Nutjobs Ranting About Politics.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Boston has already exceeded last year's murder tally. Leadership matters and affirmative action gets people killed.

The NYT had a beautiful article on a NYC precinct yesterday. I loved the unmarked anti-crime unit "Taxicab" vehicle for the precinct. As if that doesn't stand out after awhile. Mostly good stuff. It made the lesbian lieutenant appear a bit unprofessional though, and that's probably not going to be good for her career.

On another note: http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-cop09.html

An officer in Chicago gets killed by a drunken driver on saturday night at 5:45 AM in a completely psycho area where there are probably 30 officers on the overnight shift. A friend emails me to note that this is the second time this (drunk driver, dead officer) has happened in this district, on this watch, in 6 years. How ya like them odds?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

More on the fall-out from the administration's leak:

• The British MI5 was forced to have the London cell of 13 arrested immediately on Tuesday, fearing that they would flee now that they knew Khan had been arrested two weeks earlier. The British do not, however, appear to have finished gathering enough evidence to prosecute the 13 in the courts successfully.
  
  It now turns out, according to Neville, that "Reports last week also claimed that five al Qaida militants were on the run in the UK after escaping capture in last Tuesday’s raids." If this is true, it is likely that the 5 went underground on hearing that Khan was in custody. That is, the loose lips of the Bush administration enabled them to flee arrest.

link

eta: Condi Rice's explanation, such as it is, of why his name is out there is pretty bogus. When all else fails, blame the press!

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Ty, unless the story pans out, and I don't mean by blog story, I will now assume you are a SPED. In fact, I may make you new Gilligan now that GGG has admitted to being my dog.

Dude, cut back on the acid.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
BTW, "Secretary"? Treasury, yes. Interior, maybe. But Homeland Security? Can't we find a tougher name for this job? It sounds like he's wearing both cat-eye spectacles and an apron.

"Overlord"?

Already taken. -- T.S.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

This excerpt lifted from Drum's blog:

"'I spent five weeks trying to find good people,' said Mr. Hastert, who said he approached state legislators and the former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka and Gary Fencik, an Ivy Leaguer who was a hard-hitting safety.

"'I got down into last week interviewing a 70-year-old guy who was a great farm broadcaster in Illinois,' Mr. Hastert said. 'He decided because of his health problems he couldn't do it. You know, we were down — we needed to find somebody to run, somebody who wanted to run. And, you know, Alan Keyes wants to run, and I hope he's a good candidate.'"

-- Dennis Hastert (R. Ill.), Speaker of the House (as reported by NYT)

Lord! Its nice to laugh at Republicans for a change!

S_A_M

P.S. "Our economy is strong, and its getting stronger!"

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Ty, unless the story pans out, and I don't mean by blog story, I will now assume you are a SPED. In fact, I may make you new Gilligan now that GGG has admitted to being my dog.

Hey, Hank! This is Fox News and CNN shit now, not merely a blog story. Condi has essentially admitted that they disclosed the identity of the AQ guy to try to deflect criticism over the new terror alert -- but didn't know whether he was being used by the Pakistanis. (If he was, and I wouldn't trust any Paki source 100%.)

That said, no one will care much (too esoteric for the public and makes a lousy sound-bite). I think that this whole episode, which hopefully did relatively little damage to the War on Terror, is most interesting because it seems to show the administration as quite nervous -- in full campaign mode.

Kerry is making mistakes, but at least he has learned a lot of lessons from Gore's defeat. It should be interesting. (The bonus is that if my side loses, I am personally better off by several thousand dollars per year.)

S_A_M

[Secret_Agent_Man]

From the article:

"Gordon's mother said her son was recently told he was not writing enough parking tickets. But he pointed out that he and his partner had made 44 felony arrests over the past 60 days."

Just goes to show you the beaurocracy everywhere.

S_A_M

[Tyrone Slothrop]

• Gen. Tommy Franks, "producer of the early military successes in Afghanistan and Iraq, said Sunday that criticism of John Kerry's war record is political hyperbole and Kerry is 'absolutely' qualified to be commander in chief," the AP reports.
  
  Franks also said he has not decided whether to endorse President Bush for re-election, though he is "leaning in that direction."

link

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Kerry is making mistakes, but at least he has learned a lot of lessons from Gore's defeat. It should be interesting. (The bonus is that if my side loses, I am personally better off by several thousand dollars per year.)

S_A_M

You're forgetting the impact of the Bush recession on our incomes in making this calculation.

[Hank Chinaski]

a vacationing group of Frenchmen has attacked some Jews during a tour of Auschwitz crematorium.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...256783&apage=1

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
a vacationing group of Frenchmen has attacked some Jews during a tour of Auschwitz crematorium.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...256783&apage=1

Huh? A group of 50 Jews were "verbally attacked by a three-member gang of French male tourists"?

Hank, why did you post this? If you're inclined to raise every anecdotal episode of 3 or so Frenchmen acting like assholes, you'll become a very busy man, but I still won't understand what you're expecting me to draw from it.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Huh? A group of 50 Jews were "verbally attacked by a three-member gang of French male tourists"?

Hank, why did you post this? If you're inclined to raise every anecdotal episode of 3 or so Frenchmen acting like assholes, you'll become a very busy man, but I still won't understand what you're expecting me to draw from it.

You know what happened at Auschwitz right? Or are you on-board with Mel Gibson's dad?

I won't post EVERY episode of Frenchmen acting like assholes, and I've not really finalized my bright line of when to post. However, it is safe to say assulting Jews at the crematorium isn't really a close call.

Why did the dipshits go there? Had their parents been involved in the railroad staff? Were they there more to see the equipment?

Please. I hit my daughter in the sanctity of the Anne Frank house. I know from inappropriate behavior.

[Hank Chinaski]

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski

It's pretty well documented now that the people who are using the National Journal to claim that Kerry is so liberal are misrepresenting things:

• But the National Journal's rankings were only for roll call votes in 2003 - a fact obscured by many in the press. And because Kerry and Edwards were campaigning for most of the year, their scores were based on substantially fewer votes than those of other senators. A more comprehensive analysis by University of Houston political scientist Keith Poole of all contested roll call votes they cast during the year found that Kerry and Edwards fall near the median among Senate Democrats.
  
  The National Journal article announcing the magazine's rankings also noted that Kerry and Edwards were considerably less liberal for significant portions of their Senate careers. In fact, as scholars at the center-left Brookings Institute pointed out in a New York Times op-ed Monday, when considering all the votes they have cast over the course of their careers, Kerry and Edwards have been considerably less liberal than the National Journal rankings imply, The Brookings Institution scholars found that Kerry, while more liberal than the average Democrat, is "closer to the center of the Democratic Party than he is to the most liberal senators, including Mr. Kennedy." Edwards, by contrast, has cast votes that make his record slightly more conservative than the average Senate Democrat.
  
  Yet the charge continues to circulate. Commentators who have repeated the "most liberal" label without sufficient context in the last three weeks include Kathleen Parker in the Orlando Sentinel, Cosmos Macero Jr. in the Boston Herald, the editorial boards of the Washington Times and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Bush-Cheney campaign manager advisor Ken Mehlman on CNN's "Inside Politics," Republican strategist Mathew Dowd on "Tim Russert" on CNBC, and Jim Angle on "Fox Special Report with Brit Hume." "Most liberal" is now a contender for the most misleading label of Campaign 2004.

from Spinsanity (equal-opportunity debunkers of this kind of crap -- see, e.g., their takedown of Michael Moore)

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
You know what happened at Auschwitz right?

Yeah, Hank. I've heard.

I won't post EVERY episode of Frenchmen acting like assholes, and I've not really finalized my bright line of when to post. However, it is safe to say assulting Jews at the crematorium isn't really a close call.

Hey, go nuts.

That you didn't choose to use this opportunity to draw back the camera to a wide shot and intone something ominous about the entire country at least makes me comfortable in concluding that you're not NotMe's sock. Today.