In figuring where to put our hard-earned money down, we should probably watch the behavior of the potential GOP Veeps. Any proudly and publicly shameless attempt to service The Candidate Who Wasn’t There, on anyone’s part, could go a long way in an utterly pathetic contest. Brazen whore-like efforts to catch Project Romney’s attention could be handsomely rewarded, by none so gratefully as a potential president known for his risk aversion, to the point of cowardice. The question is: who is this man? Who is made of The Right Putty?

RICHARD STENGEL: But you would — just to be straight about it — but you would sanction a strike before you would tolerate a nuclear Iran?

MARCO RUBIO: Yes, and I think that we need to begin to prepare people for that. See, I think that the — not just the people of the country, but the people of the world appreciate when their leaders walk them through this process and explain this is what we’re working on, and more importantly, these are the stakes of a nuclear Iran.

And by “Nuclear Iran” (disambiguation: rhetoric, Pam Geller rape fantasy, Air Force Academy officer’s club…), he means the stakes of a presidential campaign. Bravo for the 41 year-old who still hasn’t figured out how his family made the 90 miles from Cuba to America, now a master of the game they call ‘quasi-nuclear power destruction.’ Marco’s opening: All out war. Yoo-hoo, Mittens. Nodding continuously, gravely there, and fapping furiously, the Bolton coven. Heads-up for an apocalypse. This, Senator, counts for vice presidential material.

I recall, back in 2006, the Army expanded their service window to 42 years of age, and I suddenly became eligible to die in Baghdad. If Vice President Marco gets his way, he too will be immediately eligible to die, but in Tehran.

Boy, this is great news. As tensions over Iran’s mysterious capabilities and goals ratchet up, a familiar bunch soft-shoe their way into the national spotlight. Look who’s back for a bite of the war apple: the stupid neocon lobby. From your familiar torture criminals . .

The Case for Military Action in Iran
John Yoo · Dec. 28, 2011

. . the United States should not be limited by the UN Charter, which limits the use of force to self-defense or when authorized by the Security Council . . The Charter rules have never described state practice and have the effect of keeping dictators in power and preventing the United States and its allies from maintaining peace and security in the world. The United States should have the legal right to use military force when it removes dangerous threats not just to our security, but to regions and the world — and that is, I argue, exactly what is posed by the prospect of Iranian nuclear weapons.

. . to the neo-Neocons . .

Time to Attack Iran
Matthew Kroenig | ForeignAffairs.com | Jan/Feb 2012

. . But skeptics of military action fail to appreciate the true danger that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to U.S. interests in the Middle East and beyond. And their grim forecasts assume that the cure would be worse than the disease — that is, that the consequences of a U.S. assault on Iran would be as bad as or worse than those of Iran achieving its nuclear ambitions. But that is a faulty assumption. The truth is that a military strike intended to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, if managed carefully, could spare the region and the world a very real threat and dramatically improve the long-term national security of the United States.

The sights of these ‘serious’ admonitions are so appalling they almost defy a reply (by those of us lucky enough to have survived the last ‘emergency’ with rudimentary communication skills). We just pulled out of a war that cost us thousands of our friends’ and fellow citizens’ lives 23 DAYS AGO. But here we are again with multiple ‘foreign policy experts’ calling for America to go to war in the Middle East.

And, no, they haven’t even bothered to change their tune. It’s the same: The United Nations are stupid and illegitimate. America alone sets the tone for morality and security in international affairs. Time is slipping away, and the unseen dangers are too great to ignore. And since we do everything better now than we’ve ever done it before, the costs will be minimal.

Thank gawd at least one person calls bullshit up front:

The worst case for war with Iran
Stephen M. Walt | Foreign Policy | December 21, 2011

If you’d like to read a textbook example of war-mongering disguised as “analysis,” I recommend Matthew Kroenig’s forthcoming article in Foreign Affairs, titled “Time to Attack Iran: Why a Strike Is the Least Bad Option.” It is a remarkably poor piece of advocacy, all the more surprising because Kroenig is a smart scholar who has done some good work in the past. It makes one wonder if there’s something peculiar in the D.C. water supply.

Stephen, too, has seen this:

There is a simple and time-honored formula for making the case for war, especially preventive war. First, you portray the supposed threat as dire and growing, and then try to convince people that if we don’t act now, horrible things will happen down the road. (Remember Condi Rice’s infamous warnings about Saddam’s “mushroom cloud”?) . . Second, you have to persuade readers that the costs and risks of going to war aren’t that great . . Kroenig’s piece follows this blueprint perfectly.

They’re all constructed that way. It’s as if the Middle East Socrates Group never saw their disastrously retarded and evil recommendations for Iraq as less than acceptable. For all they know, everything went fine and they’re held in high regard. For all we know, Republicans now put as much faith in them as they ever did.

Values candidate Rick Santorum just before Iowa, the shortest:

Values candidate Rick Santorum just before Iowa, the shorter, with more morals:

We must go back to traditional American values. We haven’t been in a second war for two weeks and one day.

Newt Gingrich knows something we don’t know. Oh hell, let’s just say it: Newt knows about 100 times more than we’ll ever know. Probably a thousand times more than everything I ever knew multiplied by a zillion.

Here’s a thing: a nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack will kill you. Probably soon. Watch the first minute of this clip and take some notes. Then you may find it practical to launch an attack on North Korea before they fritz your ham radio:

North Korea could launch 3 nuclear missiles and completely wipe out our electrical grid? Send us back to a pre-industrial era? Krishna no, don’t be silly.

North Korea could launch just one missile and it would send us back 300 to 400 years. And kill 90% of us within a year. That’s the prediction of that ‘expert,’ Newt Gingrich’s co-author and good friend William Forstchen:

Turns out Russia could lob a dozen nukes at us and kill millions, but most of us would survive. We’d also still be a modern country. But if, say, Iran launches a single, small nuclear-tipped missile from a boat in the Atlantic and detonates it 200 miles up in the atmosphere, most of us will die before Christmas 2013. Oh, and America will become Latvia cerca 1700-something.

My. Conservative experts on national security everywhere play up this scenario frequently. Here’s the President of the Center for Security Policy, Frank Gaffney:

The Heritage Foundation:

In 33 minutes or less, life as we know it in America could end. That’s how long it would take for an enemy ballistic missile launched from the other side of the world to hit the United States. If it carried and detonated a nuclear weapon high over the center of the country, the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) would literally fry the nation’s electrical grid and all of the circuitry that powers our homes, businesses, hospitals, phones, cars, planes, traffic lights, ATMs, water supplies, and anything else not “hardened” against such attacks. The EMP Commission chairman has testified that, within just one year of such an attack, 70 percent to 90 percent of Americans would be dead from starvation and disease.

Heavens, we’re about to die.

There really once was an EMP Commission. They were tasked with figuring out how substantial a threat the EMP from a nuclear explosion might be. The commission produced reports in 2004 (here) and in 2008 (here) and written testimony before the House Armed Services Committee (here).

They predicted the deaths of all but a few Americans? No, they produced plenty of dry boring analysis but no evidence that all but 30 million of us could be slaughtered with a single bomb. Not that that matters, of course. Because the threat of an impending sky-holocaust is simply too wonderful for the right-wing fear and book merchants to let alone. So, we get this.

From what I gather, the popular proof of your approaching death came from a Newsmax article. A reporter named Kenneth Timmerman, attending a meeting of missile defense hawks at The Claremont Institute, heard a talk by the EMP Commission’s chair, Dr. William Graham. Unable to discern the difference between Graham speaking in simpatico to his whacko friends and Graham testifying under oath to Congress, Timmerman became confused. In his sober post titled “U.S. Intel: Iran Plans Nuclear Strike on U.S.,” he reported:

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee and in remarks to a private conference on missile defense over the weekend hosted by the Claremont Institute, Dr. William Graham warned that the U.S. intelligence community “doesn’t have a story” to explain the recent Iranian tests.

Timmerman was never aware of Graham’s actual testimony. Obviously. But if Graham is saying stuff at the conference, surely he said the same things to Congress, right? Congress has slightly higher standards for shiny intellectualism and honesty, but they’re partisan. And so everything Graham lectured about at The Claremont Institute became the Commission’s report to Congress. Like this:

“If even a crude nuclear weapon were detonated anywhere between 40 kilometers to 400 kilometers above the earth, in a split-second it would generate an electro-magnetic pulse [EMP] that would cripple military and civilian communications, power, transportation, water, food, and other infrastructure,” the report warned.

No, Graham warned. Yes, that’s somewhat what the report said, but the words are Graham’s. And thus, this . .

Asked just how many Americans would die if Iran were to launch the EMP attack it appears to be preparing, Graham gave a chilling reply.

“You have to go back into the 1800s to look at the size of population” that could survive in a nation deprived of mechanized agriculture, transportation, power, water, and communication.

“I’d have to say that 70 to 90 percent of the population would not be sustainable after this kind of attack,” he said.

. . Graham’s own runaway comments became the Heritage Foundation’s “The EMP Commission chairman has testified . . ” Now the League of Doom predicts you’ll die of starvation once Iran manages to buy a fishing trawler. Of course, Newt Gingrich’s stagecraft morality leans to educating the media. And this, friends, is why we call some people “wingnuts.”

And what about this EMP? Is it dangerous? I don’t know, I really didn’t feel like blowing more hours than I already had producing a flawless debunk. But I do know this: plenty of nuclear bombs have been detonated above ground without sending countries 1000 miles away into permanent decline. From the commission’s own 2004 report:

In [1962], the Soviets executed a series of nuclear detonations in which they exploded 300 kiloton weapons at approximately 300, 150, and 60 kilometers above their test site in South Central Asia. They report that on each shot they observed damage to overhead and underground buried cables at distances of 600 kilometers. They also observed surge arrestor burnout, spark-gap breakdown, blown fuses, and power supply breakdowns.

While interesting, we also note that the Soviet Union survived. And it did so without being thrown even further back into the Dark Ages. Now I congratulate myself: I have waited the entire post to remind the loons that electrical grids have been around 130 years. Silly people. Also: we have, for some time, been concerned with our enemies lobbing nuclear missiles at us because they could come down. There’s a whole system in place for tracking incoming strikes, launching lightning counter-attacks, and turning countries into craters.

Guess who’s going to run for President in 2012? And get his ass thoroughly kicked? The odious ‘kiss up, kick down’ warmonger, John Bolton.

Gee, John, whaddya think about this Wikileaks thing? Let me guess: somebody’s brains better get spilled?

Bolton on WikiLeaks: ‘Treason, Punishable by Death’
November 29, 2010 | Brian Bolduc | National Review Online

Former ambassador John Bolton tells National Review Online that he would charge Pfc. Bradley Manning with treason for sharing U.S. intelligence with Wikileaks. “I believe treason is still punishable by death and if he were found guilty, I would do it,” Bolton says.

John being a manly manly man — always demanding the military go in and kill all the people he personally fears, chiefly everyone in Iran — I believe he really means “I’d have somebody else do it for me.”

Discussing the revelations themselves, Bolton is not surprised. On Arab countries’ anxiety over Iran’s nuclear program, he notes, “I’ve known this for a long time. It’s one reason I’ve had confidence in saying that the Middle East wouldn’t dissolve into turmoil if the U.S. or Israel attacked the Iranian nuclear weapons program. That’s what the Gulf States in particular have wanted us to do.”

Because in the power game endlessly being played out in John Bolton’s Tom-Clancy-and-American-Exceptionalism wallpapered brain, measly citizens don’t exist. The hoi polloi are but extras milling about the background of the set.

The American military ants will do their jobs. Targets will be erased, rogues will be humbled. The Middle East governments will be good with it. Everything will be fine.

Well, sure, all sorts of people will die, but that’s how the old power game goes. Can’t make any trans-national omelets without cracking some skulls. And not without killing our military people, but they were born to die, right?

BTW, who killed all those Americans on 9/11? The pissed off, anti-American hoi polloi of Saudi Arabia. What drives most of the furious Middle Eastern anti-Americanism that makes terrorism possible? Our conditionless backing of Israel while it kills the Palestinian hoi polloi.

John Bolton thinks this is all some sort of frustrating game in which the most powerful player is never really allowed to strut his stuff. And, by that, I mean he thinks we could kill far more people than we’re killing, and that would terrify and impress the shit out of governments and diplomats, and then we’d get everything we want. John Bolton is the sort of foreign affairs neanderthal that gives us nightmares.

We try to understand a great deal of the world by vicarious thinking. But we make convenient sense of the world through psychological projection.

The world is full of liars, and all you have to do to become aware of that is ask a lifelong liar. Your friend who happens to be a 10 year pill addict knows that everyone around the two of you is addicted to something. That girl at work once arrested for embezzlement swears the secretary holding the petty cash is a thief.

The ‘projector’ always betrays the lingering influence of the essential experience.

The war recovery?
David S. Broder | Sunday, October 31, 2010

When the midterm election cycle began, the prevailing opinion was that Barack Obama was cleverer and more inspirational than anyone else on the scene. As it ends, nothing appears to have changed.

OH, YES, I know that Democrats have fallen into a peck of trouble and may lose control of Congress. But even if they do, Obama can still storm back to win a second term in 2012. He is that much better than the competition . .

. . really? Tell us, David, how brilliant Obama is. Tell us how his 2012 presidential election end-game will play out:

Here is where Obama is likely to prevail. With strong Republican support in Congress for challenging Iran’s ambition to become a nuclear power, he can spend much of 2011 and 2012 orchestrating a showdown with the mullahs. This will help him politically because the opposition party will be urging him on. And as tensions rise and we accelerate preparations for war, the economy will improve.

Obama will lead the nation to War with Iran. The nation will buck up, the economy will improve, the elections will swing his way, and he’ll end up President for another 4 years. Everybody will have to admit he’s the genius we suspected he was. Oh, and we’ll say the same of the great David Broder, too.

Except, Broder is a bloodthirsty jackal. And he’s so corrupted a human, feeble and shallow, he wouldn’t consider that Obama appears to be a principled man who’d vigorously avoid war with Iran. Or as our young men perish in Broder’s war #3, someone will point out that the economy didn’t boom twice before. In fact, it tanked as we literally blew up mountains of our hard-earned dollars. David Broder is a true Conservative.

About those packages — that “credible terrorist threat” with “all the hallmarks of Al Qaeda” — coming just before Election Day.
October 30, 2010 | Ann Althouse

. . I haven’t written about it yet. I didn’t know what to say as the story was unfolding yesterday. I had the thought — and I immediately censored myself — what does this have to do with Election Day? I cut myself off from that line of thinking because, of course, the war on terrorism transcends the petty vicissitudes of partisan politics.

. . but then, I remembered that I have my own blog. OR, but then I wrote this introductory paragraph to create a fictional tension. Probably the latter:

Last night, I was listening to the podcast of the day’s Rush Limbaugh show, in which he was seeing the news in real time and reacting out loud. He started where I did: the timing so close to the election. But he didn’t censor himself. And this is what I love about Rush. He keeps going, expressing those thoughts you might get to yourself if you let your mind run free:

I include this idiot’s comments to demonstrate what thrills attend the blackhearted circle jerk. It’s the Conservative substitute for sex with your lover. Limbaugh:

No matter how you look at these packages-on-the-airplane stories, it’s either done by terrorists as a dry run or all of this is being hyped by our government. If it’s the terrorists, then who are they trying to help right before the election? What are they trying to affect here? And if it’s the government hyping it, then it’s clear the administration thinks that this will help them, that this will help Democrats.

Time Magazine, August 20th, 2009: “Now, we have word from the publisher of [George W. Bush's DHS Secretary Tom] Ridge’s forthcoming memoir, The Test of Our Times, that politics was in fact very much in play in the color-coded discussions with the Department of Homeland Security before the election. According to Paul Bedard, of Washington Whispers, Ridge admits in the book that he ‘was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush’s re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.’”

If it’s the government hyping it, then it is clear the administration thinks this will help them. Right? . . Somebody is trying to say something here, and somebody is trying to affect the outcome of something.

There’s a third possibility here. It’s a little slippery, but it’s possible: big bombs were hidden in packages by Al Qaeda in an effort to kill Americans. Tingle on:

This is thrilling radio, people. Completely unplanned. We get to watch — hear — the gears turn. This is bold thinking out loud, and he doesn’t know where he’s going.

Yeah, you Conservatives are so unpredictable.

He grew up rich, ultra-Conservative and ultra-Christian. He became a Navy Seal. He later founded the world’s most powerful para-military for hire, Blackwater. He became a friend of the Bush administration and raked in better than a billion dollars in contracts over 10 years.

He’s Erik Prince, and he’s tired of America and its bitching and complaining about his homicidal, gun-running company, and he’s getting out. Going to live in that shining city on a hill, Some Arab Capital:

Blackwater Founder Moves to Abu Dhabi, Records Say
By JAMES RISEN | Published: August 17, 2010

WASHINGTON — Erik Prince, whose company, Blackwater Worldwide, is for sale and whose former top managers are facing criminal charges, has left the United States and moved to Abu Dhabi, according to court documents . .

Current and former colleagues said Mr. Prince hoped to focus on security work from governments in Africa and the Middle East. They also said he was bitter about the legal scrutiny and negative publicity his company had received.

Mr. Prince does not face any criminal charges, but five former top company executives have been indicted on federal weapons, conspiracy and obstruction charges. Two guards who worked for a Blackwater-affiliated company face murder charges from a 2009 shooting in Afghanistan, and the Justice Department is trying to revive its prosecution of five former Blackwater guards accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007.

Yes, that’s what a great patriot does, hides in the United Arab Emirates. Because they hold traditional American values dear: democracy, freedom, and fair play. OR, more likely, ‘Your money’s good here.’ And ‘No extradition.’

Erik’s traditional values?

Erik Prince talks values, defends Blackwater at Tulip Time lunch
By PETER DAINING | Posted May 05, 2010 @ 04:10 PM

Erik Prince told a sold-out Tulip Time lunch crowd that the worth of a warrior is not best defined by his deeds, but by his enemies. The founder of Blackwater and Holland native described his own enemies as Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and “noisy leftists.” . .

Prince decried Washington and its excessive government spending. He did not mention that Blackwater — now called Xe — was the beneficiary of government contracts worth more than $1 billion, many awarded without competitive bidding . .

But he also addressed his youth, saying he walked in Tulip Time parades every year from fourth grade through high school. He went to the Naval Academy, but eventually dropped out; he called the school too liberal. “As liberal as some universities may be, imagine one run by the federal government,” he said . .

Well, the elected and powerful have officially joined the Tea Party. ‘Officially joined’, here, means the new faithful called a press conference last Wednesday to announce a list of House members that have joined the shiny new Tea Party Caucus.

Minnesota’s greatest, Michele Bachmann, and several other patriotic congressmen held a presser today announcing the launch of the House Tea Party Caucus! Her office also released a list of inaugural members — some of whom didn’t know they’d signed up.

Oops. Tea Partiers hazy in the head? I mean, err, huzzahs! I’m sure they’ll be blazing bold new paths and breaking down barriers unilaterally because this is some radical new political shit, indeed. You cannot box this sort of lightning, no sir, not this ball of fire.

Tea Party Caucus members endorse Israeli attack on Iran
Posted By Josh Rogin | Monday, July 26, 2010 – 2:30 PM

Now that the congressional supporters of the Tea Party movement have formed their own caucus, their policy positions are becoming easier to track. Expanding their foray into foreign policy, 21 members of the new caucus have now come out explicitly endorsing Israel’s right to strike Iran’s nuclear program.

Aww, fuck. Ball of Fiery Armageddon, anyone? So much for all that “The government’s out of control!!” And “It won’t listen to the people!!” Now, for the Bachmann Tea Party, it’s “The government needs to start a World War!!” And “It’ll totally be worth another trillion of your hard-earned tax dollars!!”

Almost two dozen Tea Party-affiliated lawmakers cosponsored a new resolution late last week that expresses their support for Israel “to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force.”

That’s great. I’m sure that while Israel launches a massive airstrike against Iran, and the Tea Party Caucus are all excitedly jumping up and down, creaming in their shorts, they’ll also be inventing all sorts of clever strategies to sidestep being sucked into a Middle East conflagration.

Unless, you know, the new House version of the DIVERSE TEA PARTY is merely made up of hysterical far right-wing Republicans. Because those guys would likely happily march thousands of Americans into the maw of Looks Like The Apocalypse in defense of Israel. And isn’t that very minimally governmental? Doesn’t that reek of fiscal responsibility? Isn’t that deeply respectful of individual freedoms?

Well, lookee — here’s a list of those freshly minted Tea Party rebels, and, yes, it’s the usual assholes. Founder Batshit Bachmann loved the trillion dollar wars and George W. Bush so much, she couldn’t stop kissing and hugging the chicken hawk budget buster.

Steve King never met a war he wouldn’t fund but was one of only 11 congress people to vote against the $52 billion in aid appropriated after Hurricane Katrina. Pete Hoekstra called a press conference in 2006 to claim the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction — voila — had been found. Moron. Pete Sessions voted for the Iraq War and for that Tea Party vat of cyanide, The Bailout, but just opposed a few billion bucks for unemployment benefits in the middle of the Great Recession. Paul Broun opposed healthcare reform so vigorously — which will save us money — that he said Socialists “don’t have the appreciation of life as we do in our society, evidently.”

Right, Paul. Very right-wing, the lot of you. You’re not co-opters of a popular and ill-defined movement merely to get back in power. No, you just care about life and freedoms and responsible public service, so go ahead and vow you’ve always been about limited government. And do that while you want credit for the ‘win’ produced by wasting 100,000-plus lives and a trillion dollars in that unintrusive government program you concocted the last time you ran the show: The War in Iraq.

Iran’s Ahmadinejad calls Sept 11 “big fabrication“

(Reuters) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday called the September 11 attacks on the United States a “big fabrication” that was used to justify the U.S. war on terrorism, the official IRNA news agency reported . .

He added: “The September 11 incident was a big fabrication as a pretext for the campaign against terrorism and a prelude for staging an invasion against Afghanistan.” He did not elaborate.

Who wasn’t waiting to invade Afghanistan? What with all their oil gold plutonium weaponry strategic ports visible towns roomy buildings alluring geishas fern bars fancy chocolates wrist watches clean paper plywood weather . .

Oh, Charlie. Iran has launched all sorts of missiles — why is this one the red flag that New York is next? I don’t get it.

“If you can put a mouse into space, you can put a nuke in New York, in principle.”

What ‘principle’ is he referring to?

Maybe it’s hard to write a decent bill when you can’t see past your pointy hat and fluffy white robe. Maybe that cross you were burning for Winter heat has gone out, and it’s just too cold not be a xenophobic dolt.

Whatever the reason, Gresham Barrett has uncorked a bill so god-damned dumb, it’s actually pretty funny. Here’s his press release:

WASHINGTON, DC—Today, Congressman J. Gresham Barrett (SC-03) announced that in response to recent failures in national security, he will update and reintroduce the Stop Terrorists Entry Program Act, which he originally authored back in 2003. The STEP Act of 2010 amends the Immigration and Nationality Act to bar admission of aliens from countries that have strong ties to terrorist regimes and also from the terrorist detainee facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

He’s outraged at President Obama’s inability to protect Americans. And who could blame him, what with the hundreds of terrorist attacks and the thousands of corpses choking off our streets? Well, specifically, who could blame him after those two Muslim incidents, the ones that really stick in his craw: Nidal Hasan’s shooting up Fort Hood and Umar Farouk Adulmutallab’s trying to bomb the Northwest flight into Detroit? Somebody, please, do something…

“While President Obama may have declared an end to the War on Terror, it is clear our enemies did not get the message. Twice in the past two months, radical Islamic terrorists have attacked our nation and the Administration has failed to adapt its national security and immigration policies to counter the renewed resolve of those who seek to harm our citizens . . .

“In light of these unfortunate facts, I intend to introduce legislation that will enhance our national security through common sense changes to our current immigration laws. The STEP Act of 2010 bars the admission of aliens from countries designated as State Sponsors of Terrorism as well as Yemen to the United States . . .”

The State Department has indentified (sic) the following states as sponsors of terrorism: Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria. Given recent reports of increased levels of terrorist activities in Yemen, Congressman Barrett has requested that its citizens not be allowed to enter the United States.

So citizens of Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Syria and Yemen would be barred from entry or deported if they’re already here. Well, so much for The Great America rescuing people from violence and oppression. Hey you, huddled masses, yearning to breathe free–beat it. I can’t even begin to imagine how many rabid right-wing Cubans will get tossed out. And that’s only if Florida’s got a pretty well-armed and willing National Guard.

The best part of this idiot’s anti-Muslim gambit? Hasan, the American, and Mutallab, the Nigerian, wouldn’t have come within a mile of being touched by Barrett’s brilliant law.

This is in Sirjan, in the province of Kerman.

Been waiting for this clip to finally show up, but–warning–it ain’t pretty. People are getting shot. Obviously, the Conservative regime feels threatened and is executing more citizens, in this case for merely robbery(!), to assert its authority. Here’s to the demise of Fascists everywhere:

Iranian crowd stops execution and frees convicts
Page last updated at 14:45 GMT, Tuesday, 22 December 2009

A crowd of people have helped two convicts escape a public execution in Iran, officials there say.

Human rights groups accuse Iran of making excessive use of the death penalty but Tehran insists it is an effective deterrent that is used only after a lengthy judicial process.