Put the microphones where they belong

I'm watching the hearings on C-SPAN regarding the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert status.

Aside from the witnesses evading most of the hard questions (not all...) some made it very hard to hear their testimony. The reason for that could be the fact that most of the witnesses (and the questions/comments from the Republican members of the committee) were coming out of their butts!

Yes, just like the commercial seen currently about sports fans talking out their asses!

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I have to applaud the freshman congressman from NH, Paul Hodes for asking some great questions!

What I didn't hear asked (to the Director of Security at the White House) was whether anyone from the administration directed/intimated to him in any way not to investigate the leaks.

Now that the criminal investigation and court proceedings are over (although [he, the Director of WH Security] stated that "I don't know that", [maybe he should call Patrick Fitzgerald]) and it's on the court record that Karl Rove and others still working at/for the White House improperly disclosed a CIA officer's identity to several journalists (I'm using that term loosely) still have security clearances!

And there's Rep. Tom Davis (R) trying his best to maintain the WH's talking points, and trying his best to 'rehabilitate' the witnesses like a defense attorney would.

I'm sorry, this is like the theater of the absurd.
Unless you're in serious denial (or you're in collusion with the cover-up) you know what happened. Joe Wilson wrote an article that showed that the WH's most serious claim, that of Iraq being close to having active nuclear offensive capability (remember the Smoking gun turning into a Mushroom cloud statements made by top administration officials?) was wrong, and suspect at best.

Cheney got really pissed off, and started the whole [vengeance] ball rolling, ending in a concerted effort to discredit Joe Wilson's conclusions based on the assertion that his Niger-yellowcake investigation was conceived by his wife at the CIA and therefore somehow suspect. Anyone with even half a brain can see that.

Yet still people who still support the president continue to make assertions that have been dis-proven and debunked. They still assert that her covert status wasn't 'known' by the officials purposely leaking her name. Bull!

That argument 'I didn't know she was 'covert'... just doesn't fly and is a childish excuse.

Here's a good guide to go by even a CHILD can understand:
If you know of *anyone* who works for the CIA (in ANY capacity) and you're thinking of talking to other people about them, DON'T!

ESPECIALLY a reporter, and especially a reporter like Robert Novak who's a partisan hack for the right wing. Of course that's EXACTLY why he was used.

We know that the results of this disclosure are that an important covert CIA operation regarding nuclear proliferation was compromised, and hence all the people involved in that operation.

We know that since then people's lives have been threatened as a result of the disclosure.

Now we just heard that no investigation whatsoever was initiated by the White House, including the Head of Security at the White House, whose job it is to maintain SECURITY!

Since then, despite a promise by the President that he would fire anyone found involved in the leak, and denials by the [then] press secretary Scott McClellan that anyone in the White House had anything to do with it, AND a conviction of Scooter Libby along with testimony from multiple witnesses that Karl Rove and others were involved, absolutely nobody known to be involved has had their security clearances revoked!

If this great country lets this egregious act (and all the other lies and ignoring of the Constitution) pass without redress and punishment we're all going to suffer for it.

Damn it, neither this nor any other administration is above the law.
It HAS to be that way.
Otherwise there is no trust, and like Nixon said 'the people want to know if their President is a crook'... He was, and THIS administration has done far worse things than he ever did (stated by John Dean on Countdown with Keith Olbermann) and the main man behind most if not all of it is Vice President Cheney.

They thought that they could get away with all this because of their plan to hold onto power.
They planned for a Republican majority to be maintained (for a thousand years maybe?) and were well on their way to making that a reality, but their greed, gutter ethics, and obvoius contempt for the rule of law did them in.

And you know what the worst of it is?
So few journalists and talking heads in the MSM show any outrage! This is just the 'game' of politics... 'Business as usual', and besides, 'if we show the appropriate outrage we won't get invited to the dinners and parties, and people won't be as willing to talk to us'... Only one nightly show on TV has dared to speak truth to power on a consistent basis, and that's Countdown with Keith Olbermann the rest are pathetic enablers parroting long-since debunked WH talking points, sometimes nibbling around the edges of the actual truth, but rarely stating what is obvious to anyone not in a state of denial or biased.

The frickin emperor HAS NO CLOTHES!
But the MSM, especially the water-carriers for the administration (they're obvious) keep pretending that he does. The majority of Americans have finally realized it, but many in the MSM keep repeating the White House BS.

What's wrong with this picture?
Whether or not they admit it, the lives of THOUSANDS of our fellow Americans (and many innocent Iraqis) have been WASTED to further the distorted wishes of this president and others. The evidence is there if your eyes are open to the truth. And bottom line, the Bush administration AND the overwhelming majority of MSM news outlets are directly/indirectly responsible for those deaths...

I know, it's hard to believe that any President, or any group of people associated with them would do something like this. It really SHOULD be unthinkable, but guess what folks, THEY DID IT!

The big question now is, will we let them get away with it?

VIRB [action]

I just signed up with VIRB. Here's my address.

Testing 1,2,3

Testing Windows Live Writer... Post to my Blogger page. Now.

Here's a link to my Furl archive: My Furl archive.

Test photo:

Now, to change my Blogger theme. I hope the backup is trustworthy...

That's all folks!

Twitter, "What are you doing?"

Twitter the latest new thing in electronic communication. You can stay in contact with friends and family, work, collaborations, etc..

I can't tell exactly where this will go, but I see it as another branch on the tree of electronic communication's evolution. What I do see is (aside from the developer's ideas) a worldwide audience that will take Twitter and adapt it to suit their individual needs.

Here's how Wikipedia describes it:

"Twitter is a social networking service that allows members to inform each other about what they are doing and what they think. It allows users to send messages via phone or instant messaging. Two SMS gateway numbers are available - one for USA, and one UK number for international use. Users can receive updates from other selected users via web, IM, or SMS.

It made its debut at South by Southwest Interactive in March 2005. [1]Its an example of a Micro-Blogging platform."

I'll write more about it as time goes by...

Right now I'm waiting for 4-5 relatives to respond to my 'invites' to Twitter.

I don't know why, but my brother seems like he doesn't adapt to/try new technology easily. And that's strange because as I recall, he was instrumental in bringing computers to the aerospace company he was working for back in the late 70's. I assumed that he knew much more about computers than I do, but now I have my doubts. I know that I can't expect everyone to have the same enthusiasm for emerging technology as I do, but he's just so smart, and he should be WAY ahead of me at this point. Especially when I'm the "loser" of the family!

Because of my psychiatric issues that require me to pound knowledge into my brain over and over again for it to 'stick', it takes me 10 times as long to "know" things, and half the time I avoid the PC (for many reasons..) hence the periodic gaps in my blogging output and correspondence.

Twitter, more so for me, might help [me] stay in contact more easily w/ friends, family, and associates.
I'm not sure they all realize the trouble I have staying 'in touch' (maybe cousin Martha does ;-)).
IM'ing works, but people have different preferences for IM programs.

I don't know... at the end of the day, whatever will help/encourage me keep in touch with my people (will be good [for lack of the more precise term that I was searching for but can't access*....]).

Note: Sorry for turning this post about Twitter into [insert precise term here]...
I do feel the necessity to explain what I go through in trying to appear "normal".
Sometimes I can do it, sometimes I can't. I HAVE to keep trying though.
The alternative is madness, and nobody wants that!
But as my late father always said, "keep smiling!" (and as I've found, blogging my thoughts/feelings really helps!)


*This is precisely why it takes me HOURS to produce blog posts and the like.
I spend half my time searching my brain for the correct words to convey my precise thoughts.
The words are [there], but the mechanism for recalling them is FUBAR...