Only on Fox: "Kill Social Security!" ... [Media Matters]: "Promotions for the August 13 edition of Fox News' Forbes on Fox included on-screen text exclaiming 'Kill Social Security!' and featuring a Social Security card with 'R.I.P.' superimposed over it. The Forbes on Fox segment, hosted by David Asman, featured a panel of editors and writers from Forbes magazine discussing the merits of abolishing Social Security."

(Via Martini Republic.)

The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) Blog: Fraud has delayed the V-22: "From all appearances, testing of the V-22 Osprey has gone well in recent months, but its troubled history has been expensive and delayed its development for years. A federal fraud trial in upcoming months promises to unravel the details behind one of those costly delays when the Marines grounded the entire V-22 Osprey fleet for 10 days in 2003.

Two Michigan men who worked for a military supplier that federal prosecutors say provided faulty hydraulic titanium tubing for Bell-Boeing’s tilt-rotor aircraft face an array of federal charges. They are expected to be tried in Detroit (the case was transferred this week from Philadelphia), but a date has not yet been set."

(Via a DefenseTech.)

Blood Runs Red, Not Blue - New York Times: "The war is going badly and lives have been lost by the thousands, but there is no real sense, either at the highest levels of government or in the nation at large, that anything momentous is at stake. The announcement on Sunday that five more American soldiers had been blown to eternity by roadside bombs was treated by the press as a yawner. It got very little attention.

You can turn on the television any evening and tune in to the bizarre extended coverage of the search for Natalee Holloway, the Alabama teenager who disappeared in Aruba in May. But we hear very little about the men and women who have given up their lives in Iraq, or are living with horrific injuries suffered in that conflict.

If only the war were more entertaining. Less of a downer. Perhaps then we could meet the people who are suffering and dying in it.

For all the talk of supporting the troops, they are a low priority for most Americans. If the nation really cared, the president would not be frolicking at his ranch for the entire month of August. He'd be back in Washington burning the midnight oil, trying to figure out how to get the troops out of the terrible fix he put them in.

Instead, Mr. Bush is bicycling as soldiers and marines are dying. Dozens have been killed since he went off on his vacation."

(Via NY Times.)

Washington Post | U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq: "The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

'What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground,' said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. 'We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning.'"

(Via IraqWar.)

State Department experts warned CENTCOM before Iraq war about lack of plans for post-war Iraq security: "Newly declassified State Department documents show that government experts warned the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in early 2003 about 'serious planning gaps for post-conflict public security and humanitarian assistance,' well before Operation Iraqi Freedom began.

In a February 7, 2003, memo to Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky, three senior Department officials noted CENTCOM's 'focus on its primary military objectives and its reluctance to take on 'policing' roles,' but warned that 'a failure to address short-term public security and humanitarian assistance concerns could result in serious human rights abuses which would undermine an otherwise successful military campaign, and our reputation internationally.' The memo adds 'We have raised these issues with top CENTCOM officials.'"

...

"The new documents, released this month to the National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act, also provide more evidence on when the Bush administration began planning for regime change in Iraq -- as early as October 2001."

(Via The National Security Archives.)

Salon.com Wire Story: "Gov. Bob Taft, who pushed for high ethical standards in his office, will face four criminal misdemeanor charges for not reporting golf outings and other events paid for by others, deepening a scandal that has rocked Ohio's Republican Party.

Taft, a member of a distinguished U.S. political family, would be the first governor in Ohio history to be charged with a crime. If convicted, he could be fined $1,000 and sentenced to six months in jail on each count, though time behind bars was considered unlikely.

Prosecutor Ron O'Brien said the charges relate to annual financial disclosure statements Taft filed from 2002 to 2005. Prosecutors said they had met with Taft's lawyer and expected the governor to appear in court Thursday."

(Via Salon.)

AlterNet: MediaCulture: A New Frame: Honesty: "If we're stuck on the losing side of Washington, why not try to broaden the range of political debate to include our real vision for the future, rather than pitch a mushy, centrist vision for the country?"

(Via AlterNet.)

Science News Article | Reuters.com: "Scientists in Australia's tropical north are collecting blood from crocodiles in the hope of developing a powerful antibiotic for humans, after tests showed that the reptile's immune system kills the HIV virus.

The crocodile's immune system is much more powerful than that of humans, preventing life-threatening infections after savage territorial fights which often leave the animals with gaping wounds and missing limbs.

'They tear limbs off each other and despite the fact that they live in this environment with all these microbes, they heal up very rapidly and normally almost always without infection,' said U.S. scientist Mark Merchant, who has been taking crocodile blood samples in the Northern Territory.

Initial studies of the crocodile immune system in 1998 found that several proteins (antibodies) in the reptile's blood killed bacteria that were resistant to penicillin, such as Staphylococcus aureus or golden staph, Australian scientist Adam Britton told Reuters on Tuesday. It was also a more powerful killer of the HIV virus than the human immune system."

(Via Reuters.)

Stories No Longer Operative: "Not that the jingosphere cares. The Right is always willing to sacrifice innocent others in their holy war against scary brown people.

He wasn't wearing a heavy jacket. He used his card to get into the station. He didn't vault the barrier. And now police say there are no CCTV pictures to reveal the truth. So why did plainclothes officers shoot young Jean Charles de Menezes seven times in the head, thinking he posed a terror threat? Special report by Tony Thompson, and Tom Phillips in Brazil."

(Via Eschaton.)

The Nation | Blog | The Daily Outrage | Honor Thy Neighbor | Ari Berman: "As the Bush Administration deflates its expectations in Iraq, Iran is raising them.

'US Lowers Sights on What Can Be Achieved in Iraq: Administration is Shedding 'Unreality' That Dominated Invasion, Official Says,' read a Sunday Washington Post headline.

Physical Security? Thirty-eight US troops died between August 3 and August 10, the fourth-worst week of the invasion. August has been the worst month for the over-stretched Army National Guard and Reserves. Attacks on the new Iraqi security force have tripled since January. Four thousand civilians have died since the interim government assumed power April 28. Parents refuse to let their children play outside. 'Do not expect us to defeat this insurgency,' Bush Administration officials reportedly told National Review's Byron York."

(Via The Nation Weblogs.)

they look kinda shifty to me, too: "Observe your tax dollars at work.   Now they're stopping babies from being brought onto plane flights if their names are similar to those of suspected terrorists.  From CNN:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Infants have been stopped from boarding planes at airports throughout the United States because their names are the same as or similar to those of possible terrorists on the government's 'no-fly list.'

Now I can see putting their names on the 'no-cry list,' especially for long flights.   And I can certainly see banning them from movie theaters.   (After all, you can't be too safe.)  But come on, already.   All this chaos and inconvenience from the TSA, and studies show we're no safer than we were on September 10, 2001."

(Via Night Light.)

BOHICAn:
Bend Over, Here Inflation Comes, Again: "This month's inflation report confirms that we are bubbling on the edge of inflation. We don't have a savings glut, we have a good old fashioned dollar glut. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury have printed more dollars than the future stream of revenues, and while various governments and private individuals have been willing to park dollars, that time is going to come to an end."

...

"Well duh, a war time economy with a spending binge - oh, and one other thing, a massive policy decision to count consumption and expected future forced savings as savings and wealth.

Let's get down to the rub here, the con job, and there is no other way to put it, is executed here by Levey and Brown in Foreign Affairs."

(Via BOPnews.)

The Democratic Party: "Last night, a man in a pick-up truck with a chain and pipe attached to the back of it mowed over a memorial to those who have died in Iraq. The memorial, made of white crosses, American flags and flowers, was erected by Cindy Sheehan and her supporters as they continue to wait for a meeting with the President outside his ranch in Texas. Fortunately, the man was caught, and police found pieces of the crosses in the undercarriage of his truck. (Crooks and Liars has a short video from this morning's Today show, and there are photos from the scene on this Kos diary.)"

(Via DNC: Kicking Ass.)

Think Progress » Warning Shots Fired at Fitzgerald?: "Host Tim Russert then asked Mehlman the obvious questions: ‘If, in fact, he indicts White House officials, will you accept that indictment and not fight it?…Will you pledge today, because you have tremendous confidence in him, that you will not criticize his decision?’ Despite the urgings of Russert (and Center for American Progress CEO John Podesta), Mehlman would not take that step.

Bob Dole’s attack today on Patrick Fitzgerald may quite possibly be the first warning shots of a coming right-wing campaign to undermine Fitzgerald. Is someone in the White House getting nervous?"

(Via Think Progress.)

The Nation | Blog | ActNow! | Support Cindy Sheehan--UPDATED | Peter Rothberg: "There are many reasons why Cindy Sheehan is attracting a flood of media attention. The mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, Sheehan is camping out near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas and says she won't leave until Bush agrees to meet with her to discuss the war. With a compelling personal narrative, an articulate voice and an obvious mainstream pedigree, Sheehan is tapping into a growing popular feeling that the Bush Administration is out of touch with the realities of the Iraq war."

(Via The Nation Weblogs.)

AlterNet: War on Iraq: Women of the New Iraq: "The war on Iraq has not only made the country and world less safe, it has erased the social and political rights of women who were the most liberated in the Middle East."

(Via AlterNet.)

Salon.com Wire Story: "Releasing photos and videotapes of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison would aid al-Qaida recruitment, weaken governments in Iraq and Afghanistan and incite riots against U.S. troops, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff warned in court papers.

The American Civil Liberties Union is seeking the release of 87 photographs and four videotapes taken at the prison as part of a lawsuit it filed in October 2003.

Gen. Richard B. Myers wrote in recently unsealed court papers filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that it was 'probable that al-Qaida and other groups will seize upon these images and videos as grist for their propaganda mill.'"

If we tell them about what we're doing, the terrorists will win.

(Via Salon.)