Month: April 2006

The CIA’s War Against Bush

But in concentrating on the mote in the other fellow’s eye, Waas has missed the knife sticking out of the back of the Bush Administration; a knife planted by a group of leakers–organized or not–at the CIA who, unelected though they were, took it upon themselves to first try and prevent the execution of United States policy they were sworn to carry out, and failing that, trying to destroy in the most blatantly partisan manner an Administration with which they had a policy disagreement.

How can anyone possibly understand the motivations, the actions, or the thinking in the White House during this crucial time without taking into account the war being conducted against them by the CIA?

In truth, those predisposed to believe the worst about Bush chalk up all the maneuvering on the part of the White House to “covering up” their supposed misrepresentations and exaggerations of pre-war intelligence in the lead up to the war.

But what if there is a different explanation?

What if everything you think you know and despise about the Bush Administration is, in fact, wrong?

In Brief:

A roundup of my insta-take (I suppose Insta-Glenn[*1] has that copyrighted?) on some recent news items:

Unauthorized Plame “Leak” authorized by President[*2] — Well, um, that would make it “authorized” then, wouldn’t it?

Tom Delay calls it quits[*3] — Mr. Delay seems to be an unpleasant sort. But prosecutor Ronnie Earle is the character in this little play who is the truly dangerous one–a political witch-hunter of the first order.

Senate comes to agreement on illegal immigration[*4] — I haven’t paid a lot of attention to this but the more serious and responsible bloggers I read are not encouraged by the Senate’s compromise. And, Harry Reid seems to like it, which is never a good sign.

Cynthia McKinney[*5] — Throw the book at her, bounce her from Congress, let her spend some quality time in the friendly local Federal penitentiary. And that’s just for her utterly offensive “cry racism” defense ploy.

PriceGrabber

Sean Lynch over at Catallarchy[*1] likes PriceGrabber[*2] much more than, say, Froogle.

On hard drives, for example, you can filter by size range, cache size,speed, and manufacturer. The couple times I’ve found errors in eitherthe condition an item was listed in (the vendor had a refurb listed asnew) or the availability (the vendor was out of stock but it showed asin stock on PriceGrabber) they’ve always responded within one businessday. I have yet to find an incorrect price. Occasionally some of thelistings will say “see site” but I generally just skip those. Rebates,which I hate, are also listed right in the comparison list, so youdon’t have to visit the price to find out you need to mail in a rebateform and then wait for your money if you’re lucky enough to have therebate actually fulfilled. They also list stuff that’s available fromAmazon, so no more searching Amazon and not knowing whether the item inthe list is actually available to buy or if it’s from an Amazon partnerand not Amazon themselves!

Microsoft Patches IE

In an event as shocking as the sun rising in the morning, Microsoft is preparing to send out yet another “critical” Internet Explorer security fix[*1] :

Microsoft has confirmed it plans to release a fix for a serioussecurity bug in Internet Explorer next Tuesday (11 April). The fix forthe “CreateTextRange” vulnerability – which has become the subject ofhacker exploits over recent days – will be released as a cumulativeupdate to Internet Explorer along with four other security bulletins(details here[*2] ).

Please tell me you’re not using Internet Explorer right now.  Pretty please?

WSJ on Katie’s Move to CBS

at OpinionJournal: New Time, Same Katie[*1] :

What’s more interesting about Ms.Couric’s becoming managing editor of a major network news show is thatit will mean the end of the anchor as political cipher. In days past,whatever we suspected about their leanings, anchorpersons feltcompelled at least to pose as disinterested reporters of “the way itis.” Ms. Couric dropped that veil long ago.

The list of her utterances and leading questions posted on the Media Research Center’s fretful Web site (www.mrc.org/projects/couric/welcome.asp[*2] )may not fully represent the range of her opinions and peeves. Unlessshe’s a total fake on camera, though, there’s little doubt about whereKatie stands across the great red-blue divide. Democrats and their petcauses get tender respect; Republican and “conservative” policies getintroduced in terms of the alleged threat they represent to our greatnation.

Sadly, my Snookums is among the Perky One’s big fans . . .

Evidence of Intelligent Design:

Perhaps, just perhaps God is smarter and cleverer than Intelligent Design proponents . . .

Chaos=Order: Physicists Make Baffling Discovery[*1]

But then came the real surprise: When they introduced disorder – forces were applied at random to each oscillator – the system became ordered and synchronized.

“The thing that is counterintuitive is that when you introduce disorder into the system – when the [forces on the pendulums] act at random – the chaos that was present before disappears and there is order,” said Sebastian F. Brandt, physics graduate student and lead author of the study which appeared in the January 2006 edition of Physical Review Letters.

Stadium oui, Roof non

Jackson County, Missouri voters approved the multimillion dollar rich guy welfare program, um, er, stadium renovation project, but narrowly voted down the related rolling roof project.

Jackson County political machine officials of all stripes vow to keep offering up the Truman Sports Complex Rolling Roof until the voters give in and approve it.

Yeah, I voted for both of them, but I didn’t like it.  Well, actually, the rolling roof concept is still very neat from an engineering geek point of view.  It’s just too bad that the people who’ll make the money off of it (the politically connected cronies of the Jackson County machine plus the sports team owners) can’t figure out a way to pay for it without taxing a bunch of people who won’t benefit.