Friday, October 10, 2003

Hurling Crap At The Wall. Sigh...yet another goofy post from yet another "team player" trying find any way he can to blame the Wilsons for their own outing.  Apparently they deserved it! 1. What exactly is illegal about an individual in this country making a political donation? 2. What part of "non-official cover" do you not understand? Now that we're five days later, we know that Brewster-Jennings was in fact a CIA front company. We don't know what other damage revealing it has caused. 3. Say, should an undercover CIA operative put "CIA" as her employer on every form that she gets? Uh...no. In fact, there's probably a very specific rule or law somewhere that says that it is OK FOR A CIA OFFICER TO LIE when they're asked who their employer is. Love the retractions that pop up on these web sites. Five days after accusing her of illegal campaign contributions, I find an average, and deafening, silence. Moved on to the next wild accusation, have we? 10:44:11 PM     | comment [] | trackback []

Before and After. I don't know why I bother.  A self-congratulatory round by the GOPers on Dean's World And for those of you still confused by the notion of "before" and "after", please feel free to read a complete timeline of events, with hyperlinks to every major article and item: http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2003/07/the_valerie_pla_9.html July 14: Novak's column fingering Plame as CIA. Aug. 26: Frog march comment by Wilson. You will note that the "frog march" comment in question occurred AFTER the column.  Repeat after me: Before! After!  Now we all understand. Just because this didn't hit the mainstream press until the CIA requested an investigation doesn't mean the situation hadn't already started.  It started July 14. Painful, obvious revisionism won't do.  Really, the best defense, if you care to make it, was that the leaker simply wasn't aware that he was leaking classified information.  That's even believable.  The second major criticism that is repeated over and over again is that Wilson is a loser and is unqualified for the job. GOPers: If you say that Wilson was unqualified for the Niger investigation. Why don't you give us a short list of what you believe to be adequate qualifications for the job? Then compare your list to this, which is part of Wilson's BIO: "Ambassador Wilson served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from June 1997 until July 1998. In that capacity he was responsible for the coordination of U.S. policy to the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. He was one of the principal architects of President Clinton’s historic trip to Africa in March 1998. Ambassador Wilson was the Political Advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of United States Armed Forces, Europe, 1995-1997. He served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Gabonese Republic and to the Democratic Republic of Sao Tome and Principe from 1992 to 1995. From 1988 to 1991, Ambassador Wilson served in Baghdad, Iraq as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy. During “Desert Shield” he was the acting Ambassador and was responsible for the negotiations that resulted in the release of several hundred American hostages. He was the last official American to meet with Saddam Hussein before the launching of “Desert Storm.” Ambassador Wilson was a member of the U.S. Diplomatic Service from 1976 until 1998. His early assignments included Niamey, Niger, 1976-1978; Lome, Togo, 1978-79; the State Department Bureau of African Affairs, 1979-1981; and Pretoria, South Africa, 1981-1982." Let's see...served for three years in Niger, extensive experience in the African sphere...Iraq connections, etc... Wouldn't you be looking for someone who was familiar with both countries, both cultures? 10:08:11 PM     | comment [] | trackback []

You Win Some, You Lose Some. Perfidy quotes recent Andrew Sullivan.  Once upon a time I figured Sullivan was a must read.  Quotes like "Nope, the pacifists and anti-war crowd are on the side of the tyrants - now as so often before" are such absolute bullshit that he isn't on my A-list any more.  I pretty much consider anything he says to be worthless.  There are plenty of other conservative sources that are far more thoughtful, and don't make such obvious mistakes. I did think it might be useful to write Sullivan and let him know that, in the vast constellation of probable give and take in our democracy, a little horse trading is sometimes necessary to unstick the stickiness.  We need to figure out which of our positions we'll be willing to give a little ground on, in order to get something else that we really want.  So maybe this time around we'll just stop carping on Gay Rights issues, and give that one up to the Church-State integrators in his party.  Maybe in return they'll give us some kind of National Health Care, because we're asking nice. You win some, you lose some.  Unless it's your issue, right Andrew?  Then all of a sudden you really, really care.  Keep in mind that a significant chunk of your party thinks you should be in jail.  Keep in mind that it is also an official plank of your party's platform.  For you to be in jail. Enjoy the freedom, for now. 3:46:43 PM     | comment [] | trackback []

Anders Hejlsberg is Wrong, Part II. And this time it's not me saying it.  James Gosling is saying it.  Excellent.  Bottom line is, it's fun and fast to ignore exceptions or catch them in some pointless top-level loop.  That's fabulous for, I don't know, applications that don't matter?  Now you're writing an app that has to stay up.  This is what most of us are doing now, in the Java world.  It has to stay up for months, or years.  Do you think your top-level exception loop is going to be able to handle the multiple strategies that are necessary to deal with failure in that environment?  You're going to activate retry-logic at the top level? And what the heck is the top-level in any modern Java app anyway?  It doesn't exist. Java helps you build robust code.  That is now, and has always been, its most important feature.  It does a better job of this than any other commonly used language.  We have a couple of a million lines of Java code in our app, and it's pretty damn bulletproof.  Trying to get to that level of reliability in C could take decades.  And no, we are not crappy programmers.  If you think you could do it in less time, you think you're smarter than a lot of very smart people out there who have been writing system-level stuff in C for longer than you have been alive.  Here's a clue: You're not.  You need the help; you just don't know it yet. 2:49:51 PM     | comment [] | trackback []

Once Again, Ladies And Gentlemen, Josh Marshall. Josh makes tough reporting look easy.  Or maybe it's that he figures out how to dissect the spin.  Novak has whined that his use of the word "operative" was unintentional -- Josh went and looked at each of Novak's uses of that word, in his columns.  Six for six, he found that Novak used it to refer to a covert agent.  It is possible that Novak unintentionally used the word, but his history tells us otherwise. I think a "Senior Administration Official" tested the waters on this one, and burned his toe. 11:29:48 AM     | comment [] | trackback []

The Weekly World News. Is it just me, or does the average Right-leaning blog these days read a little something like everybody's favorite crazy, Saddam-and-Osama's Gay Wedding tabloid?  The extrapolation, torturous fact-curve fitting, and generally vigorous fact-avoidance is becoming a sight to behold.  Since the facts are uncomfortable, many "conservatives" (I use that term loosely, because most of them aren't real ones), have shifted their discourse well away from facts.  The new, improved method is to trash the target's motives and qualifications.  The recent tarring of Wilson is an excellent example, and so is this; InstaPundit highlights a recent Brendan O'Neill opinion: This canonisation of the rational inspectors, in contrast to hysterical Bush and Blair, is a spectacular rewriting of history. . . . Far from being anti-war, Hans Blix, David Kelly and the rest helped to make war an easy option for the West. The inspectors' differences with Bush and Blair in the past year have nothing to do with opposing Western intervention in Iraq - and everything to do with cynically defending their special position on the world stage. . . . Rather, the inspectors' sudden turnaround - from being 'deeply suspicious' about Iraq to claiming that Iraq is not a threat after all - is driven by a far more squalid clash with the US and UK governments. In criticising Bush and Blair, the inspectors are merely attempting to defend their own position rather than actually challenging America and Britain's actions in Iraq. The inspectors thrived on a climate of suspicion about Iraq, on the notion that Saddam might potentially be a threat and must constantly be kept in check just in case. The inspectors are irritated by Bush and Blair's war because it knocked them off their perch, undermining their authority and purpose on the world stage. Brendan is something of a miracle worker.  He has a special, God-given ability to see directly into the minds of whoever he thinks his enemies are on any particular day, and understand their motivations!  It is amazing. Let's look for the new headline: PSYCHIC REPUBLICAN DETERMINES FUTURE OF IRRITATING LIBERALS, AND ANYONE ELSE WHO DISAGREES WITH WHATEVER THE CURRENT LINE OF BULLSHIT IS.     10:53:54 AM     | comment [] | trackback []

At Play in Piccolo. Something unexpected...(this likes a fast machine). 1:54:35 AM     | comment [] | trackback []