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September 11, 2004
BOSTON GLOBE CAUGHT LYING AGAIN
Bill at INDC Journal interviews Dr. Bouffard, who says that the Globe completely misrepresented what he told them. In fact, Bouffard contacted Bill asking him to help correct the record.
Patterico notes that we've seen this from the Globe, before.
On the first anniversary, I still couldn't wrap my mind around the enormity of what happened, so I tried to focus on just one victim.
Last year, I wrote about where I had been and what I had done two years earlier. I still re-read that post at least once a month.
This year, I don't have any particular 9/11 observance planned. I'll being going to the U of I football game with my new wife, her parents, my Dad, and his wife. I'll think about 9/11, of course, and remember what we've lost, and how much has changed, but I think this 9/11 is the first one that's started to feel like a normal day again. Well... "new normal," maybe. Four years ago, I wouldn't be anticipating a football game my making sure I know where all the exits are and trying to remember to keep an eye out for suspicious packages. I wouldn't be thinking about how much more comfortable I'd be if I could carry a gun, legally. But then again, I think about these kind of things every day, anyway. New normal.
Anyway, I know you'll all remember 9/11 in your own ways, today, but I hope part of that will involve going out and having some fun with your loved ones. And stay safe.
UPDATE: I've gotten a ton of e-mails this morning telling me about people's 9/11 posts. Thanks for sending those, and I plan to read them all. Ordinarily, I'd link to them, too, but I've got about 5 minutes before I have to run out the door to the football game. If anyone has any posts they'd like to point out, feel free to link to them in the comments. Alternatively, you could send a trackback to this post, and they'll show up inline on the main page. Remember, stay safe today.
The Chicago Tribune has a link to all of their coverage from that day. It's fascinating, and really brings it all back to me, because that was what I was reading at the time.
What I wouldn't give to see the Good Morning America coverage that I was watching at 8 in the morning (CDT) that day. I've made several inquiries, but it's not available.
September 10, 2004
DO WE NEED A DAN RATHER SUICIDE WATCH YET?
HODGES SAID HE WAS MISLED BY CBS: Retired Maj. General Hodges, Killian's supervisor at the Grd, tells ABC News that he feels CBS misled him about the documents they uncovered. According to Hodges, CBS told him the documents were "handwritten" and after CBS read him excerpts he said, "well if he wrote them that's what he felt."This appears to be the "independent verification" Dan Rather was talking about.Hodges also said he did not see the documents in the 70's and he cannot authenticate the documents or the contents. His personal belief is that the documents have been "computer generated" and are a "fraud".
Glenn has much, much more.
I swear, somebody better pinch me because I just may be dreaming!
This is good. NPR and the Media Matters people are accusing FreeRepublic.com commenters of being the people who forged the CBS documents -- based on a misreading of an internet time-stamp. Hilarity ensues.
http://patterico.com/archives/002691.php
RATHER DENIES FORGERIES ON CBS EVENING NEWS
I'm watching the CBS Evening News for the first time in, oh, 20 years.
"Today, on the Internet, and elsewhere, some people, including many who are partisan political operatives, concentrated not on the key questions of the overall story [questioning Bush's guard service], but on the documents that were part of the story."
This appears to be the line they're going to take.
UPDATE: Did you catch that Rather's interview with his document expert was done before the 60 Minutes broadcast aired? In other words, CBS knew they might have a problem with these documents. Did they mention this in the original piece?
UPDATE 2: Bush-bashing author Jim Moore just said that the White House is relying on "the Blogosphere" to attack these documents.
Neither Moore nor Rather saw any need to define the term.
UPDATE 3: The Final Word:
The 60 Minutes report was based not solely on the recovered documents, but on a preponderance of evidence, including documents that were provided by what we consider to be solid sources, and interviews with former officials of the Texas National Guard. If any definitive evidence to the contrary of our story is found, we will report it. So far, there is none.Isn't that interesting?
CBS's standard for accusing the President of lying, corruption, fraud, dereliction of duty, etc., is "a preponderance of the evidence."
CBS's standard for reporting on evidence that contradicts CBS's initial take, on the other hand, is "definitive evidence."
In other words, if CBS finds a story bashing the President is 51% likely to be true, they'll run it. But if the story questions the Gospel according to Dan Rather, CBS won't touch it unless it's handed down on stone tablets.
I guess they deserve points for being honest about their agenda.
Distributed Computing: "Distributed computing is a science which solves a large problem by giving small parts of the problem to many computers to solve and then combining the solutions for the parts into a solution for the problem. Recent distributed computing projects have been designed to use the computers of hundreds of thousands of volunteers all over the world, via the Internet, to look for extra-terrestrial radio signals, to look for prime numbers so large that they have more than ten million digits, and to find more effective drugs to fight the AIDS virus. These projects are so large, and require so much computing power to solve, that they would be impossible for any one computer or person to solve in a reasonable amount of time." (SETI@Home is perhaps the most well-known example of this).
Distributed Reporting: Distributed reporting refers to the concept that "Truth" and "Fairness" and "Accuracy" are too big to be "owned" by a narrow group moribund, lazy, and corrupt old-media organizations or formerly-respected talking-head dinosaurs, but in fact are more likely to be found by the action of many individuals working separately and then sharing their research, opinions, and perspectives freely.
Related: Belmont Club calls it "The Shot Heard Round the World."
STUDY: "MEN SUFFER FROM P.M.S."
(Via ThisisLondon)
Brother, you said a mouthful.
P.S. The forgoing comment is based solely on what my male friends tell me. My wife is sweetness and light 365 days a year, and if there were any women before her, I don't even remember any of them.
HOW SHARPER THAN A SERPENT'S TOOTH TO HAVE AN HONEST CHILD
Well, we already know that Ben Barnes is lying when he claims to have pulled strings as Texas' Lieutenant Governor to get Bush into the Texas Air National Guard. After all, Bush got into the guard the year before Barnes became Lt. Governor.
Oops.
Now, though, a woman claiming to be Barnes' daughter Amy is saying that her dad is making the whole thing up:
A woman purporting to be Amy Barnes, daughter of former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes, said Thursday that her father had fabricated claims that he used his influence to get President Bush into the Texas Air National Guard 36 years ago.Read the whole thing.In a phone call to WBAP's Mark Davis radio show in Dallas, Texas, Ms. Barnes told guest host Monica Crowley that her father was an "opportunist" who had lied about Bush's Guard record during a "60 Minutes II" broadcast Tuesday night.
BARNES: I love my father very much, but he's doing this for purely political reasons. He is a big Kerry fund-raiser and he is writing a book also. And [the Bush story] is what he's leading the book off with. ... He denied this to me in 2000 that he did get Bush out [of Vietnam service]. Now he's saying he did.
I have to admit, I'm a bit disturbed that no one appears to have verified yet that the caller to this radio show was, indeed, Barnes daughter Amy, but then, I've recently learned that it's considered passé to verify your stories before running them, so here you go.
Incorrect link fixed.
UPDATE: As Gerry points out, Hannity is interviewing the daughter on his show today, so she seems to check out.
WASHINGTON -- George W. Bush began flying a two-seat training jet more frequently and twice required multiple attempts to land a one-seat fighter in the weeks just before he quit flying for the Texas Air National Guard in 1972, his pilot logs show.Wow. This is devestating.The logs show Bush flew nine times in T-33 trainers in February and March 1972, including eight times in one week and four of those only as a co-pilot. Bush, then a first lieutenant, flew in T-33s only twice in the previous six months and three times in the year ending July 31, 1971.
The records also show Bush required two passes to land an F-102A fighter on March 12 and April 10, 1972. His last flight as an Air National Guard pilot was on April 16.
If this report checks out, Bush can kiss goodbye any hope he ever had of being elected fighter pilot in November.
September 09, 2004
DID BRIT HUME RIP OFF CHARLES JOHSON?
The Daily Recycler has the video of Brit Hume interviewing Byron York over the forged CBS documents. The interview was fine as far as it goes, but:
HUME: I must tell you also that a producer here at Fox News today sat down with Microsoft Word on a word processing software on a computer and typed out one of these memos just sort of the way it might look today, and the line spacing came out exactly the same. There were no words carried over or hyphenated in any of these documents, and it came out so that you could put the document one on top of the other, and they perfectly traced, which seems... peculiar.Ehhhh.
Assuming Hume's telling the truth, then he ought to have a long talk with his "producer" about the ethical expectations of Fox News, because the detective work supposedly done by the producer is exactly what Charles Johnson -- blogger extraordinaire and bona fide publishing expert -- did in his investigation.
I think two possibilities are the most likely. Either: 1) the producer got the idea from reading Johnson's blog and then replicated the experiment him/herself; or 2) the editor saw Johnson's work and merely claimed it for his/her own.
If the former, then Fox acted classlessly by not giving credit where credit is due (would they have duplicated an ABC experiment without giving credit?). If the latter, then the producer simply lied to Hume.
I suppose it's also possible that the producer did explaiin where he got the idea for this test, and did replicate it, but Hume somehow misunderstood, but that seems kind of farfetched. Even more farfetched is the idea that Fox's producer independently came up with the idea to do the same test Johnson did, right down to the superimposition of the two images. Given the exactness of the two experiments, I don't consider that a serious possibility.
So far, I can't come up with any explanation that doesn't make FoxNews look pretty bad, here. Maybe my readers have other suggestions?
Or maybe I'm all wet? Allah points out in the comments that Spacetown USA did the exact same experiment -- possibly even before Johnson.
Is this experiment just intuitively the obvious thing to do?
Am I being unfair to FoxNews?
Especially at Powerline.
One of the things that initially may have given some of you pause was CBS's initial claim that, "60 Minutes consulted a handwriting analyst and document expert who believes the material is authentic."
Well, check out this update at Powerline:
UPDATE 11: CBS is sticking to its story. It's not entirely clear which story, however. Initially, CBS spokeswoman Kelli Edwards said:But wait, there's more! And once again, Powerline's got it:
As is standard practice at CBS News, each of the documents broadcast on '60 Minutes' was thoroughly investigated by independent experts, and we are convinced of their authenticity.Later, however, Ms. Edwards sent out an email that appeared to revise the nature of the "authentication" process:
CBS verified the authenticity of the documents by talking to individuals who had seen the documents at the time they were written. These individuals were close associates of Colonel Jerry Killian and confirm that the documents reflect his opinions at the time the documents were written.So what CBS is now saying is not that the documents are authentic, but that the opinions they express are authentic, based on the hearsay reports of anonymous persons alleged to be close associates of Col. Killian, who recall his views of thirty-two years ago. This is what passes for "authentication" in the mainstream media.
UPDATE 12: In the August 18, 1973 memo "discovered" by 60 Minutes, Jerry Killian purportedly writes:And if it weren't for blogs, no one would be looking.
Staudt has obviously pressured Hodges more about Bush. I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job.But wait! Reader Amar Sarwal points out that General Staudt, who thought very highly of Lt. Bush, retired in 1972.
The more I look at these "memos," the more obvious it appears that they are inept forgeries.
Boy, is this something, or what?
The blogosphere has patted itself on the back quite a few times, and there's no doubt that it's had a tremendeous impact on what stories are covered, and how they're covered, but if the Bush docs turn out to be forgeries, then I think this may be the moment at which the Blogosphere has finally, indisputably, come of age.
The best coverage I've been able to find is at LGF. My understanding is that Powerline really broke this story, but I haven't been able to get that site to come up. Either Drudge is overloading Powerline's servers, or Powerline may be under a DOS attack. I'd think the former, but getting through to LGF is a bit tough at the moment, and they're not getting the Drudge runoff, as far as I know (plus, I think they're on a pretty robust server). That makes me suspect the possibility of a coordinated DOS attack against both sites for running it. We'll see.
There's some coverage over at The Corner, as well. They've been ranging from skeptical to agnostic of the forgery charge, but are perhaps coming around to be a little more suspicious of the docs.
God, I love this stuff.
WOW! Bill at INDC Journal is doing, you know, like, real journalism! Unfortunately, that means he's blown whatever chance he might have had for ever landing a job in the mainstream press.
Come on. You'd have done it too.
(You'll need your sound on for this one).
UDPATE: What, no comments? Did I not sell this post enough?
Did I mention that the link features a SEXY GIRL and is THE FUNNIEST THING YOU'LL SEE ALL YEAR?
Okay, that may be oversell, but you still ought to like it.
Well, this has got to be one of the strangest new blogs I've seen. Confessions of a New York City escort. Seriously.
Graffiti on the Wall has a couple posts about the root cause of people who try to find the root cause of terrorism.
Free Will points out a European Commissioner who said some very politically incorrect (i.e. true) things about Islam.
And Joe Kelley looks at some real American traitors.
September 08, 2004
REMEMBER THAT "ABDUCTED" MARINE DESERTER?
Jawa provides an update in this stunningly gullible post. In it, Jawa abjectly apologizes to Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, thanks him for his service, and calls on me to do the same.
Nutz to that.
I vigorously rebut Jawa in the comments to his post.
As far as I'm concerned, Cpl. Hassoun is most likely a deserter at best, and a collaborator at worst. I hope the bastard doesn't walk.
Ever see an anonymous source from the Clinton Administration -- or from the Kerry campaign, for that matter -- identified like this?
The officials said Bush's negotiating team plans to resist the middle debate, which was to be Oct. 8 in a town meeting format in the crucial state of Missouri.* * *
A presidential adviser said campaign officials were concerned that people could pose as undecided when they actually are partisans.
"It's not a fear of the format," said the adviser, who refused to be identified to avoid annoying Bush. "They want two debates that are focused on clear differences on foreign and domestic policy. We benefit from the differences."
I must really be falling down on the blog if I have to rely on Kim du Toit to point out anti-gun lies in the Chicago Sun Times:
How ridiculous is the notion that private citizens should be able to tote machine guns? * * * Most Americans -- Democrats and Republicans -- are against claiming Second Amendment protections for these guns and support the federal assault weapons ban.Sigh.
It's hard to chalk up a misstatement to honest mistake or even carelessness when they've made the exact same mistake over and over again. Nevertheless, I sent a very calm, dispassionate, letter to the editor of the Sun Times explaining the difference between a machine gun and the Assault Weapons Ban. We'll see if they'll print it, but I shan't hold my breath. If, as I suspect, the Sun Times knows they're mistating the facts, but simply doesn't care, they won't bother printing any rebuttals.
I also called the Sun Times' editorial desk about this -- they don't have an ombudsman or public editor. The guy I talked to listened to me for about 20 seconds, then simply suggested I should write a letter to the editor. I explained that I had done so, but wanted to call particular attention to this issue because it contained a verifiable and unambiguous misstatement of fact on the part of the paper. He said that a letter to the editor was the only way to address such things.
We'll see.
If anyone else is interested in contacting the Sun Times, their number is 312-321-3000. You have to go to a couple menus to get to the editorial desk, but once you do, you'll probably get a person. If you call, be polite.
Oh, and for what it's worth, I've reproduced my letter to the editor in the extended entry.
There's More...
Shame on the Sun Times for misleading readers in your September 7, 2004 Commentary, "Quit playing politics with ban on assault weapons." In that piece, you write, "How ridiculous is the notion that private citizens should be able to tote machine guns...? Most Americans -- Democrats and Republicans -- are against claiming Second Amendment protections for these guns and support the federal assault weapons ban."
As I suspect you already know, the Assault Weapons Ban has absolutely nothing to do with machine guns. Machine guns -- the rat-a-tat-tat fully automatic weapons that can rapidly fire many bullets with one press of the trigger -- have been extremely tightly regulated in this country since the National Firearms Act of 1934 The Assault Weapons Ban has nothing to do with these guns. In fact, because the Assault Weapons Ban applies only to SEMI-automatic weapons, possessing a machine gun isn't even a violation of the Assault Weapons Ban! (Although it's usually a violation of other laws).
The Assault Weapons Ban targets several specifically named guns, as well as other guns with two or more of such scary-looking features as folding stocks, pistol grips, and bayonet mounts (let's cut down on those drive-by bayonettings!), as well as "genade launchers" -- the one functional feature thrown in for good measure. These guns are functionally identical, fire the same ammuntion, at the same speed, with the same power, as your grandpa's hunting rifle.
The Sun-Times has every right to argue for stricter gun control. They do not have the right to mislead their readers about what the law they're advocating does.
-[Spoons]
Urbana, Illinois
[phone]
« Hide the full story
DID KERRY VOTE TO BAN THE GUN HE RECEIVED? YES, HE DID.
Drudge said yes, several pro-gun bloggers said no (I shan't link to them all).
For the definitive roundup of this issue see Volokh (also don't miss Publicola if you want more detail).
Short answer -- Drudge was essential correct (although perhaps not for the reasons he originally thought). The gun Kerry held would have been banned under the law Kerry supported.
P.S. Perhaps the most important point of all this is being missed. After all, if it's this difficult to even figure out whether a Remington 11-87 shotgun is banned (which is a very popular, garden variety shotgun), doesn't that really bely the gun-controller's claim that they simply want reasonable, common-sense legislation that bans the most evil military-style weapons that have no purpose other than killing lots of people?
Check out this not-to-be-believed hagiography for an idiot graffiti artist (and gangbanger?) who got himself killed when he was hit by a train while trying to "tag" a train tunnel.
The Trib makes this guy sound like equal parts Pablo Picasso, Martin Luther King, and Robin Hood.
In a fitting memorial for the dear departed pinhead, his fellow criminals have vowed to spraypaint his name on other people's property all over town.
BOSTON GLOBE: BUSH SHIRKED NAT'L GUARD DUTY
Quite a hit job.
This is the part where I usually tell you what I think about this.
?
Beats me.
So I'll ask my gentle readers:
1. Will the Bush National Guard story (including upcoming interviews and other coverage yet to come) hurt Bush?
2. If so, how much?
UPDATE: It occurs to me that I probably ought to add a question #3. Do you think the charge against Bush -- namely, that he failed to meet his guard obligations -- is accurate?
For the record, I think it probably is more or less true.
September 07, 2004
Alan Keyes wants to tell you.
What a fucking embarassment.
MORE BUSH NATIONAL GUARD RECORDS FOUND
The AP analyzes them.
Now find me one AP story that analyzes in this much detail John Kerry's claims to have beein in Cambodia on Christmas Eve in 1968, and the circumstances surrounding his three purple hearts, and the imaginary Combat V on his Silver Star.
Via DRUDGE:
President Bush may skip one of the three debates that have been proposed by the Commission on Presidential Debates... MORE... Bush's negotiating team plans to resist the middle debate, which was to be Oct. 8 in a town meeting format in Missouri // audience of 'undecided voters' for second debate was to be picked by Gallup. Bush officials were concerned that people could pose as undecided when they actually are partisans, WASH POST planning to report in new editions, newsroom sources tell DRUDGE... Developing...This is exactly the right approach. Those town-hall-style debates are stupid, and should be avoided.
If the Bush team is smart, they'll say that this proposal is their final word on the subject, and present it as a take-it-or-leave-it issue.
In other words, I'm pretty sure they'll give in and do all the debates.
Brian Preston tries to reconcile Kerry's... evolving... views on the Iraq war and comes away with a headache.
Of course, the Kerry campaign actually could have a plausible explanation. Kerry might say that he voted to give the President authorization to use force against Iraq because he felt it would strengthen the President's hand in dealing with Saddam and actually make it less likely that force would have to be used. He could also say that his vote was premised on trusting the President not to go to war without exhausting all other options, but that the President proved unworthy of that trust.
If this is Kerry's position -- and I infer that it is -- I can't understand why he's not making his case explicitly, frequently, and loudly. It would seem to play perfectly on Bush's primary vulnerability on the Iraq war, namely, the perception that he jumped the gun by going to war before all the facts were known.
I guess Kerry may be gunshy that the explanation I propose may reinforce the notion that he is a hair-splitting nuancy boy, but honestly, could it get any worse? Bush has successfully [and mostly accurately] painted Kerry as a flip-flopping opportunist. If Kerry's actually got an arguably defensible explanation for his apparent flip-flops on the war -- and one that hits Bush's main weakness, to boot -- I can't understand why this isn't a major theme for Kerry?
YOU'LL SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT, KID
Charles Austin shows that some people have no business messing with guns.
I wish I'd written this:
And that's the central problem of the Kerry Campaign, as well as the general distrust the electorate has for the Democratic Party when it comes to National Security. Many Americans wonder why, if we are fighting an enemy who tortures children by gouging out their eyes and/or setting them on fire, we need to ensure that Kofi Annan and his crowd are on board with us.Read the whole thing.Unsurprisingly, a lot of them conclude, "We don't."
Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass explains the Keyes phenomenon to outsiders:
[Keyes] played right into the hands of the Illinois Republican Party establishment, in a desperate political fight over the future of the GOP between conservatives and the combine Republicans who've been in bed (not literally) with Chicago Democrats for years.This is exactly right.When Democrat Barack Obama trounces Keyes in the fall, establishment GOPers will line up to crow. Thompson (who served on Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich's transition team) and Bush Midwest coordinator Big Bob Kjellander (who got that $800,000 fee in Blagojevich's state bond deal) will have a ready argument.
They'll say that conservative candidates have no business in Illinois. They'll use Keyes' failure as a tool to maintain control of the party and blame him for the GOP problems, instead of the corruption tied to their buddy, former Gov. George Ryan.
Some have suggested that the point of having Keyes in the race is to make far right arguments that the Bush administration wants made, but doesn't want to make itself. That's not it at all. The Bush administration had nothing to do with this, other than poo-pooing James Oberweis as a candidate, due to his opposition to illegal immigration.
The point of Keyes was to pick someone who'd lose spectacularly, and therefore decrease the power of the conservative wing of the Illinois party.
Keyes was never a stalking horse, he's a Judas Goat.
Don't forget, you have an assignnment from Publicola.
September 06, 2004
THIS MAY BE THE PERFECT BLOG POST
It's got Kerry bashing, media bashing, Saddam bashing, and guns -- all in one post!
That's density.
The Sundries Shack points to evidence that the Patriot Act isn't working.
KITTY KELLY: "BUSH DID COCAINE!"
It strikes me that goofy allegations like this are likely to do Kerry more harm than good. Hell, most people probably figure Bush was an ex-cokehead anyway. Bush doesn't have much to lose on this issue.
On the other hand, this sort of stuff will likely be perceived as originating with the Kerry campaign, and will cast a scent of desperation over the candidate.
Voters can smell fear.
$20 single table no limit hold 'em tournament.
3 players left. Guy in first has about 5500. I've got about 3000. Last guy has 1500.
Blinds are 150/300.
I'm under the gun, and get dealt A7 Spades. I raise to 900. Big stack on my left calls. Big blind folds.
Flop comes 5 of Spades, 6 of Spades, 9 of Spades.
I check the nut flush.
Big stack pushes 'em all in. I quickly call.
He turns over pocket Jacks.
Turn comes 5 of Clubs. River comes 5 of Diamonds.
The bastard drew two running cards to make a full house and put me out of the tournament in third place.
Via Israpundit, check out the bizarre story of Haim Saban, Mighty Morphin Media Mogul and quite possibly the dumbest billionaire on the planet:
A self-described "cartoon schlepper," Saban became a billionaire by turning the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers into a global franchise that he merged with News Corp. and, in 2001, sold to Walt Disney for $5.3 billion. He has since emerged as perhaps the most politically connected mogul in Hollywood, throwing his weight and money around Washington and, increasingly, the world, trying to influence all things Israeli.So this guy is concerned about U.S. support for Israel, so he immediately buddies up to Yasser Arafat's best friend, gives millions to elect the most pro-Arab (pro-terrorist?) candidates he can find, and funds the Brookings Institute -- a think tank that never lets reality interfere with its relentless advocacy of the same naive, failed "peace" policies that Saban apparently doesn't believe in?"I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel," he said in his first extensive interview in years.
To that end, he has become one of the largest individual donors in the country to the Democratic Party and its candidates, giving some $20 million in the past decade. He recently had Senator John Kerry over to his home in Beverly Hills. ("We played guitar and kibitzed," he said.) He regularly spends hours at a time on the phone with Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister. He often vacations with Bill Clinton.
* * *
Some of the proceeds from that sale helped to underwrite Saban's relatively new passion: politics. He said he caught the political bug in the mid-1990s, when he felt that support for Israel was slipping in the United States.
He and his wife, Cheryl, slept in the White House five times during Clinton's two terms as president. And Saban has remained close to the former president.
"Haim Saban has been a very good friend, supporter and adviser to me," Clinton said in an e-mail message. "I am grateful for his commitment to Israel, to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East and to my foundation's work, particularly on reconciliation issues."
Clinton might have added that he was also grateful for Saban's commitment to the Democratic Party. Two years ago, Saban gave $7 million, the largest individual donation in its history.And when it comes to conflict in Israel, his views are hardly sanguine. "I'm going to make a very controversial statement and I hope to God that I am proven totally wrong: I think that any resolution will have to go both on the Palestinian side and Israeli side to some form of civil war. It's not going to be without spilling blood."
Last year, he spent $13 million to start a research organization at the Brookings Institution called the Saban Center for Middle East Policy.
How does someone so stupid get so rich?
U.S. CLOSE TO NABBING BIN LADEN?
I'm trying to figure out what's behind these stories. We seem to get one every six weeks or so.
I've long been operating under the assumption that bin Laden died more than a year ago, probably at Tora Bora. I'm still inclinded to believe that, despite the rumblings from U.S. government types that "we're getting close." I'm likewise not inclined to credit reports that the CIA believes that most or all of the purported bin Laden tapes we've gotten over the past couple years are genuine.
If I'm correct, then what is the purpose of U.S. government attempts to treat bin Laden as if he's alive? Is it purely for domestic political consumption? Is it designed to keep the pressure on Pakistan to continue to let us operate in their backyard? Is it to mess with the terrorists heads?
Or is the most obvious explanation the correct one; namely, that bin Laden really is alive?
What say you all?
September 05, 2004
THE SADDER BUT WISER GIRL FOR ME
Captain Ed gets a lesson in media bias.
Red Letter Day calling the election. I expect we'll see a lot of posts like this over the next few weeks.
I was planning my prediction for right after the convention, but honestly, I have no idea what's going to happen.
Backroad Blog finds something odd about my blogroll.
WHEN THE KILLERS COME FOR THE KIDS
Must-read Ralph Peters:
THE mass murder of children revolts the human psyche. Herod sending his henchmen to massacre the infants of Bethlehem haunts the Gospels. Nothing in our time was crueler than what the Germans did to children during the Holocaust. Slaughtering the innocents violates a universal human taboo.Read the whole thing.Or a nearly universal one. Those Muslims who preach Jihad against the West decided years ago that killing Jewish or Christian children is not only acceptable, but pleasing to their god when done by "martyrs."
It isn't politically correct to say this, of course. We're supposed to pretend that Islam is a "religion of peace." All right, then: It's time for Muslims to stand up for the once-noble, nearly lost traditions of their faith and condemn what Arab and Chechen terrorists and blasphemers did in the Russian town of Beslan.
If Muslim religious leaders around the world will not publicly condemn the taking of children as hostages and their subsequent slaughter -- if those "men of faith" will not issue a condemnation without reservations or caveats -- then no one need pretend any longer that all religions are equally sound and moral.
Islam has been a great and humane faith in the past. Now far too many of its adherents condone, actively or passively, the mass murder of school kids. Instead of condemnations of the Muslim "Jihadis" responsible for butchering more than 200 women and children in cold blood, we will hear spiteful counter-accusations about imaginary atrocities supposedly committed by Western militaries.Well, the cold fact is that Western soldiers, whether Americans, Brits, Russians or Israelis, do not take hundreds of children hostage, then shoot them in cold blood while detonating bombs in their midst. The Muslim world can lie to itself, but we need lie no longer.
If anyone's hestitating to install the Microsoft update -- don't. It's awesome. Not only does it finally block popups that many other blockers can't (such as the ones on Drudge), but it's made my WiFi connection far more stable. I recommend it.
September 04, 2004
So I'm in a $20 no-limit hold 'em tournament. Table is extremely tight. We're in the 4th time around the table, but we've probably only put two people out. I'm sitting with about 700 of my original 1000 chips.
I'm dealt pocket tens in early/middle position. By the time the bet gets to me, there's been one limper after the big blind. I raise four times the big blind to chase out any lonely face cards. The big stack to my left calls. Everyone else folds.
Flop comes 2D, 8H, 4C.
I figure if anyone had QQ, KK, or AA preflop, they'd have raised me. Anyone with any kind of straight possibility wouldn't have called. JJ might have called, I guess. 22 and 44 probably shouldn't have called, but might have. 88 would have been marginal.
So, realistically, the only hands I'm afraid of are JJ and 88.
I've put the other caller on A + face, or a suited Ace.
Perhaps I was overly aggressive, but with less than 600 chips in front of me, and an overpair, I pushed 'em all in, hoping to take the pot right there.
The other guy called.
He turns over 84 offsuit.
Turn and river missed us both, and he put me out with two pair.
What the hell?!?
