"To Hell, I say, with function"

Quote of the Day

Wow, two quotes back to back- I must not be blogging worth a damn lately! Anyhow, here's a good one from Josh Marshall at TPM (emphasis, as always, mine);

Let's be honest with ourselves: the American right has a deep-seated problem with political violence. It's deep-seated; it's recurrent and it's real. And it endangers the country. It just makes sense to say something the first time they hit the sauce and not wait for things to get really out of hand.

Quote of the Day

TPM's effort to search the Judiciary committee's document dump revealed some interesting exchanges- this is from an email exchange regarding the Bush administration's political firing of U.S. Attorneys (emphasis mine, redacted curse words theirs);

For what it’s worth, a lawyer (who Domenici listens to) in the meeting with the Senator last night said “he (Bowles) wouldn’t be my first choice.” Then later he confided to me that Bowles “acted like a pussy.” I’ve never met this guy, but between that candor and his record of being a soft R, I can’t imagine him doing the job we need done. Howe do things get so f__ked up?

This makes it quite clear these firings were done with the intent of putting loyal people to "do the job we want done" in the Justice department, which is of course incredibly immoral, and very likely illegal too.

The only question now is when will the other shoe drop... I'm still hoping to see Karl Rove marched away in handcuffs, if possible.

Russia Attacked Twitter to Silence Pro-Georgia Blogger

Surprising news about the recent denial of service attack which shut down Twitter- turns out one blogger is insisting the attack was initiated by Russia in an attempt to silence his pro-Georgian views- via the NYT;

Facebook’s chief security officer, Max Kelly, told CNet that the attack was aimed at a user known as Cyxymu, who had accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LiveJournal and other sites affected by Thursday’s cyberassault.

In an interview with The Guardian, the blogger said he believed the strike was an attempt to silence his criticism on the behavior of Russia in the conflict over the South Ossetia region in Georgia, which began a year ago on Friday.

How did a targeted attack against a single user manage to cripple Twitter for almost an entire day?

The assault was two-pronged, said Beth Jones, a security analyst with Internet security firm Sophos.

Early Thursday, the attackers sent out a wave of spam in the name of Cyxymu. The technique, known as a “joe job,” is intended to discredit a Web user by making him appear as though he is the source of a large amount of junk e-mails.

“They’re literally designed to smear someone’s online reputation,” said Ms. Jones. “These hackers wanted to make him look responsible for millions of spam e-mails that went out yesterday morning.”

The messages contained links to Cyxymu’s accounts on several social networks and Web sites, including LiveJournal, Twitter and Facebook.

The next leg of the attack, Ms. Jones said, was a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack designed to knock Cyxymu off the Web.

What will the Obama Administration's response be if this turns out to be the work of the Russian government? How does one diplomatically cite a nation for shutting down an international website?

Quote of the Day

Larry Flynt gives the President a stern public talking-to... via the Daily Beast;

You have failed to keep many campaign promises. You’ve ignored civil-liberty violations such as warrantless wiretapping. You passed a stimulus package that is obviously full of pork for Democrats. You handed over billions more in taxpayer dollars to crooked bankers. You listened to the very people who created our economic meltdown, the Mutt and Jeff team of Larry Summers and Tim Geithner. You’ve let the insurance lobbyists hijack health-care reform to the detriment of every man, woman, and child in America.

I don't intend these recent posts to exclusively shitbag Obama- after all, I did vote for the guy, and on most issues our political goals are aligned. However, as the header says on this blog, the one thing I will always retain is my distrust.

The Obama Administration is treading dangerously close to losing a chunk of the Left. Wise up, guys!

Say It Ain't So II

Yet again my progressive values get trod upon- stolen wholesale from the admirably concise and always newsworthy Political Wire (emphasis, as always, mine);

"Under Barack Obama, the process of political payoff through ambassadorial appointments has matched and appears poised to exceed the already extremely abusive system that Karl Rove put in place under the Bush Administration," reports Harpers magazine.

"In his first six months, Obama has forwarded 58 ambassadorial nominees to the Senate for confirmation. Retired career diplomat Dennis Jett reports in the Daily Beast that 32 of these nominees -- 55% of the total -- are political appointees."

"Political appointees are not per se objectionable... But the Obama political appointees are of a different caliber. What distinguishes them is not a career in public service or finance, much less foreign relations or foreign area expertise, but rather something far grubbier: raising substantial sums of money for the Obama campaign."

Say it ain't so!

Say It Ain't So

Having tried to support President Obama since his inauguration (despite earlier misgivings) this piece has really started to turn my opinion on what was touted previously as the "most open White House in history";

Increased transparency was a campaign pledge Obama made at every turn during the election campaign. As president, he said he would invite television cameras into the negotiating sessions over healthcare. C-SPAN would record every word, Obama said, while he and members of Congress, as well as representatives of healthcare industry, hashed out a plan to overhaul the nation's healthcare system.

The discussions have not played out that way. Obama has met repeatedly in the White House with congressional leaders to discuss healthcare strategy. No cameras or reporters have been allowed to cover the talks. The White House has announced deals with hospital and drug industry executives -- negotiated behind closed doors -- as part of its push to revamp healthcare.

"We think the record is mixed on transparency," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "They've promised more than they've delivered, and we've been disappointed. But it's seven months in, it's early, and we hope they can get it right."

Linda Douglass, a spokeswoman for the White House, said the Obama administration is disclosing far more than its predecessors.

"The public has had much more of a window on the process of discussing these things with various interest groups than they've ever had before," Douglass said. "It could be that some meetings have certainly been in a private setting, but I don't know if the president had promised that every single conversation he has everywhere would be webcast."

Obama must be careful, or the progressives like myself who were wooed to his side during the campaign last year could turn on him quickly.

Quote of the Day

Bill Moyers goes off on the quid-pro-quo government norms in DC;

The game goes on and the insiders keep dealing themselves winning hands. Nothing will change - nothing - until the moneylenders are tossed out of the temple, the ATM's are wrested from the marble halls, and we tear down the sign they've placed on government - the one that reads, "For Sale."

Fox News Likely Tipped Off Ensign

Sounds like good old "Frothy Discharge" Santorum, former Senator now working at Fox News, may have tipped off Senator Ensign that his affair was about to go public;

Doug Hampton, husband of Cindy Hampton, Sen. John Ensign’s (R-Nev.) mistress, claims that former GOP Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.) may have tipped off his ex-colleague that the Hamptons were going public with the story over the adulterous relationship.

In an interview with Jon Ralston, a Las Vegas Sun columnist, Doug Hampton suggested that Santorum told Ensign that the Hamptons were going to reveal the affair and then Ensign held his own Las Vegas press conference in a bid to control the political damage from the revelation.

“One of the correspondents that is part of Fox News is Rick Santorum,” Hampton told Ralston in an interview. “I sent a note to Rick. I begged Rick to call me, to talk to me before, and he didn’t. Obviously, in my opinion, I could be wrong, but that would be what I supposed happen. And if I’m wrong, Rick, forgive, but it appears to me how it happened.”

Hampton pointed to the fact that Ensign was in Washington on June 15, but then traveled back to Nevada the next day to hold his press conference, as evidence that someone had told Ensign about a letter that Doug Hampton had written to Fox News on June 11, offering information on the affair between the senator and his wife.

I have nothing more to add except to say how pleased I am that Rick Santorum has found a way to publicly shit the bed again.

Quote of the Day

“It seems like some of us Republicans are taking our conservative message, mixing it with personal prejudices and racist views, and calling it patriotism,” says McAllister. “You can cover cyanide with chocolate, but you still can't call it candy.”

Lenny McAllister, author of the upcoming Diary of a Mad Black PYC (Proud Young Conservative) in response to a racial posting on Facebook by a (formerly) aspiring Republican leader.