Category — Uncategorized

I didn’t want to get into this because it really was a totally irrelevant event. Yes, it would be nice to have a chat with Bill Clinton, but he’s a former President and is no longer the leader of the Democratic Party, and isn’t really going to be much of a factor in the coming election or the US government.

My reading of the event was that Peter Daou [no link because I don’t read him] has taken a position with Hillary Clinton’s political organization and was looking to generate some positive moment for Hillary in blogtopia™ ^{[skippy the bush kangaroo]}.

People got upset because all of the faces in the photo op were white. Hell, the people in that picture were able to get to New York City for an afternoon meeting during the week, which means they are well off and, if they are working, have flexible work hours.

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Laura Rozen reports on the return of the Office of Special Plans, version 2, the Iran plan. It’s the same concept: exile groups to supply “evidence” of nefarious plots that advance the plan to attack Iran.

While Iran/Persia did battle the Roman Empire for an extended period, their last major battle involved war elephants and chariots. The decade long war with Iraq had all of the drama of the average dispute between neighbors over a hedge. A lot of people died, but there isn’t going to be a grand movie nor many doctorates awarded over the study of the conflict.

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There was a time when Osama was really worried, because it looked like the US really wanted his head and were in hot pursuit, but then life got a lot easier. These days, he makes do with a couple of videos a year and the rest is downtime.

As Billmon points out he has all kinds of people in the West doing his job for him, including the Pope.

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Día de la Independencia
Estados Unidos Mexicanos

¡Viva México!

Some background on 16 de Septiembre and El Grito de Dolores.

Things have been going so well in Iraq that, according to the BBC, the Iraqis have devised a Trenches plan to secure Baghdad. Cutting trenches around the 50 mile circumference of the city will certainly be an interesting civil engineering project for a country that still doesn’t have a reliable electricity supply, fresh water system, or sewer, although it might provide some help with the sewage problem.

No word on whether they are planning World War I trenches, the Medieval moat, or the fashional ha-ha when they talk about “trenches.”

Funneling the population of the city through 28 checkpoints should be an interesting study in urban gridlock.

I’m sorry but this whole concept reminds me of Bob the Builder and Tonka trucks, not serious attempts at solving problems…no, Bob is too good at building and fixing to be associated with these people, and Tonka trucks are better built than what Rummy has been shipping to Iraq.

Why didn’t someone vet this: Muslim anger grows at Pope speech

In his speech at Regensburg University, the German-born Pope explored the historical and philosophical differences between Islam and Christianity, and the relationship between violence and faith.

Stressing that they were not his own words, he quoted Emperor Manual II Paleologos of the Byzantine Empire, the Orthodox Christian empire which had its capital in what is now the Turkish city of Istanbul.

The emperor’s words were, he said: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

Benedict said “I quote” twice to stress the words were not his and added that violence was “incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul”.

Only the Pope knows why he chose to quote a 14^th Century Christian emperor who was engaged in a conflict with Muslims. He could have quoted the 13^th Century Christian emperor, Alexios III Angelos, who lived under Muslim protection before becoming emperor and watched Crusaders attack Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade.

The real problem is that Muslims get very nervous about Papal statements concerning the Middle East and Islam. There is a lot of history between the Papacy and Islam to overcome, so any misstep is magnified.

The BBC tells us that the US Iran report branded dishonest:

The letter went on to brand “outrageous and dishonest” a suggestion in the report that he was removed for not adhering “to an unstated IAEA policy barring IAEA officials from telling the whole truth” about Iran.

The letter, sent to Peter Hoekstra, head of the House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Intelligence, was aimed at setting “the record straight on the facts”, the IAEA said.

“This is a matter of the integrity of the IAEA and its inspectors,” spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said in a statement.

A Western diplomat called it “deja vu of the pre-Iraq war period”.

The IAEA and the US clashed over intelligence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the war in Iraq in March 2003.

You invade one little country by distorting all of the intelligence and they never let you forget. Nag, nag, nag.

Our pencil box runneth over. You might think there was a factory in Iraq producing Number 2s.

Anarcho-capitalism

Anarcho-capitalism (also known by several other names, e.g. private property anarchism) is an individualist political philosophy that advocates stateless capitalism and the provision of all goods and services—including systems of jurisdiction, law enforcement, and territorial defence—by the free market. Anarcho-capitalists argue that a pure free market system, based on justly-acquired private property, would maximise individual liberty and prosperity. For them, the only just way to acquire property is through trade, gift, or original appropriation. Anarcho-capitalism rejects the state as an aggressive entity that steals property through taxation, initiates physical force, uses its coercive powers to benefit some businesses and individuals at the expense of others, creates monopolies, and restricts trade.

Notice any familiar themes or practices? Privilege is derived from the Latin meaning “private law.”

Pierre at Candide’s Notebooks feels that the government reaction to “terrorism” has gone From Solemn To Embarrassing. He offers his view of the future for airline travelers.

R. Neal has a nice piece on Bayou la Batre over at Facing South.

It’s a little Gulfside town that made its money by shrimping and fishing. The people aren’t rich, but they felt they had a pretty good life based on what Nature offered them in the Gulf of Mexico.

This is one of the many places the Shrubbery didn’t want to go on his Katrina tour. Not much has happened since the storm, and the Federal government prevented the fishermen from digging a canal to retrieve their boats from the inland area where the storm surge carried them. A year later and almost two dozen large vessels are still in the woods inland.

CNN’s article, Bush’s 9/11 speech sparks bitter partisan squabbles, actually leads with the Democratic response and some fairly straight forward reporting.

A real surprise is over at MSNBC which carries a Newsweek opinion piece by Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey: Patriotism or Politics?

The White House promised a non-political speech. Bush’s aides said the president’s address to the nation would exploit no partisan differences, and issue no calls to Congress. In technical terms, they were right. To all intents and purposes, they were wrong.

It looks like the Kool-Aid is losing its effect.

Update: more along this line from Digby.

If you haven’t already, you should head over to STOP George’s Kos diary for the wide angle lens view of a couple of photo ops. [via Steve Gilliard]

I was really thrilled by the Shrubbery wiping his feet on the flag.

As long as you’re cruising you can read Laura Rozen on the Washington Post piece about CIA agents lawyering up on the taxpayers’ dime.

Why are we, the citizens, reimbursing our employees for the cost of their legal defense for breaking our laws? If they want this kind of help they should join a union.

Atrios handed out a “wanker” based on David Sirota finding fault with the use of “some” by “the junkie” and Marshall Wittman. Sirota thinks they should name names if “some people” are saying these things.

Actually a lot of international polling is showing that a majority of people around the world believe that the United States is a bigger threat than al Qaeda, so there probably are a few people in the United States who believe that. I would doubt that any of those people are talking around Limbaugh or Wittman, so it must be the “terrorist cab drivers” of Conrad Burns.