This turd just got deposited in my in-box through the unlikely vector of the local mailing list for freaks.

From the Republican Liberty Caucus of Austin:

This Friday, October 24th, is United Nations Day. 
I hope you can join us  and Several pro-liberty
 and pro-American sovereignty groups in making 
this  dismal day an exciting and fun one, with a 
good old fashioned UN Flag  Burning! 

WHAT: UN - Flag Burning - Day
WHEN: This Friday, October 24th at 6PM
WHERE: 11th Street, in front of the south 
State Capital, Austin, Texas

Bring your marshmallows, some friends and a camera!

[PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO ALL PATRIOTS]

For whatever it’s worth, you can look these nitwits up online. What are you going to do with these people? Perhaps introduce them to these guys (there’s someone in my neighborhood with a yard-sign from them). I’m sure they’d get along famously

A politically active religious zealot has publicly and repeatedly advocated the use of nuclear weapons against the U.S. government. Interestingly, he did so within American borders, and continues to walk around a free man.

One might expect him to be hustled off to Gitmo where he’d be fitted for an orange jumpsuit, but because this particular advocate of terrorism happens to be Pat Robertson, it’s not likely to happen.

Everyone knows the Democrats couldn’t agree to Republican plans for Texas congressional redistricting. And many of you know Republicans in the state House can’t agree with their counterparts in the state Senate, for arcane reasons. They’ve been bickering so long they’re on the verge of postponing elections so they can settle the squabble.

“We’re just praying the Democrats will leave again, to take the heat off of us,” Smithee said.

Just too rich.

Bush has asked for $87 billion to rebuild Iraq. Actually, that’s a lowball figure–he really wants more like $150 billion, and once you add in the interest payments, it will be many times that. But let’s stick with $87 billion. Of that, most of it will go to pay for American forces over there; the rest will actually be used for reconstruction (that is, Halliburton contracts).

But even the $20 billion or so for actual reconstruction is a lot of money, and some Democrats have shamefully proposed–and some Republicans supported–the idea that the money should be treated as a loan to Iraq, which that country would repay.

Now, never mind the whole blood-for-oil slogan. Never mind that the administration mistakenly thought that the Halliburton welfare project rebuilding effort could be paid for out of oil revenues. The idea that one country would invade another, blow it up, and then charge it for repairs is appalling. The Mafia has it figured out: they charge you protection money up-front, so that nothing…unfortunate happens to your country. We could save everybody a lot of trouble if we’d just extort rather than invade and then try to take money.

I’ve written before about the “senior administration official” leaking the identity of a CIA covert operative to the press, as revenge for her husband embarrassing the White House, a story Robert Novak ran. The story-behind-the-story was astounding, but got very little press at the time. Now that the CIA has requested a Justice Department investigation (which in fact has been underway for a while), and has publicized that request in the media, the media is reviving it–a little bit.

Billmon has been beating the drum on this story for the past couple of days.

One of Billmon’s commenters wondered, if the administration is willing to pull a dirty trick like this over a relatively piddling matter, what are they doing with the really important stuff? One shudders to think. And we can clearly drop the “if”: The fact of the CIA’s request makes it clear that the story is not bogus. Someone in the administration who is placed highly enough to find out Wilson’s wife’s secret identity, and vindictive enough to violate federal law and put her and her contacts’ lives at risk just to get back at her husband: Carl Rove comes to mind.

Later: Even some well-connected Republicans are appalled:

Compared to this, all of Clinton’s peccadilloes look like an mildly diverting scene from an Oscar Wilde production … Let me make this as plain as possible — I was an unpaid advisor for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign, and I know and respect some high-ranking people in the administration. And none of that changes the following: if George W. Bush knew about or condoned this kind of White House activity, I wouldn’t just vote against him in 2004 — I’d want to see him impeached. Straight away.

There’s lots, lots more out there in the blogosphere, but this is some of the juicy stuff.

Via the always-interesting six different ways, I ran across pollkatz’ pageload of presidential-poll data. The Bush approval-rating graph in particular is interesting. Taken out of context, we see that whenever his rating gets near 50%, something happens to give them a big boost, after which they resume the prevailing trend: steady decline. Of course, context helps: the first boost was 9/11; the second, the invasion of Iraq.

Right now his numbers are perilously close to 50%, making me wonder what he’s got up his sleeve for the immediate future. The military’s already overextended, so I don’t expect he’ll invade anyone. Another terrorist attack would probably give him some altitude, but look at the glide slope he’s on: it would need to be a really serious incident to kick him up high enough to avoid a hard landing before November ’04. Either that, or he’ll need a succession of smaller incidents.

Read this. Then try to wash the slimy feeling off.

I’ve pretty much quit blogging about national politics. The news is so uniformly awful, the principal actors so bogglingly loathsome, the agendas so completely evil, and the real truth so hard to pin down that it just doesn’t seem worth it.

Or as Teresa Nielsen Hayden put it, I deeply resent the way this administration makes me feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist.

When people seriously consider the possibility that Bush intentionally started forest fires as window-dressing for his forest “thinning” plans, when former insiders and former generals are blasting the Bushies over Iraq, and when previously sympathetic British government officials suggest administration complicity in the 9-11 attacks, then you know the distance between you and the wearers of tinfoil hats is…the thickness of a tinfoil hat.

Marriage is not about affirming somebody’s love for somebody else. It’s about uniting together to be open to children, to further civilization in our society.

Santorum’s remarks (of which this is a comparatively inoffensive sample) are burning up the blogosphere. I’ve been married before–and will be again–without being “open” to kids. If we’re going to have “defense of marriage” laws (or, worse, a constitutional amendment), going by Santorum’s dubious logic, shouldn’t we restrict it to people who are fertile and plan on having children? Why not exclude straight people who are infertile (because of age, biology, or sterilization), or just don’t want kids?

Gwen wondered how Santorum’s wife might feel about his loveless theory of marriage. I suggested she probably reconciled herself to that a long time ago.