TAKE IT AS A COMPLIMENT, MR. LAMONT

It's hard to believe anything the Bush or Blair government says given the countless lies, but let's say British intelligence with some Pakistani help DID foil a major terrorist plot. Well, "thank you" is hardly sufficient. Kelso leans to that point of view, meaning he gives it about a 70% chance of being true and a 30% chance of being WAG THE DOG, CAPRICORN I, etc.

But even if it's true, there are a few points to ponder andn some American behavior that has been uglier than homemade sin. Some Yahoo! news links had it yesterday but there is quite a bit to know: the U.S. knew of the arrests and released no information until after Lamont beat Lieberman, AFP quoted a gleeful adminsitration official saying how great this would be to run on in November, and even internal U.S. travel has been thrown into chaos with the new Homeland Security mandate to not only look for weapons and explosives but also for anything liquid, yes like cough syrup, toothpaste, and perfume.

Holy Joe wasted no time in using terrorism to go after Lamont [link http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/nyregion/11conn.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin].
Very good, Joe, but it's still a loser. Again, this is what happened. A smarter, better-looking, richer, and more-principled candidate beat you in an election. It happens all the time. Ned Lamont is no less a ruling-class man than Joe Lieberman is. Christ, he's a Morgan! His wife is a hedge-fund manager and a good one. Lamont himself is a very successful entrepreneur. The difference was that the voters in Connecticut preferred the ruling class man whose views: out of Iraq, univeral health care, actual pro-choice, anti-death penalty, reordered budget priorities, and a re-emphasis on privacy were preferable to Holy Joe's religiosity and chicken-hawk bellicosity. Nothing magic, nothing radical. And, really, in terms of the general election in Connecticut to elect it's junior U.S. senator, the right has cried wolf so many times, how does one more terrorist thingy or one more proxy war or one more raising of those paper-doll terrorist color threat warnings help Lieberman? What exactly does he expect Ned Lamont to do, say "O.K., Joe, you were right, this thing is really important and our country really needs you; I quit?" It's a fantasy. It's not going to happen. Lamont will win easily. Lieberman will get a nice job with Carlyle and still go to his grave with 1% of the Lamont family's net worth.

David Brooks had an absolutely absurd op-ed in Thursday's Tissue Of Lies decrying the Lamont win and dreaming of a "centrist" McCain-Lieberman 3rd party sensibly destroying partisanship and leading our country to the land of milk and honey. Huh? What exactly is "centrist" about either Joe Lieberman or John McCain? Both are right-wing ideologues whose views would put them in the "center" (hah!) of LePen or Zhirinovsky's parties and would probably be too conservative for the Aryan Nations because of Joe and John's anti-privacy views. They make fine Republicans and both have contributed mightly to "the atmosphere of partisanship." At least McCain is honest enough to call himself a Republican. Well, give Joe his props, he has played the Trojan Horse pretty well all these years. Kelso would call Ned Lamont "center-left" and somebody like Barrack Obama "center-right".

Another reality check. The ACLU lost in the court of appeals to the NYPD on the issue of random bag checks in the NYC subway system. One's chances of dying in a plane crash are smaller by orders of magnitude than one's chances of dying in a car wreck adjusted for miles travelled of course. Yet fear-of-flying is rampant. Fear-of-car travel is extremely rare. This is no bizarre tangent. Dig, one's chances of dying in a terrorist attack while riding a New York subway assymptotically approach zero. One's chances of having his or her life totally fucked for good should one of New York's finest find a joint or some pills without a corresponding prescription or something written in Arabic are anything but insignificant. And once you are up in that system, friend, you are there for good. If you are poor, you go the fuck away for a while. If you are middle-class, you might beat it. How much do you think it costs to defend even a small criminal case? If you are lucky, maybe $25,000. Think about it. Or just go back and read 1984 or some of the dissident samizdat literature of the Soviet era. Or don't think and especially don't read.

The U.S. is at war with Iraq and Afghanistan. It has always been at war with Iraq and Afghanistan.

Does that make Lamont into Goldstein in 2006?

Kelso's Nuts Love You