Friday, August 29, 2008

VP Palin?

No, not this guy.


The word is that McCain is selecting Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, to be his running mate. Here she is:




She was a local politician until 2006, when she was elected Governor.

Given McCain's age, this is the person supposed to be a heartbeat from the Presidency?

And this is why, Landru's pessimism notwithstanding, I remain convinced Obama will win in November. Not because the Democrats are particularly well-organized. But McCain? He's a dopey candidate. He's low on funds, pisses off conservatives, and makes blunders like this one.

Well, at least Gov. Palin isn't pro-choice! Is that what the Republican party is saying? Mitt Romney would be far more qualified (even though he is a sleazeball) and if McCain wanted to pick a female governor, Jodi Rell of Connecticut is far more experienced and well-liked by people of both parties.

But the powers of the GOP won't allow that.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Proof

that wackier people than I are out there.

Featuring our friends Jack Torrance and Tardy Turtle!

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Favre joins Jets

Fox Sports is reporting that Favre has been traded to the NY Jets.

I guess Assante Samuel picked a bad time to leave the AFC East.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

the anthrax attacks

The FBI is apparently trying to make that case that recently-deceased Bruce Ivins was in fact the person responsible for the anthrax letters mailed in 2001. Glenn Greenwald has been discussing this topic for most of the week. See here and here and here.

At the time, there was a lot of propaganda to the effect that they represented another Al Qaeda attack, and it was further insinuated that the strain used contained a chemical, bentonite, that was a signature of Saddam Hussein's anthrax program (which was inert at the time, but what the hell, let's throw the accusation in).

At the time it was immediately clear that the anthrax was of a weapons-grade aerosol type that probably had been produced in the United States.

So...what kind of investigations have we had?

Well, for starters, the FBI directed its attention to Stephen Hatfill. But rather than bring him up on charges, they simply fed rumors about Hatfill to various media outlets, who then ran with them, insinuating that Hatfill was a prime suspect. After a couple years of this, Hatfill managed to clear his name.

Now another scientist, Bruce Ivins, is the new target of FBI/DoJ insinuation. Ivins has (apparently) done the FBI a favor by committing suicide. This might be a sign of a guilty conscience or it might be simply a side effect of suffering from a depressive illness.

We are supposed to believe that Ivins killed himself "as investigators closed in". See the AP version.
That raises the question of just how competently the FBI was "closing in", if Ivins knew about it.

From what we know of the FBI case, there is no direct linkage to the anthrax letters. It seems to all appearances that Ivins had access to anthrax, and was somewhat deranged. But did he actually sent the letters? We still have no reason to believe that he did.

Meryl Nass, another anthrax researcher, has raised some interesting questions. In particular, was Dr. Ivins in Central New Jersey on the dates the letters were mailed? This would presumably be an easy matter to investigate (and it surely would have been easier back in 2001, when the FBI started floundering around this case).

It doesn't make sense to me that Ivins would go to the trouble to drive to New Jersey to mail the threatening letters, only to use a strain of anthrax that could be directly traced to him, individually. It seems to me that another patsy has been set up.

I tend to be of the opinion that the anthrax letters were part of a psyop to push the US into war against Iraq. I don't have any evidence, but I think it is a theory that fits the data at least as well as the Ivins theory. The lettering used, the choice to mail the letters from New Jersey, and the followup hullabaloo - in particular the campaign to tie in bentonite, suggests that whoever was behind the anthrax attacks also wanted Iraq to be blamed.

Another possibility is that some second party independently decided to blame Iraq after the letters were sent. This issue could be resolved if ABC were to reveal the source for the bentonite story.

ABC has chosen to not do so thus far. Apparently the confidentiality of sources who lie to the American public in the pursuit of a possibly unpopular war is of paramount importance to ABC, at least more important than their credibility to the general public. Somebody lied to ABC - was it Ivins himself, or some other party?

I would think that if the source was Ivins himself, that ABC would come forward now, as it would dovetail neatly with the establishment story. (Indeed, I hesitate to suggest this possiblity, as ABC might decide to seize upon it. But of course, that would require ABC to read this blog.)

I suspect that the source for the bentonite story was not Ivins. But still, ABC won't reveal the source. Thanks for serving as a conduit for government-sponsored psyops against the citizenry of the United States, guys!

Saturday, August 02, 2008

living in America

Have we achieved the idiocracy yet?

I raise this question because crack reporter Amy Chozick of the Wall Street Journal, generally considered to be one of the most reputable print journals in the United States, if not the world, has asked the important and timely question: Is Barack Obama Too Fit to Be President?

Sadly No! has the best take on this absurdity here and here.