Ability is insufficient. There must be permission, too.

Via “Mr.B,” Herbert E. Meyer on our latest intelligence screwups:

The reason our intelligence service keeps failing to connect the dots is because the officials in charge don’t know how.  And the blame lies squarely with President Obama -- and alas, with President George W. Bush before him -- for appointing managers rather than dot-connectors to run our intelligence service.

Mr.B believes the rot goes beyond the exceutives, and that we must clean house:

Like any bureaucracy, the intelligence game is full of mindless drones...

Having people who are just putting in their time towards retirement is NOT going to keep the citizens of (and visitors to) this country safe.
...
Civil service laws be damned.  Get the right folks in there, and the pencil pushing REMFS who just need to get their time in, and their proper tickets punched the hell out of the “intelligence” game.

Well yes, but...

Look, “dot-connecting” is as much an art as it is a skill, and nine times out of ten it’s the product of a judgement call.  It’s tricky under the best of circumstances, even moreso when being wrong might land the dot-connector in political hot water.

And good dot-connectors are smart- certainly smart enough to detect the unspoken messages issuing from their superiors.  What kind of messages do you suppose our dot-connectors are detecting?

What is obvious is that neither the Bush administration (which began by “declaring war on a noun”) nor the Obama administration (whose F.B.I. is busy taking sensitivity lessons from people connected with the Muslim Brotherhood) have been interested in connecting the “wrong kind” of dots. Fear of accusations of racism, international pressures, political correctness, sympathy for “revolutionaries”... whatever the reason, both administrations have continually bent over backwards, failing to name the enemy and rushing to declare each new incident “isolated.”

So it’s no surprise that, in the wake of the Fort Hood shootings, we discovered that Nidal Malik Hasan’s conduct and statements repeatedly raised concerns among his superiors and colleagues; and that each time those superiors and colleagues failed to act, instead keeping their concerns to themselves.   No surprise at all that those superiors and colleagues might have believed that connecting “Muslim” with “Jihad” or “terror” might be a career-ender.

I cannot believe that our military and our intelligence agencies have lost all  ability to connect the dots.  What I can believe is that our dot-connectors know which way the wind blows, and- consciously or unconsciously- tailor their output to avoid conclusions their superiors “don’t want to hear.”  And as long as those superiors “don’t want to hear” about Islamic terrorism, it will take something really frightening to make it across that threshold.

Which won’t be solved by replacing a few incompetent agency heads.  Permission to connect the dots has to come from the White House.

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More “presumption of good intentions by terrorists”

Talk show host Thom Hartmann:

Our left-wing crazies are incited to violence because they’re trying to create a better world.

ACORN founder Wade Rathke:

[It’s] one thing to disagree, but it’s a whole different thing to rat on folks...

...both from this Daily Caller post, about a man you’ve most likely never heard of: Brandon Darby foiled terror attack...  (Worth reading; via IP).

Related:  Darby told his own story on Big Government last September.

Previously.

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Arguing past the facts

The Muncie Star-Press publishes an ill-informed editorial.  Fortunately, Tam is there to deal with some of it.

Elsewhere:

Some background:

Previously:

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Paging Al... oh, never mind!

National Weather Service:

The first twelve days of 2010 in Indianapolis rank as the 14th coldest start to January on record in terms of daily average temperature.  The coldest temperature seen during the 12 day period was 1 degree on January 3.  The warmest temperature recorded during the period was 31 degrees on January 12.  The last time the first 12 days of January averaged colder was in 1999. The last time we had at least 12 consecutive days below 32 degrees was in 2007.

In terms of high temperature only, the first 12 days of January rank as the 9th coldest start of the month...

The temperature surged above 32 degrees in Indianapolis on January 13 for the first time since December 31, as most of central Indiana rose into the middle and upper 30s.  This marks the end to the longest streak of continuous subfreezing temperatures in almost three years.  That streak lasted 15 consecutive days, from January 28-February 11, 2007.  The longest streak of consecutive subfreezing temperatures in Indianapolis began on December 29, 1976 and continued until February 2, 1977, a total of 36 days.

The NWS story includes a nice satellite photo of snow-covered Indiana taken yesterday.

Elsewhere:

Earlier:  C-c-c-cold!

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Whooooo’s Dere?

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Even warmer!

Sarasota Herald Tribune:

For the first time in more than two decades a mixture of sleet and snow fell in the Tampa Bay area this morning.  The sleet and snow came during the early morning hours as an arctic air mass began to push through the region.  Temperatures recorded at Tampa International Airport this morning also matched a record low of 36 degrees recorded in 1969.

The last time Tampa Bay saw snow was on Dec. 23 in 1989, according to National Weather Service forecast records.  Areas just north and east of Tampa last saw snow in 1996. Snow and sleet is not in the forecast tonight but if lingering precipitation overlaps plunging temperatures, it is still possible.

Temperatures in the Sarasota area have hovered near freezing most of the day, falling to a low of 35 this morning and climbing to a high of about 37 this afternoon at Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport.

LATER, Elsewhere:  Celsius 233

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 23:22:58 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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As: “Educated” by the American “education” system?

Tom Maguire:

Longfellow:

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five...

From the [New York] Times corrections:

An article in the Escapes pages on Jan. 1 about visiting Boston in the winter, which described modern and historical sites, misstated the year of Paul Revere’s famous ride.  It was 1775, not 1776.

How soon they forget.

That story must have been written by one of those “educated class” people.

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RIP, Sebastian

Breda says goodbye...



(And Lar remembers Frisky.)

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Aliens?

The Telegraph:

Ron Trevett... and his wife Aileen... were stunned when they stumbled across the mysterious formations as they walked their dogs in a field near their home in Yeovil, Somerset.

“We saw them from a distance on the ridge of the field, and we thought some kids had been playing up there and making giant snowballs,” said Mr Trevett.

“But when we got up there we saw there were no footprints and there were hundreds of them...”

Now read on...

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Got any ideas...?

RELATED:

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