It's WTF Thursday!

Ex-California Governor Jerry Brown is thinking of running ... for governor?!

San Diego Democratic women are highly dangerous beasts! As are pastors in Texas. They are the worst!

Explains why Bin Laden wanted to attack the US. He visited Indiana and Los Angeles. Sorry about that, guys....

Wonderfully awfully ironic ads from the past.

We knew this just from seeing the photos:

Israel inflicted "wanton destruction" in the Gaza Strip during its 22-day war on the coastal enclave in December and January, Amnesty International, the London-based human rights group has said.

In a 117-page report released on Thursday, Amnesty cited evidence that Israeli troops put children and other civilians in harm's way "by forcing them to remain in or near houses which they took over and used as military positions".

I really think Israel crossed the line on this and has lost an immense amount of worldwide support. The 'victims' have become the very thing that victimized them in the first place: bloodthirsty heartless thugs.

Banks and corporations are trying to tell us everything is fine and on the mend, we can go back to spending wildly. Odd that our 'recovery' seems to be a jobless one:

The American economy lost 467,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate edged up to 9.5 percent in a sobering indication that the most painful downturn since the Great Depression has yet to release its hold.

And Europe hits a ten year high:

Unemployment in the 16-nation euro zone has climbed to 9.5 per cent, its highest rate in a decade, EU data show.

More than 15 million people are out of work across the zone, with around 273,000 jobs lost in May, the Eurostat data agency estimated.

The increase in jobless was expected, with the eurozone experiencing a 2.5 per cent drop in output in the first quarter of 2009.

"Deep and extended economic contraction, depressed business confidence and deteriorating profitability is pushing unemployment up sharply across the eurozone," Howard Archer, an economist at consultants IHS Global Insight, said.

The May eurozone unemployment rate was up from 9.3 per cent in April and 7.4 per cent in May 2008.

But if you do have a job...there is no escape from your office!

Obama administration being secret about Cheney's interview with the investigators over the Plame affair.

Ants are taking over the wooorrrrrlllddd!

And the most WTF moment of all: Cafferty asks: Good idea to allow guns in bars?

The special super extra double secret club of power

Makes one forget that the government works FOR the people.

Glenn Greenwald of Salon:

Part of what motivates this Beltway fixation on secrecy is an ignoble attribute of human nature, or at least an attribute of a certain common psyche. The more exclusive a club is, the more privileged someone feels to belong to it. The fewer people with access to certain information, the more special those who have been granted access to it -- Beltway insiders and source-pleasing journalists -- believe themselves to be.

Francis Bacon's now-clichéd-though-still-true observation that "knowledge is power" means that the more ignorant the rabble are kept about what Beltway rulers are doing, the more powerful Beltway rulers and their underlings become. Hence, Beltway insiders cherish their secrecy (and though it's amazing in one sense, it should thus come as no surprise that Miller is actually a career journalist -- someone who therefore, in theory, ought to cheer when government officials disclose what they see, not think of ways to empower political officials to legally suppress it).

As much as we need anything else, we need a massive reduction in government secrecy and a massive increase in transparency. Obama himself (as well as, ironically, CAP's President and Obama tranistion chief John Podesta) has repeatedly said as much:

"People from every State in this great Nation sent us to Congress to defend their rights and stand up for their interests," Sen. Obama said in a prepared floor statement. "To do that we have to tear down the barriers that separate citizens from the democratic process and to shine a brighter light on the inner workings of Washington."