I'm doing a really fun interview right now

I just got off the phone with Mary Carey, the porn star who's attending the dinner with President Bush on Tuesday. She's a total hoot. She cut the interview short, had to finish watching the Pistons game, and will call me back in a sec. I'll probably be able to tease a bit more tomorrow, then my article based on the interview will be published on RADAR's Web site on Tuesday, and I can then tell you all about it. Read More......

Cornflakes of Mass Destruction

Wash Post:

More than a year before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the FBI nabbed two Arab grocers loading boxes onto a tractor-trailer outside a drab gray apartment building here. The cargo: stolen Kellogg's cereal.

Agents did not charge the men that day, and set them free. But 16 months later, soon after hijacked planes had crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the FBI was back. This time, agents arrested the pair and a third Arab grocer. After they were grilled about the terrorist attacks, the men were charged and pleaded guilty -- to conspiracy to possess the pilfered cornflakes.

To this day, the three grocers remain on the federal government's list of terrorism cases, although they never were charged with a terrorism-related crime. Often cited to emphasize the government's success fighting terrorism, the list that includes Nasser Abuali, Hussein Abuali and Rabi Ahmed is made up in large part of men caught up in the post-Sept. 11 dragnet that targeted Middle Easterners.

It also includes a Sudanese actor released after his name was mixed up with that of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, as well as four Jordanians convicted in an immigrant-marriage scam in Florida. Neither the actor nor the Jordanians were linked to terrorism.

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Republican slime machine says Clinton raped Hillary to conceive Chelsea

But Howard Dean pointing out that white evangelicals run the Republican party, THAT is a low blow.

I'm not even going to link to the story. Suffice it to say, the new book about Hillary now alleges this crap. Please, Hillary, sue their asses off. Read More......

Open Thread

Is this weekend over already? Read More......

Someone thinks the all-volunteer army is "sufficient"

Interesting that he's the guy who runs the Selective Service Agency. Found this story via Raw Story (I find an awful lot of good stuff from them):

As the head of the Selective Service System, William Chatfield said Saturday in Baton Rouge that he hears questions about a draft call a lot lately.

"From everything I hear, right now, the all-volunteer Army is sufficient," he said.

Mr. Chatfield, I would like to introduce you to an obscure publication called The Washington Post which yesterday had an article that read:

The Army announced yesterday that it missed its recruiting goal for the fourth consecutive month, a deepening manpower crisis that officials said would require a dramatic summer push for recruits if the service is to avoid missing its annual enlistment target for the first time since 1999.

The Army will make a "monumental effort" to bring in the average 10,000 recruits a month required this summer, said Maj. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle, head of the Army's recruiting command. An additional 500 active-duty recruiters will be added in the next two months -- on top of an increase of 1,000 earlier this year.

The Pentagon is also considering asking Congress to double the enlistment bonus it can offer to the most-prized recruits -- from $20,000 to $40,000 -- and to raise the age limit for Army active-duty service from 35 to 40, he said.

"The challenge is one of historic proportions," Rochelle said, acknowledging that he is not sure whether the traditional summer surge in Army recruits will take place, or how large it might be.

Is it just me...or is it really kinda worrisome that the head of the Selective Service is either really out of the loop or just not telling the truth?

I'd start worrying if I had draft age kids...or was draftable.... Read More......

4 more US soldiers die in Iraq today

So I think we should all talk about how Howard Dean is mean to Republicans. Read More......

Open thread

Watching ABC News... Read More......

Cheney -- of all people -- criticizes Dean, take II

AP:

Howard Dean is "over the top," Vice President Dick Cheney says, calling the Democrats' chairman "not the kind of individual you want to have representing your political party."

"I've never been able to understand his appeal. Maybe his mother loved him, but I've never met anybody who does. He's never won anything, as best I can tell," Cheney said in an interview to be aired Monday on Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes."

Dean was elected governor of Vermont five times between 1992 and 2000.

Hey Dick, Dean signed a law to give gay couple civil unions. He respects gay people....unlike your party. So, to quote the current VP: Go Fuck Yourself. Oh yeah, and how's your daughter doing? The lesbian one you and your party betrayed? Read More......

Triumph the Insult Dog hits the Michael Jackson trial

Oh my. Read More......

Guess who's coming to prison?

At least Tom DeLay will have company. But who will be whose bitch?

A defense contractor with ties to Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham took a $700,000 loss on the purchase of the congressman's Del Mar house while the congressman, a member of the influential defense appropriations subcommittee, was supporting the contractor's efforts to get tens of millions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon.

Mitchell Wade bought the San Diego Republican's house for $1,675,000 in November 2003 and put it back on the market almost immediately for roughly the same price. But the Del Mar house languished unsold and vacant for 261 days before selling for $975,000.

Meanwhile, Cunningham used the proceeds of the $1,675,000 sale to buy a $2.55 million house in Rancho Santa Fe. And Wade, who had been suffering through a flat period in winning Pentagon contracts, was on a tear – reeling in tens of millions of dollars in defense and intelligence-related contracts.

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Vote for Dean in CNN poll

The poll is clearly being freeped. Tell them that we think Dean helps the party. You need to scroll down a bit to find the poll. Read More......

US Deaths in Iraq break 1,700

Four more US soldiers were killed yesterday. AP is keeping the tally:

Four U.S. soldiers were killed in separate roadside bombings west of Baghdad, the military said Sunday. Two soldiers were killed Saturday when a bomb exploded near their vehicle outside Amiriyah, some 25 miles west of Baghdad.

Two other soldiers also died Saturday when their vehicle struck a bomb near Taqaddum, 45 miles west of Baghdad.

At least 1,701 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

There are a lot of things I could write....but this is way too serious. Over 1700 US soldier -- mostly kids -- are dead because our President lied.... Read More......

Cheny makes a crack about Dean's mother

Yes, Mr. "Go fuck yourself, Pat" is lecturing Dean on civility. And while doing so, makes a crack about Dean's mom. That's lovely. Especially coming from a man who shed crockodile tears last year over his poor lesbian daughter who was RUNNING HIS RE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN, selling photo-ops at a gay fundraisers, was on the board of a gay rights organization, and was Coors' gay liaison, but apparently didn't want anyone to know she was gay. Uh huh.

Cheney owes Dean an apology. Read More......

More Pharmacists Insisting THEY Will Decide What Medicine You Can Buy

This is going to get worse and worse.

An Illinois pharmacist is suing because he doesn't want to have to fill prescriptions provided by a doctor that he disapproves of. In short: no birth control and no emergency contraceptives. (At least, to start with.) It offends his religious sensibilities. He owns pharmacies in two towns and it's exactly what you'd fear: Morrison, Illinois has about 4,500 people and Prophetstown (love the name) has about 2000. So he may be close to the ONLY game in town when it comes to getting a legal prescription filled.

It offends his religious sensibilities, of course. The ruckus here is mostly over the morning-after pill -- I needn't point out that the morning after pill can PREVENT pregnancy, meaning this pharmacist would be forcing a woman who got raped to get pregnant and therefore increasing abortions. Lovely.

And why stop there. Doesn't it offend his religious sensibilities to sell condoms to adults who aren't married? What about adults who are married but are of different races? We KNOW it would offend his sensibilities to sell condoms to a gay couple.

Sorry, but if you want to be a pharmacist, you can't deny medicine to people because you don't approve of them or the medicine they're buying, any more than a real estate agent can refuse to sell a home to black people or atheists. No one is trying to tell this fool how to behave in his own personal life. Why is he trying to make his own morality the law of the land? Read More......

Downing Street Memo: The Best Breakdown Of What It Means

(Thanks to Sarah B. for directing us to this.) I'm not a big fan of just pointing people towards an article. I like to link two or three articles together to make a larger point, or analyze why I think an article missed the important issue or otherwise provide value-added blogging. But some articles just have to be read.

So read Mark Danner's "The Secret Way To War" for the New York Review of Books. Unlike the Washington Post story on A-1 linked to below (way to stay on the ball guys, with an article that could have been written a month ago), this is an excellent analysis of what it means, why it's important and the real purpose of going to the UN (which both Bush and Blair offered up as "evidence" the DSM got it wrong). And though Bush implied the timing of the DSM's release was political, neither he nor Blair questioned its authenticity. One of many highlights:

At this point in the meeting Prime Minister Tony Blair weighed in. He had heard his foreign minister's suggestion about drafting an ultimatum demanding that Saddam let back in the United Nations inspectors. Such an ultimatum could be politically critical, said Blair—but only if the Iraqi leader turned it down:

The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD.... If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.

Here the inspectors were introduced, but as a means to create the missing casus belli. If the UN could be made to agree on an ultimatum that Saddam accept inspectors, and if Saddam then refused to accept them, the Americans and the British would be well on their way to having a legal justification to go to war (the attorney general's third alternative of UN Security Council authorization).

Thus, the idea of UN inspectors was introduced not as a means to avoid war, as President Bush repeatedly assured Americans, but as a means to make war possible.

Read More......

Ohio GOP Coin-gate "Culture of Corruption"

Big day of news for the Coin-gate scandal. It's going national....finally.

Toledo Blade, of course, takes the lead:

What began as questions about Ohio's $50 million venture with a Toledo-area rare-coin dealer has mushroomed in just 10 weeks into a scandal that's echoing through the halls of Congress.

It's forcing Republicans nationwide to take a close look at what went wrong in the GOP-controlled Buckeye State.

"What's happening in Ohio is a specific case that we are looking into and monitoring closely," said Aaron McLear, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. "We are taking steps to solve the problems. I don't think it is indicative of anything more."

Democrats are begging to differ.

Partisans in Washington argue that a Republican "culture of corruption" extends far beyond Tom Noe and Columbus, reaching all the way to the White House and Capitol Hill.

The Blade also explores the relationship of both Tom and Bernadette Noe to the 2004 election:

Some Democrats point to Lucas County for examples of concerns in last year's election. Mrs. Noe was chairman of the county Republican Party and chairman of the county Board of Elections.

In April, she resigned from the county elections board amid concern about how the 2004 election was run. The board was completely recast because of concerns about the failure to secure ballots during last year's election, failure to secure poll books after the official canvass, and problems with some absentee ballot forms.

There were also questions about long lines and a lack of voting machines at polls that typically have a large Democratic voter turnout.

"I can't speak for other counties, but I know inside this county when [Mrs. Noe] was in charge, it was chaotic or it was ineptness," Miss Kaptur said. "Something was very sly. I have become very suspicious of what happened."

The LA Times does a long piece on the whole Noe affair and all the GOP ties. Not much new here for those following the scandal. However, it gives a good overview and this is a major paper covering "Coin-gate." And then there is this quote which means Ohioans seem to get it:

"I can now go into any bowling alley or barber shop and mention Tom Noe's name and have everyone understand what corruption in our state means," said Ohio Sen. Marc Dann, a Democrat from suburban Youngstown who has been outspoken against the GOP. "People understand when money is stolen, and they understand the connections to the Republican Party. The GOP might try to give back the money, but they're still tainted."

Read More......

Sunday Morning Open Thread

Another scorcher in DC....what's going on? Read More......

Geldof to seek African acts for Live 8

After a bit of a public row with Damon Albarn of Blur and others who criticized (rightly so) the Live 8 lineup as too Anglo-Saxon, Geldof has asked Peter Gabriel to help recruit African acts for the concert. It should have been done from the start but at least it's now being sorted. Read More......

Washington Post jumps onto Downing Street Memo

It's just so cute when the little ones finally learn how to walk, isn't it? Read More......

Bush and Blair: Lying About Iraq (Again)

In their recent joint press conference, Bush and Blair gave rehearsed answers to not-so-probing questions about the Downing Street Memo. (The Memo made clear that top officials in the Blair government knew Bush wanted to invade Iraq and was going to fix the evidence any way he had to in order to justify it.)

Rather bizarrely, both Bush and Blair made the same weak response: oh, no, the memo can't be right because we wnet to the UN AFTER it was written. Well, duh, you can hardly plan something in advance and then cynically go through the motions without, you know, planning something in advance. Going to the UN didn't uncercut the memo; in fact, it supported the truth of the memo, because as we now know the US went there with evidence that was flimsy at best (the British paper trail to back up a claim Hussein was buying nuclear material and the tubes that Colin Powell insisted were good for one thing only -- helping to build a bomb). In fact,the British paper trail was forged and 99.9% of the experts in the US and around the world who checked out the tubes before the US went public said they were absolutely NOT for that purpose.

So what gives? Why say that going to the UN proved the Downing Street Memo was wrong? Because repeating a lie over and over again is all you can do sometimes and pretty darn effective. And what were their other options?

Here's MORE PROOF Bush was lying: the Times of London has obtained more details showing that in 2002 Bush was going to invade Iraq and that ministers needed to come up with something, anything, to provide legal backing. Their plan? Why, go to the UN and get an ultimatum and hope Hussein unilaterally defied it.

It's taken the MSM six weeks to pay attention to the Downing Street Memo. (In fact, according to Salon, during the next 19 daily briefings after that memo came to light, only 2 out of nearly 1000 questions were about it.) It better not make that same mistake again. Read More......