Needlenose

Fubar sent me this link, apparently he’s to lazy to post it himself:  The Odds of Airborne Terror.

The money quote:

“…the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.”

This fortified wall is for your protection! Really!

It’s bad enough that Israel and the Palestinians diverge on a basic and heretofore non-negotiable item in their discrepant visions of an independent Palestinian state, the nature of Jerusalem post-independence.  The Israelis consider Jerusalem in its entirety as the capitol of Israel and are continuing to evict Arabs and expand their illegal settlements in direct contradiction of world & US policy and Palestinian aspirations.

However that’s only one indication of the shape of things to come were Israel to get its way.  Whatayahoo naturally assumes a demilitarized Palestine, and more importantly, one still containing Israeli troops, ostensibly to patrol ‘the borders’ with that scary terror state of Jordan.

So if Whatayahoo and his ilk get their way, we’re looking at an Arab Palestine composed of a wiggly little patches of territory gerrymandered around Israeli colonies, surrounded throughout by an armed wall and riddled inside with Israeli troops, without a significant city to call a capitol.

Arab Palestine would have no port, all movement between Palestinian townships would be through Israeli military checkpoints, all goods and travel into and out of the territories would be monitored, controlled and subject to shutdown at any time at Israel’s whim.

Hmm that sounds like a Bantustan to me.  Hey Whatayahoo, I hope that works as well for you as it did for Botha’s Apartheid South Africa!

So, the Obama administration got a wake-up call suddenly concerned on Thursday about the health care reform drubbing it was taking in the progressive blogiverse, and held a conference call to try to stop the bleeding:

White House senior advisor David Axelrod and health care adviser Nancy-Ann DeParle held a conference call Thursday night with progressive bloggers — in what Axelrod described as a bid to clear the air after several tense days.

… In response to one blogger who chided the White House for failing to fight for the public option while taking “potshots” at the liberal activists, DeParle said: “The president is fighting for this. … You have no idea how many hours, how many hundreds of hours he has spent, how many phone calls he has made, how many meetings he has had. … We need your help and we don’t mean to be chiding you. But please appreciate how hard this is.”

… According to an account on DailyKos, DeParle said the provisions in the Senate bill need to be improved and moved closer to what the House bill includes, particularly on affordability.

Awww, I feel all warm and fuzzy now.  They like us, they really like us after all!  Except someone had to go and step on the (revised) message right away (via the Wall Street Journal):

Turn off MSNBC. Tune out Howard Dean and Keith Olbermann. The White House has its liberal wing in hand on health care, says White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel….

… Emanuel pointed to a New York Times column by economist Paul Krugman and another coming from National Journal writer Ronald Brownstein pressing for passage of the Senate health bill. “What you’re seeing is the progressive backlash against the progressive backlash,” he said.

Nice going, Rahm.  Whatever small amount of goodwill the Axelrod-DeParle call created, you just undid it.  The boss must sure be glad he has you as his political mastermind.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

Remember 2003, when we just got going in Iraq?

When the count of U.S. Soldiers killed in the Iraq Occupation hit 150? We’re at 4370 now, not counting another 300 or so folks from the Coalition of the Increasingly Unwilling.

When only 1,500 civilians had died to date due to Bush’s non-existent post-war occupation planning?  Today we’re at somewhere between 95,000 and 103,000 civilian deaths…and climbing.

Carbon limits are for the little people! Faster, driver!

Sir Richard Branson saw fit to lecture to world leaders currently debating carbon emissions limits at Copenhagen on behalf of the airline industry.  “Reduction targets”, not carbon taxes is what he’d like.  He’s also pushing the idea of moving the airline fleets to biofuels, something he terms green fuel.

Biofuels, you know – things like ethanol and bio diesel derived from industrial agriculture that require more energy inputs then they produce in outputs and exist only as pork delivery vehicles for firms like ConAgra?

Keep in mind this bullshit is from a guy who has made an a second fortune from running an especially carbon porky business, an airline.  And if that weren’t enough, his latest venture is to fly fat rich tourists into space.  Hey Sir Carbon Asshole, here’s a reduction for you – shelve your stupid space tourism and save the planet an additional 54,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually – and tell your rich buddies to go plant some trees on one of their 365 days of yearly vacation instead.

And while you’re at it, why don’t you make a real statement and shelve your new Formula 1 racing team.  I don’t think the additional 50 tonnes of CO2 your car will emit per season will ‘tip the balance’ but talk about hypocrisy.

What kind of parent hides a loaded pistol under a Christmas tree? They’re probably related to the guy who let his son shoot an Uzi at a gun show competition.

Forget criminal background checks for buying weapons, how about a simple intelligence test?  That would probably disqualify 80% of the gun nuts.

The cheaply stolen video feeds from our drones would make amazing youtube videos, don’t you think?

Apparently to make up for his unusual absence from this weekend’s Sunday talkfests, John McCain is profiled today by Politico, which muses about his reinvention as a knee-jerk Republican partisan:

For years, McCain relished being an outsider and a maverick, a style that often led to battles with his own party’s leadership. Today, for reasons that friends and McCain observers say could range from unresolved anger to concern for his right flank as he seeks re-election to genuine dismay about Obama’s agenda, he is helping lead a fiery crusade of GOP loyalists against Democratic priorities…

Democrats argue that McCain has marched to the right, pointing to his opposition to Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court after years of trying to avoid battles on judicial nominations; his damaging criticism of the Democrats’ climate change plans when he was an early supporter of cap-and-trade legislation; his attacks on AARP when he actively sought the powerful lobby’s support in the 2008 campaign.

… there was speculation that the post-presidential McCain would return to the Senate and emerge as an Obama ally, the latest turn in his “Country First” narrative going something like this: White House dreams dashed, the grizzled old politician yet again puts service over self, patriotism over party and joins with the new young president to guide America through a crisis.

It seems clear, though, that winning another Profile in Courage Award and the approval of elites by following such a course is not what McCain has in mind.

Of course, McCain is hardly losing “the approval of elites,” nor does he have any reason to fear that happening, if his near-omnipresence on TV’s political gabfests is any indication.   Instead, he’s seeking what he’s consistently sought over the past couple of decades — attention.

And Christina Bellantoni at TPM has a story this morning explaining why the GOP has adopted a conscious strategy of encouraging him, making him “the front man” in opposing Democratic healthcare reform efforts:

A Republican staffer who worked for McCain in 2008 said the party spent “millions of dollars bolstering his national image,” so it makes sense for him to be the go-to guy.

“Does anyone know who Mitch McConnell is?” the staffer asked.

This, by the way, would be the same conscious strategy that Politico is doing its small part to boost by treating McCain’s “emergence” as an Obama critic as an objective news story.  But I suppose that’s no surprise, either.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

The Dems have rebranded themselves as the Spineless Whimp Party, or Whimps for short.

*Update 12/14/09* Senator Tom Harkin grows a spine – will he be expelled from the Whimps?

“We’ve traced the posts to this location… does anyone here go by the nickname of ‘Green Boy’?”

(Via Reuters.)