BREAKING: North Korea reportedly tests a nuke - but nobody can yet confirm it

UPDATE: CNN reports that the North Korean bomb probably weighs ten tons. And they have no way of delivering the bomb anywhere - their recent missile test was a flop, and at ten tons, it's not like they're going to drive it anywhere.


(Source: WorldAtlas.com)

UPDATE: Senior US officials claim that they also believe a test did take place. Pentagon and intelligence officials are nearly certain a test took place.

UPDATE: South Korean officials claim, per the BBC, that there was a seismic event:

A South Korean official said an explosion had been detected in the north-east of North Korea, measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale.

UPDATE: Nobody has confirmed this report yet. CNN is now reporting that the Pentagon and the intelligence community thinks North Korea may have conducted a test, but it will take several hours to confirm it. Also, CNN is reporting that North Korea is masterful at deception - so they might have tried to hide the explosion (or they may have tried to fake an explosion). The USGS is saying, per CNN, that there is no indication of seismic activity. But again, it's possible the North Koreans hid the test somehow.

AP is reporting that North Korea has reportedly conducted a nuclear weapon test. I'm not sure what conducting a nuclear weapons test means exactly, since AP doesn't tell us, but I'm supposing it means they actually detonated a nuclear device.

If so, we have George Bush to thank.

Who decided to devote the past five and a half years to Iraq instead of North Korea? We KNEW North Korea was preparing to go nuclear. Iraq, not so much. Hell, even Iran was ahead of Iraq in the nuclear department. But Bush, from day one, decided he wanted to take out Saddam to make the neo-cons happy. And what did that get us?

It got us North Korea watching us stuck in a quagmire in Iraq, watching us use up all of our military weaponry and demoralize and overstretch our troops to the point where we may not be able to do much about North Korea at this point. That's why, in my opinion, North Korea is acting up - or at the very least, it's why North Korea isn't afraid of our threats. They're calling our bluff. What exactly are we going to do? Invade? With what army? And with Seoul only a hop, skip and a jump from the North Korean border, attacking North Korea is going to be an even iffier prospect.

I'll say it again. George Bush has run our military into the ground, and he sent the message to North Korea that the US is vulnerable and unable to put actions behind its threats. So now what do we do that Bush's weakness, and wandering eye, has let North Korea go nuclear?

Feeling safer yet? Read More......

BREAKING: GOP Congressman Kolbe knew about Foley's illicit Internet chats with pages back in 2000

The conspiracy grows, as does the number of years the Republicans knew about this scandal.

Oh, and the Washington Post decided to mention the GOP lie about Democrats being possibly behind the scandal. Do you think the Post bothered mentioning that ABC and a number of other news outlets in town have said that they got the creepy Foley emails from Republicans and NOT Democrats? Would you like to buy a bridge?

Sure, the Post quotes a Republican saying we did it, and a Democrat saying no we didn't. Uh, there's no evidence that the Dems did anything - why is the Post even publishing this crap, let alone not stating the actual known facts in this case, that the media has already said they got the emails from Republicans?

From the Washington Post:

Another Republican congressman knew of disgraced former representative Mark Foley's inappropriate Internet exchanges as far back as 2000 and personally confronted Foley about his communications.

A spokeswoman for Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) confirmed yesterday that a former page showed the congressman Internet messages that had made the youth feel uncomfortable with the direction Foley (R-Fla.) was taking their e-mail relationship. Last week, when the Foley matter erupted, a Kolbe staff member suggested to the former page that he take the matter to the clerk of the House, Karen Haas, said Kolbe's press secretary, Korenna Cline.

The revelation pushes back by at least five years the date when a member of Congress has acknowledged learning of Foley's questionable behavior. A timeline issued by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) suggested that the first lawmakers to know, Rep. John M. Shimkus (R-Ill.), the chairman of the House Page Board, and Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.), became aware of "over-friendly" e-mails only last fall. It also expands the universe of players in the drama beyond members, either in leadership or on the page board.

Obviously it's interesting that Kolbe is openly gay. Though that simply means he'd have a reason for being close to Foley - they shared a common bond. One thing does bother me, however. The Post reports that Kolbe had a close relationship with the pages, and talks about him inviting them to use his DC home when he is out of town. Clearly the Post is trying to imply something here, or there's no reason to print the information.

To my eyes, the Post is suggesting that because Kolbe has an unusually close relationship with pages, he may be stalking young kids as well. If the Post has something on Kolbe, then print it. Innuendo doesn't seem terribly appropriate when, at least from what the Post reported in this article, for all we know Kolbe may simply be a nice guy who lends his house out when he's OUT of town.

Then again, the Post may be following Denny Hastert's new rule of journalism: If you don't print an allegation the second you hear of it, even if it's not totally confirmed and you haven't yet done your due diligence, the Republicans will accuse you of illegally withholding evidence and harming children. Better to slander now than prove later. Read More......

Hundreds of Iraqi police fall ill at evening meal, reportedly bled from ears and nose

Might have been poisoned, not clear yet.

Hundreds of Iraqi policemen fell sick from poisoning Sunday at a base in southern Iraq after the evening meal breaking their daily Ramadan fast, and officials said they were investigating whether the poisoning was intentional....

Some of the policemen began bleeding from the ears and nose after the meal, said Jassim al-Atwan, an inspector for the Environment Ministry, who was serving as a liaison in the investigation between the Health Ministry and the base, located in the town of Numaniyah.

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Fun AMERICAblog traffic maps

I don't know what all of this means, but it looks kind of cool. Recent traffic. The bigger the bubble, the more visitors. Read More......

Losing the Cokie moms

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Open thread

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New George Allen Scandal

From AP.

For the past five years, Sen. George Allen, has failed to tell Congress about stock options he got for his work as a director of a high-tech company. The Virginia Republican also asked the Army to help another business that gave him similar options.

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We're about to lose Afghanistan now too

Unbelievable.

NATO's top commander in Afghanistan said Sunday the country was at a tipping point and warned Afghans would likely switch their allegiance to resurgent Taliban militants if there are no visible improvements in people's lives in the next six months.

Had enough? Read More......

Dick Cheney says Ronald Reagan emboldened Al Qaeda (not kidding)

Cheney and the White House have been making this point for some time now, that Ronald Reagan's withdrawal of US troops from Beirut in 1983 emboldened Al Qaeda.

For some reason, the media has been loathe to report on it. Oh sure, they mention Cheney's quotes, and list Beirut as one of two US withdrawals that emboldened Al Qaeda, but the media never seems to catch the fact that the Beirut withdrawal was Reagan's doing. That Cheney is saying flat out that Ronald Reagan's policies emboldened Al Qaeda. (Wonder how Nancy feels about that.)

To wit, from today's Washington Post:

"If we follow Congressman Murtha's advice and withdraw from Iraq the same way we withdrew from Beirut in 1983 and Somalia in 1993, all we will do is validate the al-Qaeda strategy and invite even more terrorist attacks," Cheney said in Milwaukee.

Note the Beirut reference. Also note the Somalia reference. Who got us into the mess in Somalia? President George H. W. Bush and his Defense Secretary, Dick Cheney. So Cheney is blaming Reagan and Bush, Sr., and himself for "inviting more terrorist attacks" against Americans.

Now do you think that's a story? Read More......

Democrat Rahm Emanuel talks about Mark Foley/GOP child sex predator scandal on ABC's THIS WEEK (it's good)

If you like the video, make sure you "rate it" on the YouTube page - you can get there by double-clicking the video image you see below.

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Yet another House Republican leader, GOP Rep Putnam (R-FL), tries to downplay Foley stalking of children

Rep. Adam Putnam (R-FL), one of the top Republican leaders in the House, on ABC this morning called the Foley emails "odd" and "overly friendly." Did you hear that, moms of America, the Republicans think a 52 year old stranger chatting up your children about the hot bodies of their friends is simply "overly friendly."

The other thing Putnam did is repeat the GOP lie about why the Florida papers didn't run with the Foley email story earlier. As the papers have already said, they didn't hold the story because they didn't think it was newsworthy. They held the story because the kid involved didn't want to talk, and the paper felt they couldn't publish something like this without getting the kid on the record. Big difference. So why did the Republican congressman just lie on ABC?

Then Putnam says the FBI had the same email and decided here wasn't enough to investigate. Of course, now we know that the FBI lied. They first claimed they did a preliminary investigation and couldn't find anything illegal. Then they claimed that they didn't even do the preliminary investigation because they didn't have the page's name, which is an outright lie. They were given the page's name along with the emails. Good try, Putnam.

To his credit, Stephanopoulos is responding to Putnam with the real facts. Putnam responded with the following:

Based on the information we have today, the Speaker's office acted proactively, they acted aggressively, and within hours, within hours of the explicit messages coming to light, they demanded Foley's resignation.

That's interesting, Mr. Putnam, since Mr. Reynolds claims that HE, and not the Speaker's office, demanded Foley's resignation. Then again, Denny Hastert now claims that HE was the one who demanded Foley's resignation. Of course, only a few days ago, Hastert told the media that the House GOP leadership didn't have time to demand Foley's resignation, he simply resigned BEFORE the leadership was able to confront him.

So which one is it? Read More......

Conservative Christian leader James Dobson says Mark Foley's stalking of children was little more than "a joke"

When one of the top leaders of the religious right describes a child sex predator as participating in little more than "a joke," you know these disgusting excuses for Christians no longer stand for family or values, or God.

As it turns out, Mr. Foley has had illicit sex with no one that we know of, and the whole thing turned out to be what some people are now saying was a -- sort of a joke by the boy and some of the other pages.

Disgusting, and a flat-out lie. One page - one - said he wasn't necessarily interested in having sex with Foley, but was seeing how far Foley would go in the chat. But they have now found numerous pages who Foley apparently pursued.

First off, I've read the transcript, I don't believe the kid now saying this was a joke. He sure didn't sound like he was joking when he described how he masturbates. Second, regardless of the kid's motivations, Foley initiated a discussion of masturbatory techniques with a 16 year old. Dobson find this funny and/or excusable? And finally, there are now nearly half a dozen, or more, former pages who have stepped forward and alleged that Foley asked them to measure their penises and more.

Are there any people of conscience left among evangelical Christians? This man is one of your self-proclaimed leaders, and he thinks 52 year old men asking 16 year old boys to measure their penises is "a joke"? Absolutely sickening. Read More......

Sunday Talk Shows Open Thread

Russert deemed that the Foley story "has legs."

If you're watching the shows, provide commentary. Read More......

LA Times: Former page eventually had sex with Foley

The L.A. Times revealed that a former page did hook-up with Foley. The young man had turned 21 by the time they had their encounter. He also described how Foley was always checking out the pages:

His sexual encounter was in the fall of 2000, he said. At the time, he was 21 and a graduate of a rural Northeastern college.

The former page's account is consistent with Foley's assertion that he did not have sexual relations with minors, an issue that will be key to determining whether he committed crimes. The legal age of consent varies from state to state; in the District of Columbia, where the pages live in supervised dormitories, it is 16.

Yet the former page's exchanges with Foley offer a glimpse of possible predatory behavior by the congressman as he assessed male teenagers assigned as House errand-runners.

In the messages, Maf54 described how years earlier, he had looked to see whether the former page had an erection in his tight white pants while the then-teenager was working near the congressman. Maf54 also speculated about the sexual attributes of other males in the same page class, including the observation that one young man was "well hung."

The young man and his friends "were surprised that it took so long for Foley 'to get caught.'" Foley did "get caught" years ago, but no one in House GOP leadership did anything about it. Read More......

Smoking to become part of ancient history in France?

Just like war, serfdom and the plague, some things are just better left in the past. In a country where 80% of the population is against smoking and littering the air with pollution that damages the lungs and health of children up to adults, France is finally inching closer to becoming a smoke-free zone. Yea I know, smoking is cool and lung cancer, heart attacks and emphysema are really great fun as well so thanks, but no thanks. The Big Tobacco pro-pollution fascists love claiming the rights of individuals...sure, what about non-smokers who have to breath that stuff? Don't we have individual rights too or are they just saying that their individual rights are more important than those who don't want to breathe smoke?

Great job though and I can hardly wait to live in a smoke-free country. Us 80% people are smiling with this news.

But as in other European countries, smoking in public increasingly has fallen out of favor here. This week, after a five-month governmental inquiry, a parliamentary committee approved a proposal to ban smoking in public areas.

Under the measure, cafes, hotels, restaurants, discos and casinos could designate spaces for smoking only if they could be hermetically sealed areas, furnished with air-extraction systems and subject to extremely rigorous health norms.

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