Hold onto your finery, kiddos...

On the Washington Post homepage at 8:15 EDT, at "Today in Opinions" beneath Cueball Emeritus David Broder's comely photo, is one of the most irresponsible postings I've ever read in the so-called elite media.  Not to be outdone by the Jerusalem Post's infamous editorial "Kill Arafat" from a few years back, the Washington Post is now inviting us to link up to the considered piece, "Strike North Korea, Now".

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/...

Wrapped up as everyone else is in the GOP collapse feeding frenzy, I just decided to touch base with the Iraq Coalition Casualties homepage.  There, I learned 11 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq in the past two days, and 13 since October 1.  This casualty rate matches the highest monthly rate of April 2004, when the Battle of Fallujah took place.

http://www.kristv.com/...

http://news.yahoo.com/...

A few bloggers at various sites have taken notice of the production company responsible for "The Path to 9/11" -- UHP Productions, LLC (mentioned in the last sentence of this link).

http://abc.go.com/...

The common fact these bloggers have noticed is that UHP has no trail.  I've done a little research on free and fee-based search engines, and have found even less.

* The company has no web site, and there is no person identified with the production company in public or fee-based databases.

Tomorrow's Times is publishing a bizarre attack on peer-reviewed science journals, penned by long-time writer Lawrence K. Altman.

http://www.nytimes.com/...

Titled "For Science's Gatekeepers, a Credibility Gap", and weighing in at a hefty 1,668 words, the piece leads with a roundhouse right meant to ring bells:

"Recent disclosures of fraudulent or flawed studies in medical and scientific journals have called into question as never before the merits of their peer-review system."

Paragraph 5 follows the punch:

"Virtually every major scientific and medical journal has been humbled recently by publishing findings that are later discredited. The flurry of episodes has led many people to ask why authors, editors and independent expert reviewers all failed to detect the problems before publication."

There've been many good diaries and thread comments on the political meaning for Bush and the GOP of the port deal. Hekebolos, in particular, got to the nub:

http://www.dailykos.com/...

The metaphorical resonance of this episode -- illustrated by the reactionary outcry from the GOP congressional leadership and their grassroots -- reminds me of another Bush PR disaster, though of the father and not the son.

Recall when Bush I, jogging past reporters in 1990, blithely invited them to "Read my hips" as they questioned his recantation of the "Read my lips: no new taxes" pledge?  Well, this pre-9/11-style port deal -- along with Junior's gusty veto threat and same-day plea of ignorance about its White House approval -- has become W's analogous moment, one I would call "Read My Ships".

I have a couple of "Read My Lips" backgrounder links for you on the flip, and look forward to your recollections of that time.

This is less a diary than a modest call for action, in reply to Vice President Cheney's preposterous official gesture of paying his permit stamp fine to the quell public outcry over his management of the Whittington shooting.

If every Kossack cuts a $7 check to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, they'll have half a million dollars more on-hand to perform their valuable public service.

I'm on my way to the mailbox.

http://www.bradycenter.org/

Via Dan Froomkin today, we have been provided a singular Photoshop opportunity:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

"Babington spoke to committee chairman, Arlen Specter (R-Pa.).

"When Gonzales argues that the Constitution gives the president undisputable powers to conduct warrantless surveillance despite a statute aimed at requiring him to seek court approval, such an interpretation 'is not sound,' Specter said in the interview. ' . . . He's smoking Dutch Cleanser.'

"Best I can tell from a little Googling (writes Froomkin), Dutch Cleanser is an old-fashioned scouring powder -- possibly with hallucinogenic qualities when inhaled? So "smoking Dutch Cleanser" would appear to fall somewhere between "dreaming" and "smoking crack" on the expression-of-doubt spectrum."

It's not even lunch on State of the Union Day, and I have seen more than enough from those who would "boycott" the speech, or even crazier, suggest Members of Congress walk out.

It should be the duty of all sentient Members of Congress to shout down every craven utterance emanating from the podium tonight.  And it should be the duty of every Kossack to watch every minute of OUR PRESIDENT, GEORGE W. BUSH, delivering his SIXTH State of the Union message.  Every. Single. Minute.  Sober.

Let it burn in your gut.

The number of Senators voting today against cloture for the Alito nomination reminded me of another momentous vote with almost the same result -- the Iraq War Resolution.

Today we saw 25 senators (plus the abstaining Harkin) vote against cloture; three years ago, 23 senators voted against the Iraq War Resolution.

These closely hewing numbers are no mathematical accident; they form the fault line of a depleted and functionally ineffective Democratic Party.  In my mind, they also represent two clear futures for the party -- an accommodationist opposition and a principled, responsive, proactive movement.

(flip on over)

We learn today that the Pakistani Ministry of Education will ask the U.S. National Book Foundation to delete a poem extolling the virtues George W. Bush via a subliminal acrostic from a high school textbook it publishes and distributes there.

The Telegraph (UK) republished the poem in a story today headlined "Pakistan Censors Poetic Salute to Bush."

The poem, entitled "The Leader", by Anonymous, lists the characteristics of an unnamed leader, but spells out "George W Bush" vertically with the first letters of each line.

Bring your barf bag across the jump for my transcription of the poem.

On August 17-18, 1969, Hurricane Camille struck the Gulf Coast of Mississippi as a Category 5 hurricane, with wind gusts in excess of 200 miles an hour and a 22-foot storm surge.  The damage Camille caused was extreme, and since that time, Camille became the standard by which US hurricanes are judged.

...Until Sunday, that is, when Hurricane Katrina struck just a few miles west of Camille's landfall.  Katrina appears to have struck land as a strong Category 4, though as a bigger storm in size with a comparable storm surge.

Much has been made of the similarities between Camille and Katrina, whether in geography, strength, and impact.  One major difference is being virtually ignored, however.  Camille was the third named storm in the Atlantic Basin in 1969.  Katrina was the eleventh such storm in 2005.

I looked around for a posting of this on dKos, and haven't seen it yet, so here goes...

WaPo's Dan Froomkin has linked up the guest list for last night's state dinner honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.  I read yesterday where one journalist spoke of reading WH dinner guest lists "religiously" (can't remember who, alas), so to honor his/her accrued professional wisdom, I submit the list to dKos without comment.

By way of seasoning, however, I will also append the magnificent compilation of Bush Rangers and Pioneers from your friends and mine at Texans for Public Justice.  Bon appetit.

http://www.tpj.org/page_view.jsp?pageid=203&pubid=85

Wholesale cribbing from Josh Marshall today, on claims by Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar and Reps. Diana DeGette and Mark Udall of a BushCo cover-up in the Denver Three case.

The abridged backgrounder -- a man dressed as a Secret Service agent pre-emptively evicted three ticketed attendees to a Bush Social Security event in Denver this past March.  Three months of effort by the three, the local papers, and now members of Congress to determine the identity of this security operative have revealed only that

1. he was NOT a Secret Service agent

2. that both the Secret Service and the White House know the identity of the operative

3. neither will reveal the person's identity or bonafides.
   

I feel like I've been staring at an actor's bicep for weeks now, and know I'm not alone.  So, in the spirit of the medium, I want to talk back to the tendon, as it were, and solicit your comments, concerns, assistance, or happy indifference.

In auditing my blog roll, I tally the following as running advertising for the A&E biography "See Arnold Run":

dKos, MyDD, TalkLeft, Atrios, TalkingPointsMemo, BoingBoing, TAPPED (Amer. Prospect), Blue Lemur.  [If there are others, please ad them to the thread for cataloguing.]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Cory Doctorow, fighting for public access to digital information at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) conference in Geneva, tells a wild story today via the EFF's blog "Deep Links."

It seems credentialed advocates of the proposed Broadcast Treaty (which Doctorow says would have the power to "lock up" the public digital domain worldwide) may have had a hand in "disappearing" printed material by EFF and other NGOs into toilets at the conference site.

I highly recommend reading (and grasping) Doctorow's recounting of events at this link, and keeping EFF (and others so engaged) in mind as our frontliners.  Can anyone doubt the current power holders are burning both ends to curtail our freedom of speech?  They gain nothing from the dissemination of information, which is the moral of the tale that follows.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/002117.php

One case study progressive Americans need to know stone-cold if we want to undertake any serious political reform is that of Wal-mart.  Let's start tonight by watching Frontline's "Is Wal-mart Good for America?" and taking copious notes.

Wal-mart is our new Standard Oil, which in its largesse undermines wide swaths of civic society on issues of domestic economy, health care, collective bargaining, international trade, small business security, enviromental sustainability, consumer privacy, and on and on.  Their revenues amount to 2 percent of the US GDP, and they employ over 1.3 million people.

A concerted, collaborative effort to undermine the Wal-mart model of 21st century America and provide a viable alternative will take time, smarts, patience, pooled resources and nerve.  And it could simultaneously provide the framework for a winning, durable progressive coalition.

And next to none of this vote is verifiable.  Recounts of e-ballots are self-actualizing and uncontestable.

We must sue.  This is actionable malfeaseance.  This is the first time in American history that a third of the vote has been unverifiable.  The companies that made these voting machines have made ATMs for 40 years that uniformly provide paper receipts.  Gaming this basic function out of proprietary software is an affirmative effort to obscure the end product, our calculable vote.

Repeating -- almost a third of our national vote is unverifiable.  The burden is on the winner to prove this is not massive fraud.  We need discovery.

I'll be surprised if this story stays afloat over the next two weeks, much less receive its proper context or national exposure.

Victoria Snelgrove, a 20-year-old Emerson College journalism student and innocent bystander, was killed last night by Boston police firing exploding pepper bullets into a crowd of celebrants after last night's Red Sox victory.

"It appears from evidence we have reviewed thus far that Tori was killed when she was hit in the eye by a projectile fired as officers tried to control mobs outside the ballpark," (Boston Police Commissioner Kathleen) O'Toole said. "Designated officers were equipped with less-lethal systems that use projectiles designed to break upon impact, dousing the target with (pepper-like) spray."