Remember the CEO of LifeLock who always gave out his Social Security number in their ads? Surprise, surprise - his identity has been stolen at least 12 times over the past few years! From Wired:

Apparently, when you publish your Social Security number prominently on your website and billboards, people take it as an invitation to steal your identity.

LifeLock CEO Todd Davis, whose number is displayed in the company’s ubiquitous advertisements, has by now learned that lesson. He’s been a victim of identity theft at least 13 times, according to the Phoenix New Times.

Buyer beware. Open thread below...

After a marathon session in the Senate where amendment after amendment was offered by the Republicans and vote after vote shot them down, it appears that the reconciliation package will head back to the House after a small tweak to the student loan provisions.

In inimitable fashion, the New York Times is playing this as a big win for the GOP, MSNBC has sent two news alerts to my iPhone about it, and Twitter has lit up with the concern of many who are anxiously watching the final chapter of the health care reform saga.

Then there are those hopefuls who figure striking 16 lines of language relating to Pell grants will be a swinging open door for re-introduction of the public option.

Here's my prediction. They'll amend the bill to remove the 16 lines of Byrd rule violations. They'll vote the rest of the GOP amendments down. They'll have a vote sometime today on the reconciliation package and send it back to the House. The House will then vote on Monday for the revised package, which contains non-controversial provisions.

Why wouldn't the Senate add a public option provision since they have to send it to the House anyway? Because it's doubtful they'd get the requisite number of House votes, given an escalation in rhetoric to threat level red. Let's face it: would YOU invite more controversy in the toxic wasteland that is Washington, DC today?

Republicans will still play the Sunday shows like they won something huge, and the threat level will rise because the wingers are too stupid to actually figure out the reconciliation package has nothing in it relating to abortion, death panels, or socialism. It will be noisy, and get noisier, but in the end...it's a blip. Health care reform is the law of the land. This is just a tweaker package, not a big deal at all. A one-day delay in sending to the President, but still, a blip.

It was entertaining to watch the parade of stupid on CSPAN, though. As the night wore on, the Republicans got a little more shrill and a lot more stupid. Gotta love marathon voting sessions, especially ones where the Democrats actually show some backbone for a change.

(click here to see Mark's very revealing video about the phony terror alerts back in the Bush years)

This is a big deal because it's coming from the horse's mouth. Tom Ridge admits in his new book what we've known for a long time and what has been reported years ago.

Former US homeland security chief Tom Ridge charges in a new book that top aides to then-president George W. Bush pressured him to raise the "terror alert" level to sway the November 2004 US election.

Then defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and attorney general John Ashcroft pushed him to elevate the color-coded threat level, but Ridge refused, according to a summary from his publisher, Thomas Dunne Books.

"After that episode, I knew I had to follow through with my plans to leave the federal government for the private sector," Ridge is quoting as writing in "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege ... And How We Can Be Safe Again."

Some of Bush's critics had repeatedly questioned whether the administration was using warnings of a possible attack to blunt the political damage from the unpopular Iraq war by shifting the debate to the broader "war on terrorism," which had wide popular appeal.

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He later publicly acknowledged that much of the information underpinning the new alert was three years old, stoking Bush critics' charges of political manipulation.

Ridge also charges that he was often "blindsided" during daily morning briefings with Bush because the FBI withheld information from him, and says he was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings.

Here's what Ridge's book says:

Former Bush Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is releasing a book on September 1 titled, “The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege…and How We Can Be Safe Again.” U.S. News’ Paul Bedard reports that, in the book, Ridge reveals that he considered resigning because he was urged to issue a politically-motivated security alert on the eve of Bush’s re-election:

Among the headlines promoted by publisher Thomas Dunne Books: Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was “blindsided” by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush’s re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

This was first reported way back when by the Washington Post in 2004:

The mixing of anti-terrorism policy with the 2004 presidential campaign is becoming destructive. It is creating a vicious cycle of hype, skepticism and mistrust that puts the country's security at risk.

The dangers of politicizing terrorism were clear in this month's announcement about potential attacks on financial centers in the New York area and in Washington. When Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge disclosed the threats on Aug. 1, he faced immediate skepticism about whether the intelligence was valid. Sadly, the Bush administration had helped create this climate of public suspicion by overusing its elaborate, color-coded system of terrorism warnings. After a terrorism advisory by Attorney General John Ashcroft last spring was pooh-poohed the same day by Ridge, some people wondered whether these warnings were being used for political effect.

Bush used the terror alerts to win the election against John Kerry and it's a breach of his oath of office as far as I'm concerned.

And don't forget about the release of the Osama Bin Laden tape right before the election. As we were getting closer to Nov. 4th, Kerry was picking up momentum before this happened.

On October 29, 2004, at 21:00 UTC, the Arab television network, Al Jazeera, broadcast excerpts from a videotape of Osama bin Laden addressing the people of the United States, in which he accepted responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks, condemns the Bush government's response to those attacks and presents those attacks as part of a campaign of revenge and deterrence motivated by his witnessing of the destruction in the Lebanese Civil War in 1982.

John Kerry admitted as much on MTP:

Senator John Kerry said on Sunday that the attacks of Sept. 11 were the "central deciding thing" in his contest with President Bush and that the release of an Osama bin Laden videotape the weekend before Election Day had effectively erased any hope he had of victory.

Continue reading »

Threat Level: House members in tight November elections scuttle bailout

Just Indignation: Dear Members of Congress

Crooked Timber: Republican talking point whack-a-mole, yet again

Undiplomatic: Psychogeezer compares Palin to Reagan

It's been five years since the Rude Pundit emerged to spread democracy and sodomy jokes to the blog world.

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Stinque, DeRosaWorld,That's So Maverick, Democracy Hypocrisy

Jack & Jill Politics: An important message from Rick Santorum

Words of Power: We live in a nation that has lost touch with reality.

Obsidian Wings: It just should not be possible for our government to kidnap someone, ship him off to Syria knowing that he will be tortured, and then have no one be in any way accountable.

Petrelis Files: That reporters must give up some basic rights if they're denied, or even receive, credentials makes me queasy about how the national debates for presidential candidates will be conducted.

The Washington Independent: Look who's back...

Threat Level: Experts accuse the Bush administration of foot-dragging on DNS security hole

Prometheus 6: This is pure evil and McCain will love it!

FP Passport: Europe is Obama country

The Cunning Realist: Growing Gills

Threat Level: Anti-Robocall crusader pushes for a crackdown on political phone droids

Each week until the election the producers of Uncounted - The New Math of American Elections, will release a clip from the film because now, more than ever, people need to see stories that will motivate them to stand up and help save our democracy.

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: The Hacktacular Mickey Kaus...The History Commons - an online tool for journalists...Austin paper pulls, apologizes for, article on Netroots...Obama (and Big Media) turn a blind eye to Israeli apartheid...Pre-programmed ideological idiots continue to be welcomed on WaPo op-ed page...Usury is quaint...He's exotic, dammit...MSNBC prez on Fox "You can't trust a word they say"...McCain's bid should've ended last week...The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic reponsibility to inform the public...Stephanopoulos also hacktacular...Nas delivers...He wants journalism, but journalism doesn't want him...The year the L.A. Times died...What traditional media can learn from blogs...Israelis accused of abusing journalist...

Horses Ass: The terrorist next door?

The Mahablog: Fairy Tales

Threat Level: Coming to a state near you - 50 percent of New York's Sequoia voting machines are flawed

Politics & Power: Another shady McCain co-chair bites the dust

Sensen No Sen: Undermining America, One Regulation at a Time

HOLY CRAP: Praying Liberally...Pastor Hagee's desperate news suppression campaign backfires...Emails From Jesus...Camouflage Bibles....Beer Baron funds Religious Right conclave...Adult Christianity...Obama's church/state drift is troubling for some of us...Pondering morality...St. Louis winger favorite promoted to powerful Vatican post...Jayzuz...Christian Shopping...Interfaith Alliance Media Roundup...The laying on of bucks

GOPnot4me: McCainocrats? Surely, not!

Threat Level: McCain - I'd secretly spy on Americans, too.

The Public Record: When Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton in the 1990s, he spoke out against the sanctions against Iran - the same Iran he's now rattling the saber toward for their terrorist ties.

Attytood: An Iraqi in America wonders whose war is it, anyway?

HOLY CRAP: US apologizes for proselytizing by Marine in Iraq, but they're really not sorry...You can leave the UCC - but the UCC may not leave you...The Antichrist is gay, "partially Jewish, as was Hitler"...Conservative lawyer Douglas Kmiec denied communion because of Obama endorsement...Blacks, Jews & Obama...Bobby Jindal: Exorcist Vice-President?...More anti-Semitism from the religious right.

naked capitalism: Bear Hearings: A Charade

Threat Level: U.S.funded search engine, run by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is blocking searches containing the word "abortion."

Sensen No Sen: A Gulag by any other name...

Opinions You Should Have: A NYT/CBS poll has found that a lousy future has soured the public's view of the future.

Danger Room: al Qaeda #2: We'll attack Iran

Facing South: NOLA public housing advocates bid good riddance to G-Dub's disgraced HUD chief. Heckuva job, Jackie!

NEW YORK - Authorities stepped up mass transit security Thursday after receiving a credible threat that the city's subway system could be the target of a terrorist attack in coming days. ....read on"

I hope this pans out to be nothing and you know I'm not into conspiracy theories, but isn't it interesting after the news breaks on Rove that we have another terror alert. Tom Ridge admitted that he had been pressured by the CIA to raise the threat level without sufficient cause in the past. I'm just saying.

John says that CNN's Jeanne Meserve said Homeland Security is not aware of any credible or specific threat against NYC Transit.