Lost in the latte: Pentagon (former?) employee Eric Ruff's gotta have his coffee. Before a briefing with Donald Rumsfeld before the Sunday morning talk shows, he stopped at a DC Starbucks and accidentally left his hand-written talking points behind. Turned over to the Center for American Progress, the notes expose the Bush administration's spin strategies for the day, indicating that they're worried about damage from Richard Clarke's testimony and urging Rummy to "Stay inside the lines. We don't need to puff this (up). We need (to) be careful as hell about it. This thing will go away soon and what will keep it alive will be one of us going over the line." Download the notes here.

Anarchy in Iraq: After four civilians were dragged from their torched vehicle, murdered, and dragged through the streets (two were hung from a bridge), a US military Humvee was attacked in Fallujah. Six hundred US soldiers have been killed in Iraq so far, but as Robert Fisk tells Democracy Now, most of the people dying in Iraq are Iraqis. And the situation isn't improving:

Look, things are getting worse here. All Iraqis think so. Most of the journalists on the ground fear it is getting worse. The violence is getting worse. The trust in the Coalition Authority is getting worse. There's little trust in the governing council appointed by the U.S. Consul Paul Bremer. Other things are getting better. There are more schools opening, more University students. New rail tracks have been laid in the south of Iraq. This is what the authorities keep telling us about, and it's true. The problem is that the violence, insecurity, and sense of anarchy is greater.

Billionaires for Bush: Making statements like "Work is for suckers" (attributed to Robin Eublind, aka Paul Bartlett) and "Never have so many sacrificed so much to enrich so few!" the elegantly dressed Billionaires for Bush are forging a new kind of street theater/protest. Staying in character at all times and going by snooty pseudonyms--Iona Bigga Yacht, Robb deVerker, and K. Ching--these anti-Bush activists get welcomed into the pro-Bush "free-speech zones" due to their general beautifulness, but after awhile their real motives become apparent. And sometimes, real across-the-aisle dialogue ensues.

Where was the USAF on 9/11? asks Ted Rall: "The notion of a hijacked passenger jet meandering over the northeastern United States, unmolested for more than an hour before blasting away a chunk of the Pentagon, should appall anyone whose taxes contributed to the quarter of a trillion dollars spent on defense that year. And if you stop and think about it, there was actually two hours in which something could have been done."

Priorities? 57% of Americans believe Bush prioritized attacking Iraq ahead of fighting terrorism, according to a new poll. And the Washington Post (via Xinhua) reports that Bush's focus was on missile defense prior to 9/11, not al-Qaeda.