Transmitters were infrared-beam type that would detect a passing train, and could then detonate an explosive.

This may not have anything to do with terrorism, but that seems sort of unlikely. You just don't hide such electronics near a train track, painting them black to blend in with the scenery, for shits and giggles. Presumably whoever put these transmitters there had a reason for doing so, and it wasn't just to count the number of times the train went by.

It's good we found it. It's bad that it may presage a series of train attacks that will be difficult to thwart, even given knowledge about how the terrorists plan to attack the trains.

And it's perfectly typical that Chris Matthews & Co. won't mention this, ever. Any signs of success in defending our country against terrorism are to be scrupulously ignored. Wouldn't want the American public to get the wrong idea, after all.

Moonbat One tips:

The chairman of West Germany's central bank was assassinated in the 1970's by a bomb while riding in his limousine to work. The communist terrorists who planted the bomb used an electric-eye trigger like this one in Philadelphia. The Germans turned on the electric eye by remote control, but the electric eye would detonate the bomb when the beam was broken. The electric eye trigger gave the bomb a precise detonation, and eliminated the chance of human error in detonating the bomb too early or too late.

Posted by: Ace at 01:25 PM | Comments (5)
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Interesting take on the rise of the blogosphere from The American Digest.

Call it the micromedia. His take is that news-use is becoming increasingly atomized and self-tailored via the increasing number of specialized gateways on the Net.

He makes points that are somewhere in the ballpark of our own take on the phenomenon, found in Newsjackers Unite.

Posted by: Ace at 12:19 PM | Comments (2)
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Our undercover government source "Deep Stoat" sends along glad tidings:

* Over the past year, the unemployment rate has fallen in 47 states.

* Non-farm payroll employment increased in 45 states in April.

* Over the past year, employment has increased in 44 states.

The latest state-by-state data are consistent with recent job growth nationwide. In the past 8 months, over 1.1 million new payroll jobs have been created. Over 800,000 new jobs have been created in 2004 alone. If the current pace of job growth for 2004 continues, over 2.6 million jobs will be created this year. In addition, the current unemployment rate is 5.6 percent, well below its recent peak of 6.3 percent and below the average unemployment rates of the 1970Â’s, 1980Â’s, and 1990Â’s.

Below the average unemployment rates of the 1990's!?!? Under Clinton, you mean? We're shocked, shocked that the media hasn't brought this fact to our attention previously.

Get yer "full release" here.

Modest cowbell action for what is actually not new news, but information presented in a clearer format:

Big Cowbell VCR/TiVo Alert: Incite sends us word that this weekend's Saturday Night Live is "The Best of Christopher Walken." If you haven't actually seen the Cowbell sketch, now's your opportunity. We just can't imagine that the Cowbell sketch won't be included, since it's included in other best-of shows, like the Best of Will Ferrell.

Battleground States Employment Update! Employment has risen in 11 of the 17 (but only 11 of the 17) key battleground states.

Here's the good news:

The states which saw the greatest decrease in unemployment are quite winnable: Michigan (we already noted that), Minnesota (trending Republcian for years), and Wisconsin (a squeaker last time).

Here's the bad news:

In four states, unemployment actually increased. Arizona, Arkansas, Washington, and Ohio, which saw its unemployment tick up from 5.7% to 5.8%.

Check out Minnesota. Pick-up?:

Minnesota's unemployment rate fell to 4.1 percent in April from 4.8 percent in March. The national rate is 5.6 percent.

4.1%?!?! How can the residents of a state with such a low unemployment figure not vote to re-elect the President?

These are month-to-month numbers. Unemployment may rise in one month over the level in a previous month; that doesn't disprove a long-term general downward trend. Ohio's number went up .1%, and that's not good, but that 5.8% figure is still down from recent highs.

Overall: Good news, with the promise of getting better.

Posted by: Ace at 10:41 AM | Comments (3)
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First Kerry criticized Bush for not doing anything about rising oil prices.

Then, when Bob Woodward's book claimed that the Saudis had promised lower oil prices over the summer, Kerry shrieked "corrupt deal."

Oil prices rose again, and Kerry went right back to mocking Bush for earlier claiming he could "jawbone" OPEC into increasing output.

Okay, now OPEC has increased production above what had been expected -- by 8.5%.

We expect to hear Flipper to flip back to his previous position(s) any moment now.

A tiny little cowbell for increased oil production, which should ease inflation worries and allow more American dollars to stay in American pockets:

It's still not as good as opening up ANWR, but we'll take what we can get.

Posted by: Ace at 10:06 AM | Comments (4)
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We were going to blog this yesterday, but Byron York and Kausfiles beat us to making the point.

We caught Sy Hersh on Hardball earlier in the week. We were all set for a damning indictment of the Bush Administration.

It actually wasn't.

It could be that Sy Hersh intended his report to be a damning indictment. But we were actually thrilled to hear most of what he said.

We had been worried since 9-11 that, despite Bush's claims that this was "a different kind of war," it was actually being fought by the old rules. The old Marquis de Queensbury rulebook.

Sy Hersh increased our support of Bush greatly by informing us the old rulebook had been shredded, burned, pissed on, and buried beneath a brightly-colored garden gnome in Schenectady, NY.

A must-read piece by Byron York newsjacks Sy Hersh's "damning indictment" and interprets it far differently than it was likely intended:

As Hersh tells the story, the secretary of defense was “apoplectic” after U.S. forces blew a chance to kill Afghanistan’s Mullah Omar because a military lawyer wouldn’t approve the strike.

“Rumsfeld was apoplectic over what he saw as a self-defeating hesitation to attack that was due to political correctness,” Hersh writes.

To which many people might say: ItÂ’s about time. ThatÂ’s precisely the reaction a secretary of defense should have.

And Rumsfeld didnÂ’t just rant. According to Hersh, he created a new, top-secret program to get around legal roadblocks in high-importance terrorism cases.

The program gave elite U.S. forces great freedom in nabbing terrorists. “The rules are ‘Grab whom you must. Do what you want,’” one former intelligence official told Hersh.

To which many people might say: Good.

And the plan worked. “In mid-2003, the special-access program was regarded in the Pentagon as one of the success stories of the war on terror,” Hersh writes.

“It’s been the most important capability we have for dealing with an imminent threat,” the former intelligence official told Hersh. “If we discover where Osama bin Laden is, we can get him. And we can remove an existing threat with a real capability to hit the United States — and do so without visibility.”

Although Hersh writes that some of the program’s methods were “troubling,” still many people might say of the program: Thank you, thank you, thank you.

It's a gotta-read.

As a special bonus, it contains the most potty-mouth we've ever seen in a The Hill article.

Posted by: Ace at 09:55 AM | Comments (1)
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FoxNews:

"There is no need for an investigation because we're quite certain he did it," one senior Bush administration official said.

...

CBS said the "rock solid" evidence was said to show that Chalabi himself gave Iranian intelligence officers information so closely guarded that if revealed it could "get Americans killed."

Unfrickinbelievable.

Update: Score one for the liberals, who've hated Chalabi for years. They hated him on other grounds, of course -- they resented him for being a prime advocate for a war they didn't want -- but it turns out their basic distrust of him was well-deserved.

Hyperpartisan hack Josh Marshall introduces a conspiracy-theory suggested by his conspiracy-minded readers, to wit, that the Americans raided Chalabi as a bit of Kabuki theater designed to give Chalabi credibility among hate-America Iraqis. He doesn't believe it, and we think it's so ridiculous as to be beneath consideration. Earlier developments, in which Chalabi criticized the American occupation and the Americans expressed displeasure with Chalabi, could have been a bit of Kabuki. But not accusing Chalabi of treason and espionage against his own people.

We hate being Cassandras, but we also think conservatives should be warned about possible future developments.

First of all, this is politically damaging, because Chalabi was a trusted ally until recently. The fact that he's giving life-threatening information to Iran obviously casts doubt on the Bush Administration's judgment.

But even worse, it casts doubt on the case for war, because a lot of the WMD intelligence came from either Chalabi's INC or from "sources" the INC brought forward to America. If Chalabi goes on Sixty Minutes and announces, "I played the Bush Administration with fake intelligence," this would obviously be politically damaging. Very damaging.

And it could even get worse, because Chalabi, seeing his lifelong dream undone by America (and he'll blame us-- don't they always?), could begin embroidering his tale to make it even worse for Bush. He could claim, for example, that he was repeatedly told by the Americans something like "We need more of a pretext for war-- and we don't care how you provide it. Give us something. Give us anything. It doesn't even have to be true. It just has to be something we can use to convince the public."

We doubt very much anything like that was ever said. But, having had his cushy allowance from the Pentagon cut off, hated by Iraqis, and now in great disfavor among conservatives, he'll be looking for a new patron to support his lavish London lifestyle. Why not start spinning liberal fantasias and land himself a nice book deal from Knopff?

He has a history of telling people whatever it is they want to hear in order to secure an unearned allowance. We doubt he'll suddenly stop now.

Update! Here's a cut-and-paste report on Chalabi from Stratfor/Strageic Forecasting. We don't know how reputable they are.

Posted by: Ace at 08:54 AM | Comments (12)
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A short European film we call "Serenity." Contains sound.

Same deal as above. But with golf.

We found this while looking for the video above. Just a bunch of really creepy, Lovecraft-meets-Geiger sketches and paintings. Like this one:

And we already linked this creepy but cute psychadelic game back in January, but back then we only had three correspondents. Pretty much back then it was just us, Boston Irish, RDBrewer, and Stumbo, all staying up late at night together giggling, making photo-collages, and talking about cute boys. So the game might be new to many of you.

We still love the odd opening image and the creepy music.

But the ensuing game is pretty fun too.

SMALL SPOILER in White Font (highlight to read): Don't read this if you want to play the game entirely on your own.

If you're having trouble getting the game started-- click on the lighthouse atop the space-rock. You can see what is and isn't clickable throughout the game just by putting your cursor over stuff.

New Link: This fits in with the creepy theme nicely. This is an NPR story -- either transcript or audio, but you'll want the audio -- about the "Wilhelm scream," a sound effect used in hundreds of movies, including Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, a Goofy cartoon, and a Judy Garland song.

UPDATE! The link to the creepy game mentioned above has been corrected and now WORKS!

Posted by: Ace at 11:14 PM | Comments (7)
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Atkins works, and actually engenders several healthful side-effects, say two new medical papers.

So, there you go. Another establishment of "experts," wrong again.

Nevertheless, some nutritionists are less than welcoming of the new findings, and are warning about the unknown health effects of following Atkins in the long term, and of nutritional deficiencies in the diet.

We don't know how much stock we put in the opinions of "nutritionists." Back in college, when we were weightlifting, we asked a couple of nutritionists-in-training how we could adjust our diet to achieve our twin goals of becoming 1) massively jacked and 2) awsomely shredded. They were absolutely no help at all.

Post Edited to Retract Uncharitable Attack on the Profession of Nutritionism. Original comments can be found in comment six to this posting.

Posted by: Ace at 06:35 PM | Comments (9)
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A while back we observed how high Michigan's unemployment rate was. "Write Michigan off," we sagely advised.

We were, again, wrong. Dick Morris hasn't got anything on us.

Michigan's unemployment plunges more than a full percentage point from 2003's high of 7.2%, down to 6.1%.

Things sure can turn around in a hurry.

Did someone say "cowbell"? Okay, but just a little.

Bonus Cowbell! Home Ownership Among Minorities JUMPS in Past Three Months to Highest Levels Since 1975.

That would be the sort of thing you'd expect liberals to note.

Riiiiiiight.

Thanks to Don Luskin's Conspiracy.

Posted by: Ace at 04:32 PM | Comments (2)
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Yeahp, that's right, the left-wing anti-American lunatic actually attempts to address the Sarin discovery substantively (he attempts, we said) while the "reasonable, moderate" Josh Marshall continues to strictly ignore the find.

So-- does that make Ted Rall reasonable?

Or does that finally put lie to Josh Marshall's reputation as a reasonable, sensible centrist Democrat?

Posted by: Ace at 01:53 PM | Comments (2)
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