If You Really Give a Shit

There are two stories in today's NY Times of interest.

One is how the FBI's case against Dr. Bruce Ivins is nothing more than "yeah, we think he done it."

The second is an opinion piece on how and why the financial system melted down and what an be done about it.

As to the first, I am shocked, shocked, at the notion that the FBI would seek to build/close a case on far less than persuasive evidence. (I'd page Richard Jewell, except for the fact that he's dead.)

As for the second, half of the piece is stuff that anyone on the outside, looking in, saw coming a mile away. Everyone who had a quarter-sized brain could see that Wall Street's fixation on quarterly earnings was both insanely stupid and corrosively short-sighted. The rest of it is probably worth reading.

On another note, I have been plugging away, slowly, through "Legacy of Ashes, the History of the CIA." If you're familiar with the book, it should come as no surprise that the CIA doesn't like it. The focus of the book (so far) is the often-bungled attempts at covert actions by the CIA, which have resulted in the deaths of a shitload of people.

Either the book is a hatchet-job or the people who ran those operations were lucky because, in a less tolerant nation, they all would have been shot for their sheer incompetence, beginning with Alan Foster Dulles. If the CIA is as fucked up as it is portrayed in the book, we'd be better served by dynamiting their headquarters and subscribing to a good international news-clipping service.