I Know That the Devil Exists

Because he took a crap on my tongue while I slept.

It's the morning breath from hell.



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Heh.

At the start of a new Congress, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out teabagger membership cards to the Republican Representatives:

As new members of Congress are sworn in on Thursday, Democrats are looking to brand the incoming Republican class early on. The DCCC is sending out the above "Tea Party membership cards" to the offices of 35 freshman Republicans.

Press releases in their individual districts identify each member as "the newest Tea Party House Republican who will put millionaires ahead of the middle class and dysfunction ahead of progress," according to DCCC communications director Jesse Ferguson.

This is really what I call "immature College Republican agitprop," but I still chuckled.

I guess that a lot depends on whose ox is gored.

God Bless America

The US Treasury is now freezing the accounts of cartoonists of mass destruction:

I went to Congo to write a comic book about a terror group — and ended up being labelled a terror supporter myself by the Treasury Department.

The bizarre tale of my graphic novel Army of God, the Lord’s Resistance Army in Congo and Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is a window inside a little-known counter-terrorism campaign that captures more than a few innocents in its wide net.

Nearly 12 years since the massive expansion of federal powers in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, OFAC’s collateral damage — myself included — is a reminder that defeating terrorists can come at the cost of our freedom.

It began two years ago. In the fall of 2010 I spent a month in the Democratic Republic of Congo reporting on the Lord’s Resistance Army, a brutal Ugandan rebel group that was chased from its homeland and has spent the last decade hiding out in the forests of eastern Congo. Led by charismatic madman Joseph Kony, the LRA pillages farming villages for supplies, kills or mutilates the adults and enslaves the children.

………

In early December our agent wired [artist Tim] Hamilton his share of the advance, but the money never reached the artist’s account. After a few weeks the agent made some calls. “He was told that the party holding the funds was the federal wire fraud unit which suspected that they were laundering funds for a terrorist organization,” Hamilton says.

On one level, it may seem as if it is not a big deal, but it is.  

Basically, this means that they can take everything you have with out any recourse at any time, and if they are wrong, or if they are malicious, it does not matter, because they are above the law, because if anything goes wrong, all they need to do is go, "Yadda, yadda, terrorism."

We have deliberately created a lawless national security state.

Do Responsible Gun Activists Even Exist?

I'm sure there are a few responsible gun owners out there, but the Gun Nuts With Small Penises^™ crowd seem determined to show that there is no such thing as a responsible gun owner:

A suburban New York newspaper that ignited a furor by publishing the identities of thousands of residents who hold gun licenses has hired armed security to guard its staff after receiving an intimidating e-mail, a police report said.

Among a "large amount of negative correspondence" that White Plains, New York-based Journal News has received since publishing permit holders' names was one e-mail in which the sender "wondered what would get in her mail next," according to a Clarkstown, New York, police report obtained by Reuters on Wednesday.

The editor, Caryn McBride, told police the newspaper hired a private security company whose "employees are armed and will be on site during business hours," the report said. The guards are protecting the newspaper's staff and Rockland County offices in West Nyack, New York.

Police told McBride the e-mail did not contain an explicit threat that could compel authorities to take action against the sender. The menacing e-mail was reported to police on December 28.

Let's see what happens here.

You have an argument over gun control.

The people gun control advocates call gun rights advocates dangerous and crazy.

The gun control advocates respond by threatening the lives of gun control advocates.

QED, gun control advocates are dangerous and crazy.

But of Course

The very first person goes to jail over CIA torture, and it's the whistle-blower:

Looking back, John C. Kiriakou admits he should have known better. But when the F.B.I. called him a year ago and invited him to stop by and “help us with a case,” he did not hesitate.

In his years as a C.I.A. operative, after all, Mr. Kiriakou had worked closely with F.B.I. agents overseas. Just months earlier, he had reported to the bureau a recruiting attempt by someone he believed to be an Asian spy.

“Anything for the F.B.I.,” Mr. Kiriakou replied.

Only an hour into what began as a relaxed chat with the two agents — the younger one who traded Pittsburgh Steelers talk with him and the senior investigator with the droopy eye — did he begin to realize just who was the target of their investigation.

Finally, the older agent leaned in close and said, by Mr. Kiriakou’s recollection, “In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that right now we’re executing a search warrant at your house and seizing your electronic devices.”

On Jan. 25, Mr. Kiriakou is scheduled to be sentenced to 30 months in prison as part of a plea deal in which he admitted violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by e-mailing the name of a covert C.I.A. officer to a freelance reporter, who did not publish it. The law was passed in 1982, aimed at radical publications that deliberately sought to out undercover agents, exposing their secret work and endangering their lives.

In more than six decades of fraught interaction between the agency and the news media, John Kiriakou is the first current or former C.I.A. officer to be convicted of disclosing classified information to a reporter.

This is about scaring people out of being whistle-blowers.

This is about the "most open administration in history" doing its level best to create a completely secret and unaccountable executive.

This is why I call Barack Obama the worst constitutional law professor ever.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Richard Nixon was the worst president the US had from 1933 to 1973 1974, and the best president the US had from 1969 through 2013.

If that does not make you depressed, then I want whatever it is that you are smoking.

Crap

Redskins lost to Seattle.

Sad, but not surprised.

More Financial Fraud Enforcement Theater from the Obama Administration

Yesterday, I heard the news that the 271 year old Swiss bank, Weglin, was shut down following a US Department of Justice investigation into their actions supporting tax evasion and money laundering.

It sounded too good to be true, and , as Yves Smith so eloquently points out, it was too good to be true.

The Nickel version is that the bank's asserts were transferred to another entity, Raiffeisen, and the proceeds likely given to the owners in the weeks power to its being shut down.

Finally, the DoJ is saying NOTHING about whether the got information about the accounts, and the people who used them too avoid taxes.

This its a pretty good tell that they hour no data:  If they had, they would be trumpeting it to the heavens, because they would thereby induce people to turn themselves in.

Go read the while thing, including the reader comments.

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