Ahab Has A Blog.

The Bush campaign's hurting if they're going totally balls out with the "if you do X, the terrorists have already won, or maybe mighta will soon" crap this hard. Cheney claims that if John Kerry is elected, a terrorist strike in the U.S. is likely. That's funny, because I have this vague memory of the announcement of devastating terrorist strikes being imminent - with new and excellent, though unnamed sources, of course - pretty much every time there's a holiday, or at least some other news like a sluggish economy or more KIA in Iraq. Apparently, the Bush campaign thinks you are stupid enough to fall for this.

Anyway, check out the link text itself: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apelection_story.asp?category=1131&slug=Cheney. The terminology is theirs.

If Kerry wants to win the election - Keep It Simple, Stupid. Here's the message:

The war on terror was necessary. But George W Bush botched it. He talked tough and acted weak by alienating our allies. He flip-flopped on the reasons for the war. He mismanaged the occupation. He opposed, obstructed, and dodged the 9/11 commission, then approved their recommendations and stood by waiting for Congress to do something about it; another flip-flop followed by weak leadership. He stood by as companies like Halliburton got no-bid giveaways at taxpayer expense. He gave tax cuts to the rich that didn't create jobs for working Americans. And after all this, our so-called CEO President hasn't fired anyone on his staff for doing their job badly. It's time we give him the pink slip. Mr. President, the American people want to tell you something; you're fired!

Even the hawkish should be outraged with the way King George the Dry has prosecuted the "War on Terror". U/S attacked by UBL, so we go after the Taliban as UBL frolics in the mountains. Taliban routed, rogue state no longer a complete playground for No-good-niks. Al Qaeda forced to scatter. So far, we get it.

Next, go attack Iraq, leaving a country in chaos and giving The Base a new base, a virtual playground, a rallying point, a propaganda victory, and lots of easy targets. Meanwhile, forgetting to do the mop-up of actually getting The Bad Guy.

Which brings us to the recent, suspect terror alerts. We'll happily grant that, despite the allegations that they are based on old information and released after the DNC for political effect, it's still possible that there is credible, recent information and a solid basis for the announcements. It's hard to see this administration NOT toying with the timing for political effect - they've already all but torn up the Republican's Defenders of America card by revealing, for political purposes, the identify of a CIA agent.

But maybe, just maybe there's a real terror alert here. Or, maybe not:

"Al Qaeda is regrouping. We know that," says an agent with the National Security Agency. "We've allowed them to rebuild because we diverted our attention from their activities in Afghanistan so we could invade Iraq. That was a strategic error and, somewhere down the road, we will pay for it. But they are not ready yet to launch another coordinated attack on the level of September 11, 2001."

When No Such Agency starts leaking info and policy advice to the press like this, it's pretty clear that the administration has gone off the deep end. It's getting harder to imagine Dubya winning the election (or the Presidency) without an October Surprise of UBL magnitude.

I'd say "you can't make this stuff up", except you can. But you don't need to. Just read this. Apparently, answering questions about Guantanamo Bay being undesignated "the least worst place", is Lt. Kafka. Well said by The Reg:

Yes, you're reading that correctly. A man named Kafka has been deployed to field questions about a prison where the criminals are only vaguely charged with crimes, can't speak to lawyers and likely will never get out.

Un. Effing. Believable.

Regarding religious extremists and fundamentalists (of all religions):

	All fools are damned fools.

Dec 06, 2003

So driving to meet the kid at Grandma's I hear Bill O'Reilley say something so singularly stupid and false that I forgot the other amazingly stupid and false thing he said before that. Commenting on the Supreme Court review of the "under God" adulteration of the Pledge Of Allegiance, he said "God is not a religious term". Or, ((G|g)(o|-)d) for religiously sensitive regex freaks. Either way.

*choke*

Lying liar, or troglodytic moron? I report, you decide. Personally, I'll vote for both. "God" is the precise definition of what distinguishes the religious from the non-religious. When I hear someone say something so incomprehensibly deceitful and spin-ful, I have to remind myself why we aren't allowed to sterilize people like that. The only consolation is knowing that Bill O'Reilley thinks even less of the intelligence of his audience than I do.

If only the troglodytic hordes of talk radio were like the Mongol hordes. then at least we'd be able to smell them coming and flee from the stench before the horrible perception of their sight or sound. And at least the Mongols were a civilizing influence, once they got their tribute.

And so it continues. Michael Savage, or some other indistinguishable soulless enemy of reason and humanity, said today, I shit you not - and I am paraphrasing, but I'd swear my left nut on the general content of the rant - "The problem with Liberals is that, the way I see it, there's the Old Testament and the New Testament. and the Liberals want to take literally the wrong parts, and ignore the parts that should be taken literally. You can't just have people picking and choosing which way they want to interpret the Bible." Actually, that's exactly what you must have. It's the first principle America was founded to protect. That and "thou shalt not create a police state", and you've pretty much got the gist of the whole beef with the Brits back then. If you miss those two things, you know less about being an American than the last guy who ran across the Tex-Mex border.

But maybe I got it wrong, and what people need is someone to show them true from false with the end of an axeblade. A strong man to make them recognize truth from evil masquerading as truth. I think we've heard this story before, and again and again and again and again and again. The problem is, in fact, we pretty much solved "G-d" as a political issue over 200 years ago, but apparently the crusaders of talk radio hate America so badly that they can't rest a day until they tear down the one thing we Americans got righter than the rest of the entire fucking planet. They won't rest a minute until we are crushed under the iron heel of a corrupt aristocracy (or even better, monarchy) with a religious agenda that all must obey. They'd love to restore us to the Restoration. Ah, well, maybe we should cut Savage a break. He was responding to an 80 year old woman who said that the problem with most conservatives is that they are weak-minded and want someone to tell them how to live their lives. Truth hurts. Battle. Wits. Unarmed man.

Of course, someone with such an avowed distaste for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the founding values of America will, when they get the opportunity, commit treason. And I'm pretty sure we can still hang people for that. Watch your ass, savage.

Note that there is a big difference between banning religious expressions from public life and forbidding civil authorities from using their office to advance their religious beliefs. Those with wisdom recognize this; those who don't are dangerous anachronisms (and may G-d punish you for your lack of faith and your lack of compassion).

And it's very sad indeed that so many have not the ears to hear the words of their Lord and Savior, who advised them to be respectful of civil authorities, to choose practice of their faith in secret over confrontation with secular leaders, and to distrust utterly those who make a big show of their piety.

it's the kind of thing that makes us want to make "jesus was a liberal" bumper stickers just to see people's true colors.

The New York Times says Disputes Erupt Over Service for Poor Internet Typists. That's such an understatment of the situation; it gives Verisign a benefit of doubt that they don't deserve. This isn't a "service", it's a dangerous power grab in an attempt to make a quick buck or two, it's a betrayal of trust from a company whose business is trust, and it's a reckless, unilateral, ad hoc alteration to core internet technology by stewards, not owners.

I sent the following to the Times, and I'm hoping that the reason it doesn't get printed is they have so much mail on the subject from such leading figures on the Internet that they can't even dip into mail penned by unknowns.

---

The headline of this article is misleading; the dispute is not over a service per se, but rather a unilateral corruption of the core structure of the Internet by a private corporation granted an important management role of a key technology. The resulting disruption extends far beyond hijacking the eyeballs of those who mistype addresses. For this reason, the furor among those professionals who create, deploy, and manage these technologies is near universal.

For a non-technical understanding of the scope of Verisign's move, start with the idea that without consulting anyone, your phone company decided to forward all calls to non-existent numbers to an anonymous telemarketer. Then imagine that the US Postal Service checks all addresses against valid phone numbers for accuracy; the phone company has suddenly rendered every address apparently valid, causing chaos to spread from the phone system to the mail system and on to the entire economy.

Verisign could be likened to a night watchman for a public commons who overnight de-sodded every patch of ungrazed land. They should be stripped of their responsibilities for the good of all.