"Curveball" Admits He Lied about Iraq WMD

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Tuesday February 15, 2011 · 10:12 AM PST

2011/02/15 · 10:12

Remember "Curveball"? The Iraqi defector who claimed to have evidence that Saddam was acquiring WMDs, evidence that formed a major part of George W. Bush's case for going to war:

Curveball was the chief source of inaccurate prewar U.S. accusations that Baghdad had biological weapons, a commission appointed by Bush reported this year. The commission did not interview Curveball, who still insists his story was true, or the German officials who handled his case. ...
At the Central Intelligence Agency, officials embraced Curveball's account even though they could not confirm it or interview him until a year after the invasion. LA Times 20 Nov 2005

Well, Curveball now admits he made it all up:

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995. UK Guardin (today)

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Boehner in TOTAL Disconnect

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Thursday January 27, 2011 · 11:02 AM PST

2011/01/27 · 11:02

When I watched the SOTU live the other night, I couldn't help wondering what was John Boehner doing behind the President. He looked either bored or contemptuous, or both. When he clapped, he gave every impression of doing it only because he felt he had to; the look of "unpleasant duty" would have almost comical if it weren't plastered to the face of the Speaker of the House.

Well, now we know one thing he wasn't doing: listening.

BOEHNER: Well, they -- they've refused to talk about America exceptionalism. We are different than the rest of the world. Why? Because Americans have -- the country was built on an idea that ordinary people could decide what their government looked like and ordinary people could elect their own leaders. Politico (from transcript of a CNN Parker/Spitzer show)

Except that the President did exactly that.

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Friday January 14, 2011 · 4:01 PM PST

2011/01/14 · 16:01

Why is the Radical Right trying to be Jewish all of a sudden? First it was Sarah Palin accusing her critics of "manufactur[ing] a blood libel" against her. Now the Washington Times is saying the outcry over that term amounts to a "pogrom" against conservatives:

This is simply the latest round of an ongoing pogrom against conservative thinkers. Washington Times editorial 12 Jan 2011

A pogrom, let us be clear, is a physically violent attack by an organized mob, explicitly or implicitly backed by the government, against a minority group. It leaves in its wake murder, mayhem, fire and destruction. And its most common targets have been Jews.

And the Washington Times editors say that is what Palin is going through.

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Tuesday December 21, 2010 · 2:25 PM PST

2010/12/21 · 14:25

Taegan Goddard's Political Wire just reported this snippet from a Fox News [mp3] interview with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC):

"When it's all going to be said and done, Harry Reid has eaten our lunch. This has been a capitulation in two weeks of dramatic proportions of policies that wouldn't have passed in the new Congress." Political Wire Extra Bonus Quote of the Day

Or, as TPM's headline had it: A "capitulation" of "dramatic proportions."

There is, shall we say, a slight whiff of sour grapes in the wind.

DanK Is Back

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Wednesday December 08, 2010 · 10:51 AM PST

2010/12/08 · 10:51

Unnoticed in all the screaming over President Obama's deal with the GOP is the fact that he called the Republicans some very nasty names:

Q Mr. President, what do you say to Democrats who say you’re rewarding Republican obstruction here? You yourself used in your opening statement they were unwilling to budge on this. A lot of progressive Democrats are saying they’re unwilling to budge, and you’re asking them to get off the fence and budge. Why should they be rewarding Republican obstruction?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me use a couple of analogies. I’ve said before that I felt that the middle-class tax cuts were being held hostage to the high-end tax cuts. I think it’s tempting not to negotiate with hostage-takers, unless the hostage gets harmed. Then people will question the wisdom of that strategy. In this case, the hostage was the American people and I was not willing to see them get harmed. Whitehouse.gov

Well, almost unnoticed. The right-wing media is not happy with these words.

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Wednesday November 17, 2010 · 12:20 PM PST

2010/11/17 · 12:20

A state representative on Tuesday filed a bill that would require any candidate for president or vice president of the United States to show his or her birth certificate to the Texas secretary of state, another indication of just how ambitious the conservative agenda for next year’s session of the Texas Legislature is expected to be.

"This bill is necessary because we have a president whom the American people don’t know whether he was born in Kenya or some other place," Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, said in reference to President Barack Obama and of House Bill 295. "If you are running for president or vice president, you’ve got to show here in Texas that you were born in the United States and the birth certificate is your proof." Lubbock (TX) Avalanche-Journal

It's been over two weeks since the midterms. What took them so long?

DanK Is Back

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Tuesday November 09, 2010 · 10:33 AM PST

2010/11/09 · 10:33

Early in October, New Gov. Chris Christie (R, of course) canceled a rail tunnel project under the Hudson:

[Christie canceled] the largest public works project in the U.S., a commuter train tunnel between northern New Jersey and New York City. Christie's rationale was simple: The cash-strapped state, which has the fourth highest debt per capita, cannot afford it. Daily Finance 9 Oct

Now the government wants its money back:

New Jersey must repay the U.S. government $271 million immediately for money spent on the proposed Hudson River rail tunnel that Governor Chris Christie canceled, a Federal Transit Administration official said. Bloomberg

Oops.

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Friday October 29, 2010 · 4:10 PM PDT

2010/10/29 · 16:10

Talking Points Memo has a new story up about the Alaska senate race:

The flood of write-in candidates in the Alaska Senate race was pushed by Big Government's Dan Riehl and the conservative group Conservatives 4 Palin in an attempt to hurt Sen. Lisa Murkowski's own write-in campaign and give Republican nominee (and tea party favorite) Joe Miller a boost.

Except that McAdams is more likely to benefit now.

DanK Is Back

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Wednesday October 27, 2010 · 9:59 AM PDT

2010/10/27 · 09:59

Not the kind you're thinking of. According to the rabbis of the Talmud, the sin of Sodom, for which God destroyed the place, was this:

There were four judges in Sodom, [named] Shakrai [Liar], Shakurai [Awful Liar], Zayyafi [Forger], and Mazle Dina [Perverter of Justice]. ... If one wounded his neighbour they would say to him [the victim], 'Give him a fee for bleeding thee.' B. Sanh. 109b

Sound familiar?

DanK Is Back

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Tuesday October 26, 2010 · 2:13 PM PDT

2010/10/26 · 14:13

The unseen hand in the 2010 election is that of Ayn Rand, whose Atlas Shrugged has become a fundamental text for the Tea Partiers. They are buying her book in record numbers, and telling each other to be like the book's hero, John Galt. Ron Johnson tells George Will that the book inspired him to run against Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. Rand Paul (Rand is short for Randal; he was not named after the author) calls himself a "big fan." Rep. Paul Ryan, senior Republican on the House Budget Committee, hands out copies of Atlas Shrugged as gifts.

In an irony akin to the tea partiers' call to keep the government's hands off their medicare, people in the real world that Ayn Rand would pick as her heroes are behaving like the villains in her book, and vice-versa.

DanK Is Back

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Sunday October 03, 2010 · 6:08 PM PDT

2010/10/03 · 18:08

I had really expected to see this story diaried and discussed before I got back from Guatemala this morning. But it seems not, so I'll start:

Susan Reverby, a historian at Wellesley, has been researching the Tuskegee Experiment, a study of the effects of syphilis on 400 Black men carried out without their knowledge or consent from 1932 to 1972. While digging through the archives, she came across documents that Dr. John C. Cutler, who would join the Tuskagee project in the 1960s, conducted a similar experiment in Guatemala from 1946 through 1948.

From 1946 to 1948, American public health doctors deliberately infected nearly 700 Guatemalans — prison inmates, mental patients and soldiers — with venereal diseases in what was meant as an effort to test the effectiveness of penicillin.NYT 1 Oct 2010

The next paragraphs, below the fold, require a strong stomach.

DanK Is Back

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Wednesday September 15, 2010 · 10:46 AM PDT

2010/09/15 · 10:46

We're breathing a collective sigh of relief around here over the Delaware senate race, now that the GOP has chosen a batshit insane candidate who has no chance of winning (assuming that Chris Coons doesn't do a Coakley, that is - but he won't, because the Coakley debacle happened in this election cycle and is still fresh in everyone's mind).

Still, the cries that this makes it highly unlikely to impossible that the GOP would take over the Senate are, to my mind, misplaced. First because the GOP never really had a great shot at doing so; most projections even in the dark days of August had them coming up 2-3 seats short.

But I go to thinking this morning that there may a second reason: It's possible that the GOP would just as soon not take over the Senate this time around.

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