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Here's what the plan was: We would fly out on Tuesday afternoon, in order to be in New York in plenty of time to board our cruise ship on Wednesday for our 10-day Caribbean cruise. Everything was in order--hotel reservations, airline tickets, everything.

Then . . .

ICE STORM!!!!!!

Ice storms are not good. Ice storms are bad. Ice storms are very, very bad. Ice storms are, if you will, not at all cool.

So, on Monday, the National Weather Service says "We're putting out an ICE STORM!!!!!! WARNING at 6 p.m. on Monday until noon on Tuesday." (They may have left off the all-caps and the extra exclamation points--I'm not sure.)

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Story #1:

Intelligence agencies turn on a dime, deciding that after all, Iran isn't developing nuclear weapons.  In the words of Director of Intelligence Emily Litella:  "Never Mind."

Story #2:
CIA makes tapes of, then disposes of, then tells the world about interrogation tapes of Al Qaida terrorists.

To review, these are the guys that our entire political leadership depend on for clear and honest analysis of what's going on in the world.  These are also the guys who, throughout the Clinton presidency and well into the G.W. Bush presidency, stated in no uncertain terms that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had WMD's and were ready to use them.  That is, until our political leadership actually did something about it.  That's when Miss Litella mentioned above got her promotion to Director of Intelligence.

Can someone explain to me why some the vitriol aimed at Bush (and, some of that aimed at the Democrats) is not focused like a laser beam on our deeply dysfunctional national intelligence services?

UPDATE:  Meet Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr., Director of Operations for the CIA, apparent villain of this particular piece:

Top C.I.A. officials had decided in 2003 to preserve the tapes in response to warnings from White House lawyers and lawmakers that destroying the tapes would be unwise, in part because it could carry legal risks, the government officials said.

But the government officials said that Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the chief of the agency’s clandestine service, the Directorate of Operations, had reversed that decision in November 2005, at a time when Congress and the courts were inquiring deeply into the C.I.A.’s interrogation and detention program. Mr. Rodriguez could not be reached Friday for comment.

As the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee in 2003, Porter J. Goss, then a Republican congressman from Florida, was among Congressional leaders who warned the C.I.A. against destroying the tapes, the former intelligence officials said. Mr. Goss became C.I.A. director in 2004 and was serving in the post when the tapes were destroyed, but was not informed in advance about Mr. Rodriguez’s decision, the former officials said.

It was not until at least a year after the destruction of the tapes that any members of Congress were informed about the action, the officials said. On Friday, Representative Peter Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican who was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee from 2004 to 2006, said he had never been told that the tapes were destroyed.

Hmm, wasn't the Director of Operations the bad guy in some of Tom Clancy's novels?  Life imitates art.

Two words, more than any other strike fear into any rational resident of the Kansas City metro area:

Ice Storm.

Closely related are two other words:

Freezing Rain.

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Gametime approaches. So does a winter storm. Hurray! Well, it is basketball season . . . Snookums and I decide to change plans a bit, and so instead of going to Tulsa tomorrow, we'll go to Joplin, MO and see if the storm decides to go north. If it does, we'll run down I-44 to Tulsa for the Oral Roberts U. game. If it doesn't, we'll head back to KC during a window on Saturday afternoon where freezing rain is not expected on US 71. Go north, big storm, go north!

(want to read more?  Hit "read more" below.  Neat, huh?)

A quick pre-game post . . . we ran around Shreveport, doing a bit of shopping but mostly just scouting out the town between the luxurious Rodeway Inn and the Centenary campus.

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We're comfortably in our room at the luxurious Rodeway Inn in Shreveport, after a ten-and-one-half hour drive from Kansas City. Let me tell you a bit about the drive, in case you might in future years consider a road-trip to Shreveport from Brookings: it isn't that bad at all.

On the maps, it looks like a journey into the backroads, with minimal Interstate-level roads. It's basically U.S. 71 all the way from Kansas City to Shreveport. From Kansas City down all the way to Ft. Smith, Arkansas, there isn't more than a few miles of two-lane road. Most of it is near-Interstate-grade divided highway, with some intersections at grade, but with normal controlled-access Interstate type highways in most of the built-up areas. US 71 turns into I-540 in northwest Arkansas, going through Wal-Mart home Bentonville and Fayetteville, home of the University of Arkansas. The 30 miles or so from Bentonville to Fayetteville are basically one big city now. The metropolitan area contains nearly half a million people now, and is the sixth fastest growing metro area in the country.

(more . . . click the "Read More" link.)

Tonight, my wife and I are getting ready to hit the road, bright and early tomorrow morning, to Shreveport, Louisiana. That's where Centenary College is, the opponent the night after tomorrow of my alma mater's men's basketball team--the South Dakota State University Jackrabbits.

It will be the first of ten weekends of travel from our home in suburban Kansas City. Travel to Shreveport and Tulsa, Oklahoma, Brookings, SD, Macomb, Illinois and Indianapolis, Brookings again, Fargo, ND, Ft. Wayne, Indiana and suburban Detroit, Brookings, Cedar City, Utah, Brookings, and then Brookings one last time to finish the season.

That's a lot of travel. I'll have to add up the mileage some time. Good thing my wife both loves to travel and likes basketball.

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I used to watch Fox News all of the time.  Now?  Not much at all, really. I get all the news I need from my RSS feeds.  TV is mainly for sports, science fiction, and science/nature shows nowadays.

From Instapunk, via Instapundit:

In the whole hour-and-a-half I watched while I was drinking coffee and trying to avoid ESPN because of the awful Eagles game yesterday, there was absolutely no mention of the biggest story of the day and perhaps the month: The electoral defeat of Hugo Chavez's bid to transform Venezuela's democracy into a dictatorship. He lost. And he conceded. That was HUGE NEWS, available as early as midnight last night.

F&F didn't mention Chavez. At all.

Fox News was a good idea. So was the Thunderbird.
. . .
Count us out. As smart as Ailes is, he has to know that even conservatives can bail out to the Internet.

Three years, $36 million, the Kansas City Royals sign Jose Guillen and get some much-needed offensive punch.

The signing creates roster flexibility because it leaves the Royals with a glut of outfielders. Guillen can play left or right field, which could allow the Royals to shift Mark Teahen to first base.

Club officials must also decide what to do with outfielder Emil Brown, who led the club in RBIs in each of the last three seasons. Brown is eligible for arbitration after making $3.45 million in 2007.

The Royals are also now better positioned to field trade offers for David DeJesus and Joey Gathright. DeJesus had drawn heavy interest from several clubs, including Texas and Atlanta.

The Braves are believed to be offering lefty Chuck James for DeJesus. James, 26, is 22-14 with a 4.05 ERA over the last two seasons.

A Good Point:

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was exactly the policy CNN adopted in not telling viewers that Kerr is a member of Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual- Transgender Americans for Hillary.

Sen. Clinton’s campaign Web site features a press release announcing Kerr and other members of the committee in June. And a basic Web search turns up Kerr’s past support as a member of a veterans’ steering committee for the John Kerry for President campaign - and his prior appearance on CNN in December ‘03.

CNN’s moderator, Anderson Cooper, singled out Kerr (who’d been flown in for the event) in the vast audience, giving him a chance for his own filibustering moment. Marvel at it: Not one CNN journalist uncovered the connection or thought it pertinent to disclose that Kerr’s heart belonged to Hillary.

When righty commentator Bill Bennett pointed out the facts to Cooper after the debate, a red-faced Cooper feebly blubbered: “That was something certainly unknown to us, and had we known that, would have been disclosed by us. It turns out we have just looked at it.”

Anybody who believes anything CNN has to say about American domestic politics is, simply, a fool.  Actually, you can say that about almost all of American journalism today.