So they’re putting the band back together.

Oh Brad, I’m frightened.  What kind of place is this?

Oh, it’s probably some kind of hunting lodge for rich weirdos.

This way.

Are you – giving a party?

No.  You’ve arrived on a rather special night.  It’s one of the master’s affairs.

Oh, lucky him.

He’s lucky.  You’re lucky, I’m lucky, we’re all lucky!

So I ran across this while surfing Yahoo News-

You’ll note it’s from the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol’s rag.

David Zucker is doing an allegorical remake of A Chrismas Carol called An American Carol, which like Ben Stein’s Expelled is supposed to combat left wing Hollywood bias.

Oh and it’s entertaining and funny and will make money too.  Would I lie to you?

Yes he’s that Zucker from Airplane, one of two and part of a team of 3; but he belongs like some to the Muslim Racist Paranoia Dennis Miller types who were scared so shitless of finding a brown skinned bomber under the bed that they wet themselves every night.

A coward.

Zucker was still nominally a Democrat when George W. Bush was elected in 2000. “Then 9/11 happened, and I couldn’t take it anymore,” he says. “The response to 9/11–the right was saying this is pure evil we’re facing and the left was saying how are we at fault for this? I think I’d just had enough. And I said ‘I quit.'”

He hooked up with an ex-Boxer staffer Sokoloff who- Hallelujah shares the save conversion story.

Although she didn’t vote for George W. Bush in 2000, Sokoloff says she was glad that he won. Less than a year later, she understood why. “When 9/11 happened, I knew Democrats wouldn’t be strong enough to fight this war.”

And started making commericials.

As the 2004 presidential election approached, Sokoloff and Zucker looked for a way to influence the debate. Their first effort was an ad mocking John Kerry for his flip-flops that the conservative Club for Growth paid to put on the air. In 2006, Sokoloff and Zucker followed that with a series of uproarious short spots mocking, in turn, the Iraq Study Group, Madeleine Albright and pro-appeasement foreign policy, and pro-tax congressional Democrats.

Spoilers below the fold.

Anthrax

Anthrax II

Andrew Tilghman @ TPM Muckraker

• Former FBI Agent Says White House Pressured Bureau To Blame Anthrax On Bin Laden, Al Qaeda
  
  By Andrew Tilghman – August 4, 2008, 10:30AM

• DOJ Plans To Close Anthrax Probe As Questions, Critics Mount
  
  By Andrew Tilghman – August 4, 2008, 2:00PM

• Feds Unseal Documents, Search Warrants In Anthrax Investigation
  
  By Andrew Tilghman – August 6, 2008, 10:36AM

• FBI Used Aggressive Tactics In Anthrax Investigation
  
  By Andrew Tilghman – August 6, 2008, 2:09PM

• Feds Release Documents From Anthrax Investigation
  
  By Andrew Tilghman – August 6, 2008, 4:05PM

• FBI Identified Source Of Anthrax Years Ago, But Case Remained Unsolved And Ivins Continued Working
  
  By Andrew Tilghman – August 6, 2008, 6:14PM

• Did Bruce Ivins Start Planning Anthrax Attacks Before 9/11?
  
  By Andrew Tilghman – August 7, 2008, 9:00AM

• Anthrax Scientist’s Emails Suggest Paranoia, Mental Problems
  
  By Andrew Tilghman – August 7, 2008, 9:48AM

• Scientists Say Many Questions Remain In FBI Anthrax Probe
  
  By Andrew Tilghman – August 7, 2008, 6:48PM

• Feds Continue Anthrax Probe After Ivins’ Death
  
  By Andrew Tilghman – August 7, 2008, 7:11PM

• Capitol Hill Questions FBI Anthrax Investigation: Where’s The Polygraph?
  
  By Andrew Tilghman – August 8, 2008, 9:19AM

• Ivins’ Strain Of Anthrax Was Not So Rare After All
  
  By Andrew Tilghman – August 8, 2008, 4:29PM

So tonight I had an epic failure and I want to confess it so I can avoid it in the future.

Anthrax

The FBI’s emerging, leaking case against Ivins

Glenn Greenwald

Tuesday Aug. 5, 2008 06:54 EDT

…

Within less than 24 hours, we went from “a New Jersey mailbox used to send the anthrax was less than 100 yards away from a sorority for which Ivins harbored an intense life-long obsession” to “the mailbox was near a storage closet used by a sorority that Ivins used to frequent 27 years ago and by a specific chapter that Ivins appeared to have absolutely nothing to do with.”

And then there is the Hatfill-like leaking of scurrilous information about Ivins, including the fact that he had — as the NYT put it today — “a history of alcohol abuse, had for years maintained a post office box under an assumed name that he used to receive pornographic pictures of blindfolded women.” Leaving aside the fact that alcohol abuse and pornography consumption aren’t exactly clues marking someone as the anthrax killer, how bad could his “alcohol abuse” have been if he continued to maintain Government clearance to work at a U.S. Army facility with the nation’s most dangerous pathogens?

…

All sorts of similar questions are raised by the onslaught of other FBI leaks. Dr. Jasenosky told me that he finds claims of some “ground-breaking” new DNA technique, or some “big breakthrough” to be “quite strange,” given that what the news accounts have described is nothing more than an incremental extension of molecular analysis techniques that have existed for several years and which, at most, appear to have only enabled existing techniques to be conducted more rapidly. He further emphasized that even the most sophisticated DNA tests could never link anthrax to any particular scientist, and that no assessment of the FBI’s assertions is possible without a thorough review of its underlying data. Dr. Meryl Nass said the same thing today: “Let me reiterate: No matter how good the microbial forensics may be, they can only, at best, link the anthrax to a particular strain and lab. They cannot link it to any individual.”

And then there is the issue of Ivins’ mental state. The New York Times reported today that part of the FBI investigation was so heavy-handed that it actually entailed showing gruesome photographs of the anthrax victims to Ivins’ adult children, telling them that their father is the one who did that, while trying to entice them to turn on him with promises of a reward. As Rep. Holt indicated this morning, is it any wonder that any person — guilty or not — would experience severe psychological distress when targeted by the FBI that way? Moreover, this morning’s Frederick News Post (doing some of the best reporting in the country on this case) reported that it was FBI agents who told Jean Duley to seek a protective order against Ivins — the action that then created the record used by most media outlets to depict Ivins as a crazed psychopath.

No matter what the FBI says over the next week, or whenever it is that it finally gets around to stopping its manipulative leaks to its media friends and begins instead showing the public its evidence, a full-scale investigation is required here. Bruce Ivins may very well be the anthrax killer, having acted alone, but there is no rational basis for believing right now that he is.

Well so far this week my writing has had a pretty fair reception, even the pieces where I mostly quote someone else.

I like to think I have an audience for the off topic stuff I post here too.  I think that if you’re a regular reader you should find nothing out of the ordinary in my obnoxiousness.

Sometimes I indulge my own tangents and peculiarities and don’t worry too much about the consequences until it’s far too late.

Anyway I’m always looking for bright and shiny objects for you and when I find the next distraction I’ll be right back.