IAEA: Iran Nearing Nuclear Weapons Production Capability

Good thing Hillary has assured AIPAC that she is open to "keeping all options on the table" when it comes to Iran.  Did you realize Iran was "nearing" Nuclear Weapons Production Capability?   I read it on AIPAC's home page so it must be true.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Monday warned that Iran has mastered crucial nuclear technology since August and could be as little as six months away from being able to enrich uranium on an industrial scale

Better start dropping some bombs.  Heed the warnings.  

As I was reading Granny Doc's GBCW diary today, I see that one of her points was how anyone who takes a position that is critical of Israel runs the risk of being called a "holocaust denier".  

I am frustrated by those who would hurl "holocaust denier" at anyone who does not immediately embrase their take on any issue.  

I think we all are aware of the tensions that surround discussions on Israel.   They should be stamped "Highly Flammable".   And I think any reasonable person would agree that denying the holocaust is an evil thing to do.  However, I've been seeing that phrase a lot lately and its made me think of a related issue.

One of my pet subjects is how the whole oil and gas market is rigged.  I'm on what some consider the tinfoil side of the argument.  Some favorite diaries in the past were Environmentalist's "How High Will The Price Of Oil Rise After The Election?" where the Environmentalist states that after always maintaining there was no manipulation (like Jerome A Paris), now he/she isn't so sure.   That diary references LondonYank's Rigging Gas Prices for the Election..  Now while I believe that gas prices were rigged for the election, I think that it was just a small part of the overall ongoing pricing scam.  

This is a follow up diary to yesterday's diary by KingOneEye.   In that diary we found that the main Republican candidates were using search engine advertising and the Democrats were not.   Not a good sign that the current Democratic campaigns are going to use the internet appropriately, despite what Hillary's campaign wants you to believe.  

Running search ads is a bit different than other types of advertising.  You can run an ad for any term you want.  However, if no one searches for those terms, you don't get any traffic.  So, its always good to know how many people are searching for your terms.   Below I take a look at the top 3 candidates on each side (top 3 as per my own opinion).   Rather interesting.

I just heard this on Le Show.  I visit this site way too often and was surprised I hadn't seen this here.   If this has been diaried already, i'll just delete it.   Apparently in 2003, shortly after the invasion of Iraq, Iran offered to help the US and also offered to stop supporting militant groups  From the BBC:

Tehran proposed ending support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups and helping to stabilise Iraq following the US-led invasion.

Offers, including making its nuclear programme more transparent, were conditional on the US ending hostility.

But Vice-President Dick Cheney's office rejected the plan, the official said

I'm amazed i'm still surprised by some of this stuff.   I want to know what someone did to Dick Cheney when he was a young boy to make him so fucking twisted.   No one is that fucked up without "help".   We know what happened to W, since we know his parents.

So, this may be a somewhat short diary but I really wanted to share something I just read that stunned me.  As I was wrapping up a piece on Bush's Health Care proposal that he will be touting tonight, I was stunned by the last sentence.

When Bush addresses the nation tonight, he'll sound an awful lot like a man screaming from the bottom of the ocean: lots of bubbles and flaying arms, but impossible to hear above the sea roar of Iraq.

A man screaming from the bottom of the ocean?   Lots of bubbles and flaying arms?!   I had to check that I wasn't reading a nyceve health care diary.   So who had this to say about Bush?   CNNMoney.

Yesterday there was a fine diary by Clem Yeobright on whether or not Big Oil (BO) tried to game the elections by intentionally lowering prices at the pump.   Clem cited a piece (opinion piece) that Marketplace had done that provided evidence that BO tried to do just that.  I tipped my tinfoil hat to Clem and the Marketplace people as I think we are foolish to not think that this might have possibly occured.  The raw data staring us in the face every day for a few months makes one ponder these things.  And this fantastic bit of work by Environmentalist that was linked to in the diary shed new light on what they are up to.  But, some say to look at information like this and question it is the same as saying that 9/11 was an inside job.  Some people right here on this blog.   We are told that Jerome a Paris had debunked this concept and thus we are, quite simply, nutty and our arguments have no merit.  

Anyone see Kenny last night?  Wow.   I know being president ages you but Kenny no longer looked like that dashing young eligble bachelor.   Anyway, I'm on his personal mailing list.  I signed up for it.  Today he sent me and the others on the list a thank you for our hard work on the 2006 campaign.  Highlights below.

Based on a comment this probably was on MSNBC. I've never watched that either before today (although i watch Mike Stark on YouTube). I've changed the title and will go check out their site for a transcript.

Now back to the original diary. how to you do updates around these parts?

I've never watched Fox News in my life, aside from perhaps in an airport bar.   And what happens in airport bars....is best forgotten.  However, today i was looking for something to watch on TV.  I normally only watch basketball or Chapelle, Stewart and Colbert.  There was nada on the tube.  Zip.  Lou Dobbs was talking about the war on the middle class but to any Daily Kos reader it was amateur hour.   I'd like to see Bonddad's One Hour Special on the economy on CNN.  I'd tune in for that.   Anyway, i decided to see what Fox News was saying...  

Some thoughts for someone who has worked the last 6 years as a search engine optimization (SEO) consultant.  At this point probably everyone knows the famous example of the "miserable failure" Google Bomb.  Its one of my favorites and I always try to work it into presentations for clients.   The last time everyone in the room laughed except for one guy.  I took that as a good sign.   Anyway, Google's algorithm has changed signficantly over the years, if you care, here is how it generally works.

Ok.  No one has diaried this yet so I think it may be a sign that i'm a little too obsessed with the 2006 elections.   There are other signs that my wife has pointed out but i'd rather not share them at this point.   Before Bush got elected I never cared about politics.  My family always fought on issues (nukes, farm worker rights, leading the fight to get a nickle back for beer cans in Maine (and we won!), etc) but i don't think my parents ever worked a campaign.  I digress.  Two REPUBLICAN campaigns have denounced the NRCC today for going to far. I'm not making this shit up.  Second up(i've been drinking so if "second up" isn't acceptable...deal with it) is "sex is torture" Shays

So we've got a major scandal in congress, daytime curfew in Iraq, Afghanistan falling apart, Bill Kristol admitting that the president won't move more needed troops to Iraq because of the elections, the elimination of habeus corpus....hell...we've even got a story saying Roger Clemens was using steroids (as if that wasn't obvious....notice how he bulked up once Giambi joined the yanks)...I thought steroids were a top Republican issue this year?  All that and what does CNN have as their big story today.

Last week we heard about how College Republicans were having games where you could shoot cut outs of Democrats.   And we all know Ann Coulter has said that Clinton should've been "impeached or assassinated".   From BruinKid's diary by way of Olbermann:

Last night I was watching the football game.  I don't watch football much anymore but this was an event.  Eli vs. Peyton?  hell, even Kos posted on it.   I'm a big fan of Eli.  After reading a NY Times magazine profile on him a year or two ago i started rooting for him.  Seems like someone I wanted to root for.  So I tuned in.  My wife promptly fell asleep.  During a commercial I surfed a bit and realized i was watching the mockudrama on ABC.  As predicted those cameras sure were shaky.  But it occured to me that if there was a football game on that i would bother to watch (i rarely even watch the superbowl) than I bet a lot of the people that the Republicans wanted to reach were also watching.  And I was right.  (clinton also skipped the movie)

The more I hear about Iranian president the more I think he and Bush should be real pals.  They both have that fiesty "go it alone" attitude.  And they both use their religion as a main approach to governing.  And now we find they share another thing in common.

Iran's hard-line president urged students Tuesday to push for a purge of liberal and secular university teachers, another sign of his determination to strengthen Islamic fundamentalism in the country.

Now Bush wouldn't call for this type of thing himself, he lets others do it for him.   So, while CNN writes about this horrible issue in Iran, they don't mention what goes on here in the USA.

Pakistan (AP)

The Al Qaeda administration proclaimed significant progress in the war on America Tuesday but said the enemy has adjusted to Al Qaeda and that "America is safer but foolish to think the Republican policies are making them truly safe.  Shit, they were going to spend a couple hundred million to build a bridge to an island in Alaska.  We would've blown that shit up quick fast in a hurry.  My cousin recently went for a vacation in Miami.  Had a great time.  He took a shipping container.  It cost more than Jet Blue but at least the attendent left him alone and didn't make any raghead jokes."

Happy Labor Day!   I was listening to David Wessell this morning on NPR.  Wessell is the Wall Street Journal's deputy Washington bureau chief (sounds impressive).   While I don't have a transcript the essence of what he was saying was that we got ourselves a good old fashioned class war.   The rich have been getting much richer.   The country has made huge gains in productivity.   Corporate profits are up.   And yet wages for the average Americans are stagnating or dropping.   He kept saying that in America "the middle of the middle" are losing ground.   Middle of the middle?   Sounds like a fancy way to say "the average America family".  

Did you see Joe Klein's column in Time?  Joe is upset.  Not a bad way to start your day, making Joe Klein upset. He called you "blognuts".   He mentioned the "nauseating triumphalism" caused by the Lamont victory.  What he doesn't understand is that he feels nauseous because his guy lost.   Trust me, I've felt nauseous for years now.   Didn't go away until last tueday night around 11:30 PM.  But we can't expect Joe to be all-knowing.  But at least we made him sick.  But that is just the beginning.  Check out this other column  that showed up in my paper today.