The season premiere of Monk is tonight. Set your TiVo®.
Monk
by John Cole| 12 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Monk
Swimming in Raimondo’s Fecal Ponds
Raimondo responds to this post from yesterday, stating:
The willful blindness of Israel’s partisans is running smack up against a widely-circulated report in the mainstream media that Israel’s Finance Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was tipped off to the London terrorist attacks.
A news report from Associated Press reports:
“British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday’s explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said.
“Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had planned to attend an economic conference in a hotel over the subway stop where one of the blasts occurred, and the warning prompted him to stay in his hotel room instead, government officials said. … Just before the blasts, Scotland Yard called the security officer at the Israeli Embassy to say they had received warnings of possible attacks, the official said. He did not say whether British police made any link to the economic conference.
“The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the nature of his position.”
I am not going to go into all the petty little attacks on me- I am ‘small-minded,’ I am a ‘little neo-con shit,’ the title of this blog is ‘icky’ (Balloon Juice is hot air– real icky, hunh?), I am full of ‘hate,’ etc. ad nauseum.
What I will take issue with is Justin’s characterization of events and desperate desire to cling to and distort a Stratfor report so that he may peddle his vile little conspiracy theories.
The AP report that Justin bases his entire theory on was made at the heat of the moment, when no one knew what was going on. In that report, it was stated that Netanyahu knew BEFORE the attacks that they were going to happen (not to mention the report states it was the Brits who told Netanyahu in that story, so we would have to presume that Israeli intelligence warned the Brits but failed to tell their own government officials). Every subsequent report from that point on has corrected the record, and pointed out that Netanyahu was notified of the explosions AFTER they occurred. Justin calls that a cover-up, or scrubbing the public record. I call it correcting the record and doing additional reporting.
There is probably a good chance that Israeli intelligence did tell British authorities that Britain might be ripe for an attack. After all, the G-8 summit, was taking place, London was in the running for the Olympics (and terrorist organizations elsewhere had seized upon this issue), and a whole host of other events, notwithstanding the presence of a great number of Islamist radicals in England, make it perfectly reasonable to assume that England would at some point be a target.
There probably were vague rumblings. Like, say, an internal memo that states ‘Bin Laden Intent on Striking US.’ But, hey, if it can save some lives, I can offer up some ‘intelligence’, too. Here ya go, Justin:
– Chechnyan rebels will attack Russia again.
– Zarqawi plans to blow something up in Iraq.
– North Korea will continue to be a pain in the ass throughout 2006.
– Democrats and Republicans will both have candidates in the 2008 election.
– Justin Raimondo will still be an idiot tomorrow.
– Al Qaeda will attack someone in the west again. They will probably use explosives and hit civilians
That was helpful, wasn’t it?
As the Stratfor memo states:
Contrary to original claims that Israel was warned
Political Speech is a Campaign Contribution
Via Say Anything, this story that I find a little disturbing (and, given my excitability, probably for no good reason):
Talk-radio hosts regularly discuss candidates and ballot issues, often with a particular point of view in favor of one or opposed to another.
Do those comments constitute a financial contribution to a campaign?
Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Wickham thinks they do. In a ruling issued Friday, Wickham said the comments and activities by KVI-AM (570) hosts Kirby Wilbur and John Carlson on behalf of the Initiative 912 campaign are in-kind contributions that must be reported to the Public Disclosure Commission…
In a release posted on the anti-initiative Web site Keep Washington Rolling, the plaintiffs accuse initiative backers of “failure to disclose the significant in-kind contributions received from Fisher Broadcasting, owners of radio station KVI. Radio hosts Kirby Wilbur and John Carlson have spent countless hours working on campaign strategy and promotion while on the Fisher payroll, and the KVI Web site urges listeners to help the two get the measure on the ballot. None of these resources provided by the Seattle-based broadcasting corporation have been reported as required per state disclosure laws.”
Wrote Wickham, “In the area of speech, requiring disclosure of in-kind contributions for media time allocated to campaigning for a political campaign will not restrict that campaigning, but merely require it to be disclosed to the general public, much the same as any other valuable contribution.” As part of his ruling he ordered No New Gas Tax to disclose “all in-kind media contributions.”
The ruling has attracted attention beyond Washington’s borders. “It is absolutely stunning in terms of the philosophical and theoretical questions it raises,” says Michael Harrison, publisher of the talk-radio trade magazine Talkers; Harrison adds that he’s not aware of a similar case elsewhere in the country.
In Harrison’s view, if no money changed hands then there’s no contribution. “Otherwise you can subject it to taxes, limits on contributions, all kinds of things that get in the way of free speech. To put a value on it is a very dangerous precedent.” (In response to the ruling and to meet a deadline, the initiative campaign estimated the value of the hosts’ work at $20,000).
For broadcasters the ruling raises huge questions. Dennis Kelly, program director for Fisher’s KOMO-AM and KVI-AM, notes that KOMO commentator Ken Schram blasted Wilbur and Carlson for supporting the gas-tax repeal. Does that have to be reported as an in-kind contribution to Keep Washington Rolling, he asks?
This certainly does seem like a dangerous precedent. I understand that radio show hosts doing what are essentially two-hour informercials for an issue or a candidate can be seen as troublesome, but this is just a road I do not want to go down. Or maybe it is. If this does not start as a launching off point for regulation and restriction, I am fine with it.
I have no problem, after all, with unlimited donations to any candidate or campaign, provided the source be disclosed.
Political Speech is a Campaign ContributionPost + Comments (18)
More on Schiavo
Other than Vogon poetry, few things are as unpleasant as a quick swim in the fever swamps to assess the current state of Michael Schiavo. One would think, with the news yesterday (completely and understandably overshadowed by the events in London) that Governor Bush is dropping the investigation into the ‘timeline,’ that it would be time for all of this to be put to rest.
Not so fast- Mark Furhman has a book to sell:
Fuhrman continued, “There are so many things that Michael Schiavo can’t seem to answer. In a time when you would think that you would have a memory, a videotape that you could put on play and those memories and those images would be etched in your mind forever, he couldn’t figure them out, from the first morning to this very day.
“He couldn’t even remember if they had an argument. He couldn’t remember what time he left work, couldn’t remember what time he got home, couldn’t remember if she was awake or asleep. Couldn’t remember, when he found her, if she was face up or face down. It goes on and on.”
Fuhrman also says Michael took a long time to call 911, and that may have contributed to Terri’s injuries.
It gets worse:
“I was pretty shocked with what I read, not only from a humanitarian angle from Michael Schiavo — he was completely absent of any compassion or empathy for the direct family of Terri Schiavo — but there were many questions about how she collapsed
Score One for Basic Ignorance
A new poll indicates that nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults believe in creationism – the belief that God created human beings.
Harris Interactive
Bush and Litmus Tests
Last night, I was listening to Tucker Carlson’s show as I drifted off to sleep, and before I actually fell asleep, I heard this exchage:
CARLSON: Luckily, you’ll be back tomorrow, Rachel Maddow. But e-mail it, if you know, because I don’t.
Next situation, the battle for Supreme Court. President Bush says there’s, quote,
California National Guard
The LA Times has a follow up on this story about he California National Guard that states that the authorities are launching an investigation into allegations of tracking civilians:
U.S. military authorities Wednesday began investigating whether a California National Guard unit was established to spy on U.S. citizens, as about 30 demonstrators outside Guard headquarters confronted officials backed by armed soldiers.
The federal inquiry into the country’s largest National Guard force involves the Army’s inspector general, the federal National Guard Bureau’s inspector general and the National Guard Bureau’s legal division.
The unit has raised concern among peace activists that the Guard is resorting to the type of civilian monitoring that characterized Vietnam War-era protests, when the military collected information on more than 100,000 Americans during the 1960s and ’70s.
Under scrutiny is a California National Guard unit with a tongue-twisting name