The Anthrax Man

The 2001 anthrax scare may go down in history as the most important moment everyone forgot about. When it happened, it reinforced the fear Americans had that terrorism was looming overhead, that 9/11 wasn’t simply a one-off event, and it easily catalyzed the “war on terror” as we know it today. Yet somehow it fell through the cracks.

After the death of a prime suspect in the attacks, a man working for the US Government no less, the story’s made a return. Glenn Greenwald, doing his typical spectacular job, lays it out in stunning, if depressing, detail. But it seems like it went like this:

1. Pat Leahy, Tom Daschle, and a few members of the liberal media get the famous anthrax letters, with the message “Allah is great” written on them.
2. The anthrax is sent to a lab in Maryland for testing, who determines the chemical had bentonite in it.
3. Media draws the conclusion that it had to be connected to Iraq, as Iraq had used bentonite in the past, not to mention the sophistication of the substance that precludes standard terrorists.
4. War in Iraq.
5. Suspect in Anthrax case pops up, one Bruce E. Ivins.
6. Ivins, just before the Justice Department comes after him, kills himself.

Okay, that’s our timeline. Now let’s also keep a few other facts in mind:

• All of the people who got the letters were well-known liberal/Dem targets.
• Ivins was a demonstrable religious nut who often wrote to his local paper about “abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide or capital punishment.”
• Ivins, it turns out, works at the lab in Maryland that sent out the message that the anthrax had bentonite in it (which, it turns out, was false).

Now, I may be a bit unfair in assuming Ivins’ guilt, but let’s just assume for the moment that he was the man behind it.

I thought it was pretty odd at first (“at first” meaning back in 2001) that it was Daschle and Leahy getting these letters. You’d think that the pansy-like Democrats wouldn’t have been targets, the terrorists would go after Bush, Cheney, or other Republicans in order to really give ‘em a scare. Why bother with the blues?

Now we’ve got a potential answer. Sending the anthrax to the Democrats sent the message to them that terrorism really is a danger. Bush and the Republicans, not to mention many Democrats, were already quite pro-war. Sending them a fake-Iraqi-terrorist-attack would only reaffirm their resolve. Go after the Dems that would vote against an Iraq invasion and now you might get somewhere.

So this Ivins guy cooks up some anthrax, jots down some terrorist-sounding notes, and sends them to a few Democrats and members of the liberal media, implicating Iraq by being the ones to “test” it and further cementing the event as a reason to invade. One hell of a devious plan.

Granted, if he’s innocent (we’ll have to wait and see), then that theory falls apart.

John McCain’s campaign has gone off the deep end.

Okay, I hate to dip into the “McCain’s attack ads are going out of control” well again, but this is starting to drift into the central area of Crazytown where the normal tracks don’t lead and you’ve gotta get there on foot. Check this new ad:

Let’s all just take a moment to let that sink in.

Now that we’ve had time to reflect, what actually happened in that ad? Well, he ripped a few quotes out of context, mocked Obama for “anointing himself” (apparently a presidential candidate shouldn’t think he’s qualified to lead the world’s last superpower), and ends with “is he ready to lead?” The ad doesn’t go into a single policy point, it doesn’t even answer the damn question. You just get a whole bunch of fancy music, a clip from The Ten Commandments with Heston, and then “is he ready to lead?” at the end. That’s all.

I’m sorry, but What. The. Fuck.

First off, if you take off the last five seconds, the thing almost looks like a tongue-in-cheek pro-Obama ad. Like something a supporter would pop out to playfully jab at how he’s turning into a larger-than-life figure. Hell it doesn’t even mention McCain until the very end in the box on the bottom of the screen.

That makes two ads now where McCain just flails his arms and “criticizes” Obama for being popular and a good public speaker, but does nothing else. I’m not sure who McRage hired for these ads, but he needs to tell them that it might be a better strategy if he’d start telling people who they should vote for if Obama’s a bad choice. For that matter, they might want to get cracking on explaining why he’s a bad leader, not just posing the question.

The response from Obama’s camp is correct, this is juvenile and desperate. It’s only August and McSame’s already showing that he’s blowing gaskets.

Where’s my liberal media?

I found myself watching FOX again for some reason, in between checking out Media Matters for my latest round of things to make me angry enough to chew my hands off.

I got a little bored and went on over to NewsBusters, which claims it has all of the liberal media bias and seeks to expose it. Since this is the first watchdog site listed when you look for “liberal media” in the old Google, I figured it a good place to play a game of Compare ‘N’ Contrast. In one corner, NewsBusters, eager to prove the massive amount of liberal bias in the media. In the other, Media Matters, which proves the converse.

Scrolling through the first page of NewsBusters, I started combing around for the most inflammatory claims of media bias.

Giving myself the time frame of the last week or so, here’s the top five of each. I should note I spent more time at NewsBusters because each day has about 10 stories, most of which are incredibly benign including, no joke, a story indicting Wikipedia for locking John Edwards’ page from being edited and a lot of bile thrown at the fact that Ted Stevens is indicated as a republican in his latest scandal.

NewsBusters:

• CBS’s Schieffer: Bush Like ‘Queen of Hearts From Alice In Wonderland’
• Olbermann: NRA ‘Trying to Increase Deaths,’ 2nd Amendment is for Muskets
• ABC’s Claire Shipman: Some Call Gore the ‘Best’ VP in ‘Modern History’
• Lou Dobbs Calls Pro-Free Market Administration ‘Jerks and Cowards and Fools’
• Conspiratorial Dan Rather: Big Oil Will Cut Gas Price to Help McCain

I noticed a few things. One is that the only real targets they have is Olbermann and the occasional somewhat mean-sounding allusion a pundit may make. Most of the stories involve guilt by omission or more stories for Obama than for McCain. They also looooove Brit Hume, as they quote him on a near daily basis.

Over on MM, staying within the past week or so:

• NY Sun omitted Obama’s reference to himself as “a proud citizen of the” U.S., then suggested he didn’t say it
• O’Reilly called Gore an “evil enabler” for speaking at Netroots Nation, repeatedly compared event to Ku Klux Klan, Nazi Party, and David Duke
• Stein on Obama’s convention speech: “Seventy-five-thousand people at an outdoor sports palace, well, that’s something the Fuehrer would have done”
• CBS splices McCain interview clip, expunging his false claim on surge timeline and falsely suggesting he gave different answer
• Limbaugh on Obama: “[H]e loathes America. He blames America. America’s responsible for all that’s wrong in the world”

Now it’s comparison time, and keep in mind I didn’t dig THAT deep on either. NB has a lot of guilty by omission stories (such as not enough reporting on McCain’s trip vs. Obama’s), two actual bona fide examples of name-calling, and one spot with a media outfit calling Gore awesome. MM has one guy likening bloggers to Nazis and the KKK, one guy saying Obama hates America, one likening Obama to Hitler, and two examples of consciously editing something out of an article/newscast in order to spin the reporting.

When the right talks about “media bias”, what they’re talking about is reporting that slightly spins in a way they don’t like or doesn’t report on a story they want reported. Or, sin of sins, they give a Democrat more coverage than a Republican. Ask yourself who the most liberal voices are in the media. Olbermann? That’s about all you have. Colmes maybe. While others may be Democrats by registration, they sure aren’t flaming libs.

When the left talks about “media bias”, we mean actual “reporters” and pundits who will say ridiculously unfair statements like claiming that liberals hate America or that liberal bloggers are terrorists, traitors, and Nazis. Not fringe people either, big-time names that tear into the left. I didn’t even mention Savage because the man is, frankly, a joke.

Here’s my challenge: find the most terrible anti-Republican statement you possibly can by a major media name. I don’t mean a Daily Kos diary or a guest on a radio show on Sirius that no one listens to. I mean someone on the big networks or a big-time radio host that has national syndication. I will guarantee it now, guaran-damn-teed for that matter, that it will never compare to the venemous statements made by the conservatives in the media.

We can talk about spin and omission, leanings and subtle suggestions, but one thing that cannot be denied is that in the media, there is no such thing as too right-wing.

Keith Olbermann is probably the most incredibly liberal voice the major media has today, and his skyrocketing ratings probably indicate how people respond to that. Popularity aside, it’s hard to come up with many similar voices, certainly none with his power. Cafferty and Dobbs over on CNN have their moments, but both are conservatives who in the recent past have been adored by conservatives for various reasons. Matthews? He hates Hillary Clinton so much he probably masturbates to her picture and doles out affection on Bush like he’s trying to impress the lifeguard at the pool. Colmes? Please. Rachel Maddow’s emerging, and Air America’s off to a good start, but that’s about all.

The right-wing media is coated with strong voices. Just picking one name from each of the networks, we have Hannity, Beck, and Scarborough. All three could best be described as “severely conservative”, showing nothing but pure hatred for any and all liberals (Beck famously asked a Muslim Congressman to prove he wasn’t with the enemy, for one). Another round of the big 3 gives us O’Reilly, Dobbs (listen to his immigration views, for example), and Tucker Carlson. Admittedly Carlson doesn’t have a show, but he’s still around and they keep trying. That’s six and I’m not playing the obvious game of just listing off the entire FOX evening lineup.

Severity is the big thing here. Olbermann has his tirades, I admit, and is indeed supremely lib. But outside of him, where? Has Wolf Blitzer called conservatives anti-American? Did Katie Couric say Bush is the modern-day equivalent of Joseph Stalin? When was the last time Alan Colmes said Christian conservatives want to torch synagogues and force the country to worship Jesus or be sent to jail? The plain truth is that it doesn’t happen, while conservatives feel free to spill bile all over Democrats on a daily basis.

Go ahead, though. Prove me wrong. Get quotes by Matthews that top O’Reilly’s. Show me that Glenn Beck isn’t more flamingly partisan than Brian Williams. I’ll wait.

WSJ: Is John McCain stupid?

Well, my head just blew up. The Wall Street Journal is pretty much renowned to have one of the most right-wing editorial pages, although I think their standard reporting is pretty solid. So to have an editorial titled, no shit, “Is John McCain stupid?” is just unbelievable.

This isn’t some left-wing screed where a guy like me rattles off example after example of how McCain is going senile and giving a bunch of examples of him saying stupid stuff. Daniel Henninger isn’t listing off liberal talking points, and his piece isn’t draped in an attitude of “this is why McCain is a terrible candidate”. Here’s a good example:

Then this week in San Francisco, in an interview with the Chronicle, Sen. McCain called Nancy Pelosi an “inspiration to millions of Americans.” Notwithstanding his promises to “work with the other side,” this is a politically obtuse thing to say in the middle of a campaign. Would Bill Clinton, running for president in 1996 after losing control of the House, have called Newt Gingrich an “inspiration”? House Minority Leader John Boehner, facing a 10-to-20 seat loss in November, must be gagging.

This isn’t the kind of thing a liberal would give a damn about except to briefly say “okay he’s trying too hard,” but Henninger places a lot of weight on why it’s a political wrong move to “let her off the hook before the election.” That’s Republican strategy there, not Democratic mudslinging.

It’s sad that it took the Wall Street Journal editorial page to finally call John McCain out on the fact that for all his lofty promises, he’s neither delivered on the ones pertaining to the campaign nor given any indication he’ll deliver on the ones pertaining to his presidency. Straight talk express? No. Clean, high-minded politics? Hell no. Anything resembling a plan for how he’ll accomplish the goals he listed? Oddly missing. All we’re left with is a candidate that changes what he says almost on a daily basis, and makes promises for what he’ll do in office that he’s given no outline for how

The sad thing is, his straight-talk image and his war hero status are all he’s got. The only way he can win the election is to convince people that he’s got strength where Obama doesn’t, and he’s not a shift-in-the-wind politician. He cannot compete with Obama in a debate, he can’t fight him on policy grounds, he’ll never convince people he’s an above-the-fray leader. But as Henninger astutely points out, he’s losing what little he’s got.

In this sports-crazed country, everyone has learned a lot about what it takes to win. They’ve heard and seen it proven repeatedly that to achieve greatness, to win the big one, an athlete has to be ready to “put in the work.”

John McCain isn’t doing that, yet. He’s competing as if he expects the other side to lose it for him. Sen. McCain is a famously undisciplined politician. Someone in the McCain circle had better do some straight talking to the candidate. He’s not some 19-year-old tennis player who’s going to win the U.S. presidential Open on raw talent and the other guy’s errors. He’s not that good.

There is a reason the American people the past 100 years elevated only two sitting senators into the White House — JFK and Warren Harding. It’s because they believe most senators, adept at compulsive compromise, have no political compass and will sell them out. Now voters have to do what they prefer not to. Yes, Sen. McCain has honor and country. Another month of illogical, impolitic remarks and Sen. McCain will erase even that. Absent a coherent message for voters, he will be one-on-one with Barack Obama in the fall. He will lose.

Good luck, McCain. Yer gonna need it.

This is why my eyes cross during election years

Okay, so, the McCain camp has thrown out yet another absolutely idiotic attack ad on Obama. This one, no joke, goes after Obama for being… popular. So they’re comparing him to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

Obvious questions aside (“Does that mean McCain admits that he’s unpopular?”), the fact is that this is where we’re headed with this election. John McCain has decided that he is going to drop his pants and take a nice piss on ethical and responsible campaigning in favor of picking up a slew of Bush’s old coordinators and hope to turn the election into less of a battle of ideals and more a battle of “I’m patriotic and strong, the other guy’s a faggoty traitor.”

By the way, you can read a rather nice AmericaBlog post on just how they indeed are pinning Obama as a gay guy. Fun stuff.

Anyway, I’ve seen the Paris Hilton ad. It’s been running here in PA fairly regularly. The gist of the ad is that Obama is really popular, but what does he really stand for? According to the ad, he stands for raising taxes and no offshore drilling. That’s right, he’s gone back to the offshore drilling issue and energy taxes, revisiting the same issues from an earlier ad. No new ground, just packed in an even more brainless attack.

It’s the same portrait, the exact same damn one, that got tossed at us in 2004. I’m a war president and a man of God, the other guy goes skiing and drinks lattes while talking to the French and not saying the pledge of allegiance. Character ads, attacks on integrity and patriotism, not anything relating to issues.

It probably has something to do with the fact that most Americans want a timetable out of Iraq, they’d like universal health care, etc. Down the line, Americans favor Democratic ideals, and moreover they trust Democrats on major issues. The only issue, the only one, that McCain has is the 2/3 of Americans who support offshore drilling, which is probably because 64% think it will lower gas prices. So he clings to that single issue and adds bread crumbs to his metaphorical meat loaf by going on the attack against Obama’s character.

These are the politics of desperation, what a man does when he realizes his campaign is in trouble and he’s losing in almost every single poll (save, for example, a poorly executed USA Today poll that gives McCain a 3 point lead). McCain’s supposed to be the superpatriot maverick who stood up to the president and never betrays his conscience. Turns out the people aren’t buying the phony baloney image and now McCain’s in damage control mode, hoping to cover Obama in enough sludge before November.

Someone on MSNBC said it well: McCain can’t win this election, but he just might be able to make Obama lose.

Prop 8 wording infuriates the bigoted

After California let gays get married, the conservative wingnuts went crazy trying to find a way to overturn the ruling, going back to the old claim that when judges uphold a liberal ideal it’s legislation from the bench, but when they do it on, say, gun rights in DC it’s just protecting the Constitution.

Anyway, Proposition 8, as the proposed ban is known, has been worded so that it is said to “eliminate the rights of same-sex couples to marry”. Supporters, of course, are furious, claiming that they aren’t “trying to eliminate anyone’s rights.” But Attorney General Jerry Brown nails it:

“What has happened is the Supreme Court found that the right to marriage includes same-sex couples,” the attorney general said in an interview. “This happened after the original title was approved. … Now same-sex couples have a right that’s recognized and supporters of the proposition want to eliminate that right.”

Prop. 8 supporters, Brown said, “can’t say with a straight face that this isn’t about eliminating the right to gay marriage, so what’s their problem with this? This is a political lawsuit, not one about serious legal issues.”

This vote is intended solely to stop gays from marrying. It has no other purpose, and there is no way to justify it being on the ballot without confirming it. Any claims that they just want to “protect the institution of marriage” are just dishonest. Unless they feel that it needs protected from something, it doesn’t need protected. Ask ‘em about it sometime.

Some are making the analogy to abortion, that liberals would be equally angry if there was an anti-abortion proposition that said “protect the lives of unborn babies”. That’s not a fair comparison at all, in fact. That doescreate a false dichotomy, because even the most staunchly pro-choice liberals don’t want abortions to happen, but rather strongly want women to have the ability to have them when the circumstances are dire.

Prop-8 supporters, meanwhile, aren’t about choice or anything. They unequivocally want to stop gays from being allowed to marry. There is no wiggle room here. Pro-choice folks don’t revel in the idea of women having abortions, we’d rather none happen. Anti-gay-marriage folks absolutely revel in the idea of gays never ever ever being allowed to call themselves married.

The irony of right-wing bigots wanting a more “politically correct” treatment of their intolerance is so delicious I wish I could make a syrup out of it and pour it over ice cream.

Once again, McCain v Obama on taxes.

Okay, I’m going to make this one nice ‘n’ simple. The Washington Post popped out a study about who benefits from the tax plans of Obama and McCain, complete with handy-dandy graphic:

Now, I want you to notice something VERY important there. Actually, three things.

1. No one, NO ONE, has a tax increase under Obama until they hit over $603,000 in household income, whereas everyone gets a cut under McCain.
2. Obama’s cuts are bigger for all income levels under ~$111,000, and up to about $160,000 they’re not that far off.
3. McCain’s cuts increase with income, Obama’s go in reverse. McCain gives greater proportional cuts to the rich, not just more money.

The first question that anyone looking at these figures should have is “what proportion of the population falls into these categories?” I’ve done this before, but we’ll do it again with the new numbers. According to the ol’ US Census Bureau (PDF), 85% of the population is under $100,000. According to the Wikipedia article I sneetched that link from, once you hit $154,000 you’re in the 95th percentile. Imagine just how small of a percentage represents the over-$600,000 crowd.

This is fairly significant since the tax cut percentage doubles when you go from the $66k-111k bracket up to the $680k-2mil bracket. John McCain can only claim he is a better candidate for, at best around 85-90%, and that Obama’s plan is only bad for the top less-than-one percent. Meanwhile, Obama has tax cuts for at least 99% of the country, the majority of whom will see greater cuts under him.

So the next time you hear the line that Democrats just want to take your money and Republicans are looking out for the regular old blue-collar Joes, hopefully you’ll be of the mind to smack ‘em upside the head.

HJC votes to hold Rove in contempt of Congress

This is one of those magical stories that puts a big ol’ goofy grin on my face. I’ve been wondering why, for a while, Karl Rove was allowed to just leave the country and defy a Congressional subpoena without anyone caring. As it turns out, the House Judiciary Committee cares, and they just voted to hold Rove in contempt of Congress.

The House Judiciary Committee’s 20-14 vote along party lines escalated the dispute between the Bush administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress over lawmakers’ demand for testimony by presidential aides.

This vote, by the way, perfectly encapsulates what is focking wrong with the Republican party. There is absolutely no reason objectively to vote this way unless it was simply party defiance. Rove flagrantly broke the law, and whether you think having him testify is a political stunt is irrelevant, the point is he was subpoenaed. You don’t get to pick and choose when the laws apply based on if you’re happy with it.

Could you imagine if this had happened with a Democrat? Picture that in the middle of the Clinton scandals, if Clinton had just decided he doesn’t need to testify? We’d be buried in an avalanche of “Democrats don’t care about the rule of law!!” and calls for public hangings.

Republicans put party above all else. Their decisions and opinions aren’t based on objective application of the laws, but from what benefits Republicans. This vote makes that inarguable.

Obama “death list” email flying around.

I am a sad, sad panda right now, kids. I had really hoped that the stupid-ass smears we saw in 1996 about Clinton murdering a few dozen people had faded away and we could collectively grow up, but I was wrong. I’d even been naive enough to think the swiftboat-style politics from 2004 would be done.

As the site’s title says, Sadly no!

This isn’t one of those snarky jokes we’re so often accused of making. It’s real, and it’s likely coming soon to an inbox near you (replete with nine-hundred AOL and Hotmail addresses in the ‘cc’ column).

You’ve heard of the Clinton Body Count, and now it’s time for…

The Obama Death List

The following is a partial list of deaths of persons connected to Barack HUSSEIN Obama during his time inside the United States. Read the list and judge for yourself…

SARAH BERKLEY – Author of “The Jihad at the Ballot Box” – a book examining Obama’s relationship with radical Islam. Died in a mysterious car crash in 2003.

RUSSELL MCDOUGAL – Former FBI operative, January 23rd, 2007. McDougal was known to hold sensitive information about meetings Barack Obama had with arms smugglers. His wife was murdered March 2006 after he went public with his initial reports. His father died July 8, 2006 four hours after McDougal presented his findings on the Savage Nation. Suffered administrative retaliation after reporting discussions by jihadist groups concerning Obama to his superiors.

The funny thing is, the most venemous attack that ever got shot at John McCain was, yup, from his own side. The worst the liberals can be accused of is saying McCain is old or that his POW status has been overrated as a qualification to be president. It was Republicans who said things like “John McCain has an illegitimate black child” or “John McCain is gay” (yep, both from the 2000 primaries, orchestrated by his now-campaign-advisor, Karl Rove).

Actually, no wait. The REALLY funny thing is that there is no record of any of these people, OR the book Sarah Berkley supposedly wrote. Google “Jihad at the Ballot Box”. What do you notice? Ah yes, a complete lack of information on this “book” outside of sites talking about the damn list. The rest of them produce similar results.

Oh, except Reverend David Manning. As it turns out, he’s real, but not dead.

A New York pastor who gained fame with his scathing criticism of Barack Obama has not slowed down a bit. This morning…Reverend David Manning talked with Hallerin Hill …and the Harlem minister had a brand new barrage. Manning claims to have proof that Obama had a homosexual relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, although Manning would not reveal that proof.

The only upside to this litany of complete idiocy is that we can all rest assured that John “it’s a google” McCain isn’t going to figure out how to open his email any time soon.

Vets pull invite to Cheney thanks to his “security demands”

You know if it wasn’t for the fact that he constantly says he supports our troops, there’d really be no reason to think Dick Cheney gives a damn about them at all. He was going to deliver a nice big address to wounded vets, but they pulled the invite. Why? His demands:

His staff insisted the sick vets be sequestered for two hours before Cheney’s arrival and couldn’t leave until he’d finished talking, officials confirmed.

“Word got back to us … that this would be a prerequisite,” said the veterans executive director, David Gorman, who noted the meeting hall doesn’t have any rest rooms. “We told them it just wasn’t acceptable.”

When Cheney spoke to the group in 2004, his handlers imposed the same stringent security lockdown, upsetting members, officials said.

According to the article, Bush imposed no such restrictions on vets, who “freely pass back and forth through Secret Service screening portals,” which makes it all the more puzzling that Cheney would be so strict with them.

A good question might be why Cheney doesn’t trust our troops. These are men who put their lives on the line defending the United States, does he honestly expect that if the doors aren’t bolted shut he’s going to be in danger of attack? And if he does, what does that say about him? Is he afraid that they’re going to unshackle their prosthetic limbs and hurl them at him?