Watch out for that f*&kin' potty mouth... Even though Hinderaker says the survey is badly flawed---he stands behind it.

UPDATE: The General looks at what's bearing down in the mind of the "patriotsphere" while we talk dirty to one another.

(guest blogged by Howie Klein)

Jimi Hendrix was long gone by the time I became president of Reprise Records. Coincidentally, though, as a college concert chairman I had booked the Jimi Hendrix Experience for their first appearance in the U.S. The last time I ran into him was in a small seaside town outside of Essaouira, my favorite spot in Morocco, in 1969. Soon after that, I met another revolutionary artist who has changed the course of pop music: Patti Smith.

And last week I got to hear Patti's next album, TWELVE, a collection of a dozen covers that have meant a lot to her-- and to many of us. The album starts with a brilliant and sensual rendition of Jimi's "Are You Experienced?" (informed by lots of Beatles). Patti's album is amazing and I'll try to get an advance for Crooks and Liars.

Meanwhile, here's the original:

So tonight's contest: without having heard a note of it, review Patti Smith's new album. Send your entry to downwithtyranny@aol.com and if yours is the best review, we'll send you the mindblowing 15 CD boxset-- BOB DYLAN REVISITED, 15 classic albums by a master who influenced the work of both Patti and Jimi.

(click image for full size)

(guest blogged by Logan Murphy)

Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld's revival of their 1970's war rhetoric is back in full swing, only then it was the Soviet Union instead of Iran. Like any good sequel, they used all the same plots, punch lines and cast of zany characters in hopes of boosting ticket sales. Unfortunately, the reviews are no better now than they were back then.

John Amato touched on this back in '05, noting that Dick, Don and then outgoing Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz' rhetoric on Iran's nuclear program didn't pass the smell test. Of course, we now know that these guys were for Iran's nuclear ambitions before they were against it.

More recently, despite the Bush Administration's claims that they have no intention of invading Iran, we find out that they're working on a plan anyway. You know, just in case. Meanwhile, back in reality we find this - U.N. calls U.S. data on Iran's nuclear aims unreliable .

Oh, you thought Donny was out of the picture? Think again.

Download | play Download | play (h/t SilentPatriot)

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PBS's NOW:

Can an Afghan woman, armed with only a strong voice and a fierce loyalty to her homeland, overcome entrenched views and death threats to help bring democracy to Afghanistan? On March 2, David Brancaccio talks with Danish filmmaker Eva Mulvad about her upcoming documentary "Enemies of Happiness ." The film follows the outspoken and successful campaign of Malalai Joya, a 28 year-old Afghan woman running in the country's first democratic parliamentary elections in 35 years. The elections represented a special milestone for Afghan women, who had endured second-class citizenry their entire lives.

During the campaign, Joya's life was threatened multiple times because of her vocal and fearless opposition to the presence of warlords in the nation's government. But Joya's dedication also inspired many Afghanis to join her in the cause of real reform. "Enemies of Happiness" won the World Cinema Jury Prize in Documentaries at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

The NOW website will provide additional coverage, including clips from the film and a look at Afghanistan's tumultuous past and present. A web-exclusive interview with Joya is available. A sample:

NOW: Have you made any progress in your hopes of having the warlords removed?

It seems that the U.S. government and its allies want to rely on them and install them to the most important posts in the executive, legislation and judicial bodies. Today the whole country is in their hands and they can do anything using their power, money and guns. They grab billions of dollars from foreign aid, drugs and precious stones smuggling.

The U.S. wants a group or band in Afghanistan to obey its directions accurately and act according to the U.S. policies, and these fundamentalists' bands of the Northern Alliance have proved throughout their life that they are ready to sacrifice Afghanistan's national interests for their lust for power and money. The U.S. has no interest in the prosperity of our people as long as its regional and strategic interests are met.

Human Rights Watch:

The US government should account for all the missing detainees once held by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.The 50-page report, "Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention," contains a detailed description of a secret CIA prison from a Palestinian former detainee who was released from custody last year. Human Rights Watch has also sent a public letter to US President George W. Bush requesting information about the fate and whereabouts of the missing detainees.

[..]Human Rights Watch's letter to Bush contained two lists of missing detainees. The first list names 16 people whom Human Rights Watch believes were held in CIA prisons and whose current whereabouts are unknown. The second list names 22 people who may have been held in CIA prisons and whose current whereabouts are unknown.

Human Rights Watch expressed concern about what may have happened to the missing prisoners. One possibility is that the US may have transferred some of them to foreign prisons where they remain under the CIA's effective control.

[..] Another worrying possibility is that prisoners were transferred from CIA custody to places where they may face torture. A serious concern is that some of the missing prisoners might have been returned to their countries of origin, which include Algeria, Egypt, Libya and Syria, where the torture of terrorism suspects is common.

LA Times has more. This story has come out in little drips since the beginning. I suspect that when or if the full story is ever known, the truth will be more horrifying than we can imagine. I was discussing this with a friend from Peru yesterday. The thing that we must remember is that the information is tightly controlled here, but in other parts of the world, they hear of the practices and as he reminded me, it's hard to disinguish exactly who the bad guy is in Bush's war.

Kim Jong-il thanks you.

Because of a weapons program that may not even have existed (and no one ever thought was far advanced) the White House got the North Koreans to restart their plutonium program and then sat by while they produced a half dozen or a dozen real nuclear weapons -- not the Doug Feith/John Bolton kind, but the real thing. It's a screw-up that staggers the mind.

Hilzoy has more...

And then we have the tiny bank in Macau.

Barbar at Mahablog : Unfortunately, thanks to the Bushies, North Korea’s plutonium weapons capabilities went from low to high. Very high.

For some of the most insightful analysis of the "outrage" over the HuffPo/Cheney comments emanating from the right, see here.

Salon:

From Tuesday's post on the moronic Cheney comments "scandal":

It is only a matter of time before Brit Hume and Matt Drudge begin hyping the scandal of how liberal bloggers were expressing dismay that Dick Cheney wasn't killed, and Howard Kurtz will write a drooling profile of the Blogging Warriors who exposed this scandal and join in with stern condemnation over how terrible it is that the Left is so filled with venom and rage.

Howard Kurtz today, in The Washington Post:

This is really sick.
I know we're living in a polarized time. I know there are people who absolutely detest George Bush and Dick Cheney. I know they like to vent their spleen online, sometimes in vulgar terms, and hey, that's life in a democracy.

But some of the comments posted after a suicide bomber blew himself up at Afghanistan's Bagram Air Force Base, while Cheney was there--killing as many as 23 people--are nothing short of vile.

The comments appeared on the Huffington Post, which, to its credit, took them down. But some were preserved by Michelle Malkin, and I reproduce them here . . .

Says Malkin: "Whatever your partisan leanings, an attack planned on the Vice President of the United States is an attack on America. Some of our fellow Americans, however, can't put their sneering hatred of the White House aside."

Says me: Don't people realize that openly rooting for the death of an American official says way more about them than their intended target? Read more...

I'm not able to receive any emails from Gmail. The last one came at 5:51AM PST. Does anybody know what I can do? I just filled out a form and sent it to them, but who knows if they'll even respond. I'm getting an "error code 766."