The rise of the right-wing Thought Police in Japan

Not surprisingly they seem to have taken a page from the George Bush/Republican play book. Read the rest of this post...

Another very deadly day in Iraq

Carnage continues:

A wave of bomb attacks and shootings swept Iraq Sunday, killing dozens of people despite a massive security operation in the capital and appeals from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for an end to sectarian fighting.

But don't worry. The Iraqi PM has adopted the Bush talking points. Everything is fine:

And yet, in remarks closely following similarly upbeat statements by American military officials in Baghdad, the prime minister also sought to lend optimism to his government’s efforts to bring security to Baghdad and other violent parts of the country, and to rule out the possibility of civil war.

“We are not in a civil war. Iraq will never be in a civil war,” Mr. Maliki said, through an interpreter, in an interview with CNN on Sunday. “The violence is in decrease, and our security ability is increasing.”

Mr. Maliki’s statement stood in contrast to a far bleaker assessment he made in a speech to Parliament on July 12, when he said the country had one “last chance” to eliminate the sectarian and insurgent attacks destabilizing the country, and warned lawmakers that “if that fails — God forbid — I don’t know what will be Iraq’s fate.”

Now the Iraqi Prime Minister is trying to spin his way out of this crisis, just like Bush. Read the rest of this post...

GOP Senate candidate once said gays' eyes are "devoid of life"

Ah, the party of God keeps on giving and giving.

All the homosexuals I've seen are sickly and decrepit, their eyes devoid of life."

Read the rest of this post...

Bush is setting up Colin Powell to take the fall on Valerie Plame

Only explanation for where the story is heading.

You'd kind of like to give Powell a "told you so," but then again the man did sell out his people and his country by working for, and then defending, a bunch of liars. So, it's hard to feel too bad for a very bright man who dug his own political grave.

And now the Bush crowd is getting one last dig at Powell even though he's already out of the picture. Will Powell respond, or yet again take the fall for an administration that never fully trusted him? Stay tuned. Read the rest of this post...

Bush's FBI again harasses environmental activist while leaving Pat Robertson and Ann Coulter alone

If an environmental activist endorsing one of the options the Army Corps presents for dealing with a damn is a potential terrorist, then why aren't Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson, and other far-right conservatives investigated when their comments seem to endorse terrorism against Americans?

Oh that's right, in George Bush's Republican America the federal government only harasses Democrats and it never actually investigates the real terrorists.

Speaking of which, where is Osama? Read the rest of this post...

Mel Gibson Katherine Harris clarifies anti-Semitic comments by saying she recognized the Holocaust

That's nice. Read the rest of this post...

Frank Rich talks about George Bush's return to the scene of the crime in New Orleans

Classic Frank

A representative and poignant example, brought to light by The Los Angeles Times, is Patrick R. McCaffrey, a Silicon Valley auto-body-shop manager with two children who joined the California National Guard one month after 9/11. He was eager to do his bit for homeland security by helping protect the Shasta Dam or Golden Gate Bridge. Instead he was sent to Iraq, where he was killed in 2004. In a replay of the Pentagon subterfuge surrounding the friendly-fire death of Pat Tillman, another post-9/11 enlistee betrayed by his country, Mr. McCaffrey’s death was at first officially attributed to an ambush by insurgents. Only after two years of investigation did the Army finally concede that his killers were actually the Iraqi security forces he was helping to train.

“He said we had no business in Iraq and should not be there,” his mother, Nadia McCaffrey, told the paper. Last week’s belated presidential admission that Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks on America that inspired Patrick McCaffrey’s service was implicitly an admission that he and many like him died in Iraq for nothing as well.

Mr. Bush’s press-conference disavowalof his habitual efforts to connect 9/11 to Saddam will be rolled back by the White House soon enough. When the fifth anniversary of 9/11 arrives in two weeks, you can bet that the president will once again invoke the Qaeda attacks to justify the Iraq war, especially now that we are adding troops (through the involuntary call-up of reservists) rather than subtracting any. The new propaganda strategy will be right out of Lewis Carroll: If we leave the country that had nothing to do with 9/11, then 9/11 will happen again.

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Open thread

On the way to the restaurant last night I had to stop and capture this shot just north of St. Michel (Notre Dame is behind me about a block). Don't worry, I come back home on Friday, so no more pretty pics to taunt you after that (well, no more of Paris anyway). Click the photo to see an enlargement of the shot. Read the rest of this post...

Drug companies paid for the Chamber's pro-GOP ads touting bill that benefitted drug companies

Busted. The DCCC Stakeholder outed the drug companies for hiding behind the Chamber of Commerce to run their pro-Medicare drug bill ads -- that bill, of course, benefitted those same drug companies while screwing America's seniors. They're a dirty bunch:

The pharmaceutical industry quietly footed the bill for at least part of a recent multimillion-dollar ad campaign praising lawmakers who support the new Medicare prescription drug benefit, according to political officials.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce claims credit for the ads, although a spokesman refused repeatedly to say whether it had received any funds from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

Several campaign strategists not involved in the ad campaign said no legal issues were raised by the pharmaceutical industry's involvement. In political terms, though, the disclosure is likely to embolden Democratic critics of the Medicare drug program, who charge it amounts to a Republican-engineered windfall for drug companies.

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Anything interesting happening on the Sunday morning shows?

Discuss Read the rest of this post...

US soldiers' killing of Reuter's journalist called "unlawful"

Remember when that CNN guy lost his job after talking about US troops targeting journalists. Of course, at that point we'd already blown up (apparently intentionally) the Al Jazeera station in Afghanistan. (Then there was that Italian journalist we shot.) Well, now there's a Reuter's journalist dead (apparently killed last year) and an independent inquiry found that the killing was "unlawful." Reuters wants the Pentagon to investigate, the Pentagon has refused. And guess what, the Pentagon even "lost" key footage of the incident that could have proven what really happened. When in America does someone get to orchestrate that big a cover-up and get away with it? When it's the Pentagon, and when it's George Bush's America. They break the law because they can.

What right do we have to tell anyone else in the world how to live, what is right and wrong, when our own government has become lawless? Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Good morning Read the rest of this post...