What are they Thinking?

Sometimes news stories appear that make me scratch my head and wonder, "What are they thinking?"

This morning I took a five minute break from FNS to watch a few minutes of Meet the Press, where  Tim Russert had Madeline Albright and Lindsey Graham as guests.  (I don't have a transcript and may have some details wrong, but the meaning is clear.) Russert asked Lindsey Graham what could be done to increase the level of civility of discourse in politics.  Graham answered that it would help if the opposition stopped claiming that Bush lied, and Cheney lied, as a start.  When Russert passed the question along to Albright, she couldn't do it.  She looked down at the table and nearly sotto voce, said she wondered why Bush and Cheney had misstated the intelligence.  Russert persisted and quoted her own words back to her, to the effect that Saddam Hussein had WMD and added that she was part of the Clinton administration when regime change was voted on by the Senate to be official policy of the United States; was she repudiating that now?  Her response was that they had Hussein in a box and the threat of WMD was not imminent. (This has been proven repeatedly to be a real "lie" used by the opposition to discredit the admin; Bush said we needed to act before the threat became "imminent".)   Does she really believe what she is saying despite all the evidence of how the UN (Oil for Food scandal that most of the MSM and Democrats have apparently slept through) was corrupted by Hussein and how the Iraqi embargo was failing? Add in, can she really believe she was lied to about the intelligence when she was part of an administration which, while in office, apparently believed the same intelligence and was even more extreme in their rhetoric that the Bush administration was?  It is a puzzle and I am stumped and I wonder: What are they thinking?

Next, I bring to you the new Hollywood blockbuster, Brokeback Mountain.  Apparently, the critics love the movie. 

LA critics back cowboy love story

Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, a film about two gay ranch hands who fall in love, has been named 2005's best film by Los Angeles film critics.

OK, tell me, who thinks there is a mass market for a sensitive movie about two gay cowboys, tormented by their secret love for each other who only find freedom to be who they really are on extended camping trips in scenic parts of the country (if the trailers are any reflection of the movie, that is.)?  I suspect that only the most committed liberals would want to sit through such a dreary movie, (there isn't a shred of humor in the trailer) undoubtedly for confirmation of their own elevated moral standing; to me it sounds like a dreadful idea for a movie, but maybe the action sequences make up for the silly story line.  But it certainly demands to be asked: What are they thinking?

Next up is a story all over the news today:

Massive blaze rages at fuel depot

A fire is continuing to blaze at a fuel depot in Hertfordshire after a series of large explosions sent black smoke drifting across south-east England.

On Fox News, the reporter mentioned three times in one minute that this was not thought to be a terrorist attack, though authorities do not know what caused the accident.  Now, earlier in the telecast the anchor had reported on the new 48 minute tape by Ayman al Zawahiri, number 2 man in al Qaeda.  In his long message of desperation in which he basically says his side is losing (it will be interesting to see how the MSM spins this but when he is asking for people to join the Jihad even though they will suffer personally by doing so because otherwise the infidels will win, it seems pretty clear who he thinks is losing in the larger war on Islamic fascism) he also asks supporters to attack oil installations.  It certainly may be true that the gigantic explosions in England, the largest explosive catastrophe in Europe since WWII, was completely accidental, but the timing and the recent threats against England by various al Qaeda cadres, certainly raises questions, especially when the fires are still raging out of control and no investigation has yet been done on the scene.  Why so quick to discount the possibility of terrorism?  What are they thinking?

Finally, Michelle Malkin wonders how the New York Times could print an article about blogging in which the writer reports that the conservative side of the blogosphere is running in lock step with the Republican party of Karl Rove without apparently ever having read any conservative blog?

Based on a single "expert" source--"liberal activist Matt Stoller"--Crowley makes
sweeping assertions about the content, nature, effectiveness, and media penetration of partisan blogs. Liberal blogs criticize Democrats more, while conservatives march in lockstep with the GOP leadership to "to provide maximum benefit for their issues and candidates," the piece asserts.

Do the Times editors really pay for such inanity?  Are the editors of the Times purposely trying to destroy their own credibility? 

Sometimes all you can do is wonder: What are they thinking?