Casual (read: lazy) Friday Blogging

What's in the news?

• Fourth quake in five days shakes California. Are these quakes harbingers to the Big One? They're telling us not to worry, but why is Donald Fagan heading back to Annandale?
• Is this the first case of "fragging" in Iraq? Or is this just the first one we've heard about? I thought they had a "don't ask, don't tell" policy about frags in the military.
  
• Snotty McClellen defends Cheney's comments about the Iraqi insurgency being in "its last throes." Well, not really. Answering a direct question with a direct answer is not his forte. "Next question, please." BTW, i think Cheney's "last throes" comment will become a reference point in the Iraq War timeline, much like W's "Mission Accomplished" speech in May of 2003. We'll be pointing to this comment in the future when US soldier deaths reach 3,000 and we'll say, "that's 1,300 since Dick Cheney said that the insurgency was in its "last throes.'"
  
• Cindy Sheenan, a name to remember as public dissent about the Iraq War continues to grow. Remember her from last week? She spoke again at Congressman Conyers' hearings on the Downing Street Memo on Thursday. She wants Bush to be account for her son's death and an unjust war (is this too much to ask?): "The leadership of this country rushed us into an illegal invasion of another sovereign country on prefabricated and cherry picked intelligence." Here's Mr. Conyers' account of his busy day. Please join 560,000 concerned citizens and 122 Members of Congress and sign his letter to Bush, if you haven't already.
• And finally...10 TV cliches that should be banned.

Word.

DTS update

New shorty up at DTS: "Please, Call Me Sal" Give it a read.
Other fictions by DTS here.
This is what i think Sal would look like, waiting for his return flight from a case in some tropical paradise. Found the pic just by Googling "Sal," it came up on first page. You can almost see his lazy eye.

Downing Street Memo(s!) Summary

Slate has a good summary of the memos and what they mean. Check it.

Chris Carpenter In Command, Cards Crush Canadian Competitors

A generous but consistent strike zone aided Chris Carpenter as he pitched his first career one-hitter over his former team. The former Toronto starter gave up one walk, one hit and K'd 10 on just 95 pithces to dispatch the Blue Jays. Very nice.

Carpenter (9-4) picked up the victory with his second complete-game shutout of the season (April 21) and 15th complete game of his career. He fanned 10 of the 28 batters he faced to increase his season strikeout total to 93 and career strikeout total to 857, through June 14. Carpenter's previous low was two hits allowed in a nine-inning performance (April 15, 1999). His previous low in a complete-game shutout was three hits (Sept. 9, 1997 and July 3, 1999)

The Cardinals offense delivered four homers including two by Canadian Larry Walker. Wait. Did you know he was Canadian? I thought he was from Colorado or something. Those crafty cannucks are sneaky sometimes, the way they quietly blend in with us Amerkins. I wonder who else is secretly Canadian, walking around amongst us regular people. That's kinda scary, when you think about it. They could be living next door to us right now! Or standing in line behind you at the grocery store peeping your products and taking notes as to what to buy so as to appear more like an everyday, fat, dumb Amerkin. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just that the more they act and look like us, the more they become a target for the terrists, so i'm just concerned for their safety. I'm sure most are here for a just a little while, working hard earning US dollars to mail back to their impoverished families in Canadia. They will prolly learn that it's not really safe for them down here and they will soon return to the frozen wasteland of hockey farms, beaver pelts, and Celine Dion monuments. Then we can finally stop worrying about who's Canadian.
But seriously, i like many Canadian musical exports: Neil Young, SNFU, the Weakerthans, Neko Case/New Pornographers, The Cash Brothers, all come to mind. But as for Nickelback, Celine, and Shania - they can go ahead and take off, eh! They are clearly Canadian and aren't fooling anyone.

Mainstream Media Catching up to Blogosphere?

We'll see, but this is a good start:
It's all about the memos. First, the so-called "Downing Street Memo" from July 2002, which summarized meetings in Washington that said intelligence was being "fixed atound the policy" massive military action in Iraq by the Bush Administration. This came out May 1, 2005, and received little attention in the US media.
Now, there are The British Briefing Papers, and NBC has blessed these with a "verified by NBC News" label. Hooray for NBC. Now they wait breathlessly for the Administration to discredit NBC News in general and Andrea Mitchell in particular. Snotty McClellen will employ the usual M.O. and attack the messenger and ignore the message. Stay tuned for that.

These memos(pdf links below)from as early as March of 2002 indicate:
Iraq had no WMD threat
BushCo. had given "little thought" to the post-war aftermath in Iraq
BushCo. knew that Al-Qaeda/Iraq links were weak
British officials knew that going to war at that time would be illegal

So when you hear W and his boys talk about war in Iraq as "the last option," it is clear they are lying.

1,700+ dead US Soldiers and counting.
Countless dead Iraqis - we don't know the number because "We Don't do body counts" - General Tommy Franks. Isn't that lovely?

More:
Washington Post Sunday June 12, 2005
Think Progress
The Raw Story
The Path of War timeline
Downing Street Memo rally announced for Thursday in DC
and of course After Downing Street

Mother of dead soldier vilifies Bush over war

From Raw Story and The Lexington Herald Leader
Cindy Sheehan of Gold Star Families for Peace let W have it:

"We're watching you very carefully and we're going to do everything in our power to have you impeached for misleading the American people," she said, quoting a letter she sent to the White House. "Beating a political stake in your black heart will be the fulfillment of my life ... "

Ouch. Read the whole story.