Two Thoughts 1. When a president reads in a speech that he’s about to given that a hostile state is actively seeking to a acquire uranium, wouldn’t he normally ask questions like “Is this information reliable? Was Saddam successful? How worried should we be?”, and so forth. Since the Office of the Vice President, the […]

Recession Redefinition Amidst all the Niger Uranium furor I almost missed some interesting economic news. Fortunately, commenter Stirling Newberry alerted me to a story in the Friday Washington Post: Number Crunchers vs. Recession. Said number crunchers are members of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) which, among many other things, is the most widely […]

This Just In Controversy over State of the Union claim intensifies. But apparently, CIA director George Tenet is about to try to take the fall: NEWS ALERT CIA director takes responsibility for information in State of the Union address about Iraq attempts to obtain uranium in Africa. Details soon. In fact, it looks like a […]

Yellowcake Hits the Fan Going back to the initial admission that the State of the Union information was incorrect, I speculated that a vaguely phrased statement would only ignite more press scrutiny. Recall the initial statement, as described in the NYT: White House officials issued a statement in Mr. Fleischer’s name that made clear that […]

Programming Update When you change your story after the fact, contradictions and inconsistencies are likely to emerge. Earlier, I pointed out a few in Tony Blair’s testimony before the House of Commons. Today, Rumsfeld said this: “The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq’s pursuit [of weapons […]

The Sky is Blue It’s been a week of pronouncement that the sky is blue: On Monday, MSNBC noticed that noted jackass Michael Savage is a blithering homophobic (and xenophobic) idiot. Of the firing, MSNBC cable spokesman Jeremy Gaines said, “His [homophobic] comments were extremely inappropriate and the decision was an easy one.” On Tuesday, […]

Potions of Mass Destruction In Iraq, attempting to combine these ingredients thusly consitutes a Weapons of Mass Destruction ProgramTM: A woman has set her Madrid home on fire while cooking up a potion in an attempt to imitate the fictional wizard Harry Potter (news – web sites), emergency services say….For want of more magical ingredients, […]

Uranium Hoax Hoax The Capitol Hill Blue story cited below is a hoax–Capitol Hill Blue founder Doug Thompson now alleges that he was intentionally deceived by someone pretending to be Terry Wilkinson for the last 20 years (Thompson: “Erasing the stories doesn’t erase the fact that we ran articles containing information that, given the source, […]

There’s That Word Again QUESTION: Do you still believe they were trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa? BUSH: Right now? QUESTION: No, were they? The statement you made… BUSH: One thing is for certain, he’s not trying to buy anything right now. If he’s alive, he’s on the run. And that’s to the benefit […]

A Reasonable Plan? Due credit to Texas Republican State Sen. Jeff Wentworth for coming up with a reasonable plan that the Dallas Morning News and Autin-American Statesman have endorsed. From the Dallas Morning News: The San Antonio Republican wants his colleagues to create an independent redistricting panel. Republicans would name four members to the body, […]