murder by numbers

WART
* "MISSION (STILL) NOT ACCOMPLISHED. As Knight-Ridder puts it, "with violence having picked up again, U.S. and Iraqi officials are trying to puzzle out whether the voting had any significant effect" on the insurgency. It certainly appears that it did not." http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005448

* "Insurgent attacks on the American military hit a one-day record of 260 on election day. " shhhhhh. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/10848458.htm

* "A senior U.S. general said Wednesday he believes the British C-130 aircraft that crashed in Iraq on Jan. 30, killing all 10 people aboard, was downed by hostile action rather than by a mechanical problem. The British government has not said whether it was shot down." http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2005/02/09/plane/

* monbiot does the foil4ood vs cpa comparison. one thing i wanna know is how much the cpa managed in total - ie what % of the total the missing $8.8bn represents. a lot methinx. how much did the cpa actually *not* lose. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1407964,00.html

* "Ward Churchill didn't say this: "God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them. And then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did." " http://counterpunch.org/mickey02092005.html

* "If you are a soldier and you die, Bush budget gives your family a tax free gratuity of $100,000 and an insurance policy payout of $150,000. If you are a live veteran who needs medical care, Bush's budget will more than double co-pays for prescriptions and add a new $250 annual fee for using veterans health care." http://www.patridiots.com/001456.html


AMDOM
* i mentioned an odd nuclear occurence the other day but i dont think i linked to it - here tis http://counterpunch.org/bergen01222005.html

* "Given these criteria, (and given that we do and should describe ourselves as progressives), I propose that one of the easiest and smartest single moves we can make toward winning the political war in which we are engaged is to start calling our opponents 'regressives' instead of conservatives." this guy makes a pretty good argument, and the 'regressives' thing is pretty good. i think its important to remember the distinction between redvoters and redleaders tho. on our side, we tend to generally believe/hope that most of us *and* most of our leader-types are generally actually progressive. on the other side, the leaders are obviously regressive, but then amongst the redvoters, you've got the regressives to be sure, but there are also true conservatives, who apparently think they are voting 'conservative' when they vote red. remember in the waybackmachine during the campaign that i kept saying that jonks best chance was to keep referring to the egadmininstration as 'UNconservative'. repeat. rinse. recycle. it was a cool idea for a few reasons - 1) its true 2) it tackles the frame head-on, which seemed to be the only way to bust thru it 3) it is kinda universal, and could be used as a launching pad into most of the issues - war, changing the constitution, destroying institutions like socsec etc etc 4) how are they gonna fight back? call us unliberal? demand that they really are conservatives, while acknowledging that they are run by the *Radical*Right? 5) it could possibly carve out those who actually do think they are conservative, and voting conservative.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0208-21.htm

* "Tommy Chong is out of jail... Chong is currently on tour appearing in the Marijuana-Logues." the TC story was so appalling. but the title of the show is tres funny. http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009632.html#009632

* "Hume pulls two unrelated bits out of the FDR quote, and adds the words “government funding” between them. Because it’s so carefully done, it’s clear that it’s deliberate. And it’s a nasty form of dishonesty. Hume is manipulating Americans’ trust of FDR in order to build support for dismantling FDR’s legacy." these people are clever, & shameless. dangerous mix. http://www.airamericaradio.com/weblogs/alfrankenshow/index.php?/franken/hume_resign/

* quasi-interesting/obvious bit about dems moral values: "We have always talked about values, and we thought that everyone got it."
http://www.patridiots.com/001461.html

* heres the FAA/911 report that is causing some consternation
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/politics/10terror.html
- the point seems to be that it was the FAA's fault. fuckoff. (i havent read the report, just the article)
- this is presumably *the* report that we have been waiting for since before the election, but its not exactly obvious that this is the case. u might remember the leak/fluff piece that frontpaged the nyt a month back that said that tenet would get personally slammed - no mention of tenet in the article. (from memory, i think that non-piece was on the same day as the electoral challenge, thus relegating *actual* news to page E43 or some such)
- fully half od the warnings the FAA received were about alq slamming planes into buildings - theres no mention of condi's 'noone could have predicted...'
- theres no mention of the destroyed FAA tapes.
- theres no mention of the aug6pdb - one can imagine a situation where that info may have triggered some actual preventative action - but best we dont remind the somnolent masses that blinky was derelict.
- no mention of the fact that russia/germany/france et al were all screaming at the egadmin that something was about to happen. or tenet&clarke's 'hair on fire' while blinky was having a month off down at the ranch. nope - it was the FAA's fault - and to make it clear, here's the munny quote "one aviation official told the commission said that airlines did not want to give up revenues by providing free seats to marshals." single source. uncorroborated. apparently anonymous. but this is the line thatll prolly generate the outrage, those munnygrubbing bastards. it was airlines/FAA's fault, see!

* "In an astonishing display of party discipline and empty headedness, Republicans decided to waive all laws so they can build any fence, anywhere, at anytime" - apart from the obvious problems with this - whats the first thing u think of when u think of fences and lawlessness? auschwitz? http://blog.dccc.org/mt/archives/002143.html

* http://www.americablog.org for all things gannon, http://www.crooksandliars.com for the video performances - with this being one of the hilites (dollops of ari2): http://movies.ziaspace.com/Gannon_Questions_Countdown%20With%20Keith%20Olbermann.wmv

* "At (blinky's recent) rallies, the crowds cheered his words against terrorism as though it were a nostalgic re-enactment of his campaign, and then fell into befuddled silence." http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1409591,00.html
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not.in.my.name.
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