Missouri Senate Poll
BackupPundit
Political Wire reports on the Post-Dispatch poll on the Senate Race.
McCaskill up by 6%, 14% lead among independents.
Article and results here.
There are some Nixon-Blunt numbers in there, but it’s a long way off.
2006
Peter Pride
Tomorrow (Sunday) is the annual Pride Parade in Chicago.
That means that someplace in crowd, mixing with the sweaty scantily clad men and leather daddies, will be our friend, Peter LaBarbera. [Link contains photo.]
Please report any sightings of this intrepid defender of family values. After all, we have to make certain that the right-wing watching are . . . well, watching. After all, how can one be certain that homosexuality is bad and heterosexuality is good unless one walks in the Pride Parade, ogling at every shirtless — and maybe more! — young man, out in the heat after a long march, dancing to disco . . . nevermind, I have to go now.
Oh, by the way: what event would in the Gay Games would be the best for an undercover right winger to enter?
He’s Resting at Peace with Charlie’s Angels Now
Not politics, but producer Aaron Spelling died.
Spelling provided many of my kitschy TV memories, like 90210 and Melrose Place. While I don’t think he’s an important artist, he is a pop culture icon for several generations.
Sears Target, Part 2: Scare Tactics
Well, we now have some more information about the arrests in Miami.
Mr. Gonzales acknowledged that the men, who had neither weapons nor explosives, posed “no immediate threat.” But he added, “they did take sufficient steps that we believe does support this prosecution.”
In general, Mr. Gonzales said, homegrown terrorists “may prove to be as dangerous as groups like Al Qaeda.”
News of the arrests touched off widespread television coverage of the plot against the Sears Tower, one of the tallest buildings in the world. But details of the indictment disclosed Friday at news conferences in Washington and Miami presented a less alarming picture. The indictment made clear that a pivotal role was played by an unidentified undercover F.B.I. informer who posed as a Qaeda member and met repeatedly with the reported ringleader of the group, Narseal Batiste.
More on Narseal Batiste:
But an uncle said he could not believe Batiste is capable of masterminding the murder of innocents.
“He’s a follower more than a leader,” said John J. Ford, 67, of Chicago. “He wasn’t no ringleader about nothing.”
And how serious was the threat?
Cline and other officials stressed there was no evidence the alleged plotters took any action in Chicago. They said they had no information that the men arrested had visited the Sears Tower to study it or make plans.
The plot “was never an actionable plan and, therefore, no one was in danger,” said Andrew Velasquez, head of the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communication.
People who have offices in the Sears Tower don’t seem too concerned, either.
From all the reports, it seems like this group of seven “terrorists” were not even capable of executing a major terrorist plot that involves the Sears Tower. After all, they even had to ask the undercover agent for boots [see last question] and a video camera.
These guys deserved to be busted up for the actions they took. It’s just like making a joke about a gun in the airport security line: the TSA takes the statement seriously, and gives your bags a thorough search.
But nothing that I’ve seen justifies the type of national and international press sought by the Department of Justice. This was not the kind of threat that should involve the Attorney General in a press conference. Arrest these guys, and give them a good scare. But there’s no need to make a national stink about it.
Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking at a political luncheon in Chicago, denounced the decision to reveal the existence of the financial monitoring program and the earlier-disclosed National Security Agency surveillance program.
?What I find most disturbing about these stories is that some of the news media take it upon themselves to disclose vital national security programs, thereby making it more difficult for us to prevent future attacks against the American people,? Cheney said. ?That offends me.?
Blogospheric Navel Gazing
ArchPundit
Harkening back to the good old days of the great delink wars of 2002, TNR decided to suggest Kos is somehow controlling the blogosphere.
Because herding cats is so much fun.
I’m not on Townhouse so I can’t shed much light on all of this other than to say that coordinating message amongst activists is nothing new and is one of the true weaknesses Democratic activists have.
For those who don’t understand Markos’ reaction, essentially TNR is attacking him for offering a suggestion as to how to coordinate that message and found the Advertising Liberally as some sort of leverage he exerts. The problem with that is some of the Members of Advertising Liberally can’t stand Markos and go out of their way to tweak him fairly often.
More to the point, it’s not so bad that TNR takes on Markos for his message, it’s the assanine attack that he, by coordinating message with other activist journalists, is influencing content through financial control.
Zengerle’s bullshit line is here in a later post
From these e-mails, it appears there was a good amount of concern among liberal bloggers about the Armstrong SEC story and the allegations of “pay for play” against Kos and Armstrong, and some of these bloggers wanted to address these issues forthrightly. And, yet, after Kos subsequently wrote the e-mail quoted in my original post asking the bloggers to “ignore” the story in order to “starve of it oxygen,” there was virtual silence in the liberal blogosphere about it. That, to me at least, suggests that Kos does indeed have a good deal of influence over what other liberal bloggers write.
Or perhaps because it didn’t become a big issue on the blogs, and it’s only a side issue even now. Who goes out of their way to report on a problem with a friend or ally? Sometimes, but it isn’t that frequent. Given not much information is known about the subject, it’s kind of hard to write much about it. Either the non-partisan press or the opposition makes it an issue and barring a big blogburst on the subject why would someone on Townhouse write about it? Assuming malice when the more likely answer is there was no reason to highlight Jerome’s problem is silly.
I know that in discussions regarding Advertising Liberally, when Chris Bowers set out some basic network standards, there were a couple bloggers who had grand conspiracy claims about what Jerome, Chris, and Markos were doing (Chris did it, Markos just argued for the changes). It was silly. This is the same thing.
Markos’ response goes a bit off the rails because he is talking primarily to people who understand the entire context and the frustration with TNR over it trying to tear apart burgeoning infrastructure with this kind of crap. It’s not that TNR criticizes the ideas coming out of the blogosphere, it’s that it attempts silly ad hominen attacks. In one sense, everyone is talking past one another, but I’ll put most of the blame on TNR for not even trying to understand the language.
I’m going back to my rolling waves of nausea, but I was a bit annoyed reading all of this.
Krol on Hastert
He does month in review for Hastert.
Read More
I’ll Miss It
The Osco on Old Capitol Plaza in Springfield is closing.
The store was incredibly convenient for those of us who had to make occasional trips to Springfield and walked to the Capitol from either the Hilton or the hotel formerly known as the Renaissance. I just hope that the Food Mart stays open — it has the most delightful assortment of gourmet odds and ends, and great confections to boot.
Ed Farmer has Some Mad ESP
The White Sox finished out the series against the Cards tonight. You have to feel for the kid Reyes. He pitched a 1 hitter and lost.
What I did catch was something just extraordinary. Had to run to the store so I was listening to 670 and Sox radio broadcaster Ed Farmer began the seventh inning by saying (paraphrased), “Thome up to bat and he’s going deep, I can feel it.” As the words left his mouth, Thome went 455′ deep to right field.
Wow.
Sears Target
I guess we’ll know more tomorrow. I’m especially intrigued that these guys had “no apparent ties to al-Qaida or other foreign terrorist organizations.”
Interesting
Who needs a home when you have a blog.
Scroll down to the third post, guess Wired Magazine did a feature, check it out.