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Weird Site
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One day he’ll be Senator The Cable Guy
A decent, but overly analytical profile of Larry the Cable Guy in Slate. He is one of the few comedians out there that still tells occasionally tells jokes in the Borscht Belt tradition instead of funny anecdotes and observations.
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Are the French even trying?
We enter day 11 of the European intifada.
So now the French cops found a Molotov Cocktail factory and rioters are shooting at cops and attacking firemen. They seem to be doing a successful job of ghettoizing (or creating their own autonomous areas) themselves. I suppose the French will eventually call in the military once this whole thing starts to lose steam and then call it a triumph of civilization.
One of the commenters over at the Belmont Club observed:
But are letting the burnings and insurrection go on so as to give the Muslims plenty of rope to hang themselves. Perhaps a decision exists within the French government that Muslim labor is not needed when less criminally-inclined, less subversive alternatives exist in Latin America, India, Asia……and that they have decided Islam cannot assimilate and the riots are a good way of convincing the public of that fact..
Which is an interesting thought. Not practical, and a bit too clever. It also ignores the (I think) obvious observation that when you pay people to stay out of the economy you create an underclass and breed resentment. I would imagine that would happen with most immigrant groups.
Also from Belmont
Car burning is spectacular, serious enough to get attention yet — and this is the vital point — not serious enough to provoke lethal force
which is probably true. That means these things can go on forever and probably continue for another week or two. All of this points to large gains for le Pen’s far right party whenever their next election happens.
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Zell
Zell Miller has a good idea from a (IMHO) a faulty premise in the AJC.
Why does everyone insists on thinking of the Plame affair as a grand epic?
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Quick round up
- It’s now six nights of rioting in Paris.
- Secret CIA detention camps around the world. I’m reminded of Wretchard’s line one time that when Truman ordered Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombed, he had “the sand” to do it under his own name.
- I finally got the proper wireless adapter for my Tivo, which I got to work without incident. Sadly it uses Wep, but with 3-4 totally unprotected networks around me I would imagine I’m not worth pursuing.
- It’s amazing how much lists and visual sign of progress can affect one’s mood.
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Before I forget to post about these
From an Agitator post about a senator naming a building after himself (much like Cynthia McKinney and Memorial Drive).
It’d be swell to see the GOP sweeped out 1994-like next year. Not that the Democrats would be any better — or worse. I’d just like to see the Republicans get smacked around a little for their arrogance. But it won’t happen. They’ve (a) passed incumbent-protecting McCain-Feingold, and (b) gerrymandered the bejesus out of the congressional map to make sure they’re immune from accountability.
He leaves out the Roe Effect but beyond that has it about right. When will people come around to term limits?
And infrared sniper detection is cool.
You would think that five nights of rioting in Paris would be bigger news, but you’re wrong. You would also think that people would bring up the fact that the rioting is happening in Algerian immigrant neighborhoods but it seems to be not that way.
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Happy Halloween
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Weird
I have no idea what to make of this. Russia does seem to be on quite a slide though, even with high oil prices. The rest of the former Soviet block seem to be doing better, at least anecdotally.
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Thoughts on the CIA
From Instapundit
THE BIG LOSER in the Libby affair, it would seem to me, is the CIA. At least it will be if anyone pays attention.
Consider: Assuming that Valerie Plame was some sort of genuinely covert operative — something that’s not actually quite clear from the indictment — the chain of events looks pretty damning: Wilson was sent to Africa on an investigative mission regarding nuclear weapons, but never asked to sign any sort of secrecy agreement(!). Wilson returns, reports, then publishes an oped in the New York Times (!!) about his mission. This pretty much ensures that people will start asking why he was sent, which leads to the fact that his wife arranged it. Once Wilson’s oped appeared, Plame’s covert status was in serious danger. Yet nobody seemed to care.
This leaves two possibilities. One is that the mission was intended to result in the New York Times oped all along, meaning that the CIA didn’t care much about Plame’s status, and was trying to meddle in domestic politics. This reflects very badly on the CIA.
The other possibility is that they’re so clueless that they did this without any nefarious plan, because they’re so inept, and so prone to cronyism and nepotism, that this is just business as usual.
All of which is true. How valuable could the information have been if they sent some retired guy to have coffee with mining officials. He also notes revisionism occurring.
More thoughts from Tom MacGuire.
This is not to say that Libby or whoever shouldn’t be going to prison, but it does point out that there are still structural problems that remain. Come to think of it those problems have probably only gotten worse now that the national intelligence system is more centralized.
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Times
From my place to the Airport (picking up Mark) – Door to curb – 22 minutes. Memorial Drive can be quite a timesaver. That was without really speeding too.