Fox was playing unfair with Kerry and Clinton snapshots during the convention. Someone at AFP decided to balance the photographic smear battle.

He gets results- Al Jazeera, the voice of Al Quaeda and the Baathists (tounge in cheek), is reporting that Al Zarqawi has been captured.

Even if it turns out not to be true, it’s another example (like Lybia and regime change in Palestine) of the knock-on effects in the middle east. They’re still spewing propoganda, but it’s pro-freedom, democracy, mom, and apple pie propoganda.

Because this administration has no shame.

That’s also the answer to the final question posed by Howard Kurtz in this item about the arrest of an Al Qaeda lieutenant wanted by the United States in the 1998 bombings at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

In fact, [The New Republic] quoted one unidentified Pakistani intelligence official as saying that a White House aide told the head of the spy agency last spring that “it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT [High-Value Target] were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July.” Those just happened to be the first three days of the Democratic convention.

…

And get this: The arrest was actually made Sunday, the AP reported from Islamabad. But the capture was announced Thursday. The bulletins hit the wires soon after 3 p.m., or about seven hours before John Kerry delivers his acceptance speech.

Keep your scarecrows alive by tossing them seeds from the trees. Very, very cool looking and cool playing game.

Regime change in the Middle East is working.

Iraq may be going through some growing pains (which is not an understatement – returning soilders are suprised at how negative the coverage is), but Lybia has been scared onto the straight and narrow, and now there are signs that Palestine may be free of the albatross around its neck – an albatross who at times has been embraced by the last two administrations.

Specifically, there are growing rumblings among Palistenians that Arafat must go.

According to a June poll of 1,320 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza territory conducted by the Ramallah-based Palestine Center for Policy Survey Research, 87% of Palestinians believe there is corruption in the Palestinian Authority; nine out of ten believe fundamental reform is needed.

Nabil Amar, a former Cabinet member and outspoken voice of reform in the Palestinian Legislative Council, says pressure on Arafat to enact reforms must continue. Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza “is a chance for the Palestinians to show the world that we are worthy of self rule and this can spread to the West Bank,” Amar says.

Much of the credit is being given to Israel’s plan to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza, finally giving the Palestinians land to call their own. But, with a fine eye for nuance, one can see the contagion of people who can look to their east and see another land with a dictator deposed beginning to bloom.

So I was reading through Kerry’s acceptance speech this morning (after listening to the rundown on ATC) and I was struck by how little Kerry was running on. It basically boils down to “I served in Vietnam, and George Bush is a liar.” There were throwaway references to his time as a prosecutor, and his time in the senate, but his campaign has been built on his experiences of more than 30 years ago, unfounded allegations of unilateralism (Except for the Frogs), and charges of trumped up political use of intelligence that have been dismissed by commissions on both sides of the Atlantic.

He’s held up his Vietnam record (as he should, see below. And as he should have done when he returned from the war), but when questioned on his voting in the Senate, that part of his record becomes ancient history. And wasn’t he a lieutenant governor somewhere?

Today’s reason: hypocrisy about the true nature of Beltway politics.

FactCheck.org does a good start of explaining Kerry’s now infamous quote “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”, but it forgets to mention that Bush threatened to veto the bill if his precious tax-cuts were rolled back by the ammendment Kerry tried to attach to the bill.

…the bill Kerry opposed did contain $300 million requested by the Pentagon to buy best-grade body armor for all troops in Iraq, and also contained additional combat pay and health benefits for reservists called to active duty. …Kerry had co-sponsored an amendment, which was defeated, to pay for the measure by rolling back some of Bush’s tax cuts. …For the record, the body-armor money amounted to just over 1/3 of 1 percent of the $87 billion supplemental bill that Kerry opposed.

Vetoing military spending is something Bush has threatened several times. Ignoring the fact that many politicians, including the POTUS, will alternately support or denounce bills as they are formed in committees and passed through Congress is an attempt to dumb-down the political process to fit in the NeoCon echo chamber.

NPR profiled James Prosek, a 20-something artist who makes a living painting fish. I think artists need a story. It doesn’t need to be a fabrication.

Missy and I went to one of his shows after his first book came out; he seemed a normal guy (he was probably 21 or so then) who was somewhat amazed at the number of people who wanted to buy fish pictures.

In any case, he’s living a dream – fishing and writing. Another reason to like Connecticut.

Here’s a change – a reason to vote for a candidate:

The NYT, that bastion of liberalism between Hell’s Gate and the Hudson, reports on the IRS’s income figures.= The lead is “American’s Income Shrunk for 2 Consecutive Years”. That’s true, but it fails to reflect consistient gains in income for the middle class despite the overall bad economy. (The chart below was a javascript dealy, so I took a screenshot)

A couple of notable stats – The number of returns below $25K dropped – the folks at the bottom are getting lifted up. The folks in the upper middle class ($75-$100K, people in the burbs) showed the both the largest gain in population and in adjusted income – the American Dream has flourished thanks to targeted middle class tax cuts. And Ashcroft’s relentless pursuit of corporate cheats has knocked the highest earning Americans down a peg.

George Bush’s programs and tax plans have been good for the middle class, and not even the NYT can hide that.

You’re going to hear a whole lot in August about the Kerry Campaign’s decision to “go dark” (3rd item) during that month.

Wow, I can hear you saying – that’s a ballsy move, and will give the candidate the chance to press the flesh without worrying about spending campaign cash. But won’t that be 31 days of open window for GW? Stupid public finance rules.

What’s being overlooked are the free speech restrictions in McCain/Feingold CFR, most notably, the restriction on anyone besides candidates buying campaign ads within 60 days of a national election. So the 527s have over $125 million to burn in the next month, before they’re restricted by law from expressing their views.

So, it’s another shrewd move by the Kerry Camp. Not that there’s any coordination going on between them and the 527’s. But “going dark”, in addition to not oversaturating the market, will also land them a schwack-ton of mentions on the TV news, and many favorable interviews (“But why go dark?” “Well, Katie, we wanted to take the time after the conventions to connect with the voters, to give more of America a chance to really get to know us. We don’t feel like we’ve had a chance to introduce the Johns to America in the last 18 months of campaigning, and now we can do that without the distraction of advertising.”)

This made my day:

Economists searching for reasons why some nations are richer than others have found that those with a wide belief in hell are less corrupt and more prosperous, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

… “Adam Smith wrote that one of religion’s most important contributions to the economic development process is its value as a moral enforcement mechanism,” they (Being the researchers at the Fed) said.

Obviously, there are heathen dissenters (Who most likeley are sponges off the economy):

Ellen Johnson, president of American Atheists Inc., called the study the latest gimmick from the religious establishment to drum up government support.

“Religious people cannot rely on their theology to promote what they do so they turn to other things,” she said.

You, too, can get the Fed’s pamphlet, “Jesus wants you to be a capitalist” off their website. They’ve also got good stuff like Light Rail – Waste of Money, and Satan’s Carriage and Greenspan for Pope – Money as a Belief System.

Heh. Suppose this is the last TJBTACFAM post for a while – we’ll move it back to “SPORTS” until next year…

In any case, I’ve been catching way too much harshing on OLN for not covering Armstrong crossing the finish line in Paris. All I can say to that is

Whoop de freakin’ doo.

Today’s reason: two for one.

In an effort to both keep government operations secret from citizens and impact the ability of citizens to fairly defend themselves in court:

The federal Government Printing Office has ordered libraries across the country to destroy five US Department of Justice pamphlets that provide how-to instructions on prosecuting asset forfeiture cases, invoking a rarely-used authority to order the removal of items the government routinely sends to hundreds of libraries. …

The office’s one-paragraph directive listed the five pamphlets, with titles such as “Civil and Criminal Forfeiture Procedure” and “Select Federal Assets Forfeiture Statutes,” and instructed librarians to “withdraw these materials immediately and destroy all copies by any means to prevent disclosure of their content,” according to a copy of the e-mail sent to the Boston Public Library and all other depository libraries.

Is it just me, or is the fact that a druggie and a porn star are hosting a teen awards show another sure sign of the apocalypse?

Mil Millington (of Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argues About fame — which you should have read already) sends out periodic email about things he and his girlfriend have argued about and updates on books he’s writing and how his life is going. His most recent email had a line I knew would put a smile on your face.

Those of you who awoke one feverish morning to find yourself American…you are…blessed with the Democratic Convention right now: in which spectacle you may find distraction and delight. Sadly, over here, we’ll see little, if any, of it. So, I humbly ask that I be allowed the chance to live through you, my beloved American seated Mailing Listers. Let your eyes, in place of mine, savour the moment when Kerry takes the stage and, with a heart-breaking wail of pain, Hillary Clinton collapses to the ground sobbing, ‘It should be me – it should be meeeee,’ like an ex-girlfriend at a wedding.