It is not just the Busheviks who wallow in their own reality, it goes down to the least of their supporters.

"In my view, if a balance of people have a favorable view of the future, we'll have a good economy. If a balance of people have a negative view of the future, we'll have a bad economy."

I suppose insufficient people have a favorable view of subprime mortgages, shooter242? Are you really such a moron or are you just playacting here? I suppose having one's own reality requires a certain lack of ability to be embarrassed.

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/08/01/pickens-buys-eminent-domain-powers-and-wind-power-transmission-rights-for-his-personal-8-acre-quot-water-district-quot.aspx

"....let me note that Pickens and the Republican-dominated Texas legislature have just put on a marvelous display of how government, in Texas at least, is by the rich and for the rich, who are allowed to ride roughshod over the "property rights" of others.

Last year the Texas legislature, greased by $1.2 million in campaign contributions by Pickens over the previous election cycle, modified its laws who can create a "fresh water supply district" that has powers of eminent domain - powers to forcibly take land from others - and authorized such water districts to use their rights of way to carry power transmission lines. Such water districts are authorized to raise cheap money by issuing tax-exempt bonds. By securing rule changes in his favor, a Pickens-controlled district covering eight acres in the Panhandle acquired the power to issue tax-exempt bonds and to condemn private land for a pipeline and power transmission lines all the way to Dallas. In Texas, money talks and money rules - and "property rights" means nothing more than the right to collect reasonable value in compensation for what the rich want to take from you. "

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/08/01/pickens-buys-eminent-domain-powers-and-wind-power-transmission-rights-for-his-personal-8-acre-quot-water-district-quot.aspx

You've more than earned it.

Many thanks!

The answer to this necessarily has to be speculative. In the absence of an independent inquiry, it can only remain speculative.

There are two questions to be answered. The smaller one is of Ivins' alibi for the September 17/18 mailing. It must be that Ivins has a fairly solid alibi for the September 17th evening and night - this is a weak inference from the fact that "officials" thought it fit to leak about the administrative leave which is by the FBI's own case really irrelevant.

The larger question is why does the FBI, which is constituted by many intelligent, honest and hardworking men and women, seem so bungling and collectively stupid?

Again, the answer is a weak inference only - in my experience, organizations act as much less than the sum of the parts when the leadership has some predetermined outcome that they want which flies in the face of reality. In the Amerithrax case, I'd wager that the FBI agents' ability to create and modify hypotheses based on discovered facts has been severely curtailed, and that they have been forced to support a predetermined result rather than come up with a true result. (The true result may very well be that there is not enough evidence to ever identify the perpetrators.)

----

Now onto even weaker speculation -

Among various things, it is interesting that almost from the very start, the FBI has been certain that it is a lone perpetrator. But it seems to me that the FBI has great difficulty in making the facts fit just one person.

http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/ap.html

Feb 25, 2002 -

"Van Harp, assistant director of the bureau's Washington office, wrote that the FBI believes that a single person, with experience working in a laboratory, is behind the mailings. Harp described this person as having ``a clear, rational thought process and appears to be very organized in the production and mailing of these letters.''

Fleischer said the source of the anthrax definitely was domestic, and the block handwriting on the letters seemed ``chosen by design'' to throw off investigators.

Harp also said the FBI believes that, because the mailed anthrax was of the so-called ``Ames strain'' of Bacillus anthracis, the suspect probably has or had legitimate access to biological agents in a laboratory. Harp also described the suspect as ``standoffish'' and preferring to work alone rather than in groups.

``It is possible this person used off-hours in a laboratory or may have even established an improvised or concealed facility comprised of sufficient equipment to produce the anthrax,'' Harp said.

Harp's description was in a letter sent to the Washington-based American Association for Microbiology, which published the letter Feb. 1 on its Web site. "

Moron is not an uncivil word. It means a person with a certain low mental ability but better than idiot and imbecile. Facts are not uncivil except to people with magical thinking that are offended by them.

To use anthrax as a weapon, it must be converted to a powder which can be inhaled.

The contamination of various buildings by anthrax - including a postal facility in Connecticut - shows that the Amerithrax mailer(s) had that powdered anthrax.