It is conservatives who are emboldening the enemy

It's out there. It's very, very faint right now, but it's trying to get louder. That sound you hear is the recognition, even among some in the media, that screaming "The terrorists are gonna getcha!" is not exactly the way to project strength and courage in the face of a threat. Getting a boner over an attempted terrorist attack for political gain is not the way to show how much you love your country. Hoping for another attack because you think it'll help you regain power is what traitors do, not what patriots do. Jonathan Alter advocates that Barack Obama meet with Dick Cheney -- not to find common ground, but to tell him in no uncertain terms that his remarks are traitorous and to shut the fuck up. Chris Matthews chastises Politico for serving as the official media outlet of Cheney's ravings. And the more unhinged the right gets, the more they look like fearmongers and less like national security experts...and the more their lust for absolute power demonstrates that they WANT terrorists to succeed. They WANT death on a mass scale here in this country. They WANT these things because they think it will bring them back to power.

Who's emoboldening terrorists? Who's egging them on? It isn't liberals and it isn't President Obama. It's the very right wing that fancies itself to be the "real patriots":

As I noted yesterday, it is true that one of the goals of terrorism is to elicit a wild over-reaction from the target government, resulting in greater publicity and a larger pool of potential recruits for the terrorists’ cause, and so any response has to be balanced against that. But the idea that “the strategic goals of al Qaeda” are better advanced by more security theater at American airports than they were by, say, inducing the United States to invade and occupy two Muslim countries and engage in a global campaign of kidnapping and torture, is just ridiculous on its face.

But this is largely beside the point, because conservatives like Kristol, Hume, and Doan aren’t genuinely (or at least primarily) interested in analyzing threats and policies to deal with them, they’re interested in promoting a specific, and politically advantageous, narrative about the nature of those threats. And apparently, the possibility of those threats serving as Al Qaeda propaganda is a price they’re willing to pay in order to achieve that political advantage.

And that's what nutballs like Peter King and Jim DeMint and the rest of these assholes need to be told...repeatedly....everytime they open their idiotic pieholes.

Reality has been completely inverted

I'll let Charles Johnson explain.

The idea that before it's all over I may have to blogroll Little Green Footballs is just mind-boggling.

Leon Panetta is right

Joe Biden may be diplomatic and say it's inappropriate to judge another man's motives, but it's hard to argue with Leon Panetta's belief that Dick Cheney wants another attack on this country:

CIA Director Leon Panetta says former Vice President Dick Cheney's criticism of the Obama administration's approach to terrorism almost suggests "he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point."

Panetta told The New Yorker for an article in its June 22 issue that Cheney "smells some blood in the water" on the issue of national security.

Cheney has said in several interviews that he thinks Obama is making the U.S. less safe. He has been critical of Obama for ordering the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, halting enhanced interrogations of suspected terrorists and reversing other Bush administration initiatives he says helped to prevent attacks on the U.S.

Last month the former vice president offered a withering critique of Obama's policies and a defense of the Bush administration on the same day that Obama made a major speech about national security.

Panetta said of Cheney's remarks: "It's almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it's almost as if he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that's dangerous politics."

The only area in which Panetta is mistaken is that there's no "almost" about it. Dick Cheney's power was always contingent on a frightened, traumatized population. As more information came out about how Cheney and his puppet frontman ignored screaming evidence that an attack was about to happen, thereby allowing almost 3000 people to die in the name of amassing political power, most Americans are sadder but wiser now. The idea of a former Vice President wanting this country to be attacked no longer seems as ridiculous as it did eight years ago. And with the PNAC neocons with whom Cheney is associated openly gleeful at the prospect of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prevailing in Iran, it's perfectly legitimate to ask ourselves with just whose side Dick Cheney is aligned.