ThirstyFish

Domino's Zombie at the Philly Zombie Crawl.

I usually write about something related to, or inspired by the posted photo. This time, I'm going to skip the photo and comment on two recent videos.

Last weekend, The Sunday Times ran a front-page titled "British Spies Betrayed to Russians and Chinese", about the Chinese and the Russians cracking the cache of encryted files Edward Snowden had handed to them? Only anonymous sources were cited. The story had a bunch of factual errors. The "journalist" behind the article first tried to defend himself by tweeting "Any Evidence It's Not True". I kid you not, that's what he tweeted. But his "best defense" came on a CNNi inteview. You have to watch it a few times over to really comprehend the level of stupidity. He summed up his defense of the article by saying: "Unless you actually have leaked intelligence documents like Snowden had, it's very difficult to say anything with certainty."

The second video is of former NSA director Michael Hayden. Listen carefully to what he's saying, because it probably qualifies as "doublespeak of the year. Just a little background; Recently, a Federal Appeals Court ruled that N.S.A. Bulk Collection of Data was Unconstitutional. Hayden, in the video, dismissed the Snowden effect as two years of inconvenience: "At the end of the day ... the NSA still has access to the cellphone metadata". When asked about whether Snowden was acting for a foreign government, his answer was "If I go deductive on you, I have my suspicions. But I'm not a deductive guy, I'm an inductive guy by profession, therefore I have no evidence". Mr. Hayden, thank God you are "an inductive kind of guy". More on Mr. Hayden.

My question is, are people who are supposed to be smart - journalists, agency directors - really that dumb? Really? Am I missing something here?