Open Threads

Holy shit.

A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company.

Update. Innocent until proven guilty, obviously, but maybe Dana Rohrabacher was prescient:

“Prince,” Rohrabacher said, “is on his way to being an American hero just like Ollie North was.”

Old Blackwater, keep on rollingPost + Comments (120)

Per the comments, Megan McArdle’s fiance used to work for FreedomWorks.

Small world.

I don’t know that much about FreedomWorks and I’m not trying to demonize anyone personally here. But Washington sure is an incestuous city.

I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it sure does seem like the Atlantic guys are in the tank on this one. Am I wrong to think that it seems funny that Marc Ambinder’s spent the entire day carrying water for the outfit that employed his Atlantic blogger buddy’s fiance?

FreedomWorksPost + Comments (52)

We may have to wait longer than I thought for the WaPo Bolton/Wolfowitz/Kristol/Kagan piece calling Clinton an appeaser, since Bolton lauched a pre-emptive appeasement accusation in today’s paper, but Instaputz finds PJ luminary Claudia Rosett is fast out of the gate with the a-word:

What will be the real costs of this high-profile brand of ransom payment? It’s not only the tyrant regime of Pyongyang that’s noting the rewards of hostage politics – which is becoming hard to distinguish from Obama’s broad efforts in any event to engage with the world’s most ruthless and manipulative tyrannies. Iran has just picked up three Americans accused by Iranian authorities of straying over the border from Iraq. Which ex-president should Iran now expect to come calling? Or, given the current calculus of hostage politics, and appeasement whatever the cost, should we expect that Obama will do it himself?

Let the appeasement beginPost + Comments (33)

This may be the greatest Meetup page ever. Check out the topics: Glenn Beck, 9/12, We Surround Them, Tea Party, Liberty. It’s for the group that went nuts on Steny Hoyer today in Rome, NY.

I also think that Tea Party Patriots would be a good name for a band.

Update. Here’s a directory of all 9/12, We Surround Them, Tea Party, Liberty meetup groups. Somewhat terrifyingly, my local one has 560 members.

The Fort Stanwix Tea Party PatriotsPost + Comments (54)

Here’s some footage of birfer types (via) at a Lloyd Doggett townhall, chanting “Just say no” and waving pictures of Doggett with devil’s horns on them:

A few points here:
* I’m not sure “just say no” is a great slogan for Republicans.
* The crowd has the same trailer park vibe I got from some of the crazier Palin rallies in the ’08 election.

I’ll have to see a bit more of this, but at this point, I think the Republican strategy of sending birfer bridages to shout at the devil is a dangerous one. Even in a conservative-friendly media environment, it’s going to be hard for the tea-ruptions to portrayed as anything other than fringe lunacy.

I’ll also say this: I’ve witnessed a lot of anti-Iraq war rallies in the general Rochester area, including a pretty large-scale one specifically protesting a Dick Cheney fundraiser, and none had the feeling of anger and general craziness of what I’ve seen from the birfer townhall footage. There *is* a difference between right-wing protests and left-wing ones in this country, at this point. (I can’t speak for what it was like in the past or in other parts of the world.)

Birfer brigadesPost + Comments (100)

Somewhat unexpectedly, at least to me, my part of the world has turned into a hotbed of teabag activity. There was a major tea-ruption at a recent Dan Maffei (NY-25) townhall meeting and a friend just forwarded me an email from some winger mailing list about plans to teabag all of Eric Massa’s (NY-29) townhall meetings. I’m hoping to get friends to send me a lot of good footage of this.

Now, I have to be honest, I’m afraid there is a real fear of a teabagger going too far and doing something violent. But I also think that best chance to stop from happening is to turn this into a political liability for Republicans and that probably involves mockery.

Marc Ambinder sees the teabagging as a righteous display of God-fearing middle-American anger (neo-birfer Sully apprently agrees). The key with all of this is how it gets framed. If it continues to be framed as righteous red-state anger, it will probably continue until a teabagger shoots someone. If it’s mocked as the delusional right-wing craziness that it is, maybe it will be nipped in the bud.

This should be funPost + Comments (165)

I have no idea what happened there, but we seem to be functional now.

Well, That Was Certainly ExcitingPost + Comments (55)