I noted just 4 days ago that John Kerry didn't list "National Security" as an issue on his website (I noticed that months ago about all of the other candidates except President Bush). Well, they've been redoing the site, and in addition to clearing away a bunch of Sandy Berger and Joe Wilson stuff, they added "National Security" as an issue.

Welcome to the party, pal!

Just got the largest spam attack yet - over 800 comments.

Thank heavens for MT-Blacklist.

Seriously.

As SGT Stryker says, "wait a minute, it's Two-Thousand F***ing Four! Jesus, why am I reading about people from the Clinton Adminsitration?"

Shocking but true!

We were flipping through the on-demand offerings on the digital cable the other day, and came across a movie and I didn't want to commit to spending $5 to watch it right then. Mrs. Blaster looked it up on the Internet and found some people who thought it was very funny. So I put it on the Netflix queue. Boy, was the Internet wrong.

Heed my warning: Evil Alien Conquerors is among the worst movies ever made. Don't fall for any reviews that say otherwise!

That is all.

I am not fast enough at posting to have caught the "nukes in Iraq" story before it was declared stupid by the Iraqi government.

So, umm, color me unconvinced.

I suspect Jonah Goldberg is right about whether the Berger scandal will go anywhere is right. It will all come down to whether the documents were in his pants or in his pockets. If it was just his pockets, the story will boil down to the "stories are untrue," which will be true, of course, but that will mask the serious issue of him removing all copies of highly sensitive documents.

On a side note, one of the big Berger defenders right now is Lanny Davis. I wrote back in February: "if Davis is telling your story, you have something to hide." Note this piece at Just One Minute - link via Instapundit.

Really - the news announcer said that in response to a story about Senator Warner talking about an interim Iraq Survey Group report. Here's a link to the story of that (sent by AMac). Essentially, the Senate got an interim briefing, and Warner says that the next report "will contain 'a good deal of new information' backing up the Bush administration's contention that Saddam Hussein pursued weapons of mass destruction." Of course, we heard that a year ago, too, and we see where we are today. This report is due out in September, and any such conclusions could only help Bush, so I expect that it will be reported falsely, just like Kay's first report was, just like the 9/11 Commission report was.

And just like the CNN guy saying after this report that "no WMD have been found in Iraq. Flip over a couple of stations on the cable, and you can hear from Charles Duelfer himself that so far 35 chemical rounds have been recovered in Iraq (which comports with the IHT report I noted here). Via Ace of Spades HQ.

Warner says "I'm not suggesting dramatic discoveries," so I don't expect the narrative to change much. Unless maybe they found some WMD in Sandy Berger's pants.

Glenn Reynolds notes in a post: "This whole national security thing threatens to become a "wedgie issue" for the Democrats!" ("Wedgie issue" is linked as a pants joke.)

I know that this was a funny, but the thing is, even today, on the Kerry campaign issues page, national security is not listed as an issue.

Could it be possible that we really are suicidal - that the essence of our democracy will lead to our own demise? Some days you just wonder.

Via LGF.

How exactly do you "step down" from an informal, unpaid position?

Seems like a bad idea for these guys to be so partisan. It may seem petty to base shopping on such things, but there you are. I still don't buy Tyson's chicken.

The blogosphere has been an important voice in getting major media to correct themselves. Fat lot of good that it does, but at least its a start. One of the key knives to twist is that they claim to be superior due to editing and fact checking. And right now with a bunch folks with their panties in a twist over the topic of major media v. blogs, now is not the time to get sloppy.

One big piece of sloppiness right now is going on over that story by Annie Jacobsen. Folks have been second guessing whether she made the whole thing up or not - she didn't. (That says nothing about her interpretation of the events. The events did happen. Period.) And in trying to Google their way to the truth, some sharp individual sent a link to Powerline Blog that proved there are indeed bands of Syrian musicians. This is what Powerline wrote:

Responding to my call for additional information, one of our our enterprising readers has located a photo of such a group -- the group known as Kulna Sawa.

Emphasis mine. Powerline (and its enterprising reader) do not claim that they have identified the group on Flight 347. But somehow, people read it as they have. LGF says that a reader emailed and said it was that band, and Donald Sensing wrote it (linking to LGF), and Ace links to Powerline and says they said it was that band.

I don't believe that anyone has actually identified that the band on Flight 347 was actually Kulna Sawa. But there it is.

On a more minor note, Bill Quick notes a story in the NYT about people in Northern Virginia abiding by a gun law that allows "open carry," with the headline "Now Let's Get Virginia Concealed Carry." Except of course Virginia does have concealed carry - even here in Northern Virginia - and it is a "shall issue" state. Easy to check at packing.org.

There are people who say you can't beat terrorists, and I say, of course we can. If you've read my comments in the post below, you know that I disagree with the David Warren column and Wretchard of Belmont Club's analysis of it. However, he has a new post on what is happening in Gaza right now that I do agree with a lot.

Gaza is probably the top "underreported" story right now. There is something serious happening within the ranks of the Palestinian leadership. One of the first real challenges to Arafat, and it is playing out violently. They are coming apart at the seems, I think, and it is likely to get worse before it gets better. The end of Arafat's despotism among the Palestinians will be a huge step forward for them, and provide a path to opening real negotiations with Israel, and more importantly, the US.

It puts the lie to all the talk of "we must solve the Palestinian situation before Iraq" (you do remember when that was in vogue, right?). I always thought that had it backward, that the states that supported Palestinian terrorism had to be convinced to stop supporting it before the situation there could be resolved. And Iraq was one of the key supporters - no Senate Intelligence Committee invesigation required. And I think we got leverage to crack down at least some on Saudi charities, too. And the Syrians are much more circumspect than they were. And as Wretchard points out, the Egyptians are now worried about Palestinian violence impinging on them.