Brain: Just Waiting For The Trainwreck

[elfs]

Another Guantanamo Bay prosecutor resigns in protest.

A Gitmo prosecutor, Lt. Col Darrel Vandeveld, has now resigned in protest, citing barriers to the defense as his primary reason. He states in his letter of resignation that even in cases where there is no intelligence work and no known "secret" materials, the defense cannot get even the most basic documentation.

He is the fourth prosecutor in the past two years to do this, and all had the same reason.

An attorney working for the defense even claims that senior officers wondered aloud if Vandeveld needed psychiatric counselling. Questioning the military's handling of the Gitmo tribunals is madness!

Denver Police Union brags about beating up protesters

The Democrats held their convention in Denver, CO, this year, and the Denver police were exceptionally agressive, arresting journalists as well as protestors, staging "pre-emptive" raids on organizational houses, and so forth. Now comes news that the Police Union has issued a t-shirt commemorating the cops' battle with free speech. The shirt has a picture of a thuggish brute holding a club looming over the city and the slogan, "We get up early to BEAT the crowds. DNC 2008."

Sworn to Protect and Serve, my ass. If this bothers you, Radley Balko has an entire category on the militarization of our police.

Obama's people going after news stations that air ads? Not so fast...

Ed Brayton takes apart the hysterical spinning on the right about Obama's Missouri team "threatening criminal action against television stations that air ads the campaign deems false or misleading." World Net Daily fanned the flames, but as it turns out, it was just two private citizens who happen to be attorneys who were airing their opinions about the ads. No one talked about legal action. In fact, the attorney only talked about susbstantive public responses, not legal challenges. Missouri doesn't have a criminal libel law.

Worldnet is now spinning this as "the attorneys backing off their claims." Worldnet is obviously in a universe as far away as the Weekly World News.

Is it time to start talking about McCain's age again?

Yesterday, in a testy interview with the Des Moines Register, McCain let slip, "If I were a dictator, which I always aspire to be..." If that weren't chilling enough, today, McCain, clearly trying to talk about the economic problem said, "This bill is putting us on the brink of economic disaster," the congratulated himself for bringing his fellow Republicans to the negotiating table for this bill in the first round.

Huh? It's a bill that "puts us on the brink of disaster," but you're glad to have helped it along? (Nevermind that everyone else believes blew up the negotiations, not help them along.)

Yes, they're small gaffes. But they can do a world of damage.

Old dog, old tricks: McCain repeats unlearned lessons

The McCains like to tell the story about how they adopted two children from Bangladeshi. Unfortunately, they embellished the story to add Mother Theresa's personal imprecation-- an incident that never happened.

McCain seems to do this often; add an embellishment here or there to "punch up" a story. One that he did recently was to claim that Eisenhower wrote a 'letter of resignation' to be sent if the invasion of Normandy failed. As it turned out, Eisenhower's "if we fail" letter never mentioned resignation, and McCain was corrected on that point.

He repeated the story this morning, completed with the resignation embellishment. Just one more sign.

Obama makes John McCain very uncomfortable

During last night's vote, Obama did something LBJ liked to do: cross the aisle:

Obama walked over to where McCain was chatting with Republican Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida and Independent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut. And he stretched out his arm and offered his hand to McCain.

McCain shook it, but with a "go away" look that no one could miss. He tried his best not to even look at Obama.

Finally, with a tight smile, McCain managed a greeting: "Good to see you."

Obama got the message.

Kathleen Parker shocked by 'eliminationist rhetoric' from her own side.

Last week, Kathleen Parker joined the chorus of right wing pundits asking Sarah Palin to 'step aside' for the good of the party and allow the Republicans to find someone more qualified. She now writes that, according to the base of her party,

I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a dumpster, but since she didn't, I should "off" myself.

Yes, Kathleen Parker is now on the receiving end of the right wing eliminationist rhetoric. The blinders have been lifted. Poor woman; doesn't she realize that civility currently has a well-known left-wing bias?

Seen on Wallstreet: Jump You Fuckers!

Congratulations taxpayers! Your senators have ridden to the rescue and approved a piece of legislation that should ungum the credit crunch. You'll now be able to buy that car. In the process, your lawmakers also approved extended tax breaks for the film industry in Puerto Rico, and for the makers of "certain wooden arrows designed for use by children."

I kid you not.

That provision is then followed by another that allows people who received income from the settlement of the Exxon Valdez oil spill litigation to treat it as income from the fishing industry for tax purposes.

(via JWZ)

Nick Gillespie: Our Economic Pearl Harbor

It's pretty clear that the White House, helped by a codependent Congress and media, has yet again manufactured a consensus for massive intervention. The last time they managed to pull this off, of course, the United States invaded Iraq. And that has worked out so well that they've decided to start a brand extension or spin-off series: Intervening massively into the economy.Read it all

Comments

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

With regard to McCain's age, one of the panelists at Conjecture last weekend popped up with a catchphrase that would make a nice, juicy bumper sticker... for the Democrats.

McCain '08
Palin '09

To which I would add, in smaller letters underneath, "Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid."