The McCain campaign hits a soft pitch out of the park.

The other nine “Dumbest Members of Congress” on Radar’s 2006 list: Jim Bunning, Patrick Kennedy, Conrad Burns, Cynthia McKinney, Jean Schmidt, Barbara Boxer, James Inhofe, Donald Young, and Kitty Harris.

[via TPM]

Yeah yeah yeah … I’ve been meaning to join FreshDirect and order my water supply and a gross of white meat tuna (BumbleBee, natch):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS_7Mj4y0hM

The Prepper Movement [Asylum]

Poor Douglas Story. He blows $224.90 on some 9/11 porn for his tailgate, installs a Confederate Loser flag in his rear window, and all everyone cares about is his fucking license plate:

But he got more than he bargained for when a photo of his pickup went viral on the Web last week. Motorists and Muslim groups complained that his Virginia vanity license plate — 14CV88 — was really code for neo-Nazi, white supremacist sentiments. The state Department of Motor Vehicles voted last week to recall Story’s plates and force him to buy new ones.

“There is absolutely no way I’d have anything to do with Hitler or Nazis,” Story said Wednesday… “My sister-in-law and my niece are Jewish. I went to my niece’s bat mitzvah when she turned 13 three years ago. Does that sound like something an anti-Semite would do?”

It’s true: While the Venn diagram of anti-Semites and Raging Assholes does show significant overlap, you can be the latter without the former. And that neo-Nazi “1488” reference is an innocent mistake — NASCAR’s Tony Stewart drives #14, while Dale Earnhardt Jr. handles #88.

Oh, and the CV? “Sons of Confederate Veterans”. Great-great-great-grandpappy fought valiantly for the slavedrivers.

Virginia driver denies license plate had coded racist message [WaPo]

Update: Say, let’s check Doug’s Facebook page…

Read more »

Or if you want to pull out another Sixties chestnut, Sgt. Stein is a “meteorologist for the base’s 1st Marine Expeditionary Force” — a Weatherman…

A Camp Pendleton Marine is running smack up against the limits of what uniform-wearing Americans are allowed to say about their government after his Facebook page for “Armed Forces Tea Party Patriots” sparked concern among his superiors Tuesday.

Sgt. Gary Stein, 24, was set to do a television interview with MSNBC when he got called back to the base to go over the Pentagon’s directive on political activities. Stein chose to remove the page, launched three weeks ago, until he has reviewed his obligations under military code.

No worries, the page is back up. And we’re cool at Stinque World Domination Headquarters — any revolt at the base has to fight I-5 traffic to reach us.

Marine scrutinized over Facebook page [San Diego Union-Tribune]

Armed Forces Tea Party [Facebook]

Good to know that we can depend upon the American government to round up the Bad People without that silly habeas crappus stuff getting in the way:

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.

Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible to release them”.

A spokesman for Bush declined comment. An unnamed “former associate to Mr. Rumsfeld” says the charges are untrue. We imagine Liz & Dick will be dropping by Fox for some pushback.

Speaking of which, the Times of London is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Intramural fight, anyone?

George W. Bush ‘knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent’ [Times UK]

With Congress still out of town, President Obama is continuing his Home Alone pranks with yet another major national-security shift:

President Barack Obama’s advisers will remove religious terms such as “Islamic extremism” from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy and will use the rewritten document to emphasize that the United States does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror, counterterrorism officials said.

The change is a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventative war and currently states: “The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century.”

And in case you were wondering, yes, the neocons aren’t letting the previous announcement pass undemagogued:

“If there was a biological attack, which killed over a million Americans, is this president really saying we would not retaliate?” Newt Gingrich asked last night on Fox News.

Someday we’d really like to listen in when they try out rabid attack lines on each other.

Obama Bans Islam, Jihad From National Security Strategy Document [AP/Fox]

Conservatives Falsely Claim New Obama Nuke Policy Prevents Nuclear Retaliation Against Chem/Bio Attack [ThinkProgress]

Rep. Paul Broun (R-Tara): “If ObamaCare passes, that free insurance card that’s in people’s pockets is gonna be as worthless as a Confederate dollar after the War Between The States — the Great War of Yankee Aggression.” [ThinkProgress]