Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Too little, too late, ftfnyt. fuck all the way off.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

Bark louder, little dog.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

Their shamelessness is their super power.

Iraq Constitution

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For a group of people new to this whole democracy thing, these folks sure seem to learn quick:

Iraqi leaders submitted a draft constitution to the National Assembly just before their self-imposed midnight deadline on Monday, but disagreement with Sunni leaders and other, secular Iraqis left the document incomplete, with fundamental issues still in dispute.

In a legal sleight of hand, the Iraqis decided to give themselves three additional days to close the gaps, despite the requirement in the country’s interim constitution that the document be completed by a deadline, which already had been extended a week. That left some Iraqis on the 275-member National Assembly wondering whether they were still in charge, and some Sunni leaders asserting that the delay was illegal.

And while they may have technically succeeded in adhering to the deadline (the text of the draft can be found here), there are numerous problems still:

At the heart of the dispute was the decision to largely exclude the Sunni leaders from the talks on the constitution, after the failure to meet the first deadline last week. That meant that any agreements struck by the Shiite and Kurdish negotiators were not really complete.

When the Sunnis were finally brought into the negotiations on Monday afternoon, they promptly rejected several of the constitution’s most fundamental provisions.

“There are about 20 issues in there that are unresolved,” said Saleh Mutlak, one of the Sunni leaders.

Despite the confusion, some Iraqi leaders expressed confidence that they would be able to finish the constitution in the next three days. In addition to the unresolved questions on Shiite autonomy, they said the two main disputes were whether the constitution would contain language barring members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party from working in the government and how the president and prime minister would be selected.

I was under the impression that the real need for compromise was that in order for the Constitution to be ratified, it had to have approval by numerous different regions within Iraq. I don’t see how this version will meet that standard, as the Sunni bloc is vehemently opposed. Am I missing something, or is my understanding of the ratification process wrong?

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Robertson’s Fatwah

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It appears that Islamist crazies are not the only people who can issue fatwahs:

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson suggested on-air that American operatives assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to stop his country from becoming ”a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism.”

”We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,” Robertson said Monday on the Christian Broadcast Network’s ”The 700 Club.”

”We don’t need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator,” he continued. ”It’s a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.”

Chavez has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of President Bush, accusing the United States of conspiring to topple his government and possibly backing plots to assassinate him. U.S. officials have called the accusations ridiculous.

”You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it,” Robertson said. ”It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war … and I don’t think any oil shipments will stop.’

Piece of work, this guy Robertson.

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Able Danger Story Unverifiablel, Yet Verified

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For now, at least, the Pentagon refuses to verify the Atta story:

The Pentagon has been unable to validate claims that a secret intelligence unit identified Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta as a terrorist more than a year before the attacks, a Defense Department spokesman said Monday.

Larry Di Rita said that some research into the matter continues, but thus far there has been no evidence that the intelligence unit, called “Able Danger,” came up with information as specific as an officer associated with the program has asserted.

“What we found are mostly general references to terrorist cells,” Di Rita said, without providing detail.

That officer, Army Reserve Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, said Able Danger identified as terrorists Atta and three other future Sept. 11 hijackers in 2000. But, Shaffer said, military lawyers stopped the unit from sharing the information with the FBI out of concerns about the legality of gathering and sharing information on people in the United States.

However, it appears a second officer has come forward to verify the claims:

An active-duty Navy captain has become the second military officer to come forward publicly to say that a secret defense intelligence program tagged the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks as a possible terrorist more than a year before the attacks.

The officer, Scott J. Phillpott, said in a statement today that he could not discuss details of the military program, which was called Able Danger, but confirmed that its analysts had identified the Sept. 11 ringleader, Mohamed Atta, by name by early 2000. “My story is consistent,” said Captain Phillpott, who managed the program for the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command. “Atta was identified by Able Danger by January-February of 2000.”

His comments came on the same day that the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, told reporters that the Defense Department had been unable to validate the assertions made by an Army intelligence veteran, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, and now backed up by Captain Phillpott, about the early identification of Mr. Atta.

This will be entertaining to watch, and Tom Maguire has wall to wall Able Danger coverage.

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Next From the ‘No Shit!’ Department

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It appears the Bush administration has noticed that one of many ‘Abstinence Only’ programs may have a strong religious component. The clues:

Teenage graduates of the program sign a covenant “before God Almighty” to remain virgins and earn a silver ring inscribed with a Bible passage reminding them to “keep clear of sexual sin.” Many of its events are held at churches.

In filings with the Internal Revenue Service, the organization describes its mission as “evangelistic ministry” with an emphasis on “evangelistic crusade planning.”

Representatives of the Pennsylvania-based nonprofit describe Silver Ring Thing as a “faith-based” group but dispute charges it has commingled its public funds with religious activities.

60 Minutes did a piece on this group several months ago, and the idea that this is anything other than religion dressed up as sex-ed is clear to anyone with a pulse.

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No Motivation

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I have nothing I care to say and other things to attend to- flame away at each other. Suggested flame war topics:

1.) Since we have pretty conclusive proof that Saddam did not, at the time of invasion, have WMD, why then was he resisting attempots to inspect? Did he think his bribed had made sure he could do as he please?

2.) Frank Rich’s column yesterday referred to the Swifting of Cindy Sheehan. Could an argument be made that Cindy Sheehan is the Swift Vet?

3.) Michael Moore is fat.

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The Looming Oil Crisis

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If you read nothing else today, make it this piece by Peter Maas in the NY Times Magazine about the impending oil crisis titled “The Breaking Point.”

A combination of greed, increased demand, political inaction and an unwillingness to conserve, and rejection of science has helped to create what will truly be the biggest crisis of the next century:

As Aref al-Ali, my escort from Saudi Aramco, the giant state-owned oil company, pointed out, ”One mistake at Ras Tanura today, and the price of oil will go up.” This has turned the port into a fortress; its entrances have an array of gates and bomb barriers to prevent terrorists from cutting off the black oxygen that the modern world depends on. Yet the problem is far greater than the brief havoc that could be wrought by a speeding zealot with 50 pounds of TNT in the trunk of his car. Concerns are being voiced by some oil experts that Saudi Arabia and other producers may, in the near future, be unable to meet rising world demand. The producers are not running out of oil, not yet, but their decades-old reservoirs are not as full and geologically spry as they used to be, and they may be incapable of producing, on a daily basis, the increasing volumes of oil that the world requires. ”One thing is clear,” warns Chevron, the second-largest American oil company, in a series of new advertisements, ”the era of easy oil is over.”

Read it all.

This is tangentially related.

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Hollywood’s Nightmare- Mass Production

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This is the kind of story that makes Hollywood movie execs cringe with fear:

In consumer electronics, as in much of life, good things happen to those who wait – good things as in plunging prices.

The cost of big-screen televisions, which have been steadily dropping by about 25 percent a year, are now expected to fall even more sharply this autumn, according to industry analysts. The coming markdowns reflect a singular confluence of business trends that will benefit consumers going into the holiday season.

“Prices are pretty much in a free fall,” said David Naranjo, who tracks the television industry for DisplaySearch, a market research firm.

The best evidence of this is the expectation of analysts that in the next few weeks the Panasonic unit of the Matsushita Electric Industrial Company will announce that it is dropping prices as much as $500 on plasma-screen TV’s that retail for around $3,500.

Panasonic officials refused this week to confirm or deny the speculation, but because it sells the most plasma screens in the United States, a potential downward adjustment would be considered a harbinger of a price war for all varieties of big-screen TV’s.

Speaking as someone with my own widescreen HDTV, complete with a decent surround sound system, this is what Hollywood should fear- home theatres popping up all over the country. The only movie I have attended recently is Star Wars, partly because it was a cultural event, partly because my inner geek refused to stay home. Other than that, every other movie I have seen lately is at home after it has been released on DVD.

Add to a dying business the slim offerings from Hollywood, and you can see the problem. Literally. They need to change their business model, and the day of direct to dvd releases is soon approaching.

In other news, as if to reinforce my point, the number one movie in the nation is “The 40 Year-Old Virgin,” which stars Comedy Central’s Steve Carell, and not, as I initially suspected, 2000 Presidential candidate Al Gore. Even though everyone ‘knows’ Al Gore is really quite enjoyable in person, of course.

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