Funny & Sad, or LOLPerino

During a press conference about the situation in Pakistan, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino was asked if it was "ever reasonable to restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism." Her response? "In our opinion, no."

Swampland's take on this is priceless:

She also came out against invading other countries without a plan for what's next, putting cronies in charge federal agencies, torture, Medicare part D, treating gay people as second class citizens, and Dick Cheney.

And then she said, "ha-ha, OPPOSITE DAY!"

Endgame, or Could they make it sound any scarier?

Project Censored lists the 25 most censored news stories of 2007. The one I find most horrifying is #14, "Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention Centers in the U.S." These detention centers built under the guise of rounding up immigrants could be easily be used to detain American citizens.

According to Peter Dale Scott:

The contract of the Halliburton subsidiary KBR to build immigrant detention facilities is part of a longer-term Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of “all removable aliens” and “potential terrorists.” In the 1980s Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld discussed similar emergency detention powers as part of a super-secret program of planning for what was euphemistically called “Continuity of Government” (COG) in the event of a nuclear disaster. At the time, Cheney was a Wyoming congressman, while Rumsfeld, who had been defense secretary under President Ford, was a businessman and CEO of the drug company G.D. Searle.

These men planned for suspension of the Constitution, not just after nuclear attack, but for any “national security emergency,” which they defined in Executive Order 12656 of 1988 as: “Any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological or other emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States.” Clearly September 11 would meet this definition, and did, for COG was instituted on that day. As the Washington Post later explained, the order “dispatched a shadow government of about 100 senior civilian managers to live and work secretly outside Washington, activating for the first time long-standing plans.”

The Bush Administration: Suspending more then Habeas Corpus since 2001.

"John Tanner Must Go," If He Doesn't "Die First"

Defending a "controversial photo ID requirement in Georgia" that would likely discriminate against minority voters, John Tanner, the "top-ranking voting rights official at the Justice Department," said that the ID requirement does not disenfranchise minority voters because it truly disenfranchises elderly voters, and minorities "die first." Send a letter urging the acting AG to dismiss Tanner at BarackObama.com.

Cause & Effect, or It Was Bound to Happen

Four days after J.K. Rowling told a Carnegie Hall audience that Dumbledore was gay Bill O'Reilly had this to say:

O’REILLY: Now, Dumbledore is not overtly gay in the book.

TINA JORDAN: Absolutely not.

O’REILLY: So you wouldn’t know whether he was gay or not, right?

JORDAN: And in fact, you don’t know anything about the sex lives of any of the teachers.

O’REILLY: Of any of them. Although those wizards, I’m very very suspicious about what they’re doing in their spare time. So, I think, this is my conclusion, is that J.K. Rowling is a provocateur, did it on purpose, and now is going to let all hell break loose.

Yes, who knows what those fictional witches and wizards are doing when they're not advancing the narrative? Maybe they're cooking up some terrorist plot! Oh, wait, Dumbledore's a good guy. And gay. J.K. Rowling is equating homosexuality with goodness! She wants us all to be gay!

Methinks he doth protest too much.

Mid-East Omnibus, or I'm So Worried

In chronological order:

Story 1: Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte tried to spin al-Qaeda's resurgence in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a good thing.

NEGROPONTE: It’s getting better. It’s definitely getting better. And I’ve heard some people suggest, go so far as to suggest, that al-Qaeda is getting discouraged in Iraq and is thinking more of concentrating their efforts on Afghanistan and other areas.

ROSE: That good news or bad?

NEGROPONTE: Well, I think it’s at least good news that their wings have clipped somewhat in Iraq....

Negroponte’s assertions imply that al Qaeda is not being “crippled” in Iraq but is merely being displaced. Ironically, while the war in Iraq introduced al-Qaeda elements to Iraq, the war may now be directly increasing the threat that originated in Afghanistan.

Story 2: Speaking of Pakistan, the New York Times has a new article reviewing American policy toward the nation following the attempted assassination of Benazir Bhutto. It begins, "The scenes of carnage in Pakistan this week conjured what one senior administration official on Friday called 'the nightmare scenario' for President Bush’s last 15 months in office: Political meltdown in the one country where Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and nuclear weapons are all in play." The article criticizes Bush's attention-shift away from the region and his reliance on General Pervez Musharraf who has little political capital left to spend.

Story 3: This is an excellent article by Fareed Zakaria about Iran. Zakaria slams President Bush and pundits on the right who claim that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "has his finger on the button" and "will trigger World War III." In all actuality, Iran is years away from being able to build a nuclear weapon, and most of the Middle East is aligned against Iran. Zakaria also criticizes those, like Rudy Guiliani, who compare Ahmadinejad with Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. Firstly, Ahmadinejad is largely a figurehead in Iran--the ayatollah wields most of the power--and Hitler, Stalin, and Mao "casually ordered the deaths of millions of their own people, fomented insurgencies and revolutions, and starved whole regions that opposed them....One of the bizarre twists of the current Iran hysteria is that conservatives have become surprisingly charitable about two of history's greatest mass murderers." Zakaria ends with the little-known information that Iran was instrumental in forming our allegiance with the Northern Alliance in the war in Afghanistan and continued to offer cooperation with the U.S. even after being labeled as part of the Axis of Evil by President Bush.

Declining Stature, or Failed State Department

In a recent Swampland article, Joe Klein details how the United States is becoming increasingly ignored overseas:

[1][T]he Iraqis [are] turning to China and Iran to construct electric power plants. This is particularly significant because America's inability to provide electricity in Iraq has been, for average Iraqis, the most infuriating daily evidence of our ineptitude...[2]Russian President Putin [is] offering a new alliance--and a new idea to resolve the nuclear situation--to the Iranians...[3]Turkey [is] empowering its army to move against the Kurdish guerrillas[.]

One of the commenters adds:

I recently heard Byron Wein speak. He contrasted a visit to China this year with a visit two or three years ago. On his previous visit, everyone he met wanted to talk about America; it was almost always the first topic of conversation. On his recent visit, America came up a bit, but less than Europe--despite the fact they were talking to an American. In his words, America has become "just another country". Americans still believe in American exceptionalism and in his judgement, Europeans and Asians did until recently, but that is rapidly fading.

Fruit Falling far from the Tree, or Have you any Wool?

Nothing against Barack Obama, but I find this whole situation hilarious:

When asked about Hillary Clinton during an October 16, 2007, MSNBC interview, Lynne Cheney said that she had a "certain bias" as "Dick [Cheney] and Barack Obama are eighth cousins." When asked if that meant that she was supporting Senator Obama, Cheney replied, "No."

"The Obama campaign's response? 'Every family has a black sheep.'"

Cheney was on MSNBC plugging her new book, Blue Skies, Open Fences. When she appeared on the Daily Show on October 10, Cheney claimed that there have been no terrorist attacks against the United States or American interests since 9/11. When Jon Stewart mentioned the bombings in Madrid and London, Cheney argued that these attacks on our allies' capitals did not count because "we were talking about American interests." The audience booed. Watch it:

All Eight Years of Stewart-Era Daily Show Now Online, or YESSSSS!!!

Thank you, New York Times, for letting me know.

The beginning of the very first episode with Jon Stewart at the helm: (Look how young both he and the Comedy Central logo look!)

Oh, TheDailyShow.com, you are getting favorited. I'm as giddy as a schoolgirl.

Turkey Causes Trouble, or It's Hard Not to Put a Pun Here

This from the Swampland blog over at Time.com:

Over the summer, I took an informal poll of Iraq analysts at various US intelligence agencies about how and whether the Iraq war would spill over into neighboring countries....The near unanimous opinion was...that the border to watch was Turkey-Kurdistan. The mega-fear is that the Turks will move in to "protect" the local Turkmen population if the Kurds take over Kirkuk (and the adjacent oil fields). The more likely scenario was that the Turks would cross the border to take action against the PKK guerrillas, who have been causing real trouble in the Kurdish areas of Turkey for years. Now the Turkish parliament has approved cross-border military action against the PKK. I'm not sure that this is anything more than a warning flare--or an acknowledgement of the sort of raids that have already been taking place on both sides. But it's not very good....

Add this to Turkey threatening to prevent the U.S. from shipping supplies to Iraq through Turkey (70% of all air cargo headed to Iraq goes through Turkey) if the House passes a resolution condemning the Ottoman Empire's WWI-era slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians as an act of genocide, and you can see how Turkey is ruffling a few feathers in the Mid-East. (I'm sorry, I had to.)

Favourite Son, or Apparently He's Serious

Last night on The Colbert Report, Stephen announced that he was running for president in the South Carolina primaries:

Now the New York Times' Caucus blog is reporting that he "is apparently serious enough that his staff reached out to the state’s Democratic and Republican committees in advance of his announcement." Joe Werner, the head of the South Carolina Democratic Party, said, "From what I understand, he does have credible people down here, working to have him placed on the ballot."

The real question now becomes: Will the FCC's equal-time provision cause The Colbert Report to go off the air? Or will it qualify for the exemption for news programs? If it does have to go off the air, would it affect the whole nation or just South Carolina?