WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Note to self: Come up with some catchy headlines to cycle in and out on these news posts.

If Times Select Had Existed Two Years Ago, I Wouldn't Be Able To Write This Post

I haven't written much about the Plame affair lately because, honestly, there's nothing new to say. Everything that is being written about it now in the press and on the blogs is speculation based on speculation based on third-hand hearsay. There were rumors earlier in the week that Fitzmas was coming on Tuesday or Wednesday, for instance. Well, it's Friday night now. I've had my pizza and watched Penelope Cruz in Sahara (decent, not great, action flick if you're interested). Where's Karl Rove's indictment? Fitzmas is evidently late this year. Perhaps the prosecutor didn't want to steal Ronnie Earle's moment in the sun?

The thing is, two years ago Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson pretty much gave the game away in a chat with Maureen Dowd. Check out this vignette from the column MoDo wrote back in September 2003:

Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson both happened to alight in Washington, their jet-set schedules intersecting, and spotted each other across a cocktail party filled with foreigners.

"I saw this striking blonde," he recalled, still sounding smitten six years later. At first she said she was an energy analyst, but confided sometime around the first kiss that she was in the C.I.A. "I had a security clearance," grinned Mr. Wilson, then a political adviser to the commander of U.S. forces in Europe.

Plame and Wilson met in 1997. How careful was she with her non-official cover back then? Why, she blabbed it to the handsome stranger sometime around the first kiss. If she was under non-official cover at the time, she would have been risking her career and possibly her freedom, not to mention all those precious networks and connections she would have been cultivating. For all she knew at the time, Wilson was a double agent. Adrich Ames, who had actually outed Plame in 1994 to the Russians, had functioned as an unknown mole for years and years and years. There's cover and there's cover--some agents keep their spouses and children in the dark about their company activities for decades. We can say with confidence now that Plame, at the very least, was no such agent when she met Wilson.

James Bond gets the girls to tell all their secrets before the first kiss, but I'm guessing that Joe Wilson isn't James Bond, at least in that department. Given the slipshop nature of his poolside investigation in Niger, I'm guessing he's not James Bond in any department.

No More Conservative Nice Guy

Rep. Tom DeLay shows Republicans how to deal with Democrats like Ronnie Earle.

FEMA Failed

Katrina is a black mark on FEMA's record, no doubt. FEMA recognizes that fact, and has laid out the case. The guy at the top is gone. Michelle Malkin highlights some particularly revealing exchanges between former director Michael Brown and various FEMA staffers who worked the storm. Mike Brown seeking out a nice dinner in the midst of the storm is, by itself, enough to justify his exit.

But, and I don't want this vital point to be lost, had the local government not collapsed into total and counterproductive chaos, we probably wouldn't be sharing this controversy.

The state/local governments still have not acknowledged their own failures. They still have their hands out blackmailing the rest of the country for billions of dollars. And we haven't learned the lessons we need to learn to prevent another Katrina. Flogging FEMA doesn't get us any closer to educating the country about who is supposed to do what in the middle of a disaster. It magnifies FEMA's role at the expense of a true understanding of how things are supposed to work.

FEMA fails (and succeeds) to some extent in every single storm and disaster. So do local officials. Disasters are just that--disasters. Katrina was a particularly big disaster. It's a tough job to haul into areas where the roads are washed out, houses are destroyed and there's no power and start putting everything back together. FEMA has to rely on local officials to help them sort things out and keep order. FEMA's job is ten times harder if the local government is run by crooks who justify widespread crime and accuse the feds of genocide for not correcting local mistakes before they happen. When those locals don't tell FEMA when and where things are supposed to happen and are spreading rumors that delay rescue efforts, what is FEMA supposed to do? They're not an invading army and they can't depose governors and mayors. They're a back-up for the local government.

Katrina left a swath of destruction the size of England. It was, as FEMA now acknowledges, beyond the agency's capabilities to handle such a large catastrophe. Which isn't shocking. Most hurricanes don't leave a black eye the size of a world power. FEMA won't do a lot of good if a big enough comet hits us either. For all our technology and sophistication, we're still creatures at the mercy of nature's wrath.

Yet for all the insanity after Katrina, FEMA made most of its delivery timetables. Outside Louisiana, its efforts after Katrina are on a par with its record after other storms. It's inside Louisiana where the controversy lies. And it's inside Louisiana where we're not likely to learn anything from this storm, and flogging FEMA, as justified as it may be, won't get us any closer to learning those lessons. Congress expressly allowed Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who caused many of the problems, to skate without answering a single question about her actions. NO Mayor Ray Nagin still has his job, and he's quietly assisting Louis Farrakhan's noxious campaign to "prove" the feds blew up the levees to drown black people.

We'll rebuild New Orleans on the same damned patch of ground, the locals will elect the same idiots and shills, and when the next disaster strikes they'll just blame the feds all over again. Over time this will actually expand federal power at the expense of states and cities, as presidents will empower FEMA (and thus themselves) in order to prevent another Katrina.

That's part of the problem I've had with the FEMA-centric focus of the post-Katrina coverage. It creates a false picture of what the feds are supposed to do in a disaster. It will lead to a dimunition of state responsibility and to centralizing more power in Washington. Conservatives shouldn't be apologists for FEMA, but we shouldn't shy away from getting at the real causes of the problems either. The Democrats sure won't do it. As for FEMA, it may just get so good at its job that Americans come to depend on the Beltway crowd for anything and everything, in every emergency no matter how large or small.

That suits Washington just fine. But it doesn't suit me at all.

Can't Stop the (Fake) Signal

NRO Media Blogger Stephen Spruiell predicts:

AP reports that DeLay's smiling mug shot will make it more difficult for Democrats who were looking forward to using it in campaign ads.

To which I say: nonsense. I predict they'll just use Photoshop to turn the picture black and white and add a slate with numbers on it. Either that or they'll use a different picture altogether, one in which DeLay is frowning, and Photoshop that one.

It isn't much of a prediction, actually. It's already been done, my friend. And the fake is available on a stylish thong!

Craptastic Movies Coming to a Theater Church Near You

The one Left Behind movie that I saw--on cable, on a particularly slow weekend before it was possible to download old episodes of Lost and watch them for clues about that big raptor thing that ate the pilot--was a fetid pile. If I stand next to my TV and concentrate late at night I can still pick up its stench. There have been two LB films, both were flops in theaters. Because they were terrible. But Sony has underwritten a third one, and has come up with a novel marketing approach: Skip the theaters and show them in churches.

"Marketing executives say the decision is part of a major trend, the Washington Post reports.

"The entertainment industry has discovered there is ... product-moving power in selling movies, books and music through churches - particularly the suburban megachurches that draw thousands of well-heeled worshipers.

Twenty-five years ago, there were fewer than 50 churches in the U.S. that attracted more than 2,000 people each week. Today, there are more than 1,200.

Many have professional-quality sound systems and large-screen projection systems.

I suppose we have Rick Warren mostly to thank for this marketing scheme. He pyromarketed his books to pastors, who mandated encouraged their parishioners to devour them wholesale, leading secular publishers to notice churches not as communities of believers but as venues to sell crap.

Don't get me wrong. There is a market among church-goers for good entertainment that doesn't insult or demean our beliefs. Left Behind is not that entertainment. And this marketing trend, which the Warren clones will undoubtedly embrace, is not a healthy one for churches. (t2 Chris)

A Question That Must Be Answered

How can a family with 16 (!) children be part of any "asexual" group?

Hack Columnist Plagiarizes Lame Insult of Michelle Malkin

First, go here and read this. The columnist's name is William Fisher. His opening line is:

Michelle Malkin, who strikes me as Bill O'Reilly in drag

Now go here and look at this. First, Michelle and Bill look nothing alike, though Bill is workin' that long hair. That photo comes up on page ten of a Google photo search for "malkin." So Mr. William Fisher the columnist probably spent a few minutes on the web looking for some weird way to insult Michelle, Googled around and came up with the O'Reilly line. How bloody clever.

How do I know that photo comes up on page ten of a Google photo search for "malkin?" The JYB's readers know all and see all. Sometimes they even tell me stuff. Sometimes I wish they woudn't. I could've lived a complete life if I'd never seen that photo of O'Reilly sporting the That Girl do.

Ronnie Earle Productions

A subsidiary of George Soros Transnational America-Hating Politics, Inc?

DeLay's most vocal accusers include a cluster of self-styled "ethics watchdog" groups, among which Common Cause, Democracy 21, Public Citizen, Public Campaign and The Campaign Legal Center have special prominence.

All of the above-named groups have received large contributions from Soros' Open Society Institute. Common Cause has received $650,000; Democracy 21, $300,000; Public Citizen, $275,000; and Public Campaign, $1.3 million.(10) The Campaign Legal Center acknowledges on its Web site that it too has received "generous financial support" from the Open Society Institute as well as from other leftwing foundations.

The money trail strongly suggests that George Soros is implicated in the plot to frame Tom DeLay.

A Great Loss to Politics

A giant of the political world is taking his, um, hat out of the ring:

VICTORIA, British Columbia -- Mr. Floatie, a community activist who dresses up in a feces costume to decry the pumping of raw sewage into the waters off British Columbia's capital, has withdrawn his name as a candidate for mayor.

The city had planned to challenge Mr. Floatie's candidacy in B.C. Supreme Court.

James Skwarok, the man inside the costume, said the city apparently took issue with his candidacy because only real people can run for municipal office.

"Of course I'm not a real person," Skwarok said earlier this week. "I'm a big piece of poop."

And he's different from most politicians, how? (tt JS)

By the way, Mr. Floatie has a campaign web site. There are photos. Hey kid, did you ever shake hands with a giant piece of poop?

Like Hogs to the Slaughter

The forces against pork were slaughtered in the Senate yesterday, 82-15. Why again do we have a Republican majority? Can't cut pork. Can't get a real conservative on SCOTUS. The only Washington leak investigations target Republicans, even while Sandy Berger stole classified docs and skates free and who ever leaked the original Iraq war plan to the NYT back in 2003 is still unknown and presumably still has access to high level operational plans.

But hey--the GOP still has a 2-1 fundraising advantage over the clueless Democrats!

Bird Flu Beaten?

Hungarian scientists say they have a bird flu vaccine that's 99.9% effective. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the world is different enough today from what it was in 1918--when the Spanish flu killed millions--that this bird flu won't become the monster killer that everyone fears. It could still be dangerous, no question about it. But in 1918 hygiene and medical procedures were primitive, quarantines weren't carried out with much effectiveness and most of the world was incapable of doing the kind of research that the average US community college can do now. Now the US and dozens of countries are all working on vaccines. Somebody in the vast array of med labs around the world will be smart enough or lucky enough to discover the vaccine, and we'll get the quarantines worked out if we need to and we'll beat the bird flu. You heard it here first.

Of course if I'm wrong, you didn't hear it here first. No siree.