Sam Gardiner at Left Coaster has a post on the Iranian show and tell, Iranians Reveal Evidence, which demonstrates that they can organize a dog and pony show.

Their stuff looks realistic if you didn’t know that those generic 20-round boxes of 7.62 ammo for an AK-47 were likely available any day of the week on the Iraqi black market, as is the rest of the stuff. I don’t doubt that some of came from the US, but that doesn’t prove anything. A relative of Chalabi got the contract for supplying that sort of thing, so I wouldn’t bet my life on it working, only that it was over-priced.

When you see boxes like that at gun shows you find that its re-loaded, usually with Soviet bloc casings. As long as you’re just wasting your money punching paper, it’s not bad, but you can expect dud rounds and need to pay extra attention to cleaning your weapon after you use it.

I don’t doubt the US is supporting the MEK, or that the MEK are continuing to cause trouble in Iran, but it’s frankly not a serious attempt at anything, and the Iranians have been dealing with them for decades. The only problem would be if anyone were using the MEK as a source of intelligence. That’s not what they do.

Quiddity makes an interesting catch in Lieberman walks – Joe comes to the Senate during the Sabbath, something he never does, to vote against cloture.

The Senate rules on cloture require that you get 60 votes, so not voting is the same as voting no. The only reason for making a special effort would be to vote yes, and yet, Joe makes this exceptional trip.

I can’t believe that Joe doesn’t know the rules, but it’s possible that he thought the rule was 60% of those present.

If you believe in elitism and aristocracy, you view the vulgar as bad, because you have taken the word and used it to express your disgust for the majority of people.

If you look at a dictionary you will note the earlier meanings of vulgar:

Spoken by or expressed in language spoken by the common people; vernacular;

Of or associated with the great masses of people; common.

Interesting that these people object to the common people in a representative democracy. They seem to believe that the majority of people need to lead by a small elite, rather than making their own decisions.

Ellroon’s post, The vulgarity of common bloggers, deals with the horror of the elite over the presumption of bloggers who believe they should have a voice in their country.

I realize it isn’t very comfortable for the elite when the vulgar bloggers delve into the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary to express their displeasure at the fact that the elite have benefited from the policies of the Shrubbery: the commoners are watching their own die and become disabled in a war the elite started.

I have no forgiveness for the politicians or the media who went along with the war in Iraq. As the elite, they are the ones with the access to knowledge that the government was lying. It was there if you were paying attention. You cretins didn’t simply embrace the excrement pouring out from the White House, you spread it over the truth. The mainstream media is certainly not vulgar, it is obscene.

We’ve all heard it – the country has never faced a bigger problem than the War on Terror™.

Digby covers part of it in: No, We’re The Greatest Generation, which deals with nostalgia for the Cold War as a simpler time.

I wrote about this last May, and it was bit disconcerting when the Baader-Meinhof gang made it back into the news, as in Meinhof gang killer to be freed: “A German court ruled that Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 57, qualifies for early release after serving a minimum proportion of her five life sentences.”

Now I have no way of knowing if Brigitte was in the dark blue Bimmer that went flying by on the right on the Autobahn, to be followed shortly by a green Polizei Porsche passing us on the left, but you have a tendency not to forget trying to duck as automatic weapons fire is taking place while you are driving at 120 KPH. You have to clean the upholstery after something like that.

Baader-Meinhof [Red Army Faction] had a tendency to make a trip to a bank or a drive to a shopping district an adventure during the 1970s, but I’m asked to believe that al Qaeda is a bigger threat to me. My brief in the military was the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces – I know about threats. Just because the Shrubbery is terrified, doesn’t mean I have to be.

[Update: Link fixed thanks to Alice in Comments.]