Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[augieboo]

langostino, sorry about the barbie comment -- a late-night joke that missed something in the transmission:

langostino
[lahn-goh-STEEN-oh]
The Spanish word for "PRAWN."
http://eat.epicurious.com/dictionary/food/index.ssf?DEF_ID=2462

prawn
3. The term "prawn" is ... loosely used to describe any large shrimp, especially those that come 15 (or fewer) to the pound (also called "jumbo shrimp").
http://eat.epicurious.com/dictionary/food/index.ssf?TERM=prawn&submit.x=25&submit.y=12

Remember the TV ads pumping tourism in Australia with that Crocodile Dundee dude? I'll put another shrimp on the barbie for you...

Anyhow, dumb joke that missed. Sorry.

As for the Pentagon whatchamacallit, in my original post I said that "the point of this whole thing, (which, frankly, sounds a bit silly to me), is to predict things like terrorist attacks" -- so I don't understand why you seem to think I'm a proponent of it.

I'm not going to bother playing the "I know more about politics than you do" game, because that's too much like arguing about who's daddy can beat up whose.

Suffice it to say that I know enough mid-level people in various federal agencies to say with confidence that when an executive agency proposes something that sounds far-fetched or even silly, the most plausible explanation is that some bureaucrat is letting his imagination get the better of him. This is particularly true if the bureaucrat in question is a proven ninny like Poindexter.