Red Sox win, Coulter steals, and the Pope isn't hip to gay marriage

First of all, congrats to the Red Sox for going into the All-Star break with the AL East.

Being an engineer, I know stuff about probability and other archane stuff that most Americans get glossy-eyed over. I don't know what the probability is that Ann Coulter conjured the same 20 plus words from a given article, or publication once might be....it has been said to be between 50 million and 100 million to one.

Let's use the worst case scenario for Annie.

Now, when you have multiple instances of the same variety of word usage, with each usage you multiply thusly: 100,000,000*100,000,000 or 10,000,000,000,000,000 to one.

For each ensuing duplicated passage, the probability that this is coincidence goes up 10⁸...ad infinitum.

I don't expect Ann to understand this simple math, given that in her latest work(?), she attempts to disprove evolution. Not likely. Evolution is an established fact. The only real debate amongst evolutionary biologists and others with a working understanding of the subject matter is what mechanisms are involved.

Not too clever.

Finally, the Pontiff was in Spain where it has been reported that whilst 80 per-cent of the adult population considers themselves Catholic, only 42 per-cent profess to believing in God. Not surprisingly, Bene The Umpteenth denounced gay marriage, stating that marriage was a holy union between a priest and his choir boys.

Okay, so the choir boy bit isn't exactly factual, but I'm simply trying to conform to the level of public discourse in GWB's 'Murrika.

WaPo seems to get it

The headline is a gem: A Driven President Faces a World of Crises

I would have worded it somewhat differently, but the baffled boy blunder has a lot on his plate, and precious little mental resources with which to consume this meal.

Okay, I'm being too harsh, 'too little observed or evidentiary mental resources.....'

Moving right along, here's a snippet:

From deteriorating security in Afghanistan and Somalia to mayhem in the Middle East, confrontation with Iran and eroding relations with Russia, the White House suddenly sees crisis in every direction.

North Korea's long-range missile test Tuesday, although unsuccessful, was another reminder of the bleak foreign policy landscape that faces President Bush even outside of Iraq. Few foreign policy experts foresee the reclusive Stalinist state giving up the nuclear weapons it appears to have acquired, making it another in a long list of world problems that threaten to cloud the closing years of the Bush administration, according to foreign policy experts in both parties.

"I am hard-pressed to think of any other moment in modern times where there have been so many challenges facing this country simultaneously," said Richard N. Haass, a former senior Bush administration official who heads the Council on Foreign Relations. "The danger is that Mr. Bush will hand over a White House to a successor that will face a far messier world, with far fewer resources left to cope with it."

Instead of smearing Joe Wilson(and countless others), maybe this White House could have done something constructive in the domain of foreign policy.

Nahhhhhhhh.

Meanwhile, that ever elusive phantom, 'the liberal media' continues to give Bush and the GOP brownie(you're doin' a heckuva job!) points whilst actual evidence points to a ship of state rudderless in a stormy sea. Harrrrrrr!

As is the norm, Media Matters sets the record straight.

Tis all fer now...I gotta eat.

Kristof seems really pissed off, and is anyone paying attention to Murray Waas?

E & P has some dirt. Of course now that the NYT has gone to a subscription model, it sometimes takes a bit to get all the story from some shameless website.

Here is some of what Kristof is reported to have penned:

...When I was covering the war in Iraq, we reporters would sometimes tune to Fox News and watch, mystified, as it purported to describe how Iraqis loved Americans. Such coverage (backed by delusional Journal editorials baffling to anyone who was actually in Iraq) misled conservatives about Iraq from the beginning. In retrospect, the real victims of Fox News weren’t the liberals it attacked but the conservatives who believed it.

Historically, we in the press have done more damage to our nation by withholding secret information than by publishing it. One example was this newspaper’s withholding details of the plans for the Bay of Pigs invasion. President Kennedy himself suggested that the U.S. would have been better served if The Times had published the full story and derailed the invasion.

Then there were the C.I.A. abuses that journalists kept mum about until they spilled over and prompted the Church Committee investigation in the 1970’s. And there are secrets we should have found, but didn’t: in the run-up to the Iraq war, the press — particularly this newspaper — was too credulous about claims that Iraq possessed large amounts of W.M.D....

I'll see if I can get a link to the whole Op-Ed later.

On another note, National Journal muckraker, Murray Waas has written another gem. I'm waiting for anyone in the MSM to pick this up. So far, it seems only lefty blogs are commenting on Waas' revelations. At this juncture, what Waas reports seems credible.

All the parts of the key players seem to be acted out in accord with known information.

In case you haven't seen the piece, the essential point is that Bush personally directed Cheney(ordered?) to lead the charge in the efforts to discredit Amb. Wilson's Niger claims.

It will be interesting to see if this gets any real network time.

'Merikun Independence Day!

Yes, here we are at 4 July again.

As much as I love explosions, I don't celebrate the day.

I'll celebrate our independence day when we are independent from:

1) All forms of inequality

2) Environmental degradation

3) Useless military spending

4) Imperial conquest

5) People without healthcare coverage

6) Neo-liberal trade policies

7) OUR weapons of mass destruction

8) Religion is fancied over reason...get the fucking church out of my government!

9) Fox News

(okay, so number 9 is taking it a bit too far, but it is time for people to act boldly)

In related news, the CIA's bin Laden unit that has been hunting bin Laden for a reported decade.

I guess "dead or alive" is pretty much 'wutevah!'(yeah, I know it was a non-sequitur, that's the point)

Now go show your patriotism and blow something up..