The Left Coaster: The Real Tea Partiers, and some perspective

ArmsControlWonk:: N. Korea: Deadly in a Snowball Fight

Open Left: Voter intimidation tactics still thrive in America

The Baseline Scenario: Is Tim Geithner paying attention to the global economy? (h/t Politics in the Zeros)

Citizen Energy: Who has Obama been talking to?

HOLY CRAP: Archbishop chides Blair...What Would Jesus Eat?...Inquiring minds...Breakfast with the Family...The Illuminati...Defending our Prophets against Whaleofascism...The evil of banality...Christians oppose bill aimed at child prostitution...Workaholic Pope... H-E-double hockey sticks...Atheists naughty and nice...Sodomy, American Style...

Brad Reed has compiled the extensive list, but I'll give you the Reader's Digest version here. Go read the full article at Alternet:

10: Bush Gets Re-elected
9: Alberto Gonzales' Congressional Testimony
8: North Korea Conducts a Nuclear Test
7: Colin Powell's Bogus WMD Presentation at the U.N.
6: The Terri Schiavo Affair
5: Bush and Condi's Excellent Gaza Adventure
4: "Brownie, You're Doing a Heckuva Job"
3: Abu Ghraib
2: 9/11
1: "Mission Accomplished"

Seems like the hardest part is simply narrowing it down to just 10.

The Mahablog: Who's the meanie?

Common Cause Blog: What kind of impact do Clean Elections have on participants in democracy? A big one.

Princess Sparkle Pony's Photo Blog: Condi meets...Kiss?

American Street: South Korea doesn't want our beef

The Opinion Mill: It's the Weasel Boy Special vs. the Straight Talk Express! Should Republican sleaze weasels be rewarded for telling the truth after the fact? Should presidential candidates be rewarded for retooling themselves along the lines of the people they ought to despise? Only the Opinion Mill's Sunday Bookchat dares to ask!

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: The jerk at the podium..."What liberal media?" department...Press corpse getting Iraq war wrong all over again...What does the decay of journalism have to do with our appetite for celebrity gossip?...It took years, but our press finally noticed the frightful surge in Iraq vet suicides...Killing your customers is a bad business model...Find out what the world thinks about US...WSJ bizarrely claim surge's "success" means troops must stay

Download | play WMP Download | play -QT

From CBS:

Let’s face it: "The sky is falling" or "the nukes are coming" is a frighteningly effective sales pitch.

Don’t get me wrong: North Korea testing a nuke is real bad news. But I couldn't help but wonder what political use Karl Rove and the president would put this real bad news to. After all, banging the fear gong and trying to scare the hell out of us has worked like a charm for President Bush and the GOP.

Ever since 9/11, "be afraid" has been their No. 1 talking point. They sold us on invading Iraq with warnings from Condoleezza Rice that the "smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud" and dire predictions from Bush and Cheney about all the ways Saddam could rain death and destruction on us. And it's remarkable how the terror rhetoric always seems to hit Red just before elections.

Whether it's the specter of North Korean nukes or Iraqi insurgents making their way to Main Street USA, fear is a powerful, universal emotion — always there to be exploited. So as Election Day draws near, be on the lookout for those attempting to scare us into voting our fears.

To quote FDR, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." And those who use it for their own political purposes.

"Rolling Blunder" by Fred Kaplan is a couple years old but still the article to read on Clinton/Bush/North Korea. Also, see When North Korea Falls and Moon, North Korea & the Bushes

Early Warning: Bush promised a capability he couldn't deliver...go figure

ArmsControlWonk: So, like, why didn't it work?

Xark! Some people believe that women will go for anything if there's a cute kitty on it

MyDD: Republicans are not losing because of "mistakes"

the free radical report: the true test of religious faith...

Grab Bag: Twice as many deaths in Iraq since 2003 as killed by 23 years of Saddam.. ..Richard Pombo Lied to His Constituents...a Colorado Republican State Representative asks Mother of Dead Child if They Were Illegal Immigrants...Bush Wins Korean War...Gay Time Magazine reporter protected Foley's closet in 2003..

An emailer sent these in from NiemanWatchdog: Questions the press should ask:

Larry Wilkerson: Dogging the Torture Story

Reporters should demand that the two men most responsible for acts of torture by U.S. forces explain themselves, writes Colin Powell’s formerchief of staff -- who says a paper trail clearly links the practice of prisoner abuse to the upper reaches of the Pentagon and Vice PresidentCheney's office.

Philip E. Coyle: Our missile defense system is an expensive bluff

Which is Bush’s position: A) Our missile defense system can now defend the U.S., or B) It’s too new to predict success, or C) It has a reasonable chance of knocking out anything North Korea shoots at us? If you chose all three you would be correct; those are the answers Bush gave on July 6 and 7. And if you said the system flat out doesn’t work, you’d also be correct.

Henry Banta : Speculators – not supply and demand – are to blame for skyrocketing gas prices

A bipartisan Senate report, largely ignored by the media, says that there's no oil shortage and none is expected. Rather, it's massive, unregulated speculation that is costing consumers billions of dollars – and vastly enriching people like T. Boone Pickens.

Mike Allen's new piece, The End of Cowboy Diplomacy: WHY GEORGE W. BUSH'S GRAND STRATEGY FOR REMAKING THE WORLD HAD TO CHANGE has the pundits jumping for joy because Bush isn't bombing the hell out of Iran and North Korea yet.

Altercation: North Korea Know-Nothingism

Confined Space: The future of (some) work-site enforcement...and in another excellent post, Jordan explains the Precautionary Principle and Dick Cheney's selective application of that philosophy.

Harpers.org: "I Was a Mouthpiece for the American Military"

David E and that colored fella offer some thoughts on NY's gay marriage rulings. One thing is certain: God Hates Figs...

The Existentialist Cowboy: "If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."
—Justice Robert Jackson, Chief Prosecutor for the United States, Nuremberg Tribunals
We're gonna need a guide to understanding fascism.

Bob Geiger has some of the week's best editorial cartoons.

Terror Financing Fines Fall After 9/11

By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Despite the Bush administration's pledge to battle terrorist financing, the government's average penalty against companies doing business with countries listed as terrorist-sponsoring states fell sharply after the Sept. 11 attacks, an Associated Press analysis of federal records shows.

The average penalty for a company doing business with Iran, Iraq (news - web sites), North Korea (news - web sites), Sudan or Libya dropped nearly threefold, from more than $50,000 in the five years before the 2001 attacks to about $18,700 afterward, according to a computer-assisted analysis of federal records...read on

Oh I'm sorry I think this story might be a liberal media plant. Didn't the Bush administration go hard after the terror money?

Newt flips on Iraq: "We have to pull back"

When FOX News cheerleaders jumps ship-Bush has a problem.

"Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the House, told students and faculty at the University of South Dakota Monday that the United States should pull out of Iraq and leave a small force there, just as it did post-war in Korea and Germany. "It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy that country after June of 2003," Gingrich said during a question-and-answer session at the school. "We have to pull back, and we have to recognize it."

Remember when Gingrich couldn't call us unpatriotic whiners fast enough.

"And instead of applauding this deliberate effort to minimize American casualties and to strengthen the Iraqis, we have some of our friends here at home who want it both ways. They want to complain that we're not winning fast enough, and they want to complain if we take any casualties. You can't have it both ways. [Fox, Hannity & Colmes, 9/27/04]

If Newt thinks that we can set up permanent bases in Iraq he is sadly mistaken. I'll address that later.