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Teddy Vegas Interactive Feature of the day:
Speculate on how my finger got so hideously dislocated. And no: It was not an ill-timed sneeze during a surreptitious nose pick.
BTW: Isn't the bone structure of the human hand incredible? And vividly suggestive of avian life?
BTW#2: This happened a few weeks ago and I am ok so there is no need for concern...mom. :)
ANALOGY OF THE DAY:/COINCIDENCE OF THE DAY/FINGER ON THE PULSE OF THE ZEITGEIST OF THE DAY:
Attempting to trace all the bad loans that have been bundled into elaborately securitized forms is like trying to figure out which hamburgers contain traces of meat from a particular cattle ranch where a case of mad cow disease was discovered. Needles in the scrambled haystacks. Curiously, no sooner did I use the chopped chuck metaphor to explain the subprime credit crisis to someone than I read that they've just announced the biggest beef recall in U.S. history today. (In terms of systematic greed, neglect and pervasive consequence, I think the analogy can be taken even further.)
OUTRAGE OF THE DAY: RANT OF THE DAY: FROTH INDUCING REVELATION OF THE DAY:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080217/pl_afp/usattackscia
CIA set up 12 bogus companies mostly in Europe after 9/11: report
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Following the September 11, 2001, attacks, the US Central Intelligence Agency set up 12 bogus companies in Europe and other parts of the world in the hope of penetrating Islamic organizations, The Los Angeles Times reported on its website late Saturday. But citing current and former CIA officials, the newspaper said the agency had now shut down all but two of them after concluding they were ill-conceived.
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If one wanted a single symptom of the cluelessness and stupidity of our war against terror, this would be it. An idiocy perpetrated under the name of intelligence that would be hysterically funny if it were not so infuriatingly emblematic. No, I don't speak of our decision to attack a country that had no relationship to the people who attacked us and thus to create a whole new generation of people who want to emulate the original and inciting act. I speak instead of a strategic initiative that makes the aforementioned seem brilliant in its conception and laser-like in its precision. I speak of the CIA's attempt to penetrate al qaeda networks by setting up bogus consulting companies in selected European cities. The companies were located nowhere near any known Islamic extremist enclaves and were, by all accounts staffed by agents who didn't even speak any Arabic. As the above hyperlinked article reports with brilliant understatement:
"In addition, because businessmen don't usually come into contact with Al-Qaeda operatives, the cover didn't work, The Times said.
Officials say the CIA's efforts to use corporate disguises have yet to produce a significant penetration of terrorist or weapons proliferation networks, the paper pointed out."
It's literally like a Monty Python skit--except without the comedy. Indeed, the initiative would have had more chances of success if they had been posing as members of a rabbinical congress or male erotic dancers. But of course it's much more fun to play "spy" in Hugo Boss suits than to do so while wearing peus or a g-string. It is so hatefully preposterous the jaw muscle goes slack with incomprehension. I don't want to know what espionage Einsteins proposed this idea (for they were probably just doing it as an April Fools prank to see if they could con someone into a European boondoggle). I want to know which espionage Einstein said "Yeah, that sounds like a brilliant idea" and approved it!!!!!!
They might as well have been fishing for marlin in Iowa.
The arrogance, incompetence, the idiocy the...
froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth froth
Ok, now that i've filled and emptied 3 cups of froth, let me continue.
It's terrifying to think that these are the people we're relying on to protect us. But more that that: It's just so embarrassing!!!!
In some ways it's worse that Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay and the wire tapping and the presidential signing statements and all that. Because with those things you can at least convince yourself that the people hired to protect us are corrupt and immoral and contemptible but at least they're competent. But this just reeks of fecklessness and cartoonish stupidity. It inspires so little confidence and it supports my long held suspicion that the reason there hasn't been a follow up attack on our soils has nothing to do with our homeland security efforts (almost all of which have been revealed to be buffoonish at best), and everything to do with the difficulty our enemies have had in finding a second act that lives up to the incredibly high standard of spectacular devastation set by the 9/11 attacks.
Anyhow, I hope our CIA boys had fun running around playing business man and playing spy in their designer suits--while attempting to infiltrate al qaeda on the golf courses of Europe. I'm glad our tax dollars let them have a little fun and that in addition to supporting our troops we've also been supporting our snoops.
BUMPER STICKER IDEA OF THE DAY:
"Support Our Snoops." Give to the CIA Make-W-Wish fund.
NOTES FROM THE JOURNAL OF MOURNING:
Old voice messages stumbled upon. The voices of the dead. Still quick with life. Evoking a living present and an implied future. Blowing a hole through my heart each time they play.
And yet and yet...how can one erase them?
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Posted on 2/17/2008
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