those tapes sure come in handy don't they?..especially on election night...
Posted by dennis at January 21, 2006 03:36 AMIf one were to think outside the box, one could come up with all sorts of dreadfull thoughts.
Posted by Judith at January 21, 2006 04:27 AMSo Frist thinks Alito is our "worst nightmare".
Frist calls Alito Democrats' "nightmare" By Richard Cowan - Fri Jan 20
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told Republican Party activists on Friday night that U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito was the "worst nightmare of liberal Democrats."
Frist made the remark to fellow Republicans during a private tour he gave them of the Senate chamber when the Senate was not in session.
Frist was not available for comment following his remarks.
Asked about the senator's remark, Frist spokesman Bob Stevenson said that Alito "is a thoughtful mainstream conservative jurist who is well respected by his peers, by Democrats and Republicans alike."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/court_alito_dc;_ylt=Ag2p5GrELO3m91BIhzNMDxSs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--
Posted by Judith at January 21, 2006 05:32 AMThose talking points are so lame. These idiots think that somebody's words are more dangerous than an actual terror attack.
Posted by Ga6thDem at January 21, 2006 05:35 AMI hate to say, but I agree with Steve. Not only the bin Laden tape, but the al-Zawahiri tape and the hostage, Jill Carroll. All just way too convenient for Bush and Co. right now. I hate to feel this cynical about our government, but they needed a distraction and they got a trifecta?
Posted by ann at January 21, 2006 05:41 AMYou know I think you're probably correct, but I think the fanatical extremist boogeyman scare the masses fear factor tape doesn't work as effectively with the masses as it used to...because it's been 1594 days since 9/11.
So my question is why do you think it is still done? Is it done with the intention of framing the debate (with the assistance of idiots like Chris Matthews, Limbaugh, Hannity,and Falafelboy that Liberals=Bin Laden?)That just is so over the top they slander most Americans when they do it. Is that what they are attempting to do? Rally their base? Divide and conquer strategy and throw in a little immigration issues and there is the platform? Do you really think the kkKarl Rove is serious that he is going to run on National Security? It just seems all too simplistic, too easy, too predictable yet unbelievable to me....is it a kkK trap?
Posted by emal at January 21, 2006 05:41 AMRove knows that he must keep the fiction of the Liberal Bogeyman alive in order for the rubes to keep voting GOP against their economic self-interests.
Otherwise, the rubes might notice that radical "conservatives" run everything and actually blame the party in charge.
For the record, Rove is as evil and rotten as any Nazi thug who ever walked this planet, and he ought to be treated as such. Let's not forget, children, that Herr Karl smears veterans while outing CIA agents as political cover for lies that led a nation into war.
Karl Rove must be destroyed by any means necessary. The man is a traitor and a threat to the Constitution and to the national security of this nation. He simply must be destroyed.
Period.
Posted by God Of War at January 21, 2006 05:42 AMWell, Karl Rove vowed Friday to make the war on terrorism a central campaign issue in November.
Yeah, and those tapes by Osama will surely help in their effort to continue to scare Mr. John Q. Public.
Its long past time to destroy the GOP on the issue of national security, which they utterly fucking suck at:
Failed to prevent 9/11
Failed to get Osama
IraNq (enough said).
Chickenhawk motherfuckers (enough said).
And btw, the Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan, if you didn't know.
This reeks of desperation, folks.
Please Karl, you CIA-outing fuck, run on national security. I hope you do. I've got a shitload of ammo (pun intended) that I'll share with every Democratic candidate.
Here's what I'm gonna do, Karl, you nazi: I'm going to make sure that by the time November comes around, America knows who to blame for the mess this nation is in. Guess what, Karl: It ain't gonna be the fictional Liberal Bogeyman...it's gonna be YOU.
BTW, for those of you who think KKKarl the Traitor is still a genius, allow me to remind you of his centerpiece for the second term agenda: Social Security Privatization. THAT went over well, no?
Fuck you, Rove. The time for KKKarl the America Hater's destruction is now.
Posted by God Of War at January 21, 2006 05:56 AMGod of War is right. This all about keeping the "ooga booga" moron and knee jerk fundamentalists in line. This theory only works if you think that the only people who are showing up for the election are the GOP base. Well, the odds are better at winning if you keep your base together but this theory fails to note that when the center collapses on you, you better hope it's only your base that shows up to vote. Otherwise, you are looking at political suicide.
Posted by Ga6thDem at January 21, 2006 06:06 AMI've come to the conclusion that OBL is just a modern version of bogeymen of the past (e.g. Soviets, Red Chinese, VC)...an exagerated threat, manipulated by the Administration to cow the populace and make them accept every heinous act committed in their name. Sure 9/11 was a spectacular attack, but I think it was the results of a small, highly-motivated cell and doesn't represent the tip of the iceberg. All the serious terror in the past 4 years has come from us...We've killed at least 10 times the number of innocents that died on 9/11 and I am frankly sick and tired of seeing our country's image sullied by the power-hungry, money-hungry, morally bankrupt bastards.
/rant
Posted by Roy Batty at January 21, 2006 06:30 AMIt would be interesting to see a comparative graph, similar to the one correlating the terror alert warnings and Bush's poll numbers, of the bin Laden tapes and either Bush's poll numbers or what the big news of the day was.
Posted by ann at January 21, 2006 06:42 AMAnn, I concur. I think we know what a comparative graph would show. Our chains are being yanked.
Are the powers that be planning on another attack before the 2006 elections? Is using Osama at this moment in time the warning they need to carry it out? Get ready folks, if the destruction is as bad as New York, the true believers will get behind GWB 100%, and never ask the obvious questions.
Posted by Judith at January 21, 2006 08:22 AMIf the tape is real, I think "you will see it in your homes" could be an attack on the Superbowl. Not to be paranoid--I just don't want to hear anyone say "we never could have imagined...." I'm imagining. And wasn't there a book/movie about that?
Posted by at January 21, 2006 09:03 AMYou're just now questioning the authenticity of government released "Bin Laden tapes"? Take another look at the first video released....you know, the one where, contradicting himself from an authentic interview with a Pakistani newspaper reporter (http://www.public-action.com/911/oblintrv.html), he admits to being responsible for 911. Look at the man and compare his appearence to known pictures of Bin Laden. They are quite obviously not one in the same.
Fifty percent of the country are being played for fools. Perhaps they are.
Posted by brisa at January 21, 2006 09:37 AMsince the bush administration planned and executed the events of september 11th, most likely independent of alQueda besides for the later claim that it was a terrorist action by alQueda, i do not see it being difficult for the administration to carry out another domestic terrorist attack in the name of binLaden and alQueda.
not to mention those 1982 FEMA provisions i mentioned the other day (search for ritt goldstein article written in 2002 on the topic) that bush is eager to use, he just needs the right excuse to persude the public. what's better than their fear of a dead man and their daily safety of ignorance to the external world being put in jeopardy?
Posted by lonemess at January 21, 2006 09:40 AMignore my spelling errors, i have a tendency not to preview my posts.
Posted by lonemess at January 21, 2006 09:41 AMWould anyone have a link to Maureen Dowd columns that bypass the stupid Times Select Berlin Wall? While it is true she rants at times, so do we all. Thanks in advance.
Posted by tempus at January 21, 2006 10:11 AMOh yeah, BushCo would be perfectly willing to provide us with another attack and blame someone else. They've proven they're murderous thugs, witness Katrina, and the media helps them blame others. I believe they pulled off 9/11. They talk about it at every turn, like it was a sign from heaven that they need to protect us poor slobs. Bush, Cheney, Rove are the axis of evil.
Posted by Sharon at January 21, 2006 10:12 AMTwo quick points:
As an unfortunate Dilbert, I know that a simple digital signal processor (DSP), with adequate reference samples of OBL's voice can analyze the nuances, accent, colloquialisms, and vocalizations used by anyone and verify with 99% accuracy that it is the same voice. The only catch is if the voice has been put through a reasonable filter, but that only removes one of four criteria. So technically, yes, it is quite possible to confirm the identity of a vocal recording quickly. It is also possible to recreate a sampled voice, using someone sounding only vaguely like the intended speaker.
Which leads to point two; it is very convenient that a tape or heart-rending kidnapping occurs whenever Bush$Co are in deep shit. Way too convenient.
What I am puzzled by, and I hope it is just my paranoia running amok, is why the US doesn't detonate a "dirty bomb" (non-nuclear radioactive device) in Fallujah, and then claim it was being assembled by Al Quaeda, and went off by accident. Not only would it eliminate an insurgent hotbed, possibly Zarquawi himself, but it would put the fear of god into Americans that the bad guys actually have the technology to do this. It is totally immoral, absolutely obscene, would kill thousands of innocents, and is therefore totally in character with Bush$Co.
There isn't one member of the Star Chamber who would say 'we can't do that, it's just wrong.' Maybe I should shut up and not put ideas into their pea-brains.
Over three years ago I submitted this letter to a local newspaper:
To the Editor:
What is this? “Weekend at Binnie’s?” The man has been dead for over a year now, buried in the rubble of a bombed-out cave in the Afghanistan mountains. However, it seems that bin Laden will never die in minds of three groups: Muslim fanatics, the Bush Administration and the American media. The Muslim fanatics want to believe that their hero bin Laden is immortal; the Bush Administration needs bin Laden as a convenient straw man in their seemingly endless “war on terrorism” and the American media needs to sell newspapers and television advertising. At least Bush and Muslim fanatics agree on something.
It would seem that the lack of any new video tapes by bin Laden in the last year would convince any reasonable person that he was “no longer with us.”
But no, this man is now allegedly making audiotapes for transmission to and rebroadcast by Al-Jazeera, the Arab television channel. The Bush Administration apparently feels the need to “prop up the body” in the case of bin Laden to show that their alleged “war on terror” is unfinished. Perhaps we could all contribute to a fund to get bin Laden a shiny new video camera for Christmas.
Yours truly,
James K. Sayre
here you go, tempus. Maureen's column is good today:
January 21, 2006
Googling Past the Graveyard
By MAUREEN DOWD
I don't like the thought of Dick Cheney ogling my Googling.
Because what I'm Googling, of course, is Dick Cheney. I have to constantly monitor how Vice Voyeur is pushing the federal government to constantly monitor millions of ordinary Americans' phone calls, e-mail notes and Internet searches.
If you want to know why the Grim Peeper is willing to turn this country into a police state to take his version of democracy to other countries, just do a Google search under "antiterrorism," "government snooping," "overreaching" and "fruitcake."
It was hard to know which story yesterday was scarier: Osama bin Laden, still alive and taunting the U.S., or the Justice Department's trying to force Google to turn over a suspiciously broad array of information on millions of users' searches and Web addresses, supposedly to investigate online crime involving pornography.
The Internet is full of vile diversions, but prying without justification is just as vile. Innocent Americans - not just lonely guys in their boxers - could be swept up in the fishnet dragnet. Who decides what is porn? Will those who Google to find out-of-print copies of Lynne Cheney's juicy, cheesy lesbian Old West novel, "Sisters," be suspect? (The cheapest copy at Alibris.com is $195.)
When Fox News asked him about the fresh Osama audiotape, Mr. Cheney sounded like Mr. Moviefone. "Probably low production values," he said.
Osama may not have graduated to DVD's, but he has stayed alive, despite W.'s threat way back in the era of dial-up connections to smoke him out and hunt him down.
Officials first indicated that the U.S. had killed Ayman al-Zawahiri in a bombing in Pakistan last week - or at least his son-in-law or a friend of his son-in-law, or maybe the guy who delivered a kabob to him. Yesterday, Al Qaeda released a tape of Zawahiri's greatest verse hits - poetry for jihadists - like "Tears in the Eyes of Time." What rhymes with mujahedeen? Antihistamine?
None of the Bushies' actions in defiance of law and convention, none of the money or blood spilled in Iraq, have helped these so-called tough guys get the one guy they really need to get. That is truly galling.
W. and Vice don't even act upset about Osama's still being on the loose. Having played down his significance after they missed their chance to get him in Tora Bora, they continue to act as if it's no big deal when he hurls more threats.
Torquemada Cheney was torturing logic again in a speech to a conservative think tank in New York. "Some have suggested that by liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein, we simply stirred up a hornets' nest," he said. "They overlook a fundamental fact: we were not in Iraq on Sept. 11, 2001, and the terrorists hit us anyway."
Yeah, Dick, because they weren't in Iraq, either.
The fact that federal snoopers are all over reporters, monitoring their phone calls, shows the sorry state of our intelligence. Even F.B.I. agents feel as if they have been wasting their time rummaging through library cards and tracing numbers that turn out to be Pizza Huts.
Maybe they could make an argument that it's worth bending the Constitution into a balloon elephant if we were getting Osama's area code and smashing his connections. We don't even bother to raise the terror alarm anymore when the Qaeda mass murderer releases a tape. The scare-level color code was a more useful tool before the 2004 election.
I just don't get why it's so hard to find Osama. So what if he's in what is often described as "the impossibly rugged mountain terrain" of Pakistan? We send people to the Moon, and W. wants to send someone to Mars. What's more impossibly rugged terrain than that?
If we can brave Big Brother, we could probably find Osama's lair on Google Earth (but not Dick Cheney's - it's censored).
The White House has always seemed less compelled to capture Osama than to use him as a pretext for invading Iraq and as a political selling point. Karl Rove, coming out of his "please don't indict me" crouch, tried to chase away the taint of the Abramoff scandal with a new round of terror-mongering for 2006: "We need a commander in chief and a Congress who understand the nature of the threat and the gravity of this moment. President Bush and the Republican Party do. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for many Democrats."
So why did the White House set aside the gravest threat of all?
Latest dumbass poll on cnn.com:
Do you think it is likely that Osama bin Laden will be captured in 2006?
18% No
82% Yes
I hope that the people who voted "yes" meant that he'd be found in time for the midterm elections.
Karl Rove's speeches are really aimed at the Democrats. He is trying to preemptively scare us off. He's a bully, an intimidater with back-alley morals. This is his M.O. This is the way he knows how to run a campaign. Put forth the idea, the attitude that the Republicans are superior, tough, strong and the Democrats are tentative, timid and weak. He makes fun of us and the Dems dance to his tune. He has demoralized many Democrats many times and is firing the first salvo in what has successfully worked for him and Bush in their lust for power.
Reframing is difficult, but that is what the Dems have to do. A Dem. summit meeting should take place asap. And I don't mean the "centrists" or DINOs. Howard Dean is the only Democratic official I know who thinks and speaks clearly and incisively enough to really get things going.
Also, don't forget, Dean has been working hard doing grass roots organizing. He likely has a strategy. The problem is that the "Inside the Beltway" Dems, including the DLC, cultivate a fiction of superiority. They act as if they are looking down from an Olympian, intellectual height and deign to get down and dirty in the mud pit that is politics.
IMO, Howard Dean is the only Dem I see who is tough enough to stand up to the school yard bully, Rove.
Posted by lilybelle at January 21, 2006 02:01 PMI came to the conclusion that the tapes were fake yesterday based on the quickness of the confirmation, the style differences and the timing of the last two tapes. Was not aware of the other coincidences of timing before you provided the link. Thanks! I'm more convinced then ever.
Posted by MOBlue at January 21, 2006 02:56 PMBrisa, thanks for the link. Very interesting.
Posted by Judith at January 21, 2006 03:39 PMOkay, I am sitting here with my tinfoil hat on, maybe a little crooked.
We know that the Bush, Bin Laden and the Saudi Royal families have been business partners and that their friendship goes way back into the Bush family background and continues until this day. (Where was the Bin Laden family during 9/11?). The relationship between the bin Ladens and the Saudi royal family is quite exceptional in that it not simply one of business ties: it is also a relationship of trust, of friendship and of shared secrets.
What if the Saudi Royal Family and the Bin Laden's (also friends) had agreed to allow Osama to be the dupe for Bush, and take the fall for 9/11, whether Osama agreed or not or whether he knew about it or not? I bet my last dollar that Osama has ungone a facial reconstruction, and is no longer Osama.
Okay, I'll go slap myself in the face and get back to reality.
Posted by Judith at January 21, 2006 04:06 PMYou are probably more right than you suspect, Judith!
Posted by pessimist at January 21, 2006 07:09 PMAnn: thank you very much for Maureen's column. She, along with Christiane Amanpour represent the best in the reporting world. I respect everything they write, and I'm a guy.
Although I am not religious, I pray in my own way for Jill Carroll's release. She has done nothing wrong, but be an American citizen. She will be released unharmed, if there is a God.
Posted by tempus at January 21, 2006 11:04 PMJust FYI… you can download “Sisters” for free at http://www.whitehouse.org/administration/sisters.asp ... Pass it on!!
Posted by Diana Rowe Pauls at January 25, 2006 07:18 PM