“Obscure Conservative Blogs With Tiny Audiences”

I reckon Patterico and Glenn Greenwald won't be sitting down to a nice cup of tea anytime soon. Patterico is calling Greenwald - hard - on Greenwald's latest post.

Glenn Greenwald is spreading disinformation about “The Path to 9/11.” In this post, he endorses the myth — previously propagated by Think Progress and FireDogLake, and previously debunked by me — that the producers of “The Path to 9/11″ are so desperate to push the film to conservatives that they even provided an advance screening to obscure conservative blogs with tiny audiences, like mine:

Think Progress has documented that bloggers with — to use Hewitt’s sneering description — “tiny” audiences received screeners, but they were individuals who were certain to ooze with praise for the film. And ooze with praise is exactly what they did (emphasis added).

The link is to Justin Levine’s praise for the film on this blog, which Greenwald then quotes, and terms “drooling, mindless praise.”

As when Think Progress noted that this blog is “obscure,” Greenwald argues that my blog has a “tiny” audience. Why are Think Progress and Greenwald so obsessed with the admittedly relatively small audience of my blog? The clear implication is that the publicists for “The Path to 9/11″ are so desperate to reach out to conservatives that they are giving advance screenings to the most “obscure” blogs with “tiny” audiences, like this one.

This is either disingenuous bilge, or lack of familiarity with the facts. I have already explained, and Justin has confirmed, that Justin received his advance screening, not because the publicists knew he would be writing guest posts on an “obscure” blog with a “tiny” audience — but because he produces the highest-rated morning talk radio show in Los Angeles.

You really have to go over and read the whole thing. I've said it before, I would not want to be prosecuted by Patrick. He has his ducks all lined up.

I think it's also time to state unequivicably that this particular blog is too obscure to have been given an advanced copy of anything! We also don't get the sockpuppets Patterico gets. We're green with envy.

Denouement

The not-so-great escape of Ralph "Bucky" Phillips reached its ignominious end today in a courtroom where the career criminal was charged with eight offenses. Authorities have yet to charge him with the murder of a New York State trooper, Joseph Longobardo. Murder of a police officer in New York is eligible for the death penalty. All his threats and all his crimes came as a result of an escape from prison when he had less than one week left on his sentence. Bucky isn't known as "Brainy" for a reason, obviously.

Ralph "Bucky" Phillips, who once threatened to "splatter pig meat all over Chautauqua County" in upstate New York and was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List, was charged in Chemung County with eight counts, including attempted aggravated murder, first-degree attempted murder and second-degree attempted murder, all in connection with the shooting of a state trooper in June.

Phillips, 44, did not enter a plea.

Dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit, the exhausted and unshaven suspect either looked at the floor or closed his eyes during the 12-minute arraignment. He was shackled at the ankles, with his wrists handcuffed, and was flanked by armed guards. Earlier in the day, he was turned over to state police after appearing before a federal judge in Buffalo.

"He will get his day in court, and he will be held accountable," said District Attorney John Trice.

Phillips, a career thief who has spent 20 of the past 23 years in state prison, surrendered Friday night, five months after police said he used a can opener to cut his way through a jail ceiling. The arrest capped one of the state's largest manhunts in history after a frantic day that included troopers firing at Phillips as he hid in woods.

Officials said Phillips will be kept in a special section of the county jail and will stay in Chemung County for now. Erie County Sheriff Timothy Howard said Phillips spent an uneventful night in an isolation cell and was under constant supervision. He said he had no plans to speak with him.

"I feel nothing but contempt and disgust for the man," Howard said.

A hearty second to that emotion, Sheriff. It's time to forget Bucky's very name. He will never breath free air again.

Bad Book

Not the good book. A Yemeni man was arrested after TSA officers found a knife "artfully" concealed inside a book. The man, who had bought a one way ticket to Yemen despite being a legal US resident living in Michigan with his family, said he had no idea how the knife got there. He told authorities he was going to Yemen to get married. With that one way ticket, of course.

Mohammed Ghanem, 21, of Hamtramck, was jailed Saturday on $500,000 after being arraigned on a charge of possessing a weapon in the sterile area of an airport.

Ghanem was arrested Thursday at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after Transportation Security Administration officers detected the knife "artfully concealed" in the book, airport spokesman Michael Conway said.

Someone had carved out the inside of the book and placed the knife inside it, said Ghanem's attorney, Nabih Ayad.

"He said he didn't know where the knife came from," Ayad told the Detroit Free Press.

Sounds like a perfectly valid excuse. I have often found people excavating my books to hide things inside them. That's exactly how I acquired the crown jewels of England, in fact. Oh, and I have some really nice real estate in Florida if anyone's interested in buying it.

Showing Cards

Mary Katherine Ham admits to having a bad week that challenged her optimism. Really, who can blame her? It has been a week where a lot of cards have been shown openly in the high-stakes political game that is being played out right now. The left has shown they are more than happy to openly promote real censorship as opposed to their phony cries of being repressed. The Democrats have embraced this insanity, going so far as to having Democratic Senators threaten ABC's broadcast license.

The whole thing's got me, not just angry, but pessimistic. It's not an emotion that often overcomes me. But over the last couple days, I've watched the new face of the Democratic Party applaud two threats (one from the actual Senate) on ABC's broadcast license. I've watched their unabashed intellectual dishonesty in abandoning the "larger truth" argument when it doesn't suit their objectives anymore (yes, it was a flawed argument, but some consistency at least?). I've watched them nominate a 9/11 Truther for Congress , and I've watched "Screw Loose Change," an extensive debunking of the Truthers' arguments. 

It's easy to read this stuff, blog about it, acknowledge it as loopy, and never let the sheer weight of the crazy hit you, you know? Maybe it's some sort of self-defense mechanism for the eternal optimist. But this week? Wow.

Listen, I'm a conservative and a Republican. I'm not exactly one for getting all Kumbaya with Democrats, especially since that usu sally means going all maverick and dropping most of your principles. But, I do believe in the need for two, strong, viable national parties to check each other.

She is, of course, exactly right here. What is scary about this is the utter contempt the left is showing for the ultimately sound judgment of the American electorate. The voters actually do know how to separate fact from fiction, and they actually do recognize who is really trying to curtail speech in this country. The left assumes them to be stupid and easily led. This is an appallingly bad assumption on their part. It is also a recipe for electoral disaster in the long run. Continue to talk down to the people you need to support you and you will not remain a viable party in the long run.

That is, as Mary Katherine points out, not at all good for the country. I am not yet completely pessimistic about the political situation, but I am becoming worried that the Democrats are going off a cliff, following the lemmings on the far left.

Canadian Death Sentence

Canada, which has had quite a history of giving asylum to Jihadis, is apparently not inclined to give people who criticize Muslim extremism the same level of protection. Michael van der Galien tells of a co-bloggers fight not to be sent back to Pakistan. Where he would be in serious jeopardy because of his stance on extremists.

One of the co-bloggers here, at Liberty and Justice, Isaac Schrodinger is currently involved in the fight of his life. Better said: a fight for his life.

As all of you who have read (some of) his articles will know, Isaac is very critical about radical Islam. He witnessed the results of a culture of radical Islam, he saw the effects of this ideology of hatred and ignorance, how people are forced to live, first-hand. As a result, he understands that Muslim extremists do not just pose a threat to the West, but also to every single person living in 'Muslim countries'.

As a result, it should be obvious to anyone with any basic knowledge about this subject, it is not exactly safe for him, an apostate, to live in a country in which Muslim extremists have quite some power. He came from Pakistan, was educated in Saudi Arabia, later in the United States and now lives in Canada.

He is currently involved in the battle of his life: in January 2007 one judge will decide whether he should be granted refugee status in Canada or be deported to Pakistan.

Please go read the whole thing and help if you can. We have recently been through a ruckus involving a Christian convert in Afghanistan. It is that serious.

“We Didn’t Have To Know Anybody”

The words of Renee Kelly of Marlboro, Md, who was asked if she knew anybody who had been a victim of the terrorist attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2006. She had tears streaming down her face. More than 1,000 people came to the Pentagon for a public tour that included a visit to the simple memorial room and chapel.

WASHINGTON - A solemn marker outside the Pentagon conveys a simple message: "We will never forget."

True words, judging by the lines of people — from all corners of the country, even the globe — who took time on a sun-splashed weekend to honor the 184 people who perished when a hijacked jetliner slammed into this symbol of American military.

"We are here for a happy occasion. But we have to remember the sad occasions in our country's history also," said Pam Gambacorta of Buffalo, N.Y., who was in town for a wedding. She was one of the first in line for the walk-in tours, only the second available to the general public since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

More than 1,000 people took the tour that began outside the building, where American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the side, and continued inside to a chapel and memorial. Reconstruction has made the impact point impossible to detect.

Ethan and Debbie Fleischman of Cincinnati made the memorial tour their first stop in Washington. While it lasted only about 15 minutes, they said they came away with lasting memories of the building and of the others who came to pay tribute.

"They didn't forget their country," Ethan said, nodding toward the crowd. "It really touches the heart."

Some deny, some remember. I know which group I belong to.

CBS To Show “9/11″ On Web

I've mentioned before the American Family Association's wrong-headed attempt to stop CBS from showing the documentary 9/11 due to its occasional harsh language. The film has been shown twice before on television with no problems. This time the AFA promised a complaint writing campaign to the FCC if it is shown.

Look, the one thing this country cannot do is forget what happened on that day five years ago. In the context of that day, the language should not be considered an issue. I can guarantee you I heard - and used - language that was likely just as bad that day.

But CBS has made a decision to show the film on the web to reach those areas where local stations have dropped or delayed it.

The documentary was produced by French filmmakers Gedeon and Jules Naudet and retired New York firefighter James Hanlon and has aired twice without incurring fines by U.S. regulators charged with enforcing broadcast decency standards.

CBS said affiliates that cover about 10 percent of the United States had decided not broadcast the program or would show it late at night, citing concerns they could be fined for airing profanity, primarily by firefighters during the crisis, before 10 p.m.

The American Family Association, which describes itself as a Christian organization promoting traditional values, has called on CBS stations to forgo or delay the "9/11" broadcast.

"The online streaming of this broadcast will allow viewers in those markets to see the Peabody Award-winning special," CBS said in a statement. The network will air warnings about graphic language.

I do not agree with the AFA's stance on this issue at all.

The Greatest Virtual Generation

The Pearl Harbor Memorial Fund has unveiled a new project to gather and make available the stories and memories of survivors of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Called the Pearl Harbor Survivor's Project, the website includes photos, written remembrances, video and even podcasts of telephone interviews. The public is invited to upload photos and information.

The site aims to find living survivors of the air and sea attack, who come from a time when people didn't often share their war experiences, by using social networking technology to cast a wide net. It will also use podcasting to turn telephone contributions into sound files.

Survivors, as well as their friends and families, are also invited to upload copies of photos, letters and other mementos.

The site's creators say it will serve as a repository and tribute to the survivors and they hope it will tell the story of Pearl Harbor in a way that members of the MySpace generation can understand.

An absolutely fabulous idea and long overdue, I suspect. Each day now we lose more of the people who lived through that period in our nation's history. I think it is important to not lose their perspective. (Note that the website appears to be running a little slowly right now, I expect they are getting heavy traffic due to the news coverage).

More Belgian Waffles, Please

That's apparently what Tehran ordered before beginning talks with the EU over it's weapons program. It also looks like they will be served a heaping plateful as Brussels' spine gives way. The EU appears to be signaling that they may be willing to drop the threat of sanctions if Tehran promises to maybe, possibly, kind of stop enrichment activity someday or other. Perhaps.

The discussions between Javier Solana and Ali Larijani, Tehran's top nuclear negotiator, at the Austrian chancellor's office in Vienna were meant to see if common ground could be found for negotiations between six world powers and Iran over its nuclear defiance.

While the five permanent Security Council members and Germany have demanded that Iran fully freeze enrichment as a condition for the talks, Tehran has steadfastly refused to do so.

But the game posts appeared to be shifting slightly as the two men sat down at the Renaissance manor housing the Austrian government leadership's offices.

European officials, who requested anonymity in exchange for sharing confidential information, told The Associated Press that at least some of the six nations were potentially ready to consider resuming negotiations without an Iranian commitment to an immediate enrichment freeze — if Tehran committed to such a move sometime soon after the start of negotiations with them.

The officials did not provide details. But such readiness would deal a blow to U.S.-led attempts to hold fast to the demand that Iran freeze enrichment before any talks commence — or face the prospect of Security Council sanctions.

Negotiations only work when both sides are dealing in good faith. In this case it may well be that neither party is. The EU is willing to preemptively give up the one thing that might get Tehran's attention and anyone who thinks Tehran is acting in good faith is out of touch with reality. All those good intentions busily paving away.

Ned Lamont Gets Sucker-Punched

By Ned Lamont! I read the reports of Ned Lamont attacking Joe Lieberman's criticism of Bill Clinton in a speech to the Senate in 1998. I didn't blog about at the time. I thought it was pretty cheesy, but it really didn't seem to be worth the effort of posting about. Until now. Joe Lieberman just released an email that he received in 1998 praising his speech.

The email was sent by Ned Lamont.

“I supported your statement because Clinton’s behavior was outrageous: a Democrat had to stand up and state as much, and I hoped that your statement was the beginning of the end,” Mr. Lamont, then a cable television executive, wrote in an e-mail message to the senator’s Washington office on Sept. 16, 1998, two weeks after Mr. Lieberman’s speech.

This is absolutely classic. Lamont literally shot himself in the foot here. He and his campaign know it, too.

Casey Aden-Wansbury, a spokesman for Mr. Lieberman, said that after Mr. Lamont announced his candidacy, the senator recalled corresponding with him, and the staff culled old files. She said the 1998 missive was the only correspondence found from Mr. Lamont.

Mr. Lieberman’s campaign aides pointed out Friday night that Mr. Lamont contributed $500 to his campaign shortly after the speech, in 1999, and did not donate to Mr. Clinton’s legal defense fund.

Mr. Lamont, who declined to discuss the 1998 speech when an Associated Press reporter asked about it on Friday, was unavailable to explain the apparent discrepancy between his recent remarks and his e-mail at the time.

His campaign manager, Tom Swan, did not address the content of the message, but said in response: “It is clear that Senator Lieberman would prefer to try to cloud Ned’s statements from eight years ago, instead of talking about the important issues of national security, the war in Iraq and health care. It is shocking to see that his Senate staff, at taxpayer expense, is spending their time trying to make up dirt on Ned Lamont.”

Who's trying to blow smoke here, Mr. Swan? Your candidate got himself caught out on this and you know it. Nothing was "made up". The New York Times has images of both the email and Lieberman's letter in reply. Ned Lamont hiding right now indicates full well he knows he screwed up, too.

UPDATE: Tom Maguire blames the victim. Michael van der Galien is even more amused than I am. Welcome to the big show, Ned.

I Don’t Think This Is An Accepted Technique

At least not in any modern Christian churches. Praying for someone's repentance while holding that person at gunpoint is generally frowned upon.

ATHENS, Ala. - A woman and two roommates are accused of holding her brother at gunpoint as she prayed for his repentance, even firing a shot into the ceiling to keep his attention.

Randy Doss, 46, of Athens said he fled the house when his captors got distracted and later went to police, who were skeptical at first because his story was so bizarre. But police said it checked out, including the bullet hole in the ceiling.

"We found where they patched the hole with caulk," said Sgt. Trevor Harris.

Police said the sister, Tammie Lee Doss, 43, Donna Leigh Bianca, 37, and Ronald David Richie, 45, who live at the Athens house, were charged with unlawful imprisonment, a misdemeanor. The two women were also charged with menacing, a misdemeanor. All were released on bond.

We aren't sure what is in the air in Athens these days, but this is not the first post to note an occurrence down in those parts. But the earlier post wasn't about prayers at gunpoint, or bullets flying around. No, it was about love and a can of Raid…..

The Path To 9/11 To Air

At least that is the word from the LA Times as of right now. The ABC website, which I have been keeping an eye on, is still running promos for the show as well. So all the sound and fury has brought little in the way of return for the people wailing and gnashing their teeth. Oh, they may have forced some edits, but how many or how extensive they are is not clear.

Whatever viewers ultimately see, it's clear that the five-hour $40-million docudrama, highlighting years of intelligence failures and political bickering before the attacks, has detonated an election-year bomb that's reverberating from Hollywood to Capitol Hill.

The movie is also threatening the bipartisan work of the Sept. 11 commission, whose Republican chairman, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean, served as a paid consultant on the project and has played a key role in ABC's public-relations campaign.

At least two other commission members — former Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste and Jamie S. Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general under President Clinton — have vehemently criticized the miniseries project. And two former Clinton officials, Madeleine Albright and Samuel "Sandy" Berger, expressed dismay with Kean's involvement. Clinton spokesman Jay Carson called ABC's actions "despicable" and said the film was "indisputably wrong."

Kean, in an interview Friday, continued to defend the movie as a "first-class project," adding that although the filmmakers took the recent criticisms seriously and made adjustments when warranted, much of the hostile reaction was political grandstanding from partisans who had seen little if any of the film. "That's the blogosphere, frankly," Kean said of the controversy.

Well, they may have gotten more in return than they bargained for, but not in the way they wanted. As a result of the ruckus, more and more articles are apprearing that explain the actual failures of the Clinton administration as opposed to the fictionalized "docudrama" version that apparently conflated several incidents. In other words, they got the opposite effect from what they intended.

SPACE!

Atlantis successfully launched into orbit at 11:15 am EDT.

After two frustrating weeks of delays, space shuttle Atlantis and its six astronauts blasted off Saturday on a mission to resume construction of the international space station for the first time since the Columbia disaster 3 1/2 years ago.

The shuttle rose from its seaside launch pad through a partly cloudy sky at 11:15 a.m.

"By our count, it has been almost four years, two return to flight missions, a tremendous amount of work by thousands of individuals," said Brent Jett, Atlantis' commander. "We're confident that in the next few weeks, and the next few years for that matter, NASA is going to prove to our nation and our friends … that it was worth the wait and we're ready to get to work."

On the ground, NASA kept an eye on several cameras zoomed in on Atlantis as the shuttle streaked into space for any signs of hard foam breaking off its large external fuel tank, the problem that doomed Columbia.

A preliminary review of the launch showed no indication of major foam loss before Atlantis separated from its external fuel tank and NASA declared its crew safely in space. The fuel cells that had forced launch delays earlier this week were working as expected, NASA spokesman Kyle Herring said.

Great news.

Madness

MSNBC helps provide more fuel to the 9/11 conspiracy fires by writing about a number of the people who are part of this particular mass psychosis. There is a form of madness sweeping this country that is fueled, I suspect, by a number of different factors. The unrelenting attacks by the left on the administration. An inability to believe that there really are vicious killers who want us dead, no matter what we do or do not do. An internal inability to accept that we are not in control of all events. Pick one or all as driving these delusions.

It was a year before David Ray Griffin, an eminent liberal theologian and philosopher, began his stroll down the path of disbelief. He wondered why Bush listened to a child's story while the nation was attacked and how Osama bin Laden, America's Public Enemy No. 1, escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora.

He wondered why 110-story towers crashed and military jets failed to intercept even one airliner. He read the 9/11 Commission report with a swell of anger. Contradictions were ignored and no military or civilian official was reprimanded, much less cashiered.

"To me, the report read as a cartoon." White-haired and courtly, Griffin sits on a couch in a hotel lobby in Manhattan, unspooling words in that reasonable Presbyterian minister's voice. "It's a much greater stretch to accept the official conspiracy story than to consider the alternatives."

Such as?

"There was massive complicity in this attack by U.S. government operatives."

Forget talking rationally to these people. This is a for of mass psychosis. There simply is no way to get past the defenses they have set up.

The loose agglomeration known as the "9/11 Truth Movement" has stopped looking for truth from the government. As cacophonous and free-range a bunch of conspiracists anywhere this side of Guy Fawkes, they produce hip-hop inflected documentaries and scholarly conferences. The Web is their mother lode. Every citizen is a researcher. There's nothing like a triple, Google-fed epiphany lighting up the laptop at 2:44 a.m.

A government that has proved time and time again that it cannot keep secrets is elevated to omnipotent stature. Intelligence agencies that collectively are hard put to find their collective butts with both hands become godlike creatures with limitless reach and abilities.

Let's put aside the could-anyone-do-something-that-spectacularly-twisted? question and touch on practicalities. Isn't the problem with big ugly conspiracies — from the Gulf of Tonkin to My Lai to the 1961 Pentagon plan to provoke a war by attacking Americans and blaming it on Castro — that they are too big and ugly to keep secret?

Griffin shrugs. History is littered with government black-bag jobs. "How do you know they can't keep big secrets? Can you be sure you know what you don't know?"

And there, of course is the final keep in their multiple layers of defenses. The absence of proof is itself proof. There is no way to cure these people. They will have to wake themselves out of this self-induced trance world they occupy. All the rational people can do is keep trying to repeat the facts that they keep denying. We might at least stop some from joining the fever parade.

Start here. Oh and Loose Change, Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,Loose Change,

Bunny Invasion!

The bunnies are coming, the bunnies are coming! Never mind, they're already here. At least that's the case in St. Albans, Vermont. The town has a serious infestation of white bunnies. They are everywhere. All over the roads throughout the area. You don't have to worry about hitting one, though.

Because they are spray painted all over the roads.

ST.ALBANS — “What is up with the bunnies?” That was the start of L.B. Clark’s letter to the editor appearing in the August 26 edition of the St. Albans Messenger and it is a resounding question.

Ask anyone around Franklin County about the mysterious spray-painted white rabbits stenciled onto roads at random locations and no one seems to know.

Rumor of the rabbits has been spreading, causing a lot of buzz and resulting in no answers as to their purpose or origin.

Is it a game? Random graffiti? Some sort of message? A high school prank? Who knows?

“They’re all over the place,” says Mike Juaire, a senior dispatcher for the St. Albans City Police. “I’ve heard that they’re in Essex, South Burlington, and they’re in my development in Swanton, but I’ve asked around and no one seems to know what they are.”

In Franklin County the bunnies have been spotted on city streets and rural roads with no pattern emerging. Some are near homes or driveways, while others are near hayfields. All the bunnies are the exact same shape and most likely painted from a stencil.

How long these bunnies have been around is also unknown. A few are faded and covered with skid marks while others look as fresh as if they were painted yesterday.

The helpful folks at the St. Albans Messenger even came out with an interactive map so you can locate all the known bunnies in the area. (Which proves there isn't much to do up in St. Albans at this time of year, we suspect.) However, we just want to point out the sinister implications of this series of bunny paintings. We believe it is a warning to the residents of the animal uprising! The real bunnies are the ones spray painting the fake bunnies on the ground. They are direction markers for the imminent real invasion by the real killer bunnies (Jimmy Carter variety)! How do we know this? Simple, we drew these conclusions with the exact same methodology and scientific rigor that the 9/11 conspiracy theorists use! Damn we're good!

UPDATE: KT Cat from The Scratching Post connects the dots!