Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Decision time: keep arguing about the last election, or try to win the next one?

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

The revolution will be supervised.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

White supremacy is terrorism.

He really is that stupid.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

Come on, man.

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Archives for 2005

Colin Powell on the Wiretapping

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For those of you who like to have your cake and eat it too:

“My own judgment is that it didn’t seem to me, anyway, that it would have been that hard to go get the warrants,” Mr. Powell said. “And even in the case of an emergency, you go and do it. The law provides for that.”

But Mr. Powell added that “for reasons that the president has discussed and the attorney general has spoken to, they chose not to do it that way.”

“I see absolutely nothing wrong with the president authorizing these kinds of actions,” he said.

Asked if such eavesdropping should continue, Mr. Powell said, “Yes, of course it should continue.”

Make of that what you will.

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Back Home

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Just got back home, but I am tied up cleaning and re-arranging. Picked up a new microwave, some new dishes, and a new set of pots and pans, so I am cleaning up the kitchen, cleaning up all the old stuff and packaging it for Goodwill.

Plus, Tunch is giving me mad love and in the way, since he is not used to being left alone for 48 hours. I think he thought I abandoned him.

At any rate, consider this an open thread- if there is anything newsworthy I should know about, throw it in the comments. I will be back later.

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Favorite Gifts & the Meme of Fours

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I don’t want to leave on a down note (see the post just below), so an open thread. Put the favorite gift you gave and the favorite gift you received in the comments.

*** Update ***

Guess I am not out of here yet- I got tagged by Ezra:

Four jobs you’ve had in your life: Teacher, soldier, probation officer, waiter/busboy

Four movies you could watch over and over: Airplane, Harold and Maude, Breaking Away, Goodfellas

Four places you’ve lived: Bethany, WV; Morgantown, WV, Fulda, Germany; Millbrook, NY

Four TV shows you love to watch: Boston Legal, 24, BTVS, Monday Night Football.

Four places you’ve been on vacation: France, Austria, Spain, Bavaria.

Four websites you visit daily: Check my blogroll.

Four of your favorite foods: Mexican (any type- really), Pad Thai, sushi, a blood-red steak with fresh horseradish

Four places you’d rather be: I like where I am.

Four albums you can’t live without: Little Feat- Waiting For Columbus, Frank Zappa-Live at the Fillmore East ’71, DAG- Righteous, James Brown- Make it Funky.

I tag Bill, Hubris, and Dorkafork at INDC Journal, and Tim F.

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Possible Trouble In Iraq

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Via DKos, this is potentially explosive news in Iraq:

An Iraqi court has ruled that some of the most prominent Sunni Muslims who were elected to parliament last week won’t be allowed to serve because officials suspect that they were high-ranking members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

Knight Ridder has obtained a copy of the court ruling, which has yet to be circulated to the public.

The ruling is likely to dampen Bush administration hopes that the election would bring more of the disaffected Sunni minority into Iraq’s political process and undermine Sunni support for the insurgency. Instead, the decision is likely to stoke fears of widening sectarian divisions in a nation already in danger of descending into civil war.

As noted by Georgia10, the protests the other day occurred BEFORE these disqualifications. This could get ugly, and fast.

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The Season of Giving

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Kevin Drum lists a number of conservative blogs he reads on a daily basis (we don’t make the cut, which means there is room to grow next year!), and I thought it would be interesting to list the liberal/progressive/Democratic blogs I read on a daily basis. These are in no particular order:

The Carpetbagger Report– While these are in no particular order, The Carpetbagger Report is a first stop for both me and Tim F.

The Daily Kos– If you want to know what the left is up to, the first place to check is the Daily Kos. And not just the front page stuff, but the recommended diaries as well. At over a half million hits a day, dKos does not need any advertising, but since this is what I read, I thought I would list it.

TalkLeft– If you are interested in liberal viewpoints on all things policy and all things crime, check out TalkLeft.

Mark Kleiman and friends– Almost as cranky as me, Mark Kleiman is always up to date on the Republican policy scandal du jour (from a liberal perspective).

Crooks and Liars– John Amato’s leftwing blog is one your one stop shop for video from the MSM.

The Daily Howler– Bob Somerby actually is crankier than me, and the most tenacious critic on the web.

Ezra Klein– Formerly of Pandagon, Ezra struck out on his own and is a worthwhile daily stop.

Sadly, No!– Complete and total smartasses, and this description won’t offend them.

The Whiskey Bar– The best writer of the Kos alums, and an acerbic and full-throttle liberal, Billmon is always worth your time.

The Bull Moose– My kind of Democrat.

Ain’t No Bad Dude– He doesn’t blog enough, but I check out Brian Linse every day regardless.

Feministe– Just to see what the ‘chicks’ are up to.

This isn’t a complete and total list, because I read far more than these (including Kevin Drum’s Washington Monthly), but these are some of my daily stops. I actually read more liberal/left blogs than conservative ones, because I am a member of the VRWC and get Karl Rove’s memos. I already know what the Republicans are thinking.

At any rate, there is my list. If Tim has a list of conservative blogs he checks out, I will put that up later.

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Even More on the NSA

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Big piece in the NY Times today on the NSA and their activities:

DEEP in a remote, fog-layered hollow near Sugar Grove, W.Va., hidden by fortress-like mountains, sits the country’s largest eavesdropping bug. Located in a “radio quiet” zone, the station’s large parabolic dishes secretly and silently sweep in millions of private telephone calls and e-mail messages an hour.

Run by the ultrasecret National Security Agency, the listening post intercepts all international communications entering the eastern United States. Another N.S.A. listening post, in Yakima,Wash., eavesdrops on the western half of the country.

A hundred miles or so north of Sugar Grove, in Washington, the N.S.A. has suddenly taken center stage in a political firestorm. The controversy over whether the president broke the law when he secretly ordered the N.S.A. to bypass a special court and conduct warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens has even provoked some Democrats to call for his impeachment.

According to John E. McLaughlin, who as the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the fall of 2001 was among the first briefed on the program, this eavesdropping was the most secret operation in the entire intelligence network, complete with its own code word – which itself is secret.

Jokingly referred to as “No Such Agency,” the N.S.A. was created in absolute secrecy in 1952 by President Harry S. Truman. Today, it is the largest intelligence agency. It is also the most important, providing far more insight on foreign countries than the C.I.A. and other spy organizations.

But the agency is still struggling to adjust to the war on terror, in which its job is not to monitor states, but individuals or small cells hidden all over the world. To accomplish this, the N.S.A. has developed ever more sophisticated technology that mines vast amounts of data. But this technology may be of limited use abroad. And at home, it increases pressure on the agency to bypass civil liberties and skirt formal legal channels of criminal investigation. Originally created to spy on foreign adversaries, the N.S.A. was never supposed to be turned inward. Thirty years ago, Senator Frank Church, the Idaho Democrat who was then chairman of the select committee on intelligence, investigated the agency and came away stunned…

Increasingly, it is becoming clear to me that I was oddly naive about the activities of the NSA. Or maybe I was excessively and unrealistically paranoid. I assumed the NSA was monitoring all sorts of communications they apparently (at least according to commenters here and the press) were not. In other words, I was not ‘shocked’ by the recent allegations of snooping because I thought that it had been going on for years. Many of you state otherwise, and some of you are lawyers and have some experience in the area, so maybe these new revelations of the NSA’s activities the past few year are just that- shocking revelations. Again, as I have before, I will just have to plead ignorance or paranoia, because I thought this was already going on.

At any rate, read the entire NY Times piece, as it is interesting and well-written.

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