Liberals? How Dare You!?!

I was plonking around a bit at the Center for American Progress, and came across this little bit of sage advice that MSNBC management allegedly gave to host Keith Olbermann regarding the political slant of his guests on two whole consecutive nights!

Speaking on October 25 to comedian and talk show host Al Franken, Olbermann said the following:

You were good enough to come on this newscast with me late in the summer of 2003. It was August or September. And by coincidence, either the next day or the day before, Janeane Garofalo had been a guest on the newscast. And I got called into a vice president‘s office here and told, "Hey, we don't mind you interviewing these guys, but should you really have put liberals on, on consecutive nights?"

Olbermann added, "Al, can you believe that the country was actually at that point that recently?" Later he would answer his own question, saying, "Thank goodness we have steered out of that time."

Franken was interviewed on September 2, and Garofalo on September 4. Apparently having them both on over three days--a period of time in which Olbermann's show interviewed a total of 9 guests--was grounds for being called on the carpet at MSNBC.

Thanks to FAIR for the media heads-up. You can read the entire article at the referenced link, and the transcript of Olbermann's appearance on Countdown, here.

I urge readers to at least read the FAIR piece, as it deals with MSNBC's apparent liberal phobia. Coincidently(heavy sarcasm), MSNBC does not seem to have ant issues whatever trotting out those in lockstep with Bush policy(I'd say 'conservative,' but the Bush admin. is anything but conservative)

Ahh, yes. That good ol' liberal controlled media strikes again!

Scooter catches Reaganitis

I just pulled this from the wire:

Libby defense: I don't recall
29/10/2005 12:51 - (SA)(that's South African time ed.)

Washington - The lawyer for US vice president Dick Cheney's former top aide is outlining a possible criminal defense that is a time-honoured tradition in Washington scandals: A busy official immersed in important duties cannot reasonably be expected to remember details of long-ago conversations.

Friday's indictment of I Lewis "Scooter" Libby involves allegations that as Cheney's chief of staff he lied to FBI agents and a federal grand jury.

Libby, who resigned immediately, was operating amid "the hectic rush of issues and events at a busy time for our government," according to a statement released by his attorney, Joseph Tate.

"We are quite distressed the special counsel (Patrick Fitzgerald) has not sought to pursue alleged inconsistencies in Mr Libby's recollection and those of others and to charge such inconsistencies as false statements," Tate continued.

If this report is to be believed, Scooter is going to blame his erroneous statements to FBI agents, the Grand Jury, and (?) on his failing memory - The Reagan defense in Iran-Contra.

Unfortunately, in this time of email, and other means to track a persons communications, this is unlikely to fly. Unless you think that Scooter didn't receive some coaching on these matters, AND was so incompetent that he was unable to figure this out for himself. Oh well, I guess this is the only plausible defense open to him at this juncture. The alternative would seem to be to 'drop a dime' on his boss, one Richard B. Cheney. I think Scooter would do the entire thirty years before telling the whole truth about this sordid affair. That is, if his memory can jarred into functioning again ;)

Another odd phrasing, if reported correctly is this:

"We are quite distressed the special counsel (Patrick Fitzgerald) has not sought to pursue alleged inconsistencies in Mr Libby's recollection and those of others and to charge such inconsistencies as false statements," Tate continued

Pardon me, but isn't Fitzgerald's case regarding Libby - as far as we know from the indictments - based on these mysterious 'inconsistencies.' The curious part of this statement is that as of yet Fitzgerald has chosen not to "Pursue alleged inconsistencies in Mr Libby's recollection and those of others and to charge such inconsistencies as false statements."

The obvious, yet unstated signal here is that Tate knows that others mis-lead the Grand Jury with 'inconsistencies.' Here at pure bs, we just call 'em lies.

By the way, I got the source material from this source.

I got the above redundant sentence phrasing from the pure bs affiliate Redundancy Help ;)

So, Reaganitis from another former Reaganite. Mr. Libby served in Reagan's State Department from 1981 to 1985. Hey, it worked for Ronnie, why not Scooter, too?

Total Recall

It seems that Governor Ahnuld is suffering from flashbacks. In a interview with the AP on Thusday(10-27-05) the Governator said this regarding Cali-Forn-I-Ay's democrats having a less than sanguine response to his 'government reforms.'

"I want to move things forward and ... they want to destroy me. It's a self-serving government that's all about them rather than serving the people, and it's wrong."

I think Arnold was having a stress related reaction causing him to paraphrase from his role in 1990's Total Recall, where as Douglas Quaid, the Austrian oak uttered:

"Get your story straight. That idiot over there, Richter, has been trying to kill me ever since I went to Rekall.

The Governor's quote comes from the AP..Here's a link, the film quote is from memory, and the issues that the Cali. Dems. are having issue with are quickly spelled out in this brief Reuters article.

With his re-election(?) coming up soon, this is likely to be a referendum about not only these policy moves, but also his chances in the upcoming election.

As Ahnuld might say: "I'll be bach...Unless I lose, den I guess I wone be bach. Zee you. I gotta go fill da Hummer."

GWB Today

We take a page - okay a phrase - from Bob Somerby's excellent Daily Howler and, "Try to believe he said it."

"Tyrants and would-be tyrants have always claimed that murder is justified to serve their grand vision." - GW Bush

Apparently, Neither Dick nor Karl have briefed George on the concept of irony. Or more likely, they have, and it somehow escaped that porous sponge atop his shoulders(sorry for the overly snarky remark)...Okay, I'm not really sorry.

The man definitely has a penchant for turning a phrase ;)

Courtesy of AFP, a photo of the great man at said today's speech regarding the warren terrah:


BTW, this was taken pre-Scooter indictment release.

All You Need to Know About CIA Leak Case

Scooter is charged with 5 indictments

Everything else you hear is so fluid that it isn't worth your energy to pay it much heed. Yes, I know that the most common meme is that Rove may be in really deep, but until there are additional indictments handed down, this is as good as it gets.

I just watched Fitzgerald on TV. He's a pro. If there are bigger fish to be caught, he'll do his job. From all appearances he's a real stand-up lad.

From Arlene To Beta

I know that the official climatological view is the warming trend in sea water surface temperature is only calculated to produce stronger tropical stroms, rather than more frequent storms, but now that tropical storm 'Beta' is assaulting the south western Carribean one can't help but wonder if global climate change will not in fact spawn more storms as well.

(gawd, that was a run-on sentence ;))

Here's the rundown of the busiest named tropical storm season in the history of the western Atlantic by name:

• 01. Arlene


• 02. Bret


• 03. Cindy


• 04. Dennis


• 05. Emily


• 06. Franklin


• 07. Gert


• 08. Harvey


• 09. Irene


• 10. Jose


• 11. Katrina


• 12. Lee


• 13. Maria


• 14. Nate


• 15. Ophelia


• 16. Philippe


• 17. Rita


• 18. Stan


• 19. Tammy


• 20. Vince


• 21. Wilma


• 22. Alpha


• 23. Beta

It's a good thing that I have a long history about being wrong about most things. Likely this is an anomaly(just don't tell that to anyone affected by any of these storms)

Indictment Anxiety Relief!

If you're like me - and if your are, your parents are quite likely openly sobbing even as I type - then you may need a break from the mis-reports and just plain sloppy, baseless opinions being bandied about by the MSM, bloggers, and well, pretty much everyone with any manner of interest in what only Fitzgerald and very few others know.

Take a vacation.

If you've been following this for a time, you've earned it(not like the last one my employer bestowed upon me :))

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go over to Media Matters and poke around a bit.

There is a lot more going on than what I loathe to call 'Plamegate.' The reason that I am so very hesitant to use that term is that Watergate was essentially a cover-up of a burglary, whilst this latest White House criminal enterprise concerns the cover-up of the outing of a US intelligence person - in a time of war no less. AND, no one can say with any degree of certainty just how deep this rabbit-hole goes.

The difference in real harm done to the country differs by orders of magnitude - and that is from what we already know with a very high degree of probability.

So.....Go on over, and read most anything - or most everything. You'll emerge a truly more informed person, and with a little luck, just maybe your parents will be able to put down the box of tissues for a moment ;)

Template Watch!

Well, things are progressing at a snail's pace regarding the development of an it-works-with-the-new-Pyra/Blogger/Google-template with all browsers. I can alter the color to fix it in IE,(an ugly non-fix) but with my browser of choice -Firefox - the latest post has a huge area of whitespace under it. I am not a CSS guru, but I have done some tableless design, and usually can figure this stuff out.

I guess I'll burn the midnight oil over the weekend unless I get some revelation as to how to get this to display properly.

Updte: I just had a breakthrough of sorts. I now know what I need to do. I need to decouple(release the parent-child relationship) of two elements. That should put things right.

Those Wacky Iraqis

The CS Monitor is reporting that the Sunnis are putting together an anti-American coalition to give them some additional clout in Iraq's new parliament.

This vigorous new effort to participate is a complete reversal from the Sunni position last year that voters should boycott polls to select the transitional national assembly. But if the coalition has decided to join in a process it once rejected, it is also beginning to articulate a Sunni political agenda that is Islamist, vehemently anti-American, opposed to foreign troops, and discreetly pro-insurgency.

Many of the old Sunni leaders are gone, entangled in the insurgency, or in jail. These new leaders are hoping that they can begin to reverse a political posture that was hobbled in part by the January boycott.

"We will insist on participating in the next election by the help of almighty God," says Adnan Dulaimi, head of a group called Ahl Iraq, who has a reputation for religious devotion and toughness that elicits respect in some and fear in others.

The political platform of this evolving Sunni coalition, named the Iraqi Accord, still lacks focus beyond ensuring Sunnis aren't persecuted by a Shiite government. Nonetheless, the groups in the coalition so far are drawing up a list of candidates and have begun calling for Sunnis to vote in December elections.

Remember the name 'Iraqi Accord.' Whilst this initial step - a fight with words, rather than arms - is vastly preferred, it is almost certainly not the last we'll hear from the war torn country.

I urge my dear readers to take a moment and read the full article. It provides much more color than I have provided here; man on the street interviews and such.

Shorter Sunni issues: "We got dissed."

Fashionably Late

Okay, rather than bore my gentle readers with a long winded post about Intel's dropping of a great many of their server processors, I'll keep it brief.

Intel has stuck to its processor roadmap for far too long. The now quaint notion that the legacy style processor/core logic/front side bus is still a valid opttion for future development has finally been dropped by the Santa Clara chip giant.

They've wisely opted to adopt a strategy much like their small rival AMD has done. It's unclear what Intel will call this technology, but anyone familiar with the architecture of AMD's Opteron processors will immediately recognize this as a variant of HyperTransport.

For anyone that wants to really dig into this, and that probably amounts to a tiny fraction of my readers, I would suggest not reading anything more about the matter, and wait until either Brian Neal or Johan De Gelas at Ace's Hardware cut through the hype, and give you the story straight.

There's a lot of odd speculation by people not in the field at this point. I don't see that as serving anyone particularly well.

Diversity :)

Who'da thunk it?

"If a squirrel and a bunch of puppies can hang harmoniously, why can't we?" - SD McConnell (the headlock is nice touch :))

This is not a photoshop job. I have a full video clip sent by a friend.

On Edit: My niece DEMANDED credit for the caption quote. Sheesh.

Why 2K?

CNN is reporting that the 2000th American 'casualty' has died in Iraq.

Frankly, CNN(Certainly Not News) is by no means the definitive source on this matter, but the website Iraq Coalition Casualty Count is reporting 1999 confirmed as of 23 Oct. 2005, so it looks like CNN is most likely correct.

The post title wasn't meant to be snarky. I really do want to know why. Any readers here will more than likely have their own opinions - and they may all play a part, but in the final analysis it was all enabled by packs of lies and redirections.

Additional: 2000 American dead is more than we had in the first four years of Vietnam.

On Edit: Confirmed.

Hey, They're Only Iraqi Cops

From Knight-Ridder comes the latest in DOD graft.

WASHINGTON - When the Pentagon went shopping for seven armored cars for senior Iraqi policemen, U.S. officials turned to an Iraqi supplier to provide them some hardened Mercedes-Benzes.
After spending nearly $1 million, here's what they got: six vehicles with bad armor and run-down mechanics. They also were a little more than slightly used: The newest model was a 1996; the oldest, a 1994.

According to the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, the seventh auto is missing.

In a report released Monday, the inspector general said the Pentagon couldn't get its money back because it did such a bad job negotiating the no-bid deal.

In June, the Pentagon's Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq bought the seven Mercedes-Benzes for $135,000 each. They were supposed to include high-quality armor that could withstand high-velocity rifle shots.

There's much more at the above link.

Now, one would think that our people in Iraq would at least kick the tires before spending roughly a million dollars for seven, yes only 7 'armored vehicles.'

And some adjutant bean-counter should have maybe asked something like: "Hey, I see six vehicles here. Didn't we pay for seven?"

Somehow, the pollyanna-ish adage; "When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade" doesn't appear to fix this situation. The DOD bought lemons for sure. But these lemons are too bitter a pill. That the 'lemonade' adage doesn't apply here would be the main bullet-point of this paragraph. (I know how lousy that ghastly attempt at phrasing is..moving right along..)

On a more positive note, maybe the DOD will start using the newly designed vehix.com before purchasing any more vehicles. I know that their listings for armored personnel transport is small at present, but I'm told by an insider that they are moving forward with that module ;)

Testing Update!

If you can bear with me until I get my old template to work with the newish, ugly, off-site JS that Blooger/Google has deposited at the head of the page, I'll be blogging in earnest again.


Quick tip: In FireFox, only the top post seems to be effected - I LOATHE white space - and in IE, the layout looks okay, but again, there are things that I need to rectify prior to activley blogging again.


I'm not going to violate the TOS agreement simply to have a 'pretty' blog. I'll figure it out.

For the few of you that have been peeking in, I sincerely appreciate the conituned interest.

Additional: To see what the blog should look like, access this archived page

Update: I'm closing in the desired effect. Using a CSS editor, and removing some inline styles, the page displays like it did in the good old days.

Stay tuned!