August 6, 2015 archive

Aug 06 2015

The Also-Rans

So we’re liveblogging the prelims and our invited also-rans are-

Thank you for playing our game.  Here’s a Home Version and some lovely parting gifts.

Sir Not Appearing In This Film

Now will you please stand, take off your hat, and bow your head as we quickly run through the list of who?s that you didn’t even know were running-

Now stop it.  Stop that giggling.  These are serious people seriously running for president.  Honest.

Besides, what makes you think any of these 21 have a lesser chance than the 7 margin of error candidates appearing on stage?

5 pm on Faux Noise

Aug 06 2015

August 6, 2001

An Annual Reminder.

Echo… echo… echo… Pinch hitting for Pedro Borbon… Manny Mota… Mota… Mota…

You may remember my brother the activist.  I keep trying to get him to post, but he’s shy and busy.  He sent me this yesterday and I thought I’d share it with you.

I need to add that he’s a great admirer of James Carville’s political savvy (though not his policies) and one story he likes to tell is how during the height of Monica-gate Carville was on one of the Talking Head shows and made a point about how important it is to stay on message.  Carville then proceeded to demonstrate his gift by working the phrase “Cigarette Lawyer Ken Starr” 27 times into the next 30 seconds.- ek

The date – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 needs to be as well known to Joe and Jane American as September 11, 2001.

Presidential Daily Briefing of August 6, 2001 PDB

Declassified and Approved for Release, 10 April 2004

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct foreign terrorist attacks on the U.S. Bin Ladin implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and “bring the fighting to America.”

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a [deleted] service.

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an [deleted] service at the same that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative’s access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike.

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.

So Vice President Dick, tell me again how the REPUBLICANS WILL KEEP US SAFE?

So Senator McSame, tell me again how invading and occupying IRAQ has helped the U.S. hunt down BIN LADEN?

I’m printing my own bumper stickers filled with images from 9-11 and this text-

August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S. – We Will Never Forget.

“I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center”- Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor

“All right. You’ve covered your ass now.”- George W. Bush

Aug 06 2015

Cartnoon

Aug 06 2015

The Breakfast Club (Darkseid)

All that you touch, All that you see, All that you taste

All you feel.

All that you love, All that you hate, All you distrust

All you save.

All that you give, All that you deal, All that you buy,

beg, borrow or steal.

All you create, All you destroy, All that you do

All that you say.

All that you eat

And everyone you meet

All that you slight

And everyone you fight.

All that is now, All that is gone, All that’s to come

and everything under the sun is in tune

but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.

“There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it’s all dark.”

Jon done, Republican Debate, Hiroshima, ‘You’ve covered your ass’.  Not really that much more to say today.

Science Oriented Video

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Science News and Blogs

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Aug 06 2015

On This Day In History August 6

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on images to enlarge

August 6 is the 218th day of the year (219th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 147 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day there have been many significant events. Certainly, one of the most memorable is that this is the anniversary of dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. It is also the anniversary of President Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act.

Recent significant history that has been over looked by my usual sources is this: The August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing better known as the August 6th PDB. It was handed to President George W. Bush, who was on one of his many vacations to his home in Crawford, TX, by Harriet Miers, who was the President’s WH Council, and promptly ignored. Whether Bush ignored the warning that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack the US because he was told to let it happen or, the darker theory, that the government made it happen will never be known, at least not in the lifetime of those reading this. Whatever Bush’s motive was, it set off a series of events in this country that has affected us all and divided us like no other incident since the Civil War. The US has now been in Afghanistan for almost 9 years 10 years 12 years and Iraq for over seven eight , the last U.S. combat troops withdrawing from Iraq on 18 December, 2011. Despite campaign promises to restore the rule of law and the Constitution, the Obama administration has continued the most heinous of the Bush policies that are violations of not just US law but International Law, ratified treaties and agreements. A sad anniversary, indeed.

I wrote this three years ago, although Pres. Obama has withdrawn combats troops from Iraq, “support” troops still remain. The US is in the process drawing down military presence in Afghanistan. That may sound encouraging but the President has since increased drones attacks in Pakistan and targeted American citizens for assassination and, now, is turning the US into a police surveillance state, shredding the Constitutional rights of its citizens. So much for ending the “war on terror” and restoring the rule of  law.

Aug 06 2015

Late Night Karaoke

Aug 06 2015

The Daily/Nightly Show (Conflictions)

Discontinuity

Viacom Bites!

The final guest-

Thursday is of course Jon Stewart’s last episode as host.  It will take up the whole hour.

This is probably not the piece you expect.  You see, for as much time and  pixels I’ve spent writing about The Daily Show, I’ve never had the emotional connection with it that some have had.

On the positive side, and this is really the best and noblest thing I can say about it, it has replaced and supplanted Cable news.  Under Keith MSNBC showed some signs of sanity, but that was short lived and the rest of it is simply a roiling cesspit of D.C. elite conventional wisdom (and I’m looking right at you Rachel and Chris).

Jon is better than that, but for me, except in his interview with Jim Cramer (and maybe a few other times), he never showed the killer instinct of a Carlin except in the correspondent reports and scripted work.  Lewis Black calls Stewart ‘the Cronkite of his generation‘ and that’s true enought I suppose if you remember Uncle Walter was a moderate conservative of whom it was said ‘if you’ve lost Cronkite you’ve lost the nation’.

We’re waaay dow the rabbit hole from there.  Our country routinely commits war crimes that Germans and Japanese were hung for.  We’ve reached a level of corruption that surpasses the Gilded Age.  One writer said that is time for Jon to go because he’s too bitter and strident.  Sorry, he’s not nearly bitter and strident enough.

Jon wants to keep his Rolodex and you need to tear up every card and burn it to ashes if you want to be truthful about what is happening in the United States today.  But he does know his audience and too many people are willing to pretend that weak tea and a ‘D’ make you something less than a fully bought and paid for corporatist toady.  Jon was never willing to go there because he digs the applause.

And so do I, but if there is one thing that being independent has done for me (umm… my blog you know and I don’t care whether you like it or not) is that it has relieved some of the self censorship.

30 bucks a month for freedom is a small price to pay.

It remains to be seen if success spoils Stephen Colbert.

Did I mention Viacom Bites!

Tonighly we’ll be talking about tomorrow’s Republican debate and Planned Parenthood (which we will live blog) and our panel is Jerrod Carmichael, Craig Robinson, and Ricky Valez.

Denis Leary web exclusive extended interview would be below but Viacom Bites! The real news below.

Aug 06 2015

The State of The District of Columbia

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The topic of statehood for the District of Columbia became the hot topic of discussion on Monday after John Oliver, host of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” brought attention to disenfranchisement of more than 600,000 voters who live in the District.

“They pay federal taxes, and fight in wars,” Oliver said, “and yet have no member of Congress who’s able to vote on their behalf, even though their population is larger than Vermont and Wyoming, and their gross domestic product is higher than that of 16 states.” [..]

“Isn’t this just how countries treat their capital cities? It actually isn’t,” he said. “We’re the only democracy in the world that does this.” [..]

“It seems that Congress just forces riders on DC whenever they disapprove of how they’re spending their own money,” Oliver said. “They are treating more than 600,000 people right now like children.”

German Lopez at “Vox” has an excellent primer the problem of D.C. statehood with answers to 6 questions you were too disenfranchised to ask