When 'alf of his bullshit flies wide in the ditch,

Just call Billy Kristol a crossed-eyed old bitch.

February is looking like a very good month for America and Pakistan. Biden is in Pakistan and will speak directly along with Bond to Musharraf tomorrow. The extrermists won't go gently into the night, but when the locals are tired of you, it's hard to gain any traction. So does al-Qaeda move back to Afhanistan?

bmaz, Marcy Wheeler's occasional substitute has a post up at Marcy's place that's kind of interesting. It's speculative. But, I thought it worth a flag for anyone who might otherwise miss it. Link at sig.

Don’t Cry For The Telcos - Bush & Cheney Are The Only Ones That Are Dying For Immunity

By: bmaz Monday February 18, 2008 5:19 pm

KO on Countdown just spoke about a very accurate op-ed on FISA in the Washington Times so my guess wasn't so far off. What is happening? Truth and justice is starting to rain all around us.

i scour dishes...

i cook the good (not as good as fresh from michigan in spring) asparagus from calexico and make my own fragrant garden.

read the charles todd mysteries set in post great waste (war) england

and i love your posts...no matter the handle!

Analysts say FISA will suffice

Washington Times, By Sean Lengell, February 16, 2008

Many intelligence scholars and analysts outside the government say that today's expiration of certain temporary domestic wiretapping laws will have little effect on national security, despite warnings to the contrary by the White House and Capitol Hill Republican leaders.

With the Protect America Act expiring this weekend, domestic wiretapping rules will revert to the 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which requires the government to obtain a warrant from a special court to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance in the United States.

The original FISA law, these experts say, provides the necessary tools for the intelligence community to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists.

Timothy Lee, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, said the last time Congress overhauled FISA — after the September 11 terrorist attacks — President Bush praised the action, saying the new law "recognizes the realities and dangers posed by the modern terrorist."

"Those are the rules we'll be living under after the Protect America Act expires this weekend," Mr. Lee added. "There's no reason to think our nation will be in any more danger in 2008 than it was in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, or 2006."

Ben Wittes of the Brookings Institution said because existing warrantless surveillance begun under the temporary laws could continue for up to a year, the "sky is not falling at all."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20080216/NATION/847451166

So does al-Qaeda move back to Afhanistan?

I've been trying to find somebody making a guess on that. I wonder if perhaps all the bombs going off in Kandahar aren't exactly what that is.

i think that is exactly what they are doing...and the true "success of the surge".

just expanding the whack a mole board...

Now tie that article to today's B.S. piece by Kristol.

Post your own caption on the Washington Post under a photo of Bush touring in Africa. Your post goes up without any delay.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/on-the-plane/

suggest_your_own_caption_keep.html

I feel clean now. Thanks for a deeper appreciation of that cornfussing word: Purgatory!

I would sure search my back pockets for a bier-tab facsimile of a temporary cheap tin wedding ring.

You know I am as innocent,

as a dang gone oncologist?

O, who knows what that is?

I am not real sure? It is nice?

I hope it's not a real bad word.

I'll just look it up in a dictionary.

Man, I got rhythm. Thanks

Try "Handle With Care" by the Traveling Wilburys.

I beg your forgiveness. I'll shine my farm-boots with Dirigo's bow tie and call it a night?

If 'ole Anonymust or Pedinska were around, we could all beg them for chocolate cupcakes?

What ever happened to Introvert-Girl. Where is the pleasant Grey-Sky good piano player?

Oh, and shooter242 is brooding over a wretched boss who tells him to go clean GOP grease!

Gads.

The GOPS eat geese wings at the neo-con weekly Karaoke sing-along session bar-jams.

shooter242 now works at Hallmark's beef butcher house prodding lame cows to slaughter.

'Night, bop!

Handle with care ...

William Kristol:

http://nytimes.com/2008/02/18/opinion/18kristol.html

Op-Ed Columnist
Democrats Should Read Kipling
By WILLIAM KRISTOL
Published: February 18, 2008

[...] Orwell offers a highly qualified appreciation of the then (and still) politically incorrect Kipling.

[...] If I may vulgarize the implications of Orwell’s argument a bit: substitute Republicans for Kipling and Democrats for the opposition, and you have a good synopsis of the current state of American politics.

- - William Kristol

What Orwell actually wrote:

http://www.george-orwell.org/Rudyard_Kipling/0.html

[...] It is no use pretending that Kipling's view of life, as a whole, can be accepted or even forgiven by any civilized person. [...] there is a definite strain of sadism in him, over and above the brutality which a writer of that type has to have. Kipling is a jingo imperialist, he is morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting.

Kipling [...] was NOT a Fascist.

[...] Kipling's outlook is prefascist [...] the nineteenth-century imperialist outlook and the modern gangster outlook are two different things.

[...] Kipling's 'message' was one that the big public did not want, and, indeed, has never accepted. The mass of the people, in the nineties as now, were anti-militarist, bored by the Empire, and only unconsciously patriotic. Kipling's official admirers are and were the 'service' middle class, the people who read BLACKWOOD'S.

[...] One reason for Kipling's power as a good bad poet I have already suggested--his sense of responsibility, which made it possible for him to have a world-view, even though it happened to be a false one.

[...] Although he had no direct connexion with any political party, Kipling was a Conservative, a thing that does not exist nowadays. Those who now call themselves Conservatives are either Liberals, Fascists or the accomplices of Fascists.

- - George Orwell

"Blackwood's" magazine was an imperial tradition for over 160 years -- it folded in 1980 -- and it was sorta like a cross between the "Weekly Standard" and "Reader's Digest".