Dick Cheney's Turkey Talk
Rick Perry apparently won the award at last night's GOP Reality Show for most belligerent, ill-considered comment, calling to kick Turkey out of NATO because it had ties to Islamic terrorists.
And while it doesn't have the same utter…
Iraq Learned the Ray Davis Lesson from Pakistan
Before I point out an (IMO) overlooked detail from the NYT story describing how contractors in Iraq are being "harassed," let me first draw attention to what NYT has hidden in paragraph 8:
Private contractors are integral to postwar Iraq’s…
Weaning Ourselves Off War in the Middle East? Or Preparing for Israel's War?
Gary Sick speculates that all the seeming confusion in the Obama Administration's policy on Iran may be an attempt to create political space to shift our policy on Iran. After laying out some Leon Panetta flip-flops in December and the latest…
Gilani to Appear Before Pakistan Supreme Court Jan 19 on Contempt Charges; Early Elections Likely
Pakistan's Supreme Court stopped just short of declaring Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani unfit for office today, and instead found him in contempt of court. He is to appear personally before the court on January 19 to answer the charges. He…
The Home of the Free Got Foreclosed
On Wednesday's Gitmo anniversary, Jonathan Turley had a WaPo column listing 10 reasons why the US was no longer the "land of the free." I thoroughly endorse his list:
Assassination of US citizens
Indefinite detention
Arbitrary justice
Warrantless…
Ubercapitalist Begs for Government Intervention
Fresh off the Friday news dump that its profits stalled in the last quarter (after it had to stop laundering money for Iran and inheriting the lost money of MF Global customers), fresh off the news that JPMorgan Chase might lose $5 billion in…
The False Flag Waves in the Fog
"Absolute nonsense!" Israel has responded to Mark Perry's "False Flag" claim that Mossad agents recruited Jundallah members by posing as CIA officers. They've responded clearly, they claim, because they don't want US-Israeli intelligence cooperation…
Divisional Playoff Trash - One Way Out Version
I must sincerely, and profusely, apologize for my negligence, carelessness, recklessness and, in general, sins of all varieties that resulted in the physical, emotional, and galactic damages resulting from THIS HIDEOUS NIGHTMARE! There is only…
Bmaz Made Me Ruin Trash Talk
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I tried to avoid this, really I did.
But here it is Beer Thirty ... in Denver's (and bmaz's) time zone! And there's still no sign of Trash Talk on Divisional Playoff weekend.
So I had to whip out my old…
Law Enforcement Still Can't Keep Hate Crimes and Terrorism Consistent
Last week, I noted that the NYPD--the same NYPD that had trumped up a "terrorist attack" against a synagogue last year--was calling the New Year's Day attack on a Queens mosque a "hate crime."
For the sake of consistency, I wanted to note…
Foreign Policy's "False Flag"
Wikipedia defines "false flag operations" as "covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities." Unpacking such an operation would require explaining…
PG&E's Profitable Threat to Our Critical Infrastructure
Back when PA's Department of Homeland Security was investigating anti-fracking activists as potential terrorist threats to critical infrastructure, I noted that the bigger threat to critical infrastructure pipelines was corporations that pocket…
Mitt's Welfare-Driven Vulture Capitalism
When I hosted Steve Rattner at FDL Book Salon, I noted how blind he was to problems of other private equity firms--in the context of the auto bailout, Cerberus. So I was interested in Rattner's attempt to defend Mitt's tenure at Bain.
Bain…
After Trading Jobs, Petraeus and Panetta Have Traded Sides in Military vs. Intelligence Differences
What a difference a year makes.
Here is the New York Times with some of the fallout from the Afghanistan National Intelligence Estimate prepared in December, 2010, in an article published about a week after the report was supplied to…
Pissing on the Peace Process(es)
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I hope to get around to saying more about the latest assassinated Iranian scientist, but in the meantime, I wanted to point out a coincidence of timing.
Jim Lobe argues convincingly that the assassination of…
Who Will Redact Our Next Big Constitutional Debate?
In her Gitmo anniversary piece, Dahlia Lithwick, piggybacking on Adam Liptak's earlier report, used the extensive redactions in the DC Circuit Opinion overturning Adnan Latif's habeas petition to illustrate how little the courts are telling…
The OLC Opinion on Obama's Recess Appointments
Out of the blue this morning, the Obama Administration has released the OLC opinion it relied on in making last weeks recess appointments of Richard Cordray to the CFPB and others to the NLRB. Several legal analysts and pundits have lobbied…
Torturing the Truth Vigilantes
"WHAT ELSE ARE WE ON THIS EARTH TO DO???," Dan Froomkin tweeted as he contemplated the NYT's Public Editor, Arthur Brisbane, asking for reader input on whether or not its reporters should correct false statements made by those they report on.
I’m…
Zardari Flees to Dubai Again Under Cover of "One Day" Trip: Is He Finished?
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Events continue to unfold at a very rapid pace in Pakistan. On Tuesday, I had noted, in comments to my post on the constitutional crisis facing the country over implementing the…
Santa's Elves Just Got Fired
Remember the "good" jobs report last week? As Dean Baker explained, many of the new jobs were actually the "couriers" who delivered your holiday presents.
The sharp drop in the unemployment rate over the last four months (from 9.1 percent to…
