimentary rockets and cannons.

Sources tell [our station]'s Marty Griffin the suspects made threats to blow up government buildings and carry out other extreme acts of [...] terrorism.

So how do the captured men look in your mind? "Swarthy"? Middle Eastern? Names like Mohammed or Ali or bin-Something? Did you think these arrests were maybe in Dearborn, Michigan, or someplace else that Islam has a well-established presence?

Well, you'd be wrong. The men arrested were Marvin Hall, Perry Landis, and Morgan Jones--right-wing militiamen from near Pittsburgh.

These are not, of course, the first right-wing white militia members arrested since 9/11/01. But none of those other arrests made the news, either. No, instead what we hear about are the bumbling wannabes conned by the FBI into thinking they could blow up the Sears Tower. Or more bumbling wannabes conned by the FBI into thinking they could blow up fuel lines to JFK. We hear about them, bumbling and conned as they may be, because they are of Arabic descent or Muslim. The really dangerous groups--the ones with the actual weapons and operational plans for death and destruction--don't get any play because, well, we're not supposed to be scared of white Christians. Just Arabs. See something, say something, right? As long as what you see is "the other."

More at Orcinus, where Dave Neiwert predicts it will get worse.

Let's Play Politics -- With Terror

By Keith Schmitz

For those you who can't see to understand why we are not quite on board with the way TeamBush is "fighting terror" let's follow the money -- or the planned lack of it.

Turns out that Bush is proposing to slash $23 billion in security funding to already overburdened state and local governments for stuff like police and port protection.

For an administration that never fails to wave around the terror threat to keep people in line, to silence political opposition, to win elections, to beat on the press, are now telling us the problem is well in hand at it is time to reel up the ladder.

Somebody better tell the eight (or whatever number of) dwarfs running for the GOP presidential nod. As Bob Herbert put it in this morning's NY Times, these guys are acting like adolescent boys to put across who would be the most violent in going after perceived terror threats.

Guess what folks. Doing the business of war on terror at some point will call for spending money. But of course this is not the first disconnect to reality heard on the stages of these debates.

Let's be clear. Anyone who thinks that Democrats and all but the most fringy liberals are against dealing with world-wide terror are not merely mistaken. They are just treating their readers, friends and listeners like rubes. They know what they are doing and that is rather than finding ways for us to coexist in fighting this challenge they are driving divisions for cheap political points. Locally we have John McAdams, a man with a mean streak as wide as a super highway, and Charlie Sykes carrying that water.

And anyone who thinks that the Bush administration cares about us because they insist they are protecting us, that tax cuts for the wealthy don't come first, have $23 billion worth of evidence of what counts in their minds. It ain't you.

We believe there are terrorists out there and something prudent, rational and effective has to be done. The Bush administration seems not to think so.

Why do they hate America?

by folkbum

There is a standard trope (I almost typed tripe! funny!) among conservatives that liberals and "the left" hate America, that we blame America first, that we want Americans to die and think that those who do die deserve it.

It is, of course, a lie. With the exception of isolated idiots that the mainstream (and even most fringe) "left" reject wholeheartedly--i.e., the unemployed Ward Churchill--no leftists are out there with the message that America deserves or needs an attack, no one on the left says Americans need to die.

This is not true for the right. Recall that days after September 11, 2001, it was not the left blaming Americans for the attack, but the right. (Sure, that fool Churchill eventually wrote his "little Eichmanns" essay, but no one read it until Bill O'Reilly made Churchill famous.)

Even today, six years after 9/11, conservatives are still lusting for American deaths. The most recent glaring example of this is the Stu Bykofsky essay you have probably heard about. Bykofsky laments that America is no longer united, which, in his opinion, seems to mean that people have turned against the policies of the president and his misguided war. The fault belongs to "chipmunks" who are concerned over such trifles as civil liberties. (I, too, lament the lack of unity, but I place the blame elsewhere.) Bykofsky's solution to this lack of unity? Kill Americans:

Because we have mislaid 9/11, we have endless sideshow squabbles about whether the surge is working, if we are "safer" now, whether the FBI should listen in on foreign phone calls, whether cops should detain odd-acting "flying imams," whether those plotting alleged attacks on Fort Dix or Kennedy airport are serious threats or amateur bumblers. We bicker over the trees while the forest is ablaze.

America's fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater.

What would sew us back together?Another 9/11 attack.

The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago's Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda.

Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again?

If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail.

There is no one on the left seeking such a horrible thing. Honorable conservatives should be backing away from Bykofsky and doing to him what they did to Churchill (fair's fair, after all). Instead, they embrace him:

For the record, I actually agree with him. We have forgotten 9/11. The Drive By Media has intentionally removed it from our TV screens and from our national consciousness. [. . .] We no longer have the national will to fight a long, drawn-out war like World War II. That is a sad commentary on the instant-gratification tendencies of the American public. Dumbed down badly by gummint-run skoolz, easily led around like sheep by Drive By Media polls used to shape rather than reflect public opinion (or to reflect the effectiveness of negative reporting by the Drive By Media), the American people seem to want the war over in 30 or 60 minutes less time for commercials.

That's one of our well-read locals. While there is a legitimate point to be made about the media's tendency to play to the lowest common denominator and focus on trivia, the answer is a better media, not the murder of innocent Americans. The comments at our local's blog are no better: "Ummmm….mega dittos" is perhaps my favorite--such a bright contribution to the debate!

But this one shows the mindset I'm talking about: "My fear is that the national electorate will not blame the terrorists but will blame the Bush administration for the attack." These are the same people who fall all over themselves to blame Bill Clinton for the 9/11 in the first place, but then they show utmost concern not for those who will be dead, but rather that Bush not be blamed.

These are not isolated sentiments, either. Bill O'Reilly tells al Qaeda to attack San Francisco (to be fair, that's because he doesn't like Nancy Pelosi, though, not to "wake up" America); supporters of even moderate Republicans want the same thing. Even Reaganite Peggy Noonan is getting dangerously close to calling down the dirty bombs. And she does it with the same line of thought as our local all-star:

We make it too easy for those who want to hate us to hate us. We make ourselves look bad in our media, which helps future jihadists think that they must, by hating us, be good. They hit their figurative garbage bin lids on the ground, and smirk, and promise to make a racket, and then more than a racket, a boom.

The more you look, in fact, the more you find the rhetoric on the right ratcheting up--against America. The inimitable digby echoes a theory I've heard in several places:

I guess this is the predictable re-emergence of the black helicopter crowd now that the Republicans have lost their power. (These conspiracy theorists always seem to go underground when the GOP is in power. My theory is that they switch seamlessly between anti-government conspiracy to cultlike, authoritarian leadership worship depending on who's in office.)

Consider our local boy; he has repeated time and again that he's not a Republican. But he has also worshipped repeatedly with the Cult of Bush as well as made clear his xenophobia. Which fits perfectly in with the primary subject of that digby post, as well as this from Glenn Greenwald:

Every now and then, it is worth noting that substantial portions of the right-wing political movement in the United States--the Pajamas Media/right-wing-blogosphere/Fox News/Michelle Malkin/Rush-Limbaugh-listener strain--actually believe that Islamists are going to take over the U.S. and impose sharia law on all of us. And then we will have to be Muslims and "our women" will be forced into burkas and there will be no more music or gay bars or churches or blogs. This is an actual fear that they have -- not a theoretical fear but one that is pressing, urgent, at the forefront of their worldview.

And their key political beliefs--from Iraq to Iran to executive power and surveillance theories at home--are animated by the belief that all of this is going to happen. The Republican presidential primary is, for much of the "base," a search for who will be the toughest and strongest in protecting us from the Islamic invasion--a term that is not figurative or symbolic, but literal: the formidable effort by Islamic radicals to invade the U.S. and take over our institutions and dismantle our government and force us to submit to Islamic rule or else be killed. [. . .]

One way to look at the threat posed by Islamic radicalism (let us call it Option A) is to see it as the Epic War of Civilizations, the Existential Threat to Everything, the Gravest and Scariest Danger Ever Faced which is going to take over the U.S. and force us all to bow to Islam. Another way to look at it (let us call this Option B) is to dismiss it entirely, to believe there is nothing wrong with Islamic radicalism, to think it should just be completely ignored because it poses no dangers of any kind. There are, however, other options besides A and B. Therefore, to reject Option A is not to embrace Option B.

Greenwald is right on with that middle-ground thinking, but it is not something the right would consider. For example, las week Jose Padilla was finally convicted of something. I remember quite clearly the day they arrested Padilla; John Ashcroft was on my radio telling me that this scary guy was on the verge of dirty-bombing a major US city. All the scary charges faded away, and eventually the cultists were reduced to "He will communicate in code by blinking." And the right is lapping it up. One commenter there thinks adherence to such niceties as civil liberties is a liberal weakness:

You libs are pathetic. The military captured Padilla and his confession would not have been allowed in a criminal trial.

His confession to domestic terrorism would not have admissable, so once libs insisted he be tried as a criminal, he was off the hook.

Libs simply don't get it. They probably never will. [. . .] A convicted terrorist doesn't please Jay, because Jay is an immature liberal.

Besides being wrong about who arrested Padilla, apparently that commenter confuses Padilla's conviction on tenuous charges equivalent to "off the hook"--and blames liberals for it. Because liberals in this case defended distinctly American ideals such as not torturing people and not lying through you let-the-eagle-soar teeth, it's America who's let that commenter down. As Barbara O'Brien succinctly puts it, "They dismiss what was done to Padilla, yet they are so afraid of terrorists they betray the central founding values of our country."

Don't believe me? Read some of what the government actually wrote about Padilla:

Because Padilla is likely more attuned to the possibility of counsel intervention than most detainees, I believe that any potential sign of counsel involvement would disrupt our ability to gather intelligence from Padilla. Padilla has been detained without access to counsel for seven months--since the [Department of Defense] took control of him on 9 June 2002. Providing him access to counsel now would create expectations by Padilla that his ultimate release may be obtained through an adversarial civil litigation process. This would break--probably irreparably--the sense of dependency and trust that the interrogators are attempting to create.

Did you follow that? Your tax dollars have funded this kind of thinking--that, as Marty Lederman phrases it, "legal process must be entirely denied Padilla so that he will come to think that all hope is lost--that he is in a world without law or due process. As long as he even thinks that he is subject to the Constitution and laws of the United States, the "relationship" of "trust and dependency" is broken."

It seems to me that the active rejection--and support for the active rejection--of the most fundamental founding document of these United States is a far greater threat, ultimately, than the irrational fears "that Islamists are going to take over the U.S. and impose sharia law on all of us," as Greenwald put it. While we are not yet (and not ever likely to be) forced to wear burkas or give up the ham and swiss sandwiches, we are right now living in a country where the government and its cult-like followers think it okay--indeed, desirable--to strip American citizens of basic Constitutional protections out of fear that they "might communicate in code by blinking."

Who Do You Trust?

By Keith Schmitz
This is my sign-off post as well at Folkbum, and I want to thank Jay for loaning me his space for the past few weeks. This is not as easy as it looks and I did my best to make it seem that way.

I will be going back to pumping out newsletters to Grassroots Northshore. Hoping all of you who live in this part of town, especially those of you on the Milwaukee East side, will mosey over to www.grassrootsnorthshore.org and join the movement to lifestyle politics – making politics part of your lifestyle.

Now on to shoving this cow into the piranha pool.

God knows many of us hate to think this way. You know, every time this administration gets into trouble some terror alert hits the fan.

I tried to sit on my BS detector after Democratic voters in Connecticut urged the party to grab a back bone by voting down Joe Lieberman and going with the positive Lamont program.

Happened to be going to the airport early on Thursday when I saw the news on the Mitchell Terminal monitors about the liquid bomb plot. Considering where I was and what I was about to do, and the fact that the British pulled it off I was a) glad that another airline threat was snuffed out and b) I happened to have my gels and liquids in the checked luggage.

Driving through Texas later I heard on the radio the speculation about the administration in trouble =’s flip over the terror card in the case of the London plot. Tempting, I thought, but not plausible. I mean it appears the Bobbies and MI5 were the one's on top of this. At least no one in the US could lay claim to cracking the case.

Oh my naiveté. From NBC News…

A senior British official knowledgeable about the (terror plot) case said British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence, while American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner.

I think this, ladies and gentlemen, blows up the 9/11 as inside job theory because immediately someone hisses out information to the press. The NBC post goes on to quote an unnamed US official:

Another U.S. official, however, acknowledges there was disagreement over timing. Analysts say that in recent years, American security officials have become edgier than the British in such cases because of missed opportunities leading up to 9/11.

Yeah, yeah the timing does match up with the Lieberman loss, but this might have been done just in case considering the drift of the polls. I suggest this as a possibility, not an absolute.

At any rate, lately what goes on in Washington reminds me of the name of the quiz show that launched Johnny Carson to fame – “Who Do You Trust?”

Traitors in the Liberal Media, Again

I don't have a lot of time for posting today (or reading, for that matter), but I wanted to point out that it has now been a week since that filthy liberal rag, the New York Daily News, published details of an active and operational international investigation into a terror plot to attack New York City.

As usual, those treasonous, traitorous liberal bloggers from the Cheddarsphere jumped all over the story, trumpeting from their seditious websites all of the operational information that the government wanted to keep secret in an attempt to save American lives. Now that the program has been compromised, the government has lost a valuable anti-terror tool. A fellow patriot writes:

It is not, of course, merely the leaker who "compromised the FBI's relationship with some foreign intelligence services," but also the Daily News for publishing the story.

Those treasonous snakes on the left are just gloating that the press have revealed yet another of our government's programs for trying to keep the terror off our shores, and reveling in the fact that the press has put us in danger as a result.

I mean, those commie sympathizers and al Qaida lovers on the left ought to all be hanged, with the Daily News editors first in line for the gallows.

This is America. Love it or leave it, people--don't help the terrorists find new ways to kill us all.

(The preceding, of course, is snark; in reality, the conservative bloggers linked above only denounce the "liberal" press--and go after lefty bloggers--when they reveal information that might make George Bush look bad. The New York Times and other papers--unlike the Daily News--don't actually publish information to compromise foreign intelligence sources. Unlike, say, the Bush Administration.)

For all those who insist that Democrats don't have a plan,

well, we do. (In fact, we've had a better plan than the other guys for some time now.)

Here's a link to the the bullet points, which include such commonsense priorities as eliminating Osama bin Laden (remember him? tall guy? killed 3000 Americans?), guaranteeing that our troops have protective armor, and immediately implementing the Homeland Security recommendations of the 9/11 Commission (which, as the Hart-Rudman recommendations were through 2001, sit unimplemented by this administration).

Dick Cheney's response? Well, moving on from "they don't have a plan"--I swear they must be getting kickbacks from somebody as often as they say it--Cheney says that "they don't have any plans in their plan." I'm paraphrasing, of course.

It seems obvious to me, but maybe other people don't get it: If you don't like the way things are going, then put different people in charge. It is time.