60 Minutes did a nice propaganda piece for the military industrial complex, specifically the Raytheon corporation. Common Dreams has the video. The program featured a demonstration of the "non-lethal" Active Denial System, essentially a big ray gun that shoots focused microwave beams that heat up "the target." Supposedly, when the target feels the sensation of having their skin cooked, they will quickly move out of the way avoiding serious burns. What happens to immobilized "targets" who are trampled by a panicked crowd is not explained.

Here's the neat part: This thing was developed for the military with taxpayer money, but there is no planned use of this "non-lethal" crowd-control weapon in Iraq, and Raytheon, which developed the system for the Pentagon, is currently selling a more limited-range civilian version of the system, under the name “Silent Guardian,” which it promotes as being suitable for “law enforcement, checkpoint security, facility protection, force protection and peacekeeping missions.”

It's fairly common knowledge that the position of President in Iran holds very little actual power. Back when moderate reformer Mohammad Khatami held the presidency, we were regularly reminded that he was pretty much of a figurehead with no real power. Now that the confrontational and controversial Ahmadinejad holds the office, we don't hear so much about how the president is not really the top dog. Obviously he makes a convenient boogie man for the right. Why spoil the scariness value. So it's no mystery why the neocon McCain would play this political game. But surely he's not so clueless as to be unaware that the real power in Iran is held by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the cabal of clerics known as the Council of Guardians. After all, McCain is the security expert! Hillary Clinton has assured us that he has passed the Commander in Chief "threshhold"! Could McCain really be that clueless about the leadership of the country he claims is the biggest threat we face? Watch the video below the fold and decide for yourself:

Sometime today between about 11:30 am and noon on MSNBC I heard Andrea Mitchell say something like "Howard Dean obviously commands little respect as DNC Chairman from either the Clinton or Obama camps." This is not an exact quote but as close as I can remember. She was talking to someone about the possibility of some sort of brokered deal in case the delegate count is too close to call. She was questioning whether there are any legitimate leaders in the party and in that context spewed the dismissive Dean comment.

My question is this:

Huckabee schools Al Gore and John Kerry. Note to all future Democratic Candidates facing voting "irregularities" - take a lesson from Gomer Pyle:

As I said, we are prepared to go to court, and we are also prepared to take our case all the way to the Republican National Convention in September.

"Our cause is just. We must reemphasize the sacred American principle that all ballots be counted in a free, fair, and transparent manner."

See entire quote below the fold:

Disclaimer: This diary is about why Hillary sucks as a Democratic nominee against Republicans and John McCain. I don't think she sucks as a Senator or as a person.

Earlier this afternoon I saw Chris Matthews ask Terry McAuliff about Mitt Romney's statement today:

"If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror"

That inane comment is a perfect set-up to annihilate the Republican neo-con security posture. The ball is on the tee ready to be knocked out of the park, unless...   our nominee is Hillary Clinton. Because she voted for the war.

I was watching MSNBC today from about 11:00 to 11:15. A typical crew of the usual suspects/elite media pundits/babbling villagers (Joe Scarborough, Nika Brzezinski, Mike Barnacle, Chuck Todd, and Jill Zuckman) gleefully pontificated on the state of the horse race. Over the course of 15 minutes they briefly touched on the state of the Republican race (It's unpredictable,) mentioning at least four of the Republican candidates. They spent most of the segment talking about the Democratic contest between Obama and Clinton. They spent a creepy amount of time theorizing about why Hillary is unlikable. They apparently have a shiny new soundbyte that they are gleefully clamping onto like a puppy with a new chew toy - "Obama is the future. Hillary is the past." But there was one name who was not mentioned or even alluded to a single time during the entire segment. I had to ask myself, "Am I taking crazy pills or is there a candidate who came in second place between the two candidates of this supposed two-person race?"

Check out this article by Kevin Drum of Washington Monthly. After neatly describing the war hawks' morphing first into "Pottery Barn hawks" and then into their current incarnation as "chaos hawks," he proceeds to challenge the "chaos hawk" prediction of catastrophic regional war if we leave Iraq. Read the whole thing. It's not very long.

THE CHAOS HAWKS....In the beginning were the War Hawks, and much did they counsel the powerful to do battle against the evildoer Saddam. Then came the war, and the looting, and the Heritage Foundation hordes, and the hawks lamented exceeding loud and many soon repented of their ways. Yea, verily, they presently transformed themselves into Pottery Barn Hawks, eager to fix the disaster they had helped create and thus redeem themselves in the eyes of the faithful. In the fullness of time, though, the disaster ripened and flowered and became impossible of resolution, and the hawks despaired. Success had become unachievable, yea unto their own generation and the generation to come after them. In short, life sucked.

Like many of the elite pundits who were tragically wrong on the issue of whether or not to invade and occupy Iraq, Andrew Sullivan is desperately trying to cling to the notion that in spite of being wrong, he is still smarter than those who were right:

A few people - James Fallows, Joe Klein, Brent Scowcroft, for example - opposed the war for sane reasons. They deserve kudos as much as I deserve criticism for not listening to them closely enough. But I went to the pre-war anti-war marches as an observer. I did not hear arguments about the difficulties of managing a sectarian society, nor questions about troop levels, nor worries about the impact of the war on Iran's status in the region. I heard and saw often reflexive hostility to American power, partisan hatred of Bush, and blindness toward Saddam's atrocities. I remember what I saw. And I feel as estranged from that reflexive position today as I did then.

I felt compelled to email Mr. Sullivan my opinion on the matter. Since I spent a good bit of time composing it, I figured I'd squeeze a diary out of it by sharing it with you:

I suggest that everyone on this site put one of Chris Bower's Google Bomb links in their DailyKos signature. (I have seen comments about this, but no diaries. Also, not many people seem to be doing this, so I feel justified in trying to bring more attention to it.) For those who don't know what I'm talking about: Call to Action: Google-Bombing the Election. Also, check out: Google Bomb The Elections: Let's Do This and GoogleBomb The Elections: Pump Up The Volume.

So why put one of these links in your signature? Think about it. When you change your signature, that change instantly shows up in every comment you've ever made on this site. I personally have posted thousands of comments on Daily Kos. That would be thousands of links, no? And that's just for my one signature. There are over 100,000 users making millions of comments. That could be millions of links.

Reading a critique of Noam Chomsky in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial by a Mr. Roger Scruton that is basically a big pile of bullshit compelled me to respond. Below the fold is my commentary inserted into excerpts from the piece. If you want to save time, the editorial is basically your typical anti-Chomsky name calling with no specific critiques on substance. According to Mr. Scruton, Chomsky is a rage-filled, fame-seeking, America hater who gives comfort to our enemies who hate us for our freedoms. At least he didn't call him a communist.

I have read about worries that with Delay gone the storyline of Republican corruption is diminished for the midterm elections. I have a suggestion - All please repeat the following phrase at every opportunity: "the corruption machine built by Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff." "We need a Democratic majority in Congress to break up the corruption machine built by Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff." "Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff may be sitting in/headed for a jail cell where they belong, but the corruption machine they built is still running our government." We need more Democrats in Congress so we can take back our country from the corruption machine built by Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff." See how it works? Everybody join in the fun.

I was watching Hannity and Colmes last night and one of the guests brought up Bush's low poll numbers. Hannity responded with something about Clinton's high poll numbers during the Lewinsky scandal. Judging from the bizarre comments that followed, it seems that Hannity made an unstated leap of logic that Clinton's high approval numbers were because of the scandal rather than in spite of it. He implied that Bush could simply choose to have approval numbers in the 60's by opting to have sex with an intern, thus interpreting Bush's low poll numbers relative to Clinton as evidence of Bush's moral superiority. He then accused the guest of advocating that Bush "give up his soul and have sex with an intern" in order to get Clinton's high approval numbers. The whole exchange was truly bizarre. I hope Crooks and Liars or Media Matters can get the video of this. I looked on the Fox News site for a transcript but couldn't find it.

Check this out:

Sen. Evan Bayh, a possible presidential candidate in 2008, said Thursday that his party lacks credibility on national security

Man, that's for sure. His party took got the country into an unnecessary war based on lies, then did everything imaginable to fuck it up, and now has no idea how to get us out of the nightmarish quagmire they've created. It's draining our treasury, destroying our military, fueling anti-American hatred around the world, and creating a terrorist recruitment bonanza beyond Osama Bin Laden's wildest dreams. At the same time they have underfunded the program to buy up loose Soviet nukes and are blowing it on the non-proliferation front in general. Evan Bayh is absolutely right. It's about time somebody pointed out the fact that Republicans have absolutely no credibility on national sec...

Wait a minute! Evan Bayh isn't a Republican! He's supposed to be a Democrat! What the fuck is he talking about???

I read the following item from Political Wire:

GOP Offers Reward for Daley

The Cook County Republican Party "is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to an indictment and conviction of" Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley (D), "whose administration has been buffeted by scandal," the AP reports.

"The reward follows last week's announcement by federal prosecutors that they had charged two City Hall officials with rigging the city's hiring system to get around a 1983 court order that bars officials from hiring employees for political reasons."

and initially misread "Daley" thinking it was about DeLay. Then I thought, "Hey, why not DeLay?"

Three weeks ago a videotape was found that shows O. J. Simpson killing his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. The tape appears to come from a heretofore unknown security camera outside Brown's Brentwood area condominium in Los Angeles, California.

Although news of the tape's discovery was covered widely in Britain and has spread rapidly over the internet, the discovery of the tape has received no coverage in any major newspapers or on network or cable television news in the U.S.

Newspaper editors have recently felt compelled to respond to thousands of emails asking why the videotape has not been covered. The general editorial response is that the videotape is "not news" because "everybody" already knew that O. J. did it.

As Los Angeles Times editor and columnist, Michael Kinsley, informs us, "You don't need a secret video to know this."

Congressman John Conyers held a congressional forum on media bias on Tuesday. The speakers included Al Franken, David Brock, Randi Rhoades, Bernie Sanders, John Aravosis from AmericaBlog, Eric Alterman and others. It was broadcast live on Air America during the Franken show, but was frustatingly interrupted by commercials.

Just heard Franken announce it will be shown on C-Span Saturday at 8:00 p.m.

I recommend it. All of the speakers were great, especially the ones I had never heard of.

See my earlier diary for a discussion thread from the live broadcast.

House Dems to hold forum on media bias Tuesday with Franken, Brock, others:

It is being broadcast live on Al Franken's show on Air America RIGHT NOW.

Wesley Clark: "intelligence not fixed" part II