Thomas Frank

author of The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule on the Colbert Report.

friday reads

Georgia claimed today to have downed two Russian warplanes over its territory after the former Soviet neighbours came into direct conflict over the breakaway province of South Ossetia.


As U.S. military casualties mount in Afghanistan, a retired four-star Army general, who just returned from reviewing the six-plus-year war effort, said the country "is in misery" and describes the war as "a 25-year campaign."


McCain campaign rewarding trolls and spammers.


Murray Waas: Special prosecutor a possibility as U.S. attorney and DOJ politicization probes reach into the White House?


Because the world doesn't have enough stupid people.


Countdown: Nothing About the FBI's Anthrax Story Adds Up

friday random ten

Photo by Ryan McManus



No Sé
No lo soporto
No lo soporto (2006)



Yellow Moon
Don't Be a Stranger
Frutti di Mare (2007)



Boxer
Mi and L'au
Mi and L'au (2005)



The Catch
Forget Cassettes
Salt (2006)



Rabies (Baby's Got the)
Duchess Says
Noviciat Mère-perruche EP (2006)



Jesus at McDonalds
Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper
Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper (1985)



All Over Again
Jay Reatard
Night of Broken Glass EP (2007)



Lead Me to a Quiet Cell
The Mai 68s
Froth on the Daydream (2008)



Honey You're Wasting Ammo
Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet
Sport Fishin' (1993)



Sports Car
Thinking Fellers Union Local 282
Tangle (1989)


Bonus tracks:



Fuck you estie
MC La Sauce
Québec Émergent (2007)



ちはるの恋 (Chiharu-no-Koi)
ミドリ(Midori)
あらためまして、はじめまして、ミドリです。
(Hello everyone. Nice to meet you. We are MIDORI.) (2008)

thursday reads

Scott Horton: Verdict on Hamdan


Naomi Klein - The Olympics: Unveiling Police State 2.0


Murray Waas: DOJ subpoenas its former lawyers in civil rights probe.


Emptywheel has a very handy Anthrax Timeline.


Campaigners for tougher controls on guns in the US are reeling from the allegation that a prominent member of the movement for more than a decade was a spy working for the powerful pro-gun lobby the National Rifle Association.


What took so long? NYT editorial Guilty as Ordered.


Democracy Now!: Army Recruiter Suspended for Threatening High School Student with Jail Time, Sparks Bipartisan Call for Investigation

Typhus reported in Central Austin

AAS

The Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department is investigating about a dozen cases of possible typhus infection, most of them reported in Central Austin.

The type of typhus found in Texas, murine typhus, is most commonly caused by rats and their fleas, but opossums and cats can also be involved in transmitting the disease, according to the Department of State Health Services Web site. People get it from an infected flea.

Carole Barasch, a spokeswoman for the local agency, said the department is working with the Department of State Health Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to investigate the outbreak.

"It is unusual," she said. "From 1997 to 2006 there were no reports of typhus (in Travis County)." She said she did not know how many were reported last year.

This particular strain of typhus is believed to be deadlier than other strains commonly found in South Texas.

"What the CDC told me is that the strain we're getting here is so much more lethal than what they've been seeing at the border," said Linda Komm, whose son and husband both were diagnosed with typhus. "At the border, people have been getting it and (are) able to (tough) it out, but here, everyone that's been getting it has been going to the hospital."

ObamaPhobia

ObamaPhobia: BAGnewsNotes NetrootsNation Presentation '08

spokesdrone

Pentagon's Unmanned Spokesdrone Completes First Press Conference Mission

tuesday reads

QOTD

"We are deeply disappointed with this recommendation from the board of pardons and paroles," said Donald Francis Donovan of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, counsel to Medellín "The board has failed to support the United States in fulfilling its international legal obligations. The board's action ... risks the safety of thousands of Americans travelling and living abroad.

A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein.


R.I.P. Rakan


Ken Silverstein: Will Bush Administration Let Oil Companies Skate on Money Paid to African Dictator?

Exxon Mobil is quietly commemorating the biggest operating profit in U.S. corporate history, announcing last week that it had earned $11.7 billion during the second quarter. Here’s something else that Exxon, and a number of other major energy firms, are surely commemorating: the apparent failure of the Bush Administration to hold them accountable for possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in Equatorial Guinea, even though congress issued a detailed report more than four years ago that an elementary school student could have used as a roadmap for prosecution.

Back in July of 2004, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations published a study that detailed the practices of seven oil companies in Equatorial Guinea, which has been ruled by dictator Teodoro Nguema Obiang since 1979. The report also looked at the role in the country of Riggs Bank (now PNC), which two months earlier had paid a $25 million fine for effectively helping Obiang and his family stash cash in accounts in Washington. Around this time the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched a probe of the oil companies, with particular scrutiny of Exxon, Marathon and Amerada Hess.

Name change for CIFA


About 1,000 Marines deployed to train Afghan security forces will have their tours of duty extended by 30 days, a U.S. defense official said on Monday.


1 in 4 soldiers at war have hearing loss


The federal judge who presided over the nation's only peer-to-peer copyright-infringement trial announced from the bench here Monday that he is likely to declare a mistrial.


Leonard Pitts Jr.: The Partisan Injustice at Justice


God hates wingnuts


A panel created by state law as an overseer of Capital Metro fares, voted 6-4 to approve what is essentially a doubling of Capital Metro fares by 2010. Man sought in Cap Metro bus hijacking.

anthrax

Democracy Now!: Amy Goodman interviews Gleen Greenwald and Dr. Meryl Nass. Anthrax Mystery: Questions Raised over Whether Government Is Framing Dead Army Scientist for 2001 Attacks

David Neiwert has a few questions:

-- Was Ivins, as Marcy and Glenn Greenwald have wondered, a conscious part of the disinformation campaign to convince Congress and the public to go to war with Iraq?

-- Did Ivins -- if he really was the anthrax killer -- have any co-conspirators, as the evidence suggests?

-- Why was security at Fort Detrick, home of USAMRIID, probably the nation's most sensitive and secretive weapons laboratory, so lax as to allow this to happen?

-- And finally (and perhaps most significantly), was the mere fact of this kind of weaponized anthrax's existence at Fort Detrick another example of the Bush administration's flagrant violations of international law?

Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle criticizes anthrax investigation, saying FBI should provide more information

Think Progress: Former FBI Official: After 9/11, White House Told FBI To Blame Anthrax Attacks On Al Qaeda

Anthrax suspect's colleague 'really, really' doubts his guilt

D-Day: SAnthrax Case Twists and Turns

Pissed On Politics: Anthrax and "The Patriot Act"

Brad Blog: None of the major outlets reporting the news bothered to note that the attacks were all made on perceived "liberals."

Anthrax Vaccine

Anthrax - Gang of Four

sunday reads

HIV epidemic 40% higher than thought

The U.S. HIV epidemic is sharply worse than previously estimated, with thousands more people infected than realized, according to a new government way of calculating cases, officials said Saturday.

The new count shows the number of new HIV infections was closer to 56,300 per year than the 40,000 per year previously reported -- a 41 percent increase for the 15 years up to and including 2006, said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Bob Herbert: Running While Black


John McCain: The Low-Road Warrior


Eight Years Ago Today


Gay Scientists Isolate Christian Gene