Palin was McCain's canary in a coal mine.

Come to find out, "palling around with terrorists" was a line fed to Palin by the top of the McCain campaign. They wanted her to use it, and they had a campaign ad waiting to follow about a week behind her introducing that hard Ayers attack.

It appears that upon seeing the reaction, the McCain folks decided to pull back, leaving Palin twisting on the "terrorist" limb.

Of course, that's just one version of the story told by one side. (But it does explain the raging animosity the Palin folks have for Nicole Wallace.)

Ensign

The John Ensign affair story just keeps getting weirder.

First we learn that he, too, like Sanford, was a member/resident of that weird secretive Christian group which it's members (and Congressional residents call C Street or The Family.

We also learn that members of The Family sat next to Ensign to be sure he wrote his breakup letter to his mistress. Then, unsure of whether he would actually mail the thing, they drove him to FedEx just to be sure.

They were right. Ensign then called the mistress to tell her to ignore the package/letter.

These are freaking Senators!

McNamara

McClatchy's respected Joe Galloway doesn't forget, or forgive.

Beginning in 1965 and for nearly three years McNamara each year drafted into the military 100,000 young boys whose scores in the mental qualification and aptitude tests were in the lowest quarter — so-called Category IV's. Men with IQ's of 65 or even lower....

The young men of Project 100,000 couldn't read, so training manual comic books were created for them. They had to be taught to tie their boots. They often failed in boot camp, and were recycled over and over until they finally reached some low standard and were declared trained and ready.

They could not be taught any more demanding job than trigger-pulling and, so, all of them were shipped to Vietnam and most went straight into combat where the learning curve is steep and deadly. The cold, hard statistics say that these almost helpless young men died in action in the jungles at a rate three times higher than the average draftee.

McNamara's military even assigned the Project 100,000 men special serial numbers so that anyone could identify them and deal with them accordingly....

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Thought for the Day

Countries which start wars generally don't have public healthcare.

Or, countries which have public healthcare don't generally start wars.

Second: It is often repeated (a little inaccurately) that in modern times, no two democracies have ever gone to war.

Have two public healthcare nations ever gone to war?

You don't hear Bill Kristol citing that....

You're missing the point.

I don't care about Pelosi and all the political point scoring about her briefings, I want to know what's the other "on agan off again" "collection" program that the CIA thought they had to intentionally hide from Congress for 8 years.

Picture of the Day

(President Barack Obama stands with Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi before a dinner at the G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy, July 9, 2009. (REUTERS/Alessandro Bianch))

The Kurds in Iraq (rumble...)

I guess the Kurds are "creating a reality on the ground" before negotiations really get going.

With little notice and almost no public debate, Iraq’s Kurdish leaders are pushing ahead with a new constitution for their semiautonomous region....

The proposed constitution enshrines Kurdish claims to territories and the oil and gas beneath them. But these claims are disputed by both the federal government in Baghdad and ethnic groups on the ground, and were supposed to be resolved in talks begun quietly last month between the Iraqi and Kurdish governments...

This is the long awaited fracture point. This might just be a pressure tactic, to put a backside deadline on the negotiations, but it could also get really messy.

Picture of the Day - Bastardo

After crushing the US Soccer team in a huge comeback a week ago, the Brazilian President gives President Obama a jersey signed by the Brazilian team?

I know we're just a fly to them, but still....

Senatorial ATM

John Ensign's parents paid his mistress' family $96,000 in "gifts."

FoxNews - Preserving the master race since 1996

Brian Kilmeade, one of the hosts of Fox and Friends

"We are — we keep marrying other species and other ethnics and other ... See, the problem is the Swedes have pure genes. Because they marry other Swedes .... Fins marry other Fins, so they have a pure society."

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This isn't FoxNews' first on air venture into preserving the genes of the master race. John Gibson famously had that on air editorial telling white people "we need to make more babies." .


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There have been alot of on air racist comments by various FoxNews folks, but when the hosts start talking genes and racial purity, we've passed from simple ignorant bigotry into "race war" territory.

That's a whole different ball of wax.

This should be a hugely bigger issue than it is.

From a story so long ago....

(AP) U.S. releases 5 Iranian diplomats detained in 2007 (in Iraq)

Remember that?

Picture of the Day - A dying man

(North Korean leader Kim Jong-il participates in the 12th Supreme People's Assembly in Pyongyang, in this frame grab taken from footage released by KRT April 9, 2009. (REUTERS/KRT via Reuters))

Quickhits - The kid in the slow class is causing trouble again

(AP, NYTimes) South Korean intelligence claims that the attacks crippling some S. Korean and US websites are coming from "North Korea or pro-Pyongyang forces in South Korea." (Asymmetric warfare. What's the response, shut down their horse carts?)

(AP) Kim Jong Il makes only his second appearance since last summer's suspected stroke, and he looked "thin," "gaunt," and had less hair. (Frankly, I hope the guy kicks soon so they can stop all the pre-transition posturing/hostility.)

(USAToday) "Undercover investigators sneaked bombs and detonators past security guards and into federal buildings occupied by the Homeland Security, Justice and State departments..." (Get ready for Joe Lieberman to get some media time...)

(WaPo) China will execute those it holds responsible for the recent ethnic clashes in Xinjiang.

(Guardian) British shock that MI-5 sort of used Pakistan's ISI to "outsource" torture.

(Reuters) Yet another US drone attack in the Pakistani tribal lands. Supposedly, 6 killed.

Iran's still going on

A very interesting, if somewhat overstating, NYTimes article on the upper echelon struggles over Khamenei and the Guardian Council form of government.

Most telling, and arguably most damning, is that many influential religious leaders have not spoken out in support of the beleaguered president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Indeed, even among those who traditionally have supported the government, many have remained quiet or even offered faint but unmistakable criticisms.

According to Iranian news reports, only two of the most senior clerics have congratulated Mr. Ahmadinejad on his re-election, which amounts to a public rebuke in a state based on religion.

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Rove deposed

House Judiciary Committee lawyers deposed Karl Rove today in the US Attorneys firings investigation.

Notable detail: "Rove’s deposition began at 10 a.m. and ended around 6:30 p.m, with several breaks, Conyers said."

More than just a few routine questions....

Please welcome the most junior Senator in the chamber....

Meaningful to those who know.....

Sen.-elect Al Franken will use late Minnesota progressive Paul Wellstone's bible at today's swearing-in....

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Looking for the next high....

Unless you want to talk about Sarah Palin ("Speaking in fishing waders from the town of Dillingham....",) or Marc Sanford ("the South Carolina Republican Party voted Monday night to censure Mark Sanford...",) there's not too much out there this morning.

So, to feed the blog. Palin: Those "ethics complaints" that she claims were so expensive for the state that she had to resign are the result of her own ethics reform legislation, a piece of law that she claimed as an early term signature.

Her second signature move, that hugely expensive natural gas pipeline, has been looking likely to fail as the oil companies are hesitating to sign up to commit to its use.

Sanford: It took 4 efforts to pass censure. So, I guess they're not calling on him to resign.

And, The WaPo has a decent piece on Palin's collapsing legacy in Alaska, and CNN gets the latest Palin interview, "I am not a quitter. I am a fighter..."

(I do wish I had something deeper and nobler to offer you....)

Picture of the Day

The surest way to appear not funny is to appear with Harry Reid.....

Thought for the Day

Yesterday evening, as I was driving around, I came across a woman whose car was festooned with those little plastic 99 cent American flags. On the back window, in shoe polish was an exuberant "Sarah Palin 2012."

Always nice to see my state's shame booed by his base......

Two bits on this one...

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn drew boos from a crowd outside the Texas Capitol this afternoon as he spoke at a “tea party” rally organized by the Texas office of Americans for Prosperity....

“You’re the problem,” a crowd member hollered.

First, of course I'm going to take some joy at Sen. Cornyn (and Gov. Perry) being booed by the Tea Party base.

Second, notice that the Tea Party rallies, even the local ones, are still being underwritten and organized by a big money think tank.

The essence of the man

...when the library for George W. Bush opens in 2013 on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, visitors will most likely get to see one of his most treasured items: Saddam Hussein’s pistol....

Also,

Mr. Bush also showed Mr. Hegseth another item: a brick from the Iraq safe house where the Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed by an American air strike in 2006.

To me, this sums up the "mission accomplished" side of George Bush's character. When it was his time, he avoided war with every trick and family string he could pull, but when someone else is doing the dying, he shows the war trophies proudly as his own.

Picture of the Day

(A security guard helps a bank employee to board up the bank's entrance before a demonstration by supporters of ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya in San Pedro Sula July 4, 2009.(REUTERS/Daniel LeClair))














(Supporters of ousted Honduran President, Manuel Zelaya, clash with soldiers in the surroundings of Toncontin international airport in Tegucigalpa. (AFP/Orlando Sierra))

Thought for the Day

If John McCain had had the courage to stand up to the anti-abortion wng of his party to pick the respected and capable Tom Ridge as his VP choice, both the country and the Republicans would be in a better place.

Thought for the Day - 2

Hillary Clinton took more shit for more years than Sarah Palin can even imagine.

Thought for the Day - 3

I think we should elect Tina Fey to something.

Palin observation.

Sarah Palin is resigning about 28 months into her first term as Governor.

Thought on Palin

Maybe, after the Vanity Fair piece, Sarah Palin realized that people weren't just going to forget, that those opinions and grudges weren't going away, that the McCain folks would resiste her and the national media would never take hers seriously.

Maybe she finally realized that she was never going to be President, so she just quit.

Now she can do "dollars for speeches" before another 16 months of Governor-ing dims her star even further. The crowds will be always be friendly, the money will be good, to her people, she will be a sympathetic figure, and, in a little time, she can be a "FoxNews contributor." (Screw the people of Alaska.)

(On the other hand, the "hasty" nature of the thing, with no written speech and no coordinated rollout does feel like something forced by scandal or opportunity.)

Maybe she's going to be the highly paid figurehead president of the NRA, Right to Life, or some other righty group where she can fundraise the maroons?

Oh, and check out enemy Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski's one line statement.

"I am deeply disappointed that the governor has decided to abandon the state and her constituents before her term has concluded," she said in a one-sentence statement.

PS. I'm still "fishing," but Palin's resignation deserved some mention.

Curious

Will Marc Sanford take this second incredible chance to have his story disappear and finally and completely shut up?