No Jews Allowed

Another bad day for Little Ricky.

Liar

A majority of Americans believe the president of the United State deliberately miseld the country about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

You'd think such a fact would, just maybe, have an impact on the press. It might make them a bit curious. It might make the probe a bit deeper. They might be rather stunned that a majority of Americans came to this conclusion despite the fact that very rarely is this opinion actually expressed over the airwaves by any of the guardians of our political discourse.

Hackett Says Thank You

Watch the video here.

Missing Non-White Woman

Someone Nancy Grace cares nothing about.

This is a Horrible Idea

I mean, who the hell would want Bruce Reed and Al From showing up at their door?

"Stand With the President"

Hackett's opponent, the awful Schmidt, thinks the way to support the troops is to "stand with the president." I always associated that kind of thinking with certain military dictatorships I won't name. Hackett tells her to buzz off:

Schmidt commends Hackett for his service, but believes Hackett should "stand with the president" by "supporting the Iraqi war effort and our troops that are over there," her campaign manager Joe Braun said. (Through Braun, Schmidt declined to speak with Salon.) When asked to answer that charge, Hackett is blunt: "The only way I know how to support the troops is by going over there." He doesn't hesitate to criticize Schmidt's support of the war: "All the chicken hawks back here who said, 'Oh, Iraq is talking bad about us. They're going to threaten us' -- look, if you really believe that, you leave your wife and three kids and go sign up for the Army or Marines and go over there and fight. Otherwise, shut your mouth."

You can help here.

More info here, including news that the conservative Cincy Post has endorsed Hackett.

On DLC Wankery

Ezra:

[T]heir rhetorical devices... include 1) a lot of sniffing and despairing at all those hopelessly irresponsible liberals followed by a 2) high-minded promise to stroll into whatever trap the Republicans have set for them or 3) set one themselves if the right's been remiss.

12 Hour Gap

Dems demand DOJ Inspector General investigation.

Open Thread

Too many threads spoil the soup.

Eschacon

Info here. Registration here.

Wanker of the Day

Eric Minamayer. Make sure to read through the comments.

Minamayer thinks he's justified in questioning Hackett's service because he was a Civil Affairs officer. You know, the guys who, like Hackett, have to go into Fallujah after we bomb the shit out of it and try to make nice with the local population. Surely not a dangerous or important job.

Minamayer writes:

Being a Civil Affairs Officer is a noble thing and carried the same dangers we all faced in the Middle East. If one’s role was not command or combat, however, one should not imply that it was.

Of course, here's what Minamayer said on his own website:

I fought the war on terrorism and now I will fight for you in Washington. At
least the liberals in Congress don’t have guns.

Minamayer in combat? Nope.



You know what to do.

The End of GWOT

Did we win?

Whiners

The DLC really are hilarious. Read this one.

If only we could hear such moral clarity from our own party's left! Instead, we heard from Daily Kos, the ur-liberal ur-blogger, whose blog included a cheer for, among others, outcast Labourite George Galloway, who blamed the attacks on Blair's Iraq policy -- and was roundly denounced by virtually all British politicians. "See, Democrats? That's how it's done," lectured the blogger ignorantly. Likewise, Matt Yglesias, an articulate liberal voice at The American Prospect, who belittled Marshall Wittmann's call for moral clarity as a phrase never used "unironically" anymore. No wonder Democrats are perceived to have a values problem.

Notice especially that they're trying to smear Markos not based on something he wrote, but simply because his "blog included" something - could've been a comment, an unpromoted diary, etc...

[edited]...ah, I found it. And, no, Markos didn't write it. It's funny how much they hate Markos with little reason - they have to reach to find quotes with which to try to smear him, and attribute things to him which he didn't even write. Hilarious.

Reinventing the Wheel

This is sad and scary.

Open Thread

Words form the thread on which we string our experiences. --Aldous Huxley

Open Thread

Quick! To the threadmobile!

Little Ricky

Did little Ricky just say on Aaron Brown what I thought he said? That Griswold was wrongly decided, and that therefore the state has the right to regulate the use of birth control by married couples?

If we had a decent press, the first question little Ricky would face at his next press availability would be - have you ever used any form of birth control of any kind?

DLC Loser Will Marshall

What Digby Says.

Though I'll add one thing... born in 1952, Marshall was of prime fighting age in 1970, though that little stint in Vietnam appears to be missing from his CV.

Never fear, though. Another round of enlistment eligibility age raising and he'll get another chance.

Open Thread

To infinity thread and beyond!

Dance PNAC Monkey Dance

PNAC Monkey Gary Schmitt today:

Well, it's good to see that the former CIA employee is now worried about the war on terror. But it's a bit late. On July 10, 2001--two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon--Johnson wrote an op-ed for the New York Times ("The Declining Terrorist Threat") in which he argued that Americans were "bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism" and, in truth, had "little to fear" from terrorism. And, in turn, he rebuked his former colleagues in the national security bureaucracy for using the "fiction" of the terrorist threat to pump up their budgets.

Note he's blaming Johnson for having a "pre-9/11 mindset" for something he wrote... pre-9/11.


What did Gary Schmitt write in November 2000?

The reason is that, as horrific as terrorism can be, its human and material costs have a minimal impact on the American population. Oh, we loudly demand that the culprits be caught and justice meted out. But that indignation passes rapidly as the terrorists’ deeds fade and the terrorists themselves disappear into the shadows. And the dirty little secret is that governments are often happy that’s the case. If terrorism is state-sponsored, then governments are faced with a choice between waging war in return and ignoring an act of aggression, neither of which is without consequences.

...

Study of Revenge, then, is about an ongoing war. But this war by unconventional means is not recognized as such. Rather, as Mylroie points out, the conventional wisdom is that terrorism today is chiefly a product of transnational organizations, motivated by religious extremism, only loosely tied together and, more often than not, directed and funded by a single individual, Usama bin Laden. Witness our initial reaction to the attack on the USS Cole. Putting aside for the moment that even bin Laden depends on state sanctuary and state assistance to operate, isn’t it reasonable to ask what states had the most to gain from raising the price for our presence in the Gulf?

(thanks to Cloudy who wants me to credit someone at the DU forum)