Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

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

The revolution will be supervised.

Let there be snark.

This blog will pay for itself.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Joe Lieberman disappointingly reemerged to remind us that he’s still alive.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

This fight is for everything.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Plame Gate

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I guess now we know why Judy was in jail:

In two appearances before the federal grand jury investigating the leak of a covert CIA operative’s name, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, did not disclose a crucial conversation that he had with New York Times reporter Judith Miller in June 2003 about the operative, Valerie Plame, according to sources with firsthand knowledge of his sworn testimony.

The new revelations regarding Libby come as Fitzgerald has indicated that he is wrapping up his investigation and making final decisions as to whether criminal charges will be brought in the case.

Libby also did not disclose the June 23 conversation when he was twice interviewed by FBI agents working on the Plame leak investigation, the sources said.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald apparently learned about the June 23 conversation for the first time just days ago, after attorneys for Miller and The New York Times informed prosecutors that Miller had discovered a set of notes on the conversation.

Miller had spent 85 days in jail for contempt of court for refusing to testify before the grand jury about her conversations with Libby and other Bush administration officials regarding Plame. She was released from jail after she agreed to cooperate with Fitzgerald’s investigation. Miller testified before the grand jury on September 30, and attorneys familiar with the matter said that she agreed to be questioned further by Fitzgerald today.

Meanwhile, in recent days Fitzgerald has also expressed significant interest in whether Libby may have sought to discourage Miller-either directly or indirectly through her attorney-from testifying before the grand jury, or cooperating in other ways with the criminal probe, according to attorneys familiar with Miller’s discussions with prosecutors.

This is going to get ugly and fast.

It will be interesting to see how much of our consensus project from this summer turned out to be accurate.

I guess it will also be interesting to see how many Republicans continue to defend these guys, and how many Democrats will back down from their previous treason remarks should this all turn out to be about obstruction of justice and conspiracy, rather than outing an agent.

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Open Thread

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I am bored. Someone pick a fight with someone. Or pick a fight with me. Or we could do something more productive, and play Get to Know Your Blog Host– ask me a question or a my position on an issue, and if I choose to respond, I will. That could actually be useful, considering the vast gulf between what I think and what some of you think I think.

Or you could just call me an asshole and start a flame war.

Oh yeah- BTVS is even better on the second viewing. I just watched The Becoming pts. 1 and 2 and actually got a little teary-eyed when she offed him.

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Cue the Hallelujah Chorus…

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Big Ben is ok:

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger has a hyperextended left knee and a bone bruise sustained during a game-winning field goal drive at the end of a 24-22 victory over San Diego on Monday night, but hasn’t been ruled out of Sunday’s game against Jacksonville.

The injury isn’t as severe as it initially appeared to be – immediately after the game, coach Bill Cowher said “it looked bad.”

“It’s a deep sigh of relief,” Cowher said Tuesday.

Roethlisberger, 16-1 as an NFL regular-season starter, was injured with 1:05 remaining when Chargers defensive end Luis Castillo’s helmet collided with his left knee as Roethlisberger was completing a 9-yard pass to Antwaan Randle El.

Roethlisberger lay in pain on the turf for several minutes, clutching at his knee, before limping off the field. He was removed from the field on a cart, his knee heavily wrapped, after Jeff Reed kicked a 40-yard field goal with six seconds remaining, but he had no bandage on the knee when he got dressed shortly after that.

Roethlisberger had an MRI test shortly after the team returned to Pittsburgh on Tuesday morning.

Phew.

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The Baseball Crank on Miers

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The Baseball Crank has a great piece up on Harriet Miers.

In other nomination news, the ‘Gang of 14’ claims Harriet is safe from the filibuster. (h/t Instapundit)

The Bull Moose notes the new tactic to get Miers confirmed:

First they tried a rather pathetic line of attack – that their foes were Ivy League elitists. Then, Mr. Eddie Gillespie trotted out the politically correct accusation that the opponents were “sexist.” Excuse me, Mr. Ed, this crowd is not exactly sensitive to that charge.

So now the Rovians are going negative on the nominees who were not selected.

Also, check out this chart of quotes both pro and con Miers.

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Time for Some Tough Love

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This is insane:

In September 1998, Hurricane Georges swept up a beachfront house along the Gulf of Mexico and tossed it like a bowling ball into John and Gail Leacy’s summer home on the western edge of this barrier island. The Leacys collected thousands of dollars in federal flood insurance and rebuilt.

Last year, Hurricane Ivan slammed their Creole-style three-bedroom cottage with wind and floodwaters. And in late August, a wall of water from Hurricane Katrina severely undercut the house’s concrete pad and pilings.

“We’re still standing, but we’re pretty severely damaged,” Gail Leacy said from her year-round home in Mobile, Ala. “We hope we can save her.”
Dauphin Island is one of the most vulnerable barrier islands in the nation. Since 1979, it has been struck by six hurricanes and has lost nearly 500 expensive vacation homes and rental properties. Yet owners keep building back, trying to elevate their homes out of harm’s way. And the island has received more than $21 million in federal flood payments to help spur redevelopment.

Now, after Katrina, Leacy and hundreds of other Dauphin property owners will join thousands of others in the Gulf states filing claims against their federally backed flood insurance, putting enormous financial strain on the government-run program…

Nearly from its inception, the program has struggled to pay all its claims. It collects $2 billion in annual premiums but has no reserves, heavily subsidizes some of its riskiest customers and relies on the Treasury to bail it out when losses exceed income. Losses this year from Katrina and Hurricane Rita alone could top $10 billion, experts say, forcing the program to borrow billions from taxpayers with no guarantee of repayment.

$10 billion dollars to help subsidize John and Gail Leacy’s vacation home in a hurricane prone flood plain. Clearly I can not be the only person who read this and wanted to vomit. At some point, someone in charge is going to have to come to their senses and just say “No” to these people and those who continually choose to live in these areas yet expect a federal bailout every time ‘disaster’ strikes.

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Merkel as Chancellor

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This is cool:

Angela Merkel, the leader of Germany’s main conservative party, announced a deal on Monday that would allow her to become Germany’s chancellor in a coalition government, succeeding Gerhard Schröder after his seven years at the head of Europe’s biggest and most economically powerful country.

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, right, on his way to talks on Sunday that led to the agreement for Angela Merkel to succeed him and their parties to form a coalition, ending their post-election power struggle.

Woman in the News: Angela Merkel: Politician Who Can Show a Flash of Steel (October 11, 2005) If formally elected to the post, as expected, she will become the first woman and the first person from the former East Germany to serve as chancellor.

But because Mrs. Merkel must share power with Mr. Schröder’s party, it is unclear whether she will be able to push through the changes that most economists agree are needed to shake off years of stagnation and high unemployment.

Will she be able to fundamentally alter the way the German government operates?

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Katrina Fall-Out

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I half-heartedly suggested this, but it looks like they might actually do it:

The military’s Northern Command is developing a proposal to organize a specially trained and equipped active-duty force that could respond quickly to assist relief efforts in the event of overwhelming natural disasters, like major hurricanes, floods or earthquakes.

The proposal, one of the first results from the military’s study of shortcomings in the relief effort after Hurricane Katrina, could resolve significant stumbling blocks to the deployment of active-duty forces into a disaster area on American soil…

In the first days after Hurricane Katrina passed and the levees broke in New Orleans, flooding the city, the Democratic governor of Louisiana and White House officials squabbled over whether the federal government should take command of the faltering relief effort.

Active-duty troops may conduct relief operations without the federal government being in charge, but the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits active-duty forces from conducting law enforcement missions on American soil.

Pentagon and military officials say that federal troops could not have been sent into the chaos of New Orleans without breaking the Posse Comitatus law.

That would not be a problem with the standby force as long as it was kept to logistical and relief operations and the mission, in particular law-enforcement duties, remained with the National Guard reporting to the state governors.

The federal, state and local authorities would first agree, in advance, on what kind of event would lead to the sending of active-duty forces into a state. The criteria might include predictions of hurricane severity, the level of damage from an earthquake or casualty figures. Admiral Keating said that could help eliminate politics from the calculation.

The upside of this is that when Anderson Cooper and Shepard Smith are reporting unsubstantiated rumors making the problem worse, we might be able to shoot them.

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