popular domestic outrage

* Karen Kwiatkowski: "The power of popular domestic outrage at a behemoth state shouldn’t be underestimated... Domestic outrage and honesty from the battle lines are creating a binary weapon powerful enough to bring down whole governments. At a minimum, it isolates our political parasites and deprives them of political energy, mobility and security." (link)

* "One of (kidan's) bagel partners, Michael Cavallo, was an associate of a New York crime family, according to New York law enforcement. Cavallo, now dead, was dating one of Kidan's sisters... (kidan's) mother, Judith Shemtov, was murdered in her Staten Island, N.Y., home in 1993 during a botched robbery by a Bonanno crime crew... Sami Shemtov accused his stepson (kidan) of stealing $250,000 of his money from the sale of an electrical company. He also contended that Kidan ripped off another $15,000 Shemtov put up as a reward for information leading to the arrest of his wife's murderer." (link)
(via laura) with friends like these...

* go read frank rich: " Mr. DeLay's latest plight is only a tiny detail within this vast Boschian canvas of depravity. If this were Watergate - and Watergate itself increasingly looks like a relatively contained epidemic of corruption - the Texas grand jury's indictment of the congressman and his associates would be a sideshow tantamount to the initial 1973 California grand jury indictment of the Nixon aide John Ehrlichman and his pals in the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office; Watergate's real legal fireworks were still in the wings. So forget about all those details down in Texas that make your teeth hurt; don't bother to learn the difference between Trmpac and Armpac. Fasten your seat belt instead for the roller coaster of other revelations and possible indictments that's about to roar through the Beltway." (link)
i said, go read!

* bob parry has an article called "Can Bush Be Ousted?" (link)

* "Gallup poll conducted September 12-15:**
73% of a sample of American adults say the nation would be better off if our leaders "paid more attention to public opinion," and 22% say we would be worse off." (link)

* simbaud points to an 'oh no!' possibility from over at digby's place - perhaps miller's decision to testify now was a function of john-john gay-gay robert's appointment. OH NO! out out, nasty thought.

* stratfor:

"Presidential failure in the second term consistently has been the result of unsatisfactory wars or perceptions that the president was a criminal...

The failed presidents, on the other hand, all failed not because their opponents reviled them or even because those opponents became a majority, but because their own base of political support lost basic confidence in them...

Bush's problem, therefore, is the war in Iraq. But the issue is not his Democratic opposition, nor even whether his opponents swell to become a majority. The threat to Bush's presidency will come if, and only if, his own political base breaks. By all polls, that base -- which historically has been at about 40-42 percent -- is holding. If that continues to be the case, he will be able to execute foreign policy effectively. If that base is shattered, he fails...
There has been confidence in Bush's character. But if it is determined that Bush failed in the Katrina crisis because of a failure of character, then all bets will be off. " (link)

ftr - they dont even mention the indictments that are crashing around the repugs