I can't believe everyone is buying the "it was bad intelligence" bullshit coming out of the administration. The evidence looks bad now only because they ignored or redacted everything that didn't suit their needs at the time!

But now it's the CIA's fault.

The CIA had so many hedges in their reports that they needed a gardener. The CIA put those caveats in footnotes, not the straight text, because the administration was breating down their necks. And the Administration ignored those footnotes and reported to the rest of us the raw, un-nuanced picture. And when that wasn't good enough, the Administration started their own little intelligence op in the Pentagon. Why isn't the "Operation for Special Planning" getting any of the blame? As summarized by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "The dramatic shift between prior intelligence assessments and the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), together with the creation of an independent intelligence entity at the Pentagon and other steps, suggest that the intelligence community began to be unduly influenced by policymakers’ views sometime in 2002."

Sickening. You would think your less-than-average chimp could figure this out... could follow the bouncing ball.... yet somehow the average american keeps putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with 9 and 11.

Just can't get past this.

"The Nazis were for gun control, the Nazis were for high marginal tax rates," said Grover Norquist in an interview with the Forward."

"THE NAZIS WERE FOR HIGH MARGINAL TAX RATES"

Dwell on that for a moment. I'll wait.

"The Nazis were for gun control, the Nazis were for high marginal tax rates," said Grover Norquist in an interview with the Forward. "Do you want to talk about who's closer politically to national socialism, the Right or the Left?"

Just keep talking, Grover.

Grover Says: No Taxation without Extermination

Terry Gross: Right. OK. So when you cross that, maybe you're making, like, $20,000 or something. That's not going to help you with the estate tax. I mean, you're talking about $2 million. That's a line people don't cross a lot. That's -- I don't think that's ...

Grover Norquist: Yeah, the good news about the move to abolish the death tax, the tax where they come and look at how much money you've got when you die, how much gold is in your teeth and they want half of it, is that -- you're right, there's an exemption for -- I don't know -- maybe a million dollars now, and it's scheduled to go up a little bit. However, 70 percent of the American people want to abolish that tax. Congress, the House and Senate, have three times voted to abolish it. The president supports abolishing it, so that tax is going to be abolished. I think it speaks very much to the health of the nation that 70-plus percent of Americans want to abolish the death tax, because they see it as fundamentally unjust. The argument that some who played at the politics of hate and envy and class division will say, 'Yes, well, that's only 2 percent,' or as people get richer 5 percent in the near future of Americans likely to have to pay that tax.

I mean, that's the morality of the Holocaust. 'Well, it's only a small percentage,' you know. 'I mean, it's not you, it's somebody else.'

And this country, people who may not make earning a lot of money the centerpiece of their lives, they may have other things to focus on, they just say it's not just. If you've paid taxes on your income once, the government should leave you alone. Shouldn't come back and try and tax you again.

Terry Gross: Excuse me. Excuse me one second. Did you just ...

Grover Norquist: Yeah?

Terry Gross: … compare the estate tax with the Holocaust?

Grover Norquist: No, the morality that says it's OK to do something to do a group because they're a small percentage of the population is the morality that says that the Holocaust is OK because they didn't target everybody, just a small percentage. What are you worried about? It's not you. It's not you. It's them. And arguing that it's OK to loot some group because it's them, or kill some group because it's them and because it's a small number, that has no place in a democratic society that treats people equally. The government's going to do something to or for us, it should treat us all equally. …"

Terry Gross: So you see taxes as being the way they are now terrible discrimination against the wealthy comparable to the kind of discrimination of, say, the Holocaust?

Grover Norquist: Well, what you pick -- you can use different rhetoric or different points for different purposes, and I would argue that those who say, 'Don't let this bother you; I'm only doing it' -- I, the government. The government is only doing it to a small percentage of the population. That is very wrong. And it's immoral. They should treat everybody the same. They shouldn't be shooting anyone, and they shouldn't be taking half of anybody's income or wealth when they die."

So David Kay is blaming intelligence agencies for, "[failing] to detect that Iraq's unconventional weapons programs were in a state of disarray in recent years..."

How to square that will reports that the CIA's reports changed dramatically in the 6 months before the war when Cheney et al began to pressure them directly to support administration claims of a threat from Iraq's WMD?

Good morning.

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Your Honor.

from James K. Galbraith's lede on Salon.com today:

"The method is clear to any who choose to study closely: It is a method of subterfuge and deception. It is the systematic and relentless pursuit of partly hidden agendas, sold to the public with slogans. The tax cuts were not aimed to produce recovery and jobs; they were a reward to the rich. The war on Iraq was not waged to help the war on terror; it was about getting Saddam, as we have now had confirmed by Paul O'Neill's report on the Iraq agenda Bush carried from the beginning. Missile defense is not about North Korea, and still less about Iran or any other "rogue state"; it's about the contracts. In all these cases, the decision on what to do came first -- then the circumstances of the day were arranged to suit."

emphasis is mine.

The EPL All "First-Name-As-Last-Name" Team

GK: Howard, Tim
D: Neville, Gary; Neill, Lucas; Samuel, Jlloyd
M: Barry, Gareth; Clark, Lee; Stuart, Graham; Robert, Laurent
F: Henry, Thierry; Owen, Michael; Angel, Juan Pablo

Subs: James, David; Rufus, Richard; Terry, John; John, Stern; Neville, Phil
Mgr: Bruce, Steve - Mgr
Match Commentator: Tyler, Martin

Borrowing the keys to Dad's yacht

Bush's space flight of fancy was proposed and un-funded by his Dad, 15 years ago. Let's hope that history keeps repeating itself come November.

Bush to achieve 1969 by 2015.



Perhaps the most relevant part of this story is that, "An extended human presence on the moon "will enable astronauts to develop new technologies and harness the moon's abundant resources to allow manned exploration of more challenging environments," the White House said in a prepared statement.""

Or should that read, "will enable Haliburton to... harness the moon's abundant resources...". Cheap shot, I know, but this idea is so ridiculous that it is what I'm reduced to. Don't we already have a multi-billion dollar, space-based iniative of dubious practical merit?

Gregg Easterbrook discusses/disects/discredits the purpose and the science behind this truly remarkable development.

Safe Hands retires from football.

Mike Langlais is the enemy.

Josh Marshall spelling out the obvious:

"Number of days between Novak column outing Valerie Plame and announcement of investigation: 74 days.

Number of days between O'Neill 60 Minutes interview and announcement of investigation: 1 day.

Having the administration reveal itself as a gaggle of hypocritical goons ... priceless."

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The Management

Happy New Year to all.

Lord of the Rings...



... or "Two Gay Hobbits Save the World."