A widespread computer attack that began July 4 knocked out the Web sites of the Treasury Department, the Secret Service and other U.S. agencies, and South Korean government sites also came under assault.

South Korean intelligence officials believe the attacks were carried out by North Korean or pro-Pyongyang forces. U.S. officials so far have refused to publicly discuss details of the attack or where it might have originated.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that its own Web site was among several commercial sites also hit.

“We will sternly smash the US imperialist forces and South Korea’s puppet regime anti-unification plot.”  — spotted at a memorial service for the anniversary of his dead dad…. where, it is reported:

The servicepersons and people of the DPRK are hardening their will to hold President Kim Il Sung in high esteem for all ages and to firmly defend his revolutionary ideas and undying revolutionary feats and thus add luster to them generation after generation on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of his demise.
The world witnesses the outstanding greatness of Kim Jong Il, the greatest incarnation of the revolutionary moral obligation, through the realities in the DPRK in which he is holding the leader in high esteem invariably.

Here we see Kim Jong Il instructing the assassins of the cyber-war on how to smash the Imperialists:

Unless that’s him leading the man to add new insults to the North Korean news service to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.  Nearly 10 times a day, the official state news agency of neighboring North Korea insults Lee, calling him a “stooge,” “lackey,” “fascist,” “dictator” and other names. He has been disrespected 1,700 times so far this year, according to a study released this month.

Who can say?  One or the other.

By the way:  if you come to this website, and see it dominated by haliographic portraits such as this, and odes to “Dear Leader”, suspect the Korean hackers.  I wouldn’t know why they’d chase away from bringing down the Treasury website — maybe a quick respite to an easier target as a lark?

I’d be a bit of a jerk, sitting here making light of heavy matters, if I didn’t mention — if nothing else than to pierce the faded story out from its long ago news cycle — that Euna Lee and Laura Ling are still captive in North Korea.

I think I just might be responsible for leading a Larouchite to call the Mark Levin show — seen (heard?) here, posted by this conservative radio fan.  To wit, I mentioned Mark Levin in relation to Larouche on this post, saying simply that the current line for Larouche in “Obama’s Nazi Health Care Plan” aligned under Mark Levin’s current rhetoric about “knowing the history”.

It is interesting that the cult-caller, John from Lansing, Machigan, chose the “Larouche is a Federalist” line, apparently thinking it matched better the right wing host’s political predilictions better than what the Larouchies might say to a Democrat — which would be something along the lines of “Rooseveltarian”.  (Though, I take it from his current take on the situation in Hondurus — aligned with the coup , never mind the tangeantal lump in of  health care politics– that he’s sort of charging to and fro in right-wing paranoia during the Obama Administration as opposed to the left-wing paranoia during the Bush Administration — the “recruiting for the LYM” would necessarily be off now.)

A note to John from Lansing, Michigan… if this weird course of deployment surfaced from out of this blog.  HA HA!!  No, really:  HA HA!!!

Maybe they can try for some synergy on the fringes of the “tea-party”, which in its sort of “down to the core” state has hit its “Obama Hitler Mustache” sweet-spot — slightly better than handing out to (go to item #2) pictures of Nancy Pelosi which protesters can then slice the “l-pac” line at the bottom for use with the bigger earlier crowd.

But John from Lansing, Michigan must have missed my point.  The guru views these political movements (left or right) — in this case, against “socialized health care” [for the sake of Alexandar Hamilton’s Federalism, I guess?]– as entities to trail, for some implantating of anti-British and “international” conspiracy to public discourse (or to ride the wave of the already existent ‘paranoid style’?) and for implanting “Historic World Importance” in the membership, and off the margins for recruitment and donations.

Such is the case for demonstrations as:

Also Thursday, a group of activists gathered in Sioux Falls to protest what they consider to be a Democrat-led drive for “socialized medicine.” Some of that unrest spilled over to Mitchell when, at the end of the hearing, a man stood up in the audience to loudly proclaim that Herseth Sandlin and Johnson should have “listened to Lyndon LaRouche,” a perennial presidential candidate whose brochures were distributed Thursday by supporters. One brochure depicted President Barack Obama alongside Adolf Hitler with an admonition to “Act now to stop Obama’s Nazi Health Plan!”
When the LaRouche supporter was talked down by moderator Duffett and some audience members, another man stood up in a different part of the audience and shouted “They work for us! They need to listen to us!” The hearing wrapped up quickly thereafter, and the second man carried on a private conversation with Herseth Sandlin for several minutes.
Johnson and Herseth Sandlin told the panelists and the audience members — who were given the opportunity to fill out comment cards — that they were playing a vital role in an important process of reform.

So I await the Larouche response to Al Gore’s comment.  I suspect Winston Churchill will get a work-out moreso than an analogy about a weak will in fighting the nazis.  But that’s just a guess.
……………………………………

Question:  who took this interview off of youtube?  The “We Are Change Virginia” 9/11 Truthers, or LPAC?  (One or the other needed it removed to avoid embarrassment, I gather.)  Not that it’d be worth 40 minutes of one’s life to find out what’d embarrass whom.

Hey!  Here’s a twitter feed to subscribe to!

http://twitter.com/StormfrontWPWW … It seems to be clip each new thread posted to the neo-nazi website “Storm-front” for twitter feed purposes.  In the mix of that  came:

StormfrontWPWW: Breaking News: LaRouche calls Obama insane..: Here’s the webcast..

And to think, Larouche went on a jeremiad against twitter not that long ago.
Some more fandom seen in the comments here.  I’m puzzling over this one:

 :  TheInternetGanger says:
Your smile captivates me.

 Huh.

And, this is as good a conspiracy as any.  I am a bit surprised they haven’t shown up to leave comments to “keep hoping a large truck swerves and at least clips the f*cktards” comparing themselves to the accosted civil rights struggle , as seen here (commented on by me in this post.)

I wonder too if something waving the Guardian into the neo-conservative universe is in the offing, since they just saw print new developments in the Jeremiah Duggan struggle.  Actually, seeing the new administration in America, they may be might have the politics aligned in a semi-more-sensical way.
…………………

It’s pretty easy to miss, but KPOJ 610 “Portland’s Progressive Talk” broadcast on Sunday during the hours of 1 pm to 4 pm…

Alan Colmes.

I turned on the radio at 3 pm, ready to turn the dial to anything moderately interesting, and heard on KPOJ… Alan freaking Colmes.  A quick scan over the Internet shows that few people noticed.  A Democratic Underground thread pops up, with one interesting “management response” to a complaint.

David Bender is no longer doing a radio show. He has been replaced by Alan Colmes. Sometimes Alan likes to go “behind enemy lines,” but, I must admit, I was surprised to hear Ann Coulter and Dick Morris on the show. I will monitor the program in the future to see if it is something KPOJ should continue to air.
Operations Manager

If Alan Colmes has done nothing else, he aired three memorable interviews with Neal Horseley where the anti-abortion extremist was side-tracked to discussion of his loss of virginity to a mule.  That was radio worthy of enshrinement to the Museum of Radio Broadcasting.  He does bring on the crazies, which may or may not be worth anything in political discourse, but is worth something in entertainment value.  (The pastor praying for Obama’s death being another figure, something which came out from his disccing public declaraction that he had been praying for the death of George Tiller, another example.)

Unfortunately, Colmes is also stuck with a strange Fox News sphere of entertaining chummily the likes of Ann Coulter and Dick Morris.  There is no entertainment or enlightenment to be garnered there — there are far more substantial people to find if one is interested in discussions or debates with conservatives — fish around Thom Hartmann’s guest list.  But these are not associations he plucked from his time with Fox News.

It’s a mixed bag.  And consigned to three hours at roughly the least listened to time possible.  The execs at KPOJ probably have no particular reason to do anything but take the “replay” feed passed to them, but it’s a mineable 15 hours of programming — probably three hours are available ready to please a liberal audience.  (If they can get past the Fox News association and advertisements.)

A local teacher accidentally put pornography into a DVD that was meant to be filled with school memories from the past year, and nobody caught the error until after it was sent home, shocking parents and students alike. […]

 

Boy Howdy!

Actually this story is a little boring.  What’s amusing me moreso than the unfortunate accident of fifth graders getting a glimpse of their teacher self-pleasuring and the awkwardness that followed… is the stock photographs that the various news sites are inserting into the story.

The Inquisitr

Daily Contribut…

WLFI.com

Daily Mail

San Francisco C…

CBS News

KTLA

Manolith

 

To take stock of what Vice President Joseph Biden said last weekend, noted by people who note things and thus trending toward being heralded to “Gaffe” status:

#1:  “We misread how bad the economy was.”
This, I think, is extrapulated to the “Nobody could have predicted” syndrome.  A politician should know never to say that, at least, as when “nobody could have predicted”, one can immediately google and find the “everybody” who predicted it.
This floats past fairly easily, even if it was plastered in giant type at the top of “Huffington Post” on Sunday.  The Politico-Economic picture remains the same.  In four years, Obama will be up for re-election.  The classic question “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?“  will determine his re-election chances.  If you under-estimated the severity of the economic picture, now is the time to say so — six months in instead of four years in.

#2:  BIDEN: Look, Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Whether we agree or not?
BIDEN: Whether we agree or not. They’re entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that. But there is no pressure from any nation that’s going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed.  What we believe is in the national interest of the United States, which we, coincidentally, believe is also in the interest of Israel and the whole world. And so there are separate issues.   If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that. That is not our choice.

Considering the way this plays in the world — much of it assumes Israel is America’s 51st state anyway, which includes headlines that include “Go Ahead Bibi:  Drop the Bomb“, and considering the dangers of this statement in relation to the hoped for “regime change” in Iran, President Obama had to walk this one back.
Perhaps with forked tongue?  The message is out there, I’d guess.

But these less than political smooth statements are at least more meaningful than Biden’s “Hide!  Hide!  Hide!” reaction to the Avian Flu, which you just go ahead and chalk up to “just one of those things.”  They bear down on policy decisions.  Of course, if you want to flicker around to personality political calculations, you might go down the route of the “Biden versus Clinton” game and assume Biden is getting air-time, despite the fact that he will say something, to undermine Hillary Clinton’s 2012 Presidential Bid.  If you want to play that game.

The email spam item of the day:

“Respond Before they Kill Me”.

It’s an attachment, so I’m not about to open it.  I first assume it’s evoking the, quote-de-quote,  “Green Revolution” in Iran.  Surely we’re not fishing around the South Carolina serial killer on the loose?  But the name doesn’t stick for that one.

 This, I gather, is it.  It’s not giving me any Iranians to save from Khamenei.  But maybe I guess the foreign situation has to be somewhat more in the background for these scams  to work?

But it does mark an evolution in subject lines from the purely cynical “deal” to a more altruistic plea — one gilded with the old promise of the rich ruling class’s money, perhaps, but altruistic pleading nonetheless.  Or perhaps the storyline of the “Nigerians” just needs to get more desperate?

The first thing I note in The Weekly Standard insta – piece from William Kristol on Sarah Palin’s resignation…

… Hey!  Finally The Weekly Standard is looking to someone besides Reagan as a historical model to connect.  Margaret Thatcher! 

Which is good, because otherwise I’m stuck with Kristol’s clever “unconventional thinking”.  Sarah Palin is off and running for president.

I suppose she’ll take a hit for leaving the governorship early – but how much of one? She’s probably accomplished most of what she was going to get done as governor.

I will now farm out to an Alaskan the question of what it is Palin has accomplished.
I will give Kristol this: We do live in a system which rewards electoral mediocrity.  A presidential candidate has to step aside any political controversy that may undo him/her.  And avoid leaving a record to pick apart.  It looks like the future lies with single-term Senators and governors who can step away before the effects of an economic down-turn force harsh decisions.
Palin may also be truncating the Nixon approach, I suppose.  Out of office, you shore up a “machine” and obstensibly campaign for the party in the mid-term.  It strikes me as a debased version of that, but then again the “Experience versus New face” campaign of Clinton versus Obama bama versus Clinton as a reprise of Johnson versus Kennedy seemed kind of shaky — Clinton’s tenure of Senatorial experience matching the “new face” Kennedy.

All in all, it’s going to be a high-wire act. The odds are against her pulling it off. But I wouldn’t bet against it.

I would.
In other news, Palin is threatening to sue for libel irresponsible rumor mongerers.

The type of rumor which stems from trying to make sense of puzzling mid-term resignations.

Wait.  This is another clever Nixonian ploy!

Palin… will… be president.  Just you watch!