Live from the Nuke Free Zone

I’ll let Warrior Tang and the others carry on about politics. Today I’m going to concentrate on the big wide world outside mere Earthly politics.
First up, we have the rather surprising announcement that the speed brake actuators on the shuttle Discovery were installed backwards. What’s surprising about this is that this happened when Discovery was […]

Fox News brought on NSA deputy director Jim Wilkinson to rebut Clarke’s allegations. Wilkinson called Clarke’s book a work of fiction. Such harsh words are unexpected from the #2 of the None Such Agency, a position that must take decades of experience and bureaucratic diplomacy to earn. It’s worth a google, and look what turns […]

Richard Clarke and Bob Graham, two men with impeccable reputations on the subject matter, publicly blasted Bush last night for his handling of, or more accurately not handling, terrorism. What rock has the media been hiding under that they consider this debatable?
Clarke came out with some new points: Wolfowitz was into conspiracy theories blaming Iraq […]

This seems to be firing up the blogosphere: a blogger noted that Dr. John Gray, author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, isn’t a real Dr. according to another blog citing Cult News and Men’s Daily News. Now he’s threatened with a lawsuit.

A lot of people don’t seem to understand what raw intelligence is. If someone calls up the CIA and says they have Prince Albert in a can, this becomes an unverified, “raw” intelligence report. It is neither proven nor unproven. It has to be analysed by intelligence experts according to how well the report […]

What may soon become the most important news item is that Pakistani forces believe they’ve trapped bin Laden’s #2. It’s about two years overdue that something be done in the ungoverned provinces, but better late than never.
The operations seem to be Pakistani-only, although the US is probably providing intelligence and/or logistics. This is good for […]

via Big, Left, Outside we have a startling report of Alan Colmes (the “liberal” half of Hannity & Colmes on Fox News) regaining his backbone…
Colmes, politely, thanking him for his service to his country, asked him a series of pointed questions in which it became clear to all viewers that the poor guy really didn’t […]

The junior college I attend recently had a showing of “Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War”. To the school’s credit, the presenter (someone from the philosophy department) noted that the title was a lie; nobody knows the Whole Truth and you’re not likely to get it from a 60 minute film.
I was afraid […]

A couple of days ago, over at Collective Sigh, Andante wrote about the Madrid bombings and their effect on the election in Spain:

The voters certainly did not embrace al Queda or cave to it’s demands - they rejected Aznar’s alliance with George Bush and the war in Iraq and Aznar’s apparently politically motivated attempts to […]

On March 2nd, I was a poll worker for this year’s California primary election. More specifically, I was a Systems Inspector in San Diego county, whose problems with voting machines and procedures received some coverage in the national media.
First, a summary of my personal opinion: I think that current electronic voting systems are better than […]