CNN reports that North Korea threatened South Korea with destruction Sunday after Seoul’s top military officer said he would consider attacking the communist nation if it tried to carry out a nuclear attack.

The statement from North Korea’s official news agency marked the third straight day of bellicose rhetoric from the North, which is angry over the harsher line the South’s new president has taken against the country since assuming office last month.

“Our military will not sit idle until warmongers launch a pre-emptive strike,” said an unidentified KCNA military commentator. “Everything will be in ashes, not just a sea of fire, if our advanced pre-emptive strike once begins.”

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North Korea is at it again. They ratchet up the tension tight up to the line, then they “cooperate” with the international community and tensions subside. This up and down talk has been going on for years. We need to keep the pressure on the government, but that results in continued oppression against the ordinary North Korean, who has no intentions of taking over the world, they just want to feed their family. With all the smart people in the world, we should be able to figure out how to liberate those that want to be liberated, and not kill thousands in the process.

Think Progress yesterday published a charge that John McCain had plagiarized from a 1996 speech by Adm. Timothy Ziemer:

“These lines are not McCain’s own. As TP reader 5th Estate discovered, they were in fact taken largely from a 1996 speech by ret. Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer.

Nowhere in yesterday’s speech does McCain give credit to Ziemer. Additionally, it’s not the first occasion that McCain has stolen Ziemer’s words…”

“It’s unclear whether Ziemer is tied to the McCain campaign, but a search of both his campaign and Senate websites turned up no references to the admiral.”

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It’s always regrettable when a publication makes an error, and Think Progress did the right thing by retracting the charge quickly.

However, this type of charge being printed so quickly after a “tip”, is not the right thing to do. Once it gets printed, no matter how quick or prominent the apology, you can’t ever reach everyone who may have read it. Any serious charge should be exhaustively researched and vetted so that a retraction is never even considered. There once was a time where a retraction was the kiss of death for print media. Much has changed in the last several years and the news has morphed into the chase for the latest dirt, anonymous sources welcomed. For every one pubic figure, there are probably 100 people looking for ways to undermine them, and spreading lies, falsehoods and distortions is the name of the game.

From CBSNews.com – President Bush on Thursday defended the slow pace of progress in Iraq, asserting “it is not foot-dragging” as Iraqi politicians try to reach agreement on political, security and economic goals.

Bush derided calls from Congress for troop withdrawals or deadlines so that the military could focus more on the anti-terror battle elsewhere. “This argument makes no sense,” he said.

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Makes no sense for whom? Haliburton?, Blackwater? The oil companies? The Taliban is still headquartered where? Not Iraq. If we are going to fight terrorists (and we should), we need to fight them in the right place. Picking a fight with Iran via the insurgents (and calling them al Qaeda) in Iraq doesn’t solve the problem of al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This administration will, to its dying day, put Iraq and al Qaeda in every sentence they speak about terrorists .

“No matter what shortcomings these critics diagnose, their prescription is always the same: retreat,” Bush said. “They claim that our strategic interest is elsewhere and if we would just get out of Iraq, we could focus on the battles that really matter.”

“If America’s strategic interests are not in Iraq, the convergence point for the twin threats of al Qaeda and Iran, the nation Osama bin Laden’s deputy has called the place for the greatest battle, the country at the heart of the most volatile region on earth, then where are they?”

Here at home…

New York State Airline Customer Service Legislation is preempted by Federal Law the 2nd Court of Appeals ruled. The “Passenger Bill of Rights” is overturned.

ATA STATEMENT

The Air Transport Association of America (ATA), the industry trade organization representing the leading U.S. airlines, today released the following statement in response to the United States Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that state legislation of airline services is preempted by federal law.

“The court’s decision vindicates the position of ATA and the airlines – that airline services are regulated by the federal government and that a patchwork of laws by states and localities would be impractical and harmful to consumer interests. This clear and decisive ruling sends a strong message to other states that are considering similar legislation.”

ATA airline members and their affiliates transport more than 90 percent of all U.S. airline passenger and cargo traffic. In addition, ATA represents three associate member airlines, three industry partners and 36 industry members. For additional information about the industry and ATA members, visit www.airlines.org.

The complaint read as follows:

The Air Transport Association of America appeals from a final judgment of the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York (Kahn,J.) granting summary judgment to defendants and dismissing plaintiff’s complaint seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against New York State’s passenger Bill of Rights, codified at section 553(2)(b)-(d) of the New York Executive Law and sections 251-f to 251-j of the New York General Business Law. We reverse and hold that the substantive provisions of the law, N.Y. Gen.Bus. Law § 251-g(1), are preempted by the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978.

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FUDReport STATEMENT

So requiring airlines to provide food, water, clean toilets and fresh air to passengers trapped in a plane delayed on the ground for 8 to 10 hours is a victory for the airline’s customers? Forcing passengers to relieve themselves in drink containers is better customer service than allowing customers to deplane and be comfortable during long delays? Wow…Airline customer service these days consists of usually not telling passengers anything, but when they do, it’s usually some kind of warning to “stay in your seat or be labeled a terrorist”. The traveling public has long accepted the fact that the airlines had to reduce amineties to stay in business, but to treat travelers like prisoners has gone too far.

Looks like California’s law may not get off the ground…

WASHINGTON, D.C. -

Dana Perino, in her press briefing today, made this statement regarding Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and terrorism:

Q You mentioned the brutal enemy in Iraq. To what extent was that enemy present before the U.S. invaded?

MS. PERINO: You know, I’m — there was a report last week that came out from the Defense Department that I would refer you to. It has lots of experts providing input and it’s detailed all throughout there.

There’s no doubt that Secretary — I’m sorry, excuse me, Saddam Hussein was a state sponsor of terrorism. So let me refer you to that report; it’s quite detailed.

What we know is that al Qaeda has decided to make Iraq the central front in their war on terror and we are fighting them there so that we don’t have to fight them here. And one of the things that has helped us is a hugely significant event of the Sunni Arabs in Iraq deciding to turn against al Qaeda and to work with us instead to fight against them.

Q But al Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq, in its current form or in its post-invasion form –

MS. PERINO: In its current form, no. But let me refer you to that report, they have some very interesting information in there.

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Still, after 5 years, 4,000 U.S. casualties and untold tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi’s killed or displaced, this administration insists on maintaining the Saddam/al Qaeda link. It’s a white paper on “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it”. 600 billion dollars spent. tens of thousand soldiers maimed and wounded. It would be one thing if the post-invasion strategy had been well thought out, and the electricity and oil were flowing, people had ready access to food, water and sanitation by now, but instead they have electricity 4 hours a day, not much oil has been pumped, and millions are living in bombed out buildings.

The FUD link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda link is still alive and kicking at the White House…

A car bomb exploded close to a police station in the northern Spanish town of Calahorra on Friday after a warning from the Basque separatist group ETA.

ETA has launched sporadic attacks in Spain since it ended a ceasefire it announced in March 2006 by bombing Madrid airport in December 2006, killing two people.

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More spreading of fear by way of acts of violence against the citizenry. At least they had the “manners” to notify the authorities prior to the attack. Just one person hurt. Still one too many. We have to find a way to make these violent acts to stop. The IRA finally figured it out, maybe they can also stop by the ETA to give them a lesson in why these tactics can never succeed long term.

CNN reports that Al-Jazeera broadcast on Thursday an audiotape on which a voice identified as Osama bin Laden declares “Iraq is the perfect base to set up the jihad to liberate Palestine.”

Terrorist leader Osama bin Laden spoke on a video released by al Qaeda in September.

The voice calls for the people of neighboring countries “to do their best in supporting their mujahedeen brothers in Iraq.”

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Coming out just as President Bush is touting progress and some level of stability and al Qaeda takes the predictable route of reading the current situation, and try and find a way to make it turn better for them. They are masters of using FUD to bring the tension levels back up (at the least) and spin up more violence (at the worst) and kill more innocent people. May we should send the former IRA representatives over to talk to Osama and maybe they can give him a lesson in long term strategy e.g. violence only kills people and prolongs the inevitable…

The Food and Drug Administration said today it has identified a mystery ingredient that contaminated a type of blood thinner imported from China that could have led to as many as 19 U.S. deaths and hundreds of severe allergic reactions among frail patients.

FDA Deputy Commissioner Janet Woodcock said the contaminant would not have occurred naturally in the many steps involved in processing the blood thinner heparin. That raised the possibility that a counterfeit drug could ultimately be blamed in the case.

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Well, isn’t that a surprise…a contaminated product from China. Not toys this time, but medication. When are we going to learn that the current import system is failing us. Bad stuff is getting to us from all over the place, yet the government does not seem to have the fortitude to insist on quality checks along the way. Consumers can’t buy (presumably safe) drugs from Canada, because “we have to maintain the quality” as the administration tag line goes, but somehow an American company can import tainted drugs from China and that’s OK. In the meantime, 19 people have died so far from contaminated heparin. I guess that’s considered “acceptable casualties”. We as consumers need to wake up, and start putting pressure on the government to start implementing sound trade policies rather than construct policies that drive all the manufacturing offshore where we ultimately have zero control over the processes. Bring that work back here.

From Yahoo Finance:

Google Inc., the world’s leading search engine, said on Monday it was concerned about the free flow of information on the Internet if Microsoft Corp were to succeed in acquiring Yahoo Inc.

“We would be concerned by any kind of acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft,” Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told reporters.

Schmidt pointed to Microsoft’s past history and “the things that it has done that have been so difficult for everyone,” but he did not elaborate.

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No doubt Google is worried. Microsoft tends to get it “right” the 3rd or 4th time they attempt a takeover of a market space, and search has been on their radar for a long time. As big as Microsoft is, they have not been able to pull off a successful search engine, and that’s left is Yahoo! That’s a lot of muscle to bring to bear against #1. Google has expanded to many other (distributed document sharing, phones, maps, etc.) areas, and Microsoft is worried about losing their Office revenue stream, among others. Google is starting the FUD campaign against Microsoft (the irony is not lost here) to start and sway the hearts and minds of the regulators that will ultimately decide the merger’s fate.

Internet users in China were blocked from seeing YouTube.com on Sunday after dozens of videos about protests in Tibet appeared on the popular U.S. video Web site.The blocking added to the communist government’s efforts to control what the public saw and heard about protests that erupted Friday in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, against Chinese rule.

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It’s FUD alright, but it is the Chinese government that is afraid. Afraid that the ordinary citizenry will rise up again ala Tienanmen Square if they get access to the outside worlds view of what’s going on in Tibet.

They are also kicking out foreign journalists.