I haven't seen this diaried, but if it has been, I will delete.  A series of very unusual options trades has some on Wall Street spooked that extremely large puts and calls -- set to expire on September 21 and requiring a huge swing in the markets to be profitable -- might be a precursor to another terror attack.  As reported by TheStreet.com, one or more entities has made an unusually large bet that the S&P 500 will swing by 50% or more before the end of September.  Traders and bloggers are struggling to figure an innocent explanation for the bizarre investments, reminiscent of the options taken on American Airlines in advance of the 9/11 attacks.

[UPDATE: the recent great work by the Congressional Dems, especially Pat Leahy, John Conyers and Harry Reid, shows how unfair this diary was to them.  I hereby recant it (although I still say impeach now!)]

So, I used to be an impeachment nut, what with all the high crimes and misdemeanors and stuff, but Nancy P. has convinced me of the wisdom of the "do nothing and hope to elect Democrats in 2008" strategy.  I mean, after all, we don't have the votes to impeach.  And it would distract us from doing the important business at hand (whatever that is).  And it would be unseemly.  And Fox News would say nasty things about us.  And it would look like revenge for Clinton.  And Nancy can't appear to be trying to make herself President.  And so on and so on.

Anyway, I have become a realio/trulio/coolio who accepts that the appearance of craven impotence is indeed a clever political strategy that will WOW the electorate and result in a landslide for the Dems in 2008.  Then we can fix everything.  I mean, what are the chances Bush and Cheney could do any real damage in 18 months?  It's not like they might nuke Iran or something.

    I grew up in a small town in west Texas, a very conservative part of the country where pretty much everyone believes in guns, God and limited government.  And as you might expect, my Dad is one of the most conservative people you would ever meet.  He's a true product of his environment:  hard working, hard drinking and no nonsense.  At age 76, he still gets up at 3:00 a.m. every day and puts in a twelve hour day selling oil field equipment.  He's a life-long Republican.

   But like a lot of folks in this country who once supported George Bush and have long considered themselves Republicans, he is appalled at what this administration has done.  Appalled by the senseless and endless war in Iraq, by the mushrooming trillion dollar deficits, by the pillaging of the treasury by Halliburton and their ilk, by the decimation of personal freedoms by the "unitary executive."  In short, my Dad is just the sort of voter that the Democrats ought to be attracting in 2008.  But we're not.  We are losing these voters.  Follow me below the fold to find out why.

President Bush's chief propagandist, Tony Snowjob, has been giving a briefing at the White House, primarily addressing the administration's allegations that Iran is supplying explosively formed penetrators (EFP's) to forces attacking Americans in Iraq.  The link is here. To say that Snow is completely full of shit is damning with faint praise.  Details below.

Well fuck.  Just when I think the Bush administration's invasion of my privacy and the relentless Pentagon spin machine can get no worse, well, they do.  In the latest round of "let's spy on and lie to our citizens," we learn that the FBI has been amassing a huge database of information on the internet habits and activities of thousands of Americans, according to The Raw Story, citing a ZDNet article. Then we learn that under the Pentagon's "Information Operations Roadmap," the military has been engaged since at least 2003 in psyops propaganda operations it admits are to be "consumed by [the] domestic audience" and replayed by the media to the American people, according to BBC News.  

Details below

The expense of the ill-conceived war in Iraq, combined with that of the battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan, may force the British to bid farewell to their once-proud blue water navy.  According to a story in the Telegraph, the Brits are connsidering mothballing as many as one-half of their 44-ship fleet in order to cut costs. The ministry of defense cites a need to cut the defense budget by 250 million pounds.  

The reason for the demise of what was once the world's most formidable fleet, defenders of an empire that circled the globe?  According to Stephen Bush, editor of the monthly magazine "Warship World," the MoD is bankrupt from fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  More below.

In an interview with truthdig at http://www.truthdig.com/... , Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich makes the perfectly reasonable argument that it is time for Congress to stop providing ever-increasing funding for the war in Iraq:

War spending generates a forward momentum—the more you spend, the more you are going to spend in the future.  And so regardless of what anyone in the Pentagon is saying, Congress has the obligation here to cut off funds, and that’s what I’m calling for.  We have to stop this! We have to stop this war and we have to stop the potential expansion of the war and we have to stop this administration from getting another $130 billion to promote war anywhere [it] please[s].

More below the fold.

In a bizarre victory for the Bush administration's efforts to hide the evidence of its criminal activity, U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle has ruled that records relating to the so-called "Terrorist Surveillance Program" of warrantless wiretaps -- a program another federal district court has already held to be unconstitutional -- are protected from discovery under the Freedom of Information Act because the administration has declared the records 'classified'.

The loud popping noise you hear is just George Orwell's head exploding.  More below.

Heartfelt thanks and congratulations to all for a huge and god-sent Democratic victory.  I hope, as do many of you, that this is the dawn at the end of a long, dark night.

So now what?  What do YOU want to see the new Democratic majority do first?  What are your priorities? Iraq?Torture? Minimum wage?

So much to do, so little time.  Nancy Pelosi's plan for the first 100 days is a good start, but there is so much more.  Let's start making clear to our elected representatives what we require of them now.

Here's my Top Ten Priorities for the New Congress, not necessarily in order.  There's a poll for you  to vote for your priorities.  I know I will leave out some critical issues, so please add them in the comments.  Rock on!

I have to admit, I have never been a particular fan of Hillary Clinton.  She has always struck me as too calculated, too careful and too self-interested. It will be hard for me to support her enthusiastically in 2008.

But she is clearly smart as hell and stands an excellent chance of being the Democratic nominee for president in '08.  So I was quite pleased to read about a very good speech she recently gave to the Council on Foreign Relations on the topic of what our Middle-East policy ought to look like after Bush.

The complete story is by Jim Lobe at Antiwar.com, a site I highly recommend. [http://www.antiwar.com/...] More below the fold. UPDATE: My attention has been directed to some previous questionable content on this site, which I appreciate. Although I see nothing of concern in connection with the referenced article, I withdraw any recommendation of the site as a whole and merely commend you to the article itself.

The blue-ribbon Iraq panel chaired by James A. Baker to identify American policy options for the war in Iraq will concede that the war is unwinnable, according to a draft report obtained by the New York Sun.  Instead of a plan to win the war, the panel report will focus on options aimed at controlling the damage rather than establishing a democracy.

Of course, the final report will not be issued until after the elections.

Details from Sun online article [http://www.nysun.com/...] are below.

This essay was submitted to The Dallas Morning News the day after the Senate passed the detainee tribunal bill.  The News has since come out in support of the bill, although it gave lip service to regret over the death of the Great Writ.

I know this topic has been written about by others, but even in the midst of Foleygate, NIE, the Iraq quagmire and Korean nukes, it is too important to forget.  If the Dems take back Congress, repeal of this bill must be made a first priority.