This is simply unbelievable.

Though no guns were brandished, the bust from a distance looked like classic LAPD, DEA or FBI work, right down to the black "raid" vests the unit members wore. The fact that their yellow stenciled lettering read "RIAA" instead of something from an official law-enforcement agency was lost on 55-year-old parking-lot attendant Ceasar Borrayo.

Some enterprising tort lawyer should start writing the false imprisonment complaint.

(The RIAA would just settle.)

A good idea in theory...

Mark Kleiman has the best take.

Be sure to read the Easterbrook blog-entry, too.

Not a particularly effective rhetorical device.

Here's Alex Cockburn quoting one of his CounterPunch writers:

"It's going a bit far to compare the Bush of 2003 to the Hitler of 1933. Bush simply is not the orator that Hitler was. But comparisons of the Bush Administration's fear mongering tactics to those practiced so successfully and with such terrible results by Hitler and Goebbels on the German people and their Weimar Republic are not at all out of line."

I think that this is essentially right. But it's not only the Bush Administration; it is the right, generally, that employs tactics similar to those employed by the Nazis. The most eliminationist rhetoric is on the fringes, but the tactical theme pervades almost all current conservative discourse.

David Neiwert (Orcinus) is always on top of this stuff.

I would never advocate illegal behavior.

That said, you can do some interesting things with cashier's checks if your bank accidentally overcredits your account for some reason.

(It sounds like one has a great deal of negotiating power once the cashier's check is safely in hand.)

I hate calling people names, but this guy is either part of the creeping crypto-fascist conspiracy or he's a troll.

[UPDATE: I really don't hate calling people names.]

Some folks who, not coincidentally, don't like President Bush, are whining about security provisions during Bush's travels which keep protestors at some distance from him.

Read the complaint filed in the protestors' lawsuit and tell me if you think they're "whining."

The comments are pseudo-arguments written by barely articulate monkeys.

Via Romenesko:

Mugger is best ignored, if not openly mocked.

Long, but highly entertaining.

I (tentatively) support Dean at this point. That said, E.J. Dionne's observations about Dean are worth reading.

I'm pro-Dean mostly because of the transformative effect of his candidacy on Democrats. Dionne:

On the one hand: Dean has done an amazing thing by single-handedly building an activist organization and a money machine based on small contributors. This is exactly what the Democratic Party needs.

But I still have serious questions. Dionne again:

On the other hand: Notice how much of the above is about process. What about the candidate? Is he too arrogant, a trust-fund baby, a closet secularist who suddenly discovers religion only after the New Republic writes that his distance from people of faith will doom his candidacy? Why does he keep shooting his mouth off?

Questions about Dean himself are too often ignored by true-blue Dean supporters. Though Dean's missteps haven't seemed to have hurt him too badly yet, there's no guarantee that they won't in the future. Only a portion of Dean's negative press can be assigned to the preponderance of anti-Dean media and the attacks by the other Dem candidates; the rest must be assigned to Dean himself. Deanies, energized by the candidate's plain-talk charisma and the Dean movement itself, tend to ignore Dean's penchant for political clumsiness.

Dionne concludes with a couple of really important questions:

In an interview, Greenberg posed these questions about Dean: "Can he speak of faith, can he speak of God, can he speak of the culture of rural and working-class America in a way that is natural? Does he transcend the culture of the secular information world that he's part of and speak in a way that people outside that world can see as accessible?"

Those are the right questions, which Dean's awkward forays into theology and Confederate memorabilia did little to settle. Dean won't become president unless he deals with them successfully.

Via the Butt:

A lone book titled "Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends" was untouched.

But nearly everything else in Chris Kirk's downtown Olympia apartment was
encased in aluminum foil when he returned home Monday night from a trip to
Los Angeles.

The power of aluminum foil.

Via Kos, looks like Harkin will endorse Dean. Assuming that Dean's comments about Iowa don't dent him too badly, I think this puts Dean over the top in Iowa.

A friend asked me last night for a 30-second version of how the primaries work. The best update I've seen so far is this Kos post.

Bush is off to Mexico on January 12.

From the International Herald Tribune:

A recent poll by Zogby International found that 87 percent of Latin American opinion-makers disapproved of Bush's policy in the region. Another, by Latinobarometro, found that nearly a third of Latin Americans had a negative image of the United States - a twofold increase since 2000.

One of my favorite pranks -- ever.

I picked up a John Trubee CD at the RE/Search Pranks! conference here in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. The songs aren't bad. The prank phone calls are absolutely inspired.

This page allows you to determine your Wu-Tang Clan name.

Mine is MASTER WARRIOR.

And Howard Dean?

"Howard Dean from this day forward
you will also be known as Erratic Contender"

Ha.

A great NPR piece via Atrios.

The number of injured soldiers is unknown, but is probably greater than 10,000 (the Army alone has evacuated almost 9,000 injured soldiers).

This is essential reading from Calpundit on how liberalism has won the rhetorical war.

Like, as opposed to not reading a newspaper at all?

The new anti-Dean ad that the "Club for Growth" is running is wonderfully impotent. Watch it -- and then compare it with the stuff at Bushin30Seconds.org.

And watch how much money Dean raises because of the ad.

More of the same, please, "Club for Growth."

I really loved Gregg Easterbrook's ESPN football column. It almost (but not quite) made a football fan out of me.

Easterbrook wrote prolifically elsewhere, including a blog for The New Republic which got him in trouble (and eventually fired by ESPN).

The Columbia Journalism Review has an interesting article about the incident, which included criticisms of Tarantino's movie Kill Bill along with allegations of anti-semitism.

(I guess Easterbrook's NFL stuff is now on NFL.com, but I don't seem to get there regularly...)

Rumors have it that Siouxsie has died. They may just be rumors, though.

Anyone have any tips on any of Musto's latest blind items?

The finalists are up. Watch 'em.

Whoa.

This is important.

Jim VandeHei of the Washington Post suggests that Dean is considering a proposal to cut payroll taxes (check the last para of the article).

If Dean rolls out such a plan, it could offset what many strategists see as a big liability: his support of what amounts to a nearly $2 trillion tax increase by calling for a repeal of Bush's tax cuts.

Dean is being beaten around the face and neck by the other Dems on middle-class taxes; cutting the payroll tax cuts off that debate. And it would be awfully useful as a contrast to the Bush tax cut's skew towards the wealthy.

Here's Reich on payroll tax regressivity:

Everyone hates taxes, but the payroll tax has got to be the worst. Four out of five American workers pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes. The payroll tax is also regressive as hell -- poorer workers pay proportionately more than richer ones. It's paid out of the very first dollar earned, all the way up to a threshold that's now roughly $80,000. After that, nothing. (Wealthy earners pay only the tiny Medicare portion of the payroll tax on all their earnings.) So the very rich get finished paying almost all their payroll taxes early in the year. Bill Gates is done a few minutes past midnight, New Year's Eve. True, poorer retirees get back more each year from Social Security and Medicare than richer retirees, relative to the yearly payroll taxes they contributed when they worked. But poorer retirees don't live nearly as long as richer ones. So, overall, the system's still regressive.

(Here Reich says cutting the payroll tax would pep up the economy in the long run.)

Which Dems are supporting this now? Only one that's still in the race. The other is Bob Graham...

What if you actually were what you regularly ordered at Starbucks?

I would be a large, mild drip.

P.S. Starbucks sucks, etc., but their mild morning coffee is leagues ahead of the other Noe Valley joints.

P.P.S. I totally fight the power by not using their special sizing code brainwashing language, i.e., "venti."

For the long haul.