Random Thoughts 4/29/06

Greetings, Mein Froinds!

Pardon, once again, the rather skint entries to the blog. Work has been busy, profitable, and exhausting, and thus, posting at the end of these vigorous workdays can be nigh impossible. That said, it has been an interesting few weeks news-wise (when isn't it?). Nothing out of the ordinary, mind. Gas prices went higher, leftist demogogues came out in full force decrying price gauging (when is someone going to teach these people Economics 101?), Iran once again thumbed its nose at the perpetually impotent United Nations (so much for multi-lateralism!), the Fitzgerald special prosecution has called Karl Rove for a FIFTH time to talk about who leaked Valerie Plame's name (while, of course, failing to disclose to the public whether she was a covert agent or not; more on this later), and Dana Priest of the Washington Post and James Risen of the New York Times won the Pulitzer for their seditious journalism, aiding al Qaeda in the process. (Thanks, folks! I'll touch on that later, as well.) Anyway....


* I read an article that Andy Garcia has written, directed, and produced a movie called The Lost City (pardon the lack of link; writing on the Mac today!), which depicts Che Guevara in his true (ie bad) light. Seems this has a few people upset out there, and thus he didn't have the easiest time getting the movie made. It never ceases to amaze me the amount of people that scream, curse, yell, and cry about the supposed erosion of civil liberties here (four years plus since 9/11, I haven't felt any erosion at all; then again, I'm not a muslim and/or attempting to sabotage the United States...), call Bush every name in the book (King George, George W. Hitler, etc...etc...ad nauseum), but defend the Castro-ite regime to the fullest. Said Garcia, "There have been festivals that wouldn't show it. That will continue to happen from people who don't want to see the image of Che be tarnished and from people who support the Castro regime. He still has a lot of supporters out there. Some people think Castro is a savior, that he looks out for the kids and the poor. It's a bunch of hogwash. In the 45 years since Castro came to power, Cuba has been in the top three countries for human rights abuses for 43 of those years. People turn a blind eye to his atrocities." Go Andy. And thank you for revealing, yet again, the complete falsehood that the leftists of this world are interested in peace, human rights, and liberty for all. It couldn't be further from the truth.

*The Left once again has demonstrated that it cannot be trusted with security issues in this country, unless of course, you're the enemy. Then they can be consistently counted on to publish classified information which damages the United States, as was the case with Dana Priest of the Washington Post (who published the story that the U.S. was working with Romania, Poland, and a few other Eastern European nations in setting up secret holding sites for al Qaeda captives) and James Risen of the New York Times (who published the NSA wiretapping of international calls story). For this, these two seditious morons won a Pulitzer Prize. (Think Claudia Rossett, who doggedly unearthed the United Nations oil-for-food scandal got a Pulitzer? Nah....she wasn't even nominated.) I fail to see how publishing these stories was of any benefit to anyone, save giving the seditious Left yet another cudgel from which to beat on Bush and, obviously, al Qaeda.

*On a related note, the CIA fired the leaker of the secret prisons story, a woman named Mary McCarthy. Not coincidentally, McCarthy was a campaign contributor to the John Kerry campaign ($2000 contribution) and was a Clinton appointee to several positions during his tenure. Of course, in the eyes of the seditious Left, McCarthy isn't a "leaker", but rather a "truth-teller". Well, yeah....she told the truth. So what? She also jeopardized the war effort against Islamo-fascism. And for what? Because her favored nominee lost the election? I'll tell you, if the security of this nation is consistently compromised by people within government who put their party (Democratic, in this (and most) cases) above the safety and security of the American people, I fear for the future in a deep way. And yet, this ridiculous Valerie Plame investigation continues. Which brings me to....

*...the Valerie Plame investigation. Why can't Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald just say flat-out whether Plame was an undercover agent or not? My guess is that she wasn't, that the revealing of her name was a non-story, and this thing is gone completely off the rails. Just to recap for all of you, Valerie Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, was sent by the CIA (at her urging) to Niger to verify whether Saddam Hussein had attempted to buy uranium from them. Turns out that Saddam DID in fact attempt to buy uranium from Niger in '99, just as he had succeeded in doing in the early 90's. Wilson told this to the CIA, but then, in a fit of Bush hatred (this should be diagnosed and entered into psychiatric journals as a bonafide mental illness, no?), wrote the opposite in a New York Times op-ed piece. So, the Bush White House, when asked who Wilson was and why he was sent to Niger, told the truth: we didn't send him, his wife did. So....how do we know that Wilson lied in his NYT op-ed piece? Because a.) he said the opposite to his CIA debriefers, and it was reflected in the bi-partisan Senate Intelligence Estimate report, b.) the British Government's Butler Report also verified that Saddam sought to acquire uranium from Niger, and c.) Wilson claimed that the forged documents that had been floating around, that were ancillary to his original observations regarding this story, had dates and names wrong....though Wilson, while using this as additional evidence that Saddam HAD NOT sought to acquire uranium, had never seen the documents himself. (And later admitted that he hadn't.) And yet, Scooter Libby has been indicted for perjury for supposedly lying about who told him about Valerie Plame, even though Valerie Plame wasn't even undercover, and Karl Rove is STILL getting questioned over this non-leak. And yet, Dana Priest and James Risen parade their Pulitzers around with pride in having weakened their country with a REAL and damaging leak. Unbelievable.

*On a different note, I'm almost through Plutarch's "Makers Of Rome", which is a truncated version of "Lives". Many interesting short biographies on the great Roman figures. I was struck by this quote by Sertorius, as recorded by Plutarch, "A man of noble spirit welcomes victory if he can achieve it with honor, but he will not embrace dishonor even to save his own life".

Except, of course, if you're seditious leftist. (Pardon the redundancy there.)