Dude.

Dude.

Dude.

A one-day retirement?

You at least have to give a couple of days to make it look good.

Anyway, Dave's back.

PS: The whole retirement/unretirement ploy? It's old. I did it a year ago, man.

PPS: The cool "Elder Thing" miniature from the Daily Dementia post was nabbed off of Dave's site a week ago.

Thanks to River Rat.

Posted by: Ace at 11:48 AM | Comments (17)
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LGF.

The Transportation Security Administration reports that a passengerÂ’s water bottle screened positive for an explosive material around 9:15 this morning. A second test was confirmed at 11:25.

NBC News reports that federal screeners found four containers of liquids inside a womanÂ’s carry-on bag during the screening process this morning. Larry Salyers, Tri-State Airport Director, tells WSAZ the woman is of Pakistani origin, lived in Jackson, Michigan and most recently lived in the Huntington area. She is being detained for questioning.

FBI officials are on scene.

It's at Wayne County, West Virginia. (Thanks to Rusty for the heads up on that.)

Good God.

Thanks to Eric, who "questions the timing," and wonders why the government is so determined to gaslight poor Andrew Sullivan with all this "evidence."

More at LGF.

RELATED: WOMAN WHO CAUSED YESTERDAY'S PLANE DIVERSION (a different incident) A "PEACE ACTIVIST" WHO'D RECENTLY VISITED PAKISTAN: But of course she is, darling.

A woman on a trans-Atlantic flight diverted to Boston for security concerns passed several notes to crew members, urinated on the cabin floor and made comments the crew believed were references to Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks, according to an affidavit filed Thursday.

Catherine C. Mayo, 59, of Braintree, Vt., appeared in federal court Thursday on a charge of interfering with a flight crew on United 923 as it flew from London to Washington, D.C., Wednesday.

...

Her attorney, federal public defender Page Kelley, said Mayo was "just barely lucid" when they spoke. "She's got some very serious mental health problems."

Mayo's son, Josh, 31, described his mother as a peace activist and said she had been in Pakistan since March. She traveled there often since making a pen pal prior to Sept. 11, 2001, he said. The pen pal hasn't been allowed to visit the U.S., he added.

Well, the left chuckled about how seriously the right took this yesterday (although, actually, we were pretty guarded about it, as we usually are).

The woman is deranged, and probably is not Al Qaeda, but it's pretty obvious this was something very serious. The left, apparently, would have us allow mentally disturbed women fresh home from visiting a "pen pal" in Pakistan (not permitted to enter the US, for reasons I think are pretty obvious) babble about Al Qaeda and urinate on the cabin floor without paying her much mind, because we're, I guess, supposed to psychically determine she's actually just a mental patient, not a terrorist.

Although I do have to offer two words.

Dry.

Run.

Not endorsing that. Just "airing" it.

Thanks to David Gilles.

Posted by: Ace at 11:23 AM | Comments (99)
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Isn't that, like, SOP? The French are forever "offering" other countries the power to command those countries' own troops, while refusing, absolutely, to contribute their own.

They see their role in the world as doing all the bossing-around, leaving the actual work to lesser countries (America, especially).

Larwyn writes:

"French willing to lead such a force,but not willing partarticipate," says Smith on FNC just now.

...

UN meeting going on now. Per FNC French willing to contribute 400 troops up from 200!!!!

400 troops, huh?

Well.

I'm not sure you get a "leadership" role with a de minimis, purely cosmetic contribution to the actual corps of troops.

But that's always pretty much their "offer."

Posted by: Ace at 10:26 AM | Comments (39)
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Run Andy, Run!

Posted by: LauraW. at 10:10 AM | Comments (5)
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Imminent?

Police probing an alleged plot to bring down an airline have found a suitcase containing items which could be used to construct a bomb, the BBC has learned.

Officers have been searching a piece of land called King's Wood in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.

A police source told the BBC the case contained "everything you would need to make an improvised device".

...

A police spokeswoman said some 49 residential and business premises and one area of woodland had been searched in connection with the inquiry.

Planted, obviously.

Sullivan was getting too close to "the truth," so it was necessary to plant a bomb-making kit in the woods near the SkyBomber's homes.

I'm not endorsing that theory, mind you, just "airing" it. Though it seems pretty damn likely to me.

Posted by: Ace at 09:52 AM | Comments (20)
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Jeff Goldstein questions the timing, and is not endorsing, just airing, the theory that the Pakistan has captured this man, almost certainly based on information provided by his captured, tortured associate Rashid Rauf, in order to discredit Sullivan just as he was finally "putting all the pieces together" of the Grand Rovian Unified Conpiracy Theory.

They do that, you know.

Remember, by his own reluctant self-admission, Sullivan is one of the most important, most influential voices in the political world.

You think they're going to let him get to "the truth" just as They are about to triumph?

No way, Buddy. No way that's happenin'.

More here.

I'm serious: Sullivan needs an intervention. He's on a John Nash jag that cannot end well.

Posted by: Ace at 08:49 AM | Comments (18)
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Wheels. Wagon. A divorce based on "irreconcilable differences."

Check out this lunacy. Though he's careful to say he's not endorsing it, just "airing it," he goes ahead anyway and endorses it.

Such sweet, sweet crazy, I should just cut out the middleman and apply his blog directly to my ass!

Long story short: Cheney and Rumsfeld intentionally lost the War in Iraq so they wouldn't be troubled with any nation-building nonsense (having already proven its ineffectiveness) when they went all shock-and-awe on Iran.

Oh. Myyyyyy.

I have long wondered whether Cheney and Rumsfeld ever believed that their job was to build a new democracy in Iraq. Rumsfeld had dealt with and supported Saddam in the past; Cheney was extremely suspicious of occupying Iraq in 1990. One subversive theory - which I'm not endorsing, just airing - is that both merely wanted to turn the Saddam regime to rubble, and then play along with neocon democracy supporters, while making sure that the military was never given enough resources to do nation-building. Then Cheney and Rumsfeld could prove their point about the impossibility of reforming the Muslim world, and promote the view that we need merely to pummel enemies, project military fear across the region, and deter Islamo-fascism by "shock and awe." The Likud strategy, in other words.

Under this interpretation, Bush was too trusting or dumb to understand the deviousness of their plan to fail in Iraq; Wolfowitz saw it too late and got out; Rice is stuck managing the debris that a democracy-promoting president and a democracy-hostile Pentagon created. The troops were just pawns in Cheney's and Rumsfeld's strategy. This interpretation would mean that incompetence is not the issue. Cheney and Rumsfeld have succeeded: they have turned Iraq into a failed state, removed its capacity to make WMDs, and detonated a regional Sunni-Shi'a war. Now they want to use the same brutalist strategy against Iran. This theory is probably [!] too complex and subtle to be true. The screw-up theory of history is more often the most plausible. But it does make some internal sense - if you assume that Cheney and Rumsfeld are not complete incompetents.

Probably too subtle and complex to be true. But, hey, it could be true.

Emphases and exclamation point added, of course.

Note that Sullivan himself has long assumed Cheney and Rumsfeld are "complete incompetents," but, presented the chance to swap out incompetence for deliberate malice, he leaps at the chance.

He even manages to rope the Jews into this, somehow, by invoking "the Likud" strategy.

As they say, you don't have a grand conspiracy theory until you involve either the 1) Jews or 2) Knights Templar or 3) Jewish members of the Knights Templar.

I guess the Templars have been busy these past few years with the Sacred Feminine and all.

He's now saying shit that Kos himself would consider too lunatic to print.

Thanks to the Wardrobe Door. Here are a couple of the stories over there:

A professor has taken to defending the Prince of Darkness, no not
Karl Rove, the other one. No one in academia would defend Rove, but the Devil, why not? He is a "victim of unfair press and groundless aspersions." Everyone (but the Jews) is a victim, including Satan.

If you can support Hezballah, surely you can give a little love to Satan himself.

Former NBA and Maryland Terrapin forward, Lonny Baxter was arrested after shots were fired two blocks from the White House. He has since
signed with a three-year deal with a Hezbollah sponsored team in
Lebanon to play shooting guard.

Shooting guard, huh? Seems like he's got the skills.

Rosetta:

2 This conspiracy theory has layers shooting out of its ass!

All the best ones do, Kid. All the best ones do.

I think... poet laureate of Satan Ozzy Osbourne said it best:

All aboard! Hahaha

Crazy, but that's how it goes
Millions of people living as foes
Maybe, it's not too late
To learn how to love
And forget how to hate

Mental wounds not healing
LifeÂ’s a bitter shame
IÂ’m going off the rails on a crazy train
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train

I've listened to preachers
I've listened to fools
I've watched all the dropouts
Who make their own rules
One person conditioned to rule and control
The media sells it and you live the role

Mental wounds still screaming
Driving me insane
IÂ’m going off the rails on a crazy train
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train

I know that things are going wrong for me
You gotta listen to my words
Yeah yeah

Heirs of the cold war
ThatÂ’s what weÂ’ve become
Inheriting troubles, I'm mentaly numb
Crazy, I just cannot bear
IÂ’m living with something that just isnÂ’t fair

Mental wounds not healing
Who and whatÂ’s to blame
IÂ’m going off the rails on a crazy train
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train

Posted by: Ace at 08:40 AM | Comments (45)
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Welcome, Glenn Greenwald Reader!s: Important background here.

...

Whatever.

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security AgencyÂ’s program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of journalists, scholars and lawyers who say the program has made it difficult for them to do their jobs. They believe many of their overseas contacts are likely targets of the program, which involves wiretapping conversations between people in the U.S. and people in other countries.

And she ordered an immediate halt to the program. Not giving the Government or Congress any time to scramble to introduce legislation conforming with her opinion.

Obviously, she takes terrorism seriously.

The have-it-both-ways Democrats have been claiming for months they're gung-ho on national security, and don't object to the NSA program in principle, they merely wish the President to "comply with the law" and seek Congressional authorization for the program.

Well, Congress has had months to pass such leglislation.

Where is it?

On the heels of the SkyBomb busts, ably assisted by American signals intelligence (i.e., NSA intercepts), this judge has ruled that American efforts in this regard must stop immediately.

I don't question her timing. I question her sanity.

Well, This Explains It: Two words that chill any anti-terrorist's blood to red ice: Carter. Appointee.

Goldstein Weighs In: With Ms. Taylor's bio, and her insistence that the government must reveal highly sensitive information if it wants to keep in place a highly sensitive program.

Posted by: Ace at 08:20 AM | Comments (220)
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No, this isn't Hezbollywood. And it's not the Western MSM. But it is highly illustrative of the sensationalistic, ethically-dubious media culture in many parts of the world.

The West has a mature media culture. (Well... "mature" is a relative term.) Much of the rest of the world has an immature media culture, not having taken on the status of a "profession" with enforced ethical guidelines and so forth.

Yes, the Western MSM is pretty damn biased, and pretty damn sloppy and irresponsible. But in much of the rest of the world -- particularly the Islamic world -- the dominant media culture is of a Wild West nature that would make William Randolph Hearst turn six shades of white from the deep jaundice of the Yellow Journalism on display.

And these are the sort of people the media credulously subcontracts coverage of major world events to, and presents their reportage and photographs as if they have been carefully vetted for accuracy.

Anyway:

A group of Indian television journalists gave a man matches and diesel to help him commit suicide in order to get dramatic footage which was later broadcast on the news, police said.

The man died from severe burns to his body in hospital in Gaya town in the eastern state of Bihar on August 15, India's Independence Day.

Footage of the man, screaming and writhing in pain as he ran with his back on fire, was aired on several television channels. Police identified the man as Manoj Mishra.

"We have seized footage clearly showing a group of journalists handing over matches and some inflammable substance - which we later verified to be diesel - to the victim," acting Gaya police chief P K Sinha said by telephone.

Mishra, who worked as a delivery man, was upset over what he said was a large sum of money owed to him by a state-run dairy farm whose milk he transported to customers, police said.

"We have prepared charges for abetment against the journalists. There were five to six of them who were conspirators in this suicide attempt which is a criminal offence," Sinha said, adding that arrests were expected shortly.

India is growing, maturing, pluralistic liberal democracy.

Few of the countries of the Islamic world are. Even Turkey, a fairly mature democracy as regards the Islamic world, has a wildly sensationalistic press. Jim Geraghty, who's over there and knows Turkish reporters, said it's like "the New York Post plus DebkaFile plus Krugman plus Coulter." And that's not the tabloid press; that's the whole of the media mentality.

And yet the MSM denies, denies, denies it may have a problem.

Thanks to CraigC.

Posted by: Ace at 08:05 AM | Comments (11)
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He called Karol deranged, and she's responding tu quoque, and backing it up with facts.

Sullivan wants to know what "evidence" there might be that the SkyBomb attacks were "imminent."

Karol actually bothers to read the articles that Sullivan finds too gob-smackingly vile to read (as they tend to seriously undermine his "torture-is-never-justified" jihad), and finds this:

Members of the terror group, who were arrested in a series of raids by anti-terror police yesterday, were due to mount a dry run today to check if they could smuggle components for liquid explosives through Britain's airports.

United Airline tickets dated next Wednesday were found by police at the home of one of the raided addresses.

Dry run the day of the article, with a possible actual terrorist attack occuring the following week.

"Imminent" enough for you, Andrew?

To use a bit of newish Internet jargon:

You've frisched yourself with this one, Sullivan. But good.

You were a laughingstock among those in the know. Now you're a laughingstock for the entire world.

A narcissist with an unhinged mind and a pathological need for self-validation and the destruction of his enemies should not have a blog. It's like giving a gun to a depressive with thoughts of suicide. The odds of something very bad happening, with the tool of one's self-destruction so readily available, short-circuiting the normal time which would be afforded for careful reflection, go up dramatically.

There should have been a safety-lock on Sullivan's interface. Or a three-day waiting period. Something that could have avoided this tragedy.

Then again, blogs don't kill reputations, credibility, and careers.

People kill reputations, credibility, and careers.

The Coming Spin: St. Andrew will of course say "We haven't seen those tickets yet," and then will say that, even if the tickets were bought, they're not "evidence" of an actual "imminent" attack. Could be just a dry-run. Could just be two weeks holiday in Taramasalata.*

But that's bullshit. Because what Sullivan was endeavoring to prove is that the "timing" of this was entirely cooked up by Bush and Blair. The fact the terrorists made such an alarming move is all the justification one needs for starting the raids. You don't need to wait until they're actually boarding the plane with bombs. If you have strong evidence that next week is the week, what the hell would you delay further for, anyway?

And even if the terrorists were just planning another dry run-- that would put the actual arrests much closer to November. And what would Unhinged Andy say then?

It boggles the mind. There would have to be whole new colors, not seen on this earth but only upon the eerie alien wasteworld of Carcossa, invented for the Andrew Sullivan Freak-Out Warning System.

* Where?

Blame Cheney For Question-The-Timing Derangement: Because he won't let us find out for certain. Johnny Catbird explains:

I've been reading the blogs, and I question the timing. After all, if we stop something before it happens, we now cannot say whether or not an attack would actually happen. There's no proof that it did happen, because it didn't, and you can't prove something would happen when it won't. Of course, if an attack does happen, we should criticize those in charge because they didn't do enough, even though we can't let them do anything until something happens.

In short, the only proper way to stop a terrorst act is by letting it happen, then going back in time and stopping said attack, altering the temporal stream. But we can't, and do you know why?

Halliburton's Temporal Device division won't let us use their machines.

In fairness to Halliburton, they're already leasing most of them to Diebold, which has been working like a bitch to retroactively undo John Kerry's 2004 presidential election victory.

There are still some problems, like in Ohio, but within a few months, Bush will have won Ohio by thirty-seven bazillion votes.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., however, will still be writing articles suggesting this margin could have been overcome were black people not "intimidated" from voting.

Posted by: Ace at 07:13 AM | Comments (57)
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