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Saturday, February 23, 2002
Reader Randolph Addison sends word that First Elected President To Be Impeached Bill Clinton is down in Australia, doing his bit to support President George Bush ten thousand percent:
ACKNOWLEDGING the United States would not be the world's most powerful nation forever might lead to a better approach in its current international relations, former US president Bill Clinton said today.
Speaking at the 2002 World Congress on the Peaceful Reunification of China and World Peace in Sydney, Mr Clinton said this "brief moment in history" when the US had pre-eminent military, economic and political power, would not last.
Thanks for all your support, Bill, and don't let the door pop you in your big fat mouth.
Peaceful Reunification of China and World Peace? Is he down to hustling the bliss-ninnies now?
UPDATE: Will Warren (see comments) is right: the airhead-sounding conference name does hide a sinister purpose. And some protestors on the scene didn't let it pass unchallenged.
The intellectual capacity of Dubya is not highly rated within Downing Street. One of Mr Blair's most influential foreign policy advisers regards George Bush as 'imbecilic', a global village idiot.
Why, thanks, Guardian! This should add a bit of zing to the special relationship. And what an excellent way to deal with the "American goliath."
President Bush is expected to seek Sheikh's extradition to America after discussions with senior aides following his return from China. Although there is no extradition treaty between Islamabad and Washington, Mr Bush is intending to exert heavy pressure on his Pakistani counterpart, Gen Pervez Musharraf, to co-operate in the handover of Sheikh, whose family still lives in east London. However, powerful elements within the ISI operate independently of Gen Musharraf and have made it clear that they would block any extradition deal. "They will do everything they can to stop Omar Sheikh being sent to America," said intelligence officials. "He knows much too much about their activities and he is too talkative."
And you know what happens when somebody "too talkative" gets caught between a rock and a some hard men. I doubt if salesmen will be flocking around this guy to sell him life insurance any time soon. On the other hand, if the ISI does decide to make their potential problem with Omar Sheikh disappear because he was involved in Daniel Pearl's murder, then I hope they do it slowly - and use common blacksmith implements heated to several hundred degrees.
The latest donation means that Simon has lent about $4.7 million to his campaign. Even a financier with pockets as deep as Simon's isn't going to chuck that type of money into an effort that looks like a sure loser.
Good point. Riordan, called by the Elephant grass roots a "RINO" (Republican In Name Only) always was a shaky candidate, although local Dems desperately want him to be the opposition come the fall. But he always has had to survive the primary process to gain the nomination, and that was a different kettle of horse-colors. Primaries in both parties are traditionally more doctrinaire than general elections, and the usual approach is for candidates to run as party hard-liners in the primary, then smooth the message for wider consumption later. Simon is, in fact, doing it this way now.
But Riordan has too much history to let him pursue a similar strategy. When even a former Republican governor, George "Duke" Deukmejian, publicly announces he would never vote for Riordan, you know the man is going to have problems winning over a sufficient number of hardliners to grab the nomination.
Conventional wisdom here - which means the wheeze peddled by gaggles of liberal columnists - is that the Republicans are so sick of losing they'll nominate a Democrat who calls himself a Republican just to get back in the game. I think not. I think the equation changed drastically post 9/11, even in California, and the older conventional wisdom - that Americans turn to Republicans when the republic itself is threatened - may be in play again.
And Simon is no neanderthalic Dan Lundgren. He's a tough, smart, attractive, rich campaigner. I think he's going to be the Republican nominee, and when all the dust settles, I think it's fifty-fifty he beats "Grayout" Davis in the fall.
In his first direct confrontation with the international shock set off by his "axis of evil" remark, President Bush spent six long days in Asia last week trying to reassure the shaken leaders of Japan, South Korea and China that he was more interested in peace than war.
The assumptions implicit in this news "report" are typical for the new Howlin' Howell Raines version of the NYT: The President said something ill-considered and goofy, and is now racing about the world trying to repair the damage.
Anybody who understands how major presidential statements are crafted - and that would include Bumiller, the writer of this tale, as well as any reporter on the political beat for a major news outlet - knows this notion is ridiculous. Presidents don't toss their State of the Union addresses off the tops of their heads. Every word is weighed and calculated by many people who try to gauge the effects of the end result as it relates to the administration's goals. In other words, President Bush knew what he was saying, had a damned good idea what effect it would have, and called Iraq, Iran, and Korea an "axis of evil" because doing so was integral to his objectives.
All you need to know about the objectivity of this article's premise is this: in all his supposed "damage control," has George Bush even once repudiated his original statement? No, to the NYT's consternation, he has repeated it. Several times.
Convicted killer Rodolfo Hernandez wants two legs by the time he makes that final, 50-foot journey to the death chamber next month. But he says the prison system is stalling on his request for an artificial limb. Hernandez, whose left leg was amputated 4 inches below the knee last July because of complications from diabetes, says the state does not want to spend the money because he is set to be executed anyway.
rounded up 5 illegal immigrants in San Antonio after they slipped into Texas aboard a boxcar from Mexico. He offered to find them transportation to Denton where they hoped to get jobs.
Hernandez and his brother-in-law, Jesse Garibay, agreed to drive them for $150. They stopped in a secluded area of Comal County where the 5 Mexican men were ordered out of the car at gunpoint. When 1 of the men tried to run away, he was shot in the back. [and killed - ed.]
Court records indicate Hernandez ordered the men to lie on the ground face down, took their valuables and shot each in the neck, then drove off with his brother-in-law.
A psychopath who cold-bloodedly tried to murder five men execution style for thirty bucks a head. Let him crawl to the chamber.
But then the area's rental market tightened to a 2.4 percent vacancy rate last March, pushing up the average monthly rental to $843 in December 2001 -- a 10 percent jump over the previous year, according to Novato-based industry analyst RealFacts.
"I think that's the direction we need to go," Councilwoman Lauren Hammond said. "We need to research what's happened in places like West Hollywood and Los Angeles (that have rent control ordinances...
The metro’s average rent now stands at $1,173 per month. The highest average rents -- $1,910 per month -- are produced in the West Los Angeles submarket, which includes neighborhoods such as Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Westwood, West Hollywood, Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades, Malibu and Marina del Rey. West Los Angeles in fact commands the highest rents across all of Southern California, surpassing prices in upscale areas like Orange County’s Newport Beach and San Diego’s northwestern suburbs of La Jolla, Carmel Valley and Sorrento Valley.
So if you want to "kick it up a notch" from $843 to $1,910, sure, go ahead. Institute rent control.
Jennifer Portnick eats healthy, works out six days a week and can nail complicated dance steps without missing a step. But she didn't make the cut with Jazzercise. The company rejected the San Francisco woman's application to teach the dance-style exercise classes, and Portnick believes it's because of her size. At 5 feet 8, 240 pounds, Portnick looks nothing like the svelte models on the company's Web site and brochures.
First, from a libertarian point of view, a company should have unlimited latitude to set its hiring qualifications. Second, the product this company sells is as much a look as anything else. As far as I'm concerned, it's perfectly legitimate for them to require their trainers to possess the look they are trying to sell.
I used to live in Golden, CO. Believe it or not, pistol-packing mamas who pursue burglary as a full time vocation are more common than you might think. Must be all that Coors...
The arrest, Barnes-Gelt said, was an example of "good kids doing stupid things. This is a really good kid who did a really stupid thing."
Since it involves arrest, I presume the councilwoman isn't talking about her son's involvement in that exploitative post-Columbine gun-control group.
This is an interesting juxtaposition: The constitution, properly interpreted, would permit this kid to smoke and/or sell all the dope he wants, while making it a crime to violate the right to keep and bear arms. The fact that exactly the reverse has occurred may be a delicious bit of irony, but nonetheless it doesn't make it right.
Civil liberty groups have also objected to the proposal, fearing it could bring the more rigorous anti-hate speech laws that exist in continental Europe to the more liberal UK and U.S.
As Steven Den Beste points out (and Reuters clearly doesn't have a clue about) such restrictions will not fly in the United States, no matter what sort of
comprehensive legal framework for international crimefighters as they strive to identify and prosecute cross-border hate crimes on the Internet
the Eurocrats manage to devise. The First Amendment forbids such restrictions on freedom of expression.
They just don't get it. The notion of an inviolable constitution that guarantees the rights of people over their government, a constitution not amenable to change or amendment on a whim, is as foreign to them as the notion of government of, by, and for the people.
In Europe, leaders rule. In the United States, they serve. In a nutshell, that's the difference between us politically, and evidently it's a gulf so wide we may gradually be losing our means of bridging it. What European leaders don't seem to understand is that allowing that bridge to vanish is far more dangerous for them than it is for us.
Odd as it may seem to me - because I remember him as a young man in his thirties back when I worked for Robert Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign - Ted Kenned just turned seventy.
Statistically, he may be closing in on the end of his string. He's male, overweight, and has been a heavy drinker and cigar smoker for most of his life. Studies indicate that, on average, such people don't remain healthy - or even alive - very far into their seventies. Sen. Kennedy is considered one of the great lions of the liberal wing of the Democratic party. But he's gotten old when we weren't looking - and like that liberal wing to which he belongs, he hasn't aged well.
For boomers, whether they love or hate the man, Kennedy's eventual passing will be a traumatic marker of their own advancing age. He played an integral part in the high dreams of boomer youth: Camelot, JFK, RFK, Jackie - all gone now, even to the next generation and JFK Jr. Nothing remains but Edward, who never achieved the goals many throught would be his by birthright - when told that Kennedy would challenge him for the presidency, Jimmy Carter said, "I'll whip his ass," and then did. How humiliating. Nonetheless, he's all that remains of those heady times for many people.
For me, Ted Kennedy's greatest moment was his eulogy for his brother Robert. As far as I'm concerned, it's been all downhill for him since then, although I'm sure many will disagree. Even so, it still seems strange: "Teddy" Kennedy. Now an old man.
Only when the major participants in the sorry cavalcade of scandal that was the Clinton administration have all been soundly repudiated at the polls will the real legacy of that pack of soulless opportunists become apparent: Losers, every single damned one of them.
Editor -- The very first lie was told by the new Office of Strategic Influence when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that there would be no lying by the agency. Reminiscent of the old Soviet Union, now we have an official agency dedicated to disseminating propaganda in order to distort reality. Just think, these folks will have $100 million at their disposal! DONALD SCOTT Calistoga
What a relief! After yesterday, I feared that sanity might have come to the letters page of the Chron, but I see the buggos are back today. So, yes indeed, Donald Scott, our government has become just like that of the old Soviet Union, disseminating propaganda in order to distort reality. And your reality is pretty distorted to see no difference between a country where the press was an organ and a slave of the government, and one where the press is free to reject government propaganda and make up and disseminate their own - ala the NYT. Or the SFChron.
Europe's unconditional solidarity with the Bush administration, declared so quickly in the shock after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, has faded almost as suddenly.
Did anybody, even the agenda-driven ideologues at the NYT, really believe there was anything of seriousness in the proclamations of solidarity that issued from every European quarter in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks?
I know that my thought was that talk is cheap, and European talk of late has usually been worthless. I felt no shock when Europe proceeded to do exactly as I expected and backed away from its previously voiced "support," because I assumed the leaders were lying as they usually do when a lie is the cheap and easy way to achieve some political goal - in this case a pretended harmony with the United States to justify attempts to control American policy and response toward their own interests and preferences.
In any scenario involving the projection of significant military power, Europe is irrelevant, and has been for some time. And the region is becoming increasingly marginalized economically and diplomatically for this reason. Mao voiced an uncomfortable truth when he said, "Power grows out of the barrel of a gun." He was talking about political power, but economic and diplomatic power have also always and inexorably gravitated toward the nations with the most powerful militaries - especially if those nations tend to use their militaries primarily in defense rather than offense.
As has been noted by many, European leadership has made the conscious choice to forego guns for butter served on a salver of ever-expanding statism. Part of this is an expectation (justified, I might add) that in extremis the United States will always be there to protect the old countries (from each other, if necessary). However, like most unhappy recipients of charity, Europe is now reduced to salving its own feelings of resentment and inferiority by aiming a tide of furious bombast at its benefactor - which is exactly what the United States has been for the past half century.
Europe's biggest problem these days it its sense of entitlement. It is so sure that its history, its social welfarism, its "progressive and enlightened" domestic schemes, its veneer of sophistication, all mark it as an undeniably superior culture that it is simply nonplussed when this fondly held belief is not somehow translated into real power. What we now see is nothing more than a tantrum of age and decadence, as the realization sinks in that the torch was passed a long time ago.
Worse, the problem is not just one of military inequality. The wave of meaningful innovation left Europe behind fifty years ago, and those who will make and remake the future now reside in the corporations and university labs of the United States, which summon, and receive the best and brightest the world has to offer.
There are moments in history when one power embarks on a virtuous cycle, while another finds itself entrapped in a vicious cycle. The vast military and economic power of the United States combine to bring it investment, innovation, top flight immigration, and all the other benefits that go toward increasing military and economic power even further, and so the virtuous cycle continues.
Europe, committed to a path of state welfarism and de facto disarmament, bleeds inverstment, innovation, and top level emigrants, leaving behind a population increasingly concerned with security and little else. And as productivity falls and unemployment continues its secular rise, the state will be called upon even more stringently to become the guarantor of last resort for the lifestyles of its citizens, and so will divert an ever-growing stream of resources away from the things that build true power - innovation, real investment (not the phony version that is nothing but taxes and more taxes poured into rickety redistribution scams), a functioning military, and so continue ever deeper into a vicious downward spiral.
We are at that point now. The Roman Republic was established in 509 BC. About three and a quarter centuries later, Rome burned its old enemy, Carthage, to the ground, and set itself firmly on the road to world empire. Plymouth Colony was established in 1620. About three and a quarter centuries later, George Bush in all but name proclaimed the establishment of a Pax and Lex Americana, backed up by a dozen carrier battle groups and the largest economy in the world.
The real question for Europe - and the rest of the world - isn't American unilateralism. That is now a given. It is how to deal with the looming specter of a new Rome. But the people most intimately concerned both with that question, and with whatever answers are devised, don't live in Europe or Asia or Africa. They live in the United States.
It will be an interesting conversation. We embarked upon it in the elections of 2000. Further bulletins to follow.
UPDATE: Evidently John Humphrys of the British Sunday Timesreads DailyPundit.
Whatever the convention may achieve we should not pretend that a European Union can be created that will have the power to challenge American unilateralism.
Robert Fisk has evidently recovered sufficiently from his vicious beating to write this:
The murder of Daniel Pearl of The Wall Street Journals was as revolting as it was outrageous. But why was he killed? Because he was a Westerner, a "Kaffir"? Because he was an American? Or because he was a journalist? And if he was killed because he was a reporter what has happened to the protection which we in our craft used to enjoy?
There was never a time when the vocation of war journalist was without risk. Even Fisk, fresh from his own near-death experience, should be able to understand this. Unfortunately, his deeply ingrained self-loathing (perhaps the most justifiable aspect of his personality) will not permit him to blame the people who did this monstrous thing to his friend Daniel Pearl. No, he has to come up with some cockeyed theory saying that it's the reporters's fault.
No, Robert, no. The men who beat you did so of their own volition, and they bear the blame. The maniacs who slaughtered Daniel Pearl - and filmed themselves slitting his throat - did that because they wanted to do it. They gleefully accepted responsibility for their act, and will fully deserve the whirlwind they've set about reaping.
In other words, Robert, the fault is not yours. It is not Daniel Pearl's. It is not Israel's. It is not Britain's, nor is it America's. It is not western civilization's. And all your agonized twisting and turning upon your self-built crosses will not change that one bit.
In any case, Arafat is mortal and, sooner or later, by natural cause or human design, he will depart from this world. Who will be the next leader of the Palestinian national movement?
Time to put my money where my mouth is. I'll wager a buck on April 19, 2002, as the day the raddled old murderer bites the bullet, as it were.
One of the more interesting developments of the past couple of decades has been the gradual erosion of the traditional medical approach to nutrition. "Americans have the most expensive urine in the world," sneered medicos trained to treat, but not prevent, illness. "You get all the vitamins you need from your daily diet," trumpets another school of thought.
Yet time and again, from vitamin e to vitamin c to a dozen others, scientists have discovered that vitamin, mineral, or herbal intake above the average results in increased health. There is still a considerable number of old-school advocates preaching the traditional supplements-are-useless mantra, but more and more they are being discredited by real world results.
Read this and remember why we're fighting this war.
From the bottom of my heart, I would like to express my gratitude to all of the people throughout the world who have given Danny and me support and encouragement.
In one way, at least, a terrorist "army" is no different from a legitimate military force, in that they both need logistics support of all kinds.
Despite the specific charges these men were convicted under, what they actually did was make fake IDs and papers for the use of active terrorists "soldiers." The men who crashed into the WTC did not act alone. They needed others to manage and supply their money, train them, provide false documents, manage communications, and a host of other details not glamorous enough for the press to focus on.
In many cases, those who supply such services are nothing more than cold, hard professionals without much ideological fervor, selling their skills to anybody who can pay.
These convictions send a valuable message: the risks inherent in pursuing such livelihoods have just increased drastically.
This is supposed to be a sad story, but I'm able to restrain my libertarian tears at the specter of cold, cruel capitalism at work. Yes, folks, capitalism is sometimes cold and cruel in the short term, or on the individual level, but over time, nothing works better for that notional "greater good." It's like democracy - it's not perfect, but it's way ahead of whatever is in second place.
Our star unleashed a titanic coronal mass ejection, or CME, on February 18th. Containing bilions [sic]of tons of matter, the superheated blast was captured by an extreme-ultraviolet camera aboard the orbiting Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. Fortunately, the outburst was directed away from Earth.
Okay, can any of my astronomically inclined readers make a comment as to what would have happened if the ejection had been directed toward the earth?
The cable news network MSNBC reported the news of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl's death nearly an hour after its rivals Thursday, interrupting a women's curling match from the Winter Olympics.
Is it any wonder so few people respect the news media, when they plainly have no respect for themselves?
It singled out the judging that gave Hughes the win after she placed fourth in the earlier short program. Russian Irina Slutskaya finished in second and Michelle Kwan took the bronze.
I don't care about the judging controversy. I just wanted a chance to mention that name. Earlier, I posted something about a couple of ninnies named Sunny and Mordant. Now Ms. Slutskaya.
Can life get any sweeter for somebody with a low and juvenile sense of butthead humor?
For the first time since I began this daily feature, the Letters Page of the San Francisco Chronicle is filled with missives from folks who seem to be residing on the planet Earth, and in full possession of their wits. Consequently, I don't single out any one offering. Take a look at the whole page, and know that you may not see its like pass this way again.
This is a real whiplasher: a piece in The Guardian, written by Lord Owen, founder of the British Social Democratic Party, advocating wholehearted support for George Bush and American military action against Iraq.
Osama bin Laden's most senior lieutenant, the Egyptian militant Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been captured and jailed in Tehran, a leading Iranian newspaper reported yesterday.
If true, it is one of the most important developments so far in the war on terror. Now all we have to do is get Iran to turn him over. I expect that high level negotiations have been going on ever since this report was released and repudiated, and probably before. The question to be resolved is simple: how much do the mullahs want for him, and how much are we willing to give?
I also wonder at the coincidence of Iran turning up al-Zawahiri only days after President Bush named them part of an "axis of evil." The former head of Islamic Jihad certainly provides the theocrats with a powerful bargaining chip. My hunch is he's been there quite a while, with the full knowledge of the religious authorities, and Ayatollah Kahmeni made a decision to turn a potential liability into a major asset. I also wonder if they may not be holding Osama bin Laden in reserve, to toss into the pot later if necessary.
We are going to ram the Euro, extra-national taxation and tax policies, and full political union (and the loss of your sovereignty) down your throats whether you like it or not.
A moving, richly detailed New York Times Magazine profile of a boy who became an Ivory Coast slave turns out to have been a fabrication. The Times acknowledged in an editor's note yesterday that Youssouf Male, the teenagerdescribed as living an impoverished existence, hacking weeds on a cocoa plantation for mere pennies, was a composite....
One thing I've always wondered: what does "composite" mean in cases like these? I've heard the term used in other instances of complete fabrication being passed off as reporting. I suspect it means the writer made up the tale out of whole cloth, but if so, why don't they just say so?
"Certainly it's a serious mistake," Finkel, 33, said yesterday from his home in Bozeman, Mont., adding that he was trying to convey a larger reality about child slavery.
In other words, the ends justify the means, and if that means passing off lies as the truth, well, so be it. It's a tactic that's been used on guns, second-hand smoke, drugs, and any number of other issues favored by one pack of ideologues or another.
I wish I could chortle that only the left pulls this stuff, but I know only too well that social conservatives lie just as vigorously in support of their hatred for some drugs.
A coalition of gun control groups urged U.S. newspapers on Thursday to stop publishing classified ads for guns, saying they were a potential source of weapons for terrorists.
Like ticks riding the belly of a hog, these freedom-hating, self-aggrandizing scavengers attempt to exploit the deaths of thousands of innocent Americans for their own unconstitutional purposes. I'd ask if they have no shame, but I already know the answer.
Television evangelist Pat Robertson yesterday described Islam as a violent religion bent on world domination, drawing immediate protests from American Muslims.
Robertson is an idiot, but world Islam has left itself wide open for this sort of thing by not stepping up and vigorously condemning Islamofascist terrorism. Protesting against Robertson loses effectiveness when at the same time you're calling for the slaughter of all Israel or more attacks on the Great Satan - or remaining silent in the face of those who do.
Chinese President Jiang Zemin insisted Thursday that his people are free to worship as they choose, and said Roman Catholic bishops detained there must have broken the law.
The brutal Communist tyrants lie, and then lie again, and then lie some more. And if that doesn't work, they try lying. Should that fail, they'll shoot a few thousand people.
Many American intellectuals are fixated on Red China, mostly because it's the last great bastion of Communism on the planet. But over the next twenty years, my money is on India, a rapidly developing democracy whose population will surpass China's, and whose first world technology sector will dwarf that of the repressive, command-economy Communist tyranny.
Weisberg's column is actually quite excellent, but I suspect most people only remember it as the target of one of Andrew Sullivan's intemperate screeds. Even now, Sullivan takes every opportunity to hammer Weisberg for his supposed naivete. Now that a fellow conservative (or at least, someone else who plays a conservative on NPR) has made the same point, will Sullivan admit that he overreacted?
I don't think Sullivan needs to admit anything of the sort. I was there in the sixties, right from the very beginning, and a lot of what later grew to malignant size started very, very small. If somebody had stomped on it hard when it was still weak, much might have turned out differently.
The ideologies reflected in the idiotic things said by far more people than just "Stone, Sontag, and Chomsky" deserve to be stomped, and vigorously so - lest they mutate and grow into some form of pseudo-respectability. Would Murtaugh feel so sanguine if some of these actors began to preach the revivication of the Internationale? (Which is certainly not a far-fetched notion in the case of, say, Ted Rall).
I'm not waving a hammer here, but nonetheless, I think Murtaugh is, like Weisberg, naive - at least on this issue.
Feb. 21 — U.S. officials told NBC News on Thursday that a video shows kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl being killed by his Islamic extremist captors in Pakistan. Pearl’s family said they were “shocked and saddened” by his death, adding they believed no human being was capable of harming such “a gentle soul.” In Beijing, a grim-faced President Bush denounced the murder and said “those who would engage in criminal, barbaric acts need to know that these crimes only hurt their cause and only deepen the resolve of the United States of America.”
Tell me again how cowardly, murdering Islamofascist thugs like this aren't evil.
That said, and with the deepest compassion toward Pearl's grieving loved ones, I'm glad the US government made no effort to bow to the demands of Pearl's murderers. That's the first step in removing incentives for similar acts in the future. The second step is equally necessary: hunt down and destroy the lunatics who committed this filthy act.
Collier County teacher Ian Harvey will be suspended for three days without pay and reassigned to a non-teaching position pending an investigation from the state, Superintendent Dan White announced Thursday. Harvey got into trouble after he was accused of preaching his anti-war views to his classes to the detriment of his students’ learning.
Just think. In a privatized school system, you parents could make your own choice as to whether you wanted your kids to go to Che Guevera Revolutionary High, or Father Coughlin's Taliban Wing Middle School.
When retirees Sunny and Mordant Adler refused to pay a $1,500 annual fee for more individualized care, their doctor dropped them last month.
He was among a small but growing number of physicians nationwide charging $1,500 to $20,000 for "concierge care.''
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., met with the Adlers and a dozen other seniors Thursday about legislation he filed that would prohibit doctors who charge such extra fees from receiving federal Medicare payments.
I wish every time somebody charges me more than I want to pay, my Senator would try to pass legislation forcing them to lower their prices. You think the lawyers in congress will react the same way if Sunny and Mordant decide their attorney is overcharging them, too?
This should really boost union organizing in the red areas. Actually, they probably don't give a damn, since almost all their new members come from government employees working in the blue.
An Alexandria woman said she saw a "flare or rocket" ascending toward a US Airways flight landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport last month, similar to a report from a Southwest Airlines pilot landing at Baltimore-Washington International Airport Sunday.
This is pretty funny coming from Sir Elton John, all things considered. It's not as if he was ever famed for the heavyweight, groundbreaking tunes he produced. Well, unless you count that Diana In The Wind thing. Age do make a body pompous, don't it?
Gary Farber's blog, Amygdala, just keeps getting better. (Read his devastating takedown of Sheryl McCarthy, for instance). He notes that like other New Yorkers he's still jumpy. We San Franciscans know something about jumpiness, given our region's propensity to either go up in smoke, or go up in a frenzied St. Vitus's dance - or just mud slip-n-slide into the nearest large body of water. It took about a year after the 1989 quake for my heart to stop double-clutching at even the faintest road vibrations from passing busses. Now I'm back to not noticing shakes unless something actually falls off one of my bookshelves. It will pass, Gary. Just not yet.
By the way: I thought I gave Gary credit for inventing one of my favorite new phrases, "fish-barreling," but I can't find that I did. So now I am.
Editor -- As I read about the Bush administration's pattern of secrecy, disinformation and cowboy rhetoric, while observing the Enron way of doing business -- buying government services on the open market while swindling the public through secrecy, disinformation and open market rhetoric -- I realize that these are the same band of yahoos. They are arrogantly clueless in their understanding of human affairs, and paranoidly cunning in their actions. It appears that the Bush-Enron connection is the evil axis that presents the most serious threat to American life and the democracy our founders contrived to protect us from the leadership of the deranged. ROGER LAKE San Francisco
Certainly, Roger Lake. The collapse of a badly-managed corporation is exactly like a trio of terror-supporting nations threatening us with weapons of mass destruction. Our founders contrived a nation ultimately led by the people, so in your case I will cheerfully accept your own self-description: "deranged."
PERRY DE HAVILLAND doesn't have much use for the American Constitution. Luckily, there are others who feel differently. Ayn Rand, for instance:
Ours was the first government based on and strictly limited by a written document - the Constitution - which specifically forbids it to violate individual rights or to act on whim. The history of the atrocities perpetrated by all the other kinds of governments - unrestricted governments acting on unprovable assumptions - demonstrates the value and validity of the original political theory on which this country was built.
I tend to embrace Rand's viewpoint. But then, I'm not an anarcho-libertarian.
A message from Teddy Roosevelt to Christopher Patten, Hubert Vedrine, Joschka Fischer et al:
It is not merely unwise, it is contemptible, for a nation, as for an individual, to use high-sounding language to proclaim its purposes, or to take positions which are ridiculous if unsupported by potential force, and then to refuse to provide this force. If there is no intention of providing and keeping the force necessary to back up a strong attitude, then it is far better not to assume such an attitude. The steady aim of this Nation, as of all enlightened nations, should be to strive to bring ever nearer the day when there shall prevail throughout the world the peace of justice. There are kinds of peace which are highly undesirable, which are in the long run as destructive as any war. Tyrants and oppressors have many times made a wilderness and called it peace. Many times peoples who were slothful or timid or shortsighted, who had been enervated by ease or by luxury, or misled by false teachings, have shrunk in unmanly fashion from doing duty that was stern and that needed self-sacrifice, and have sought to hide from their own minds their shortcomings, their ignoble motives, by calling them love of peace. The peace of tyrannous terror, the peace of craven weakness, the peace of injustice, all these should be shunned as we shun unrighteous war.
Almost a hundred years old, and the message is still fresh today.
HELP me out here. What was it again that Newt Gingrich did that made him such a suitable target for demonizing? Now that the dust has settled, I look back and think, "You know what? I pretty much liked a lot of the guy's ideas. Yeah, even that notebook computer thingy."
Can the Democrats succeed on this issue? Maybe, but it won't be easy. Some stereotypes die hard. The only thing harder than persuading people to see Democrats as pro-gun might be trying to convince people that not everyone in the news media is anti-gun.
Demo anti-gun hysterics helped sink the party and Al Gore in 2000. It seems that some of them, at least, can learn from their mistakes. Good.
As for that line about the media, yes, I will take some convincing on that.
For libertarians who believe in laissez faire capitalism, this is good news:
In a move that could fuel a tremendous new wave of media consolidation, federal judges threw out the ban on cable-broadcast cross-ownership Tuesday and ordered the Federal Communications Commission to either justify or eliminate the government’s 35 percent cap on one company’s national TV-household reach.
It may have been a model rocket. Or it might have had "Stinger" printed on the side. My guess is we'll never know. Even if the plane had been brought down, we'll never know.
AP reports a classic case of "Stop me before I sin again," noting that
Sen. John McCain said Tuesday he had been "tainted'' by donations from Global Crossing, but never acted improperly on behalf of the troubled telecommunications firm. The Arizona senator has received more money from Global Crossing than any other member of Congress. "I am tainted by this because I received money from them,'' McCain told reporters after addressing a luncheon in Los Angeles about the need for campaign finance reform.
John "Keating Five" McCain: up to his armpits in Other People's Money. Again.
In the mid-1990s, California refineries more than tripled the volume of MTBE to 11 percent as the most economical way to meet federally mandated specifications for low-polluting gasoline sold in urban California and other smoggy areas of the country. In 1999, Davis ordered that MTBE be phased out of California's gasoline because of its potential to pollute drinking water supplies.
The most hilarious part of this tale is this:
The price of California's gasoline will double at the pump if Gov. Gray Davis keeps his order to eliminate the environmentally troublesome MTBE additive by the end of this year, a consultant reported Tuesday.
Whee! Just in time for Grayout to be recalled, should he be lucky enough to win re-election.
Gregory Hlatky at A Dog's Life says, "Lady, your little interview should get all the publicity it can get," about Elizabeth Wurtzel's explosion of inanity in NYP's Page Six column today. I agree. Here's a sample:
"I just felt, like, everyone was overreacting," Wurtzel told a Canadian journalist last week about her experience being near Ground Zero on Sept 11. "People were going on about it. That part really annoyed me."
If you think you were annoyed then, wait until you see what happens now.
Wurtzel - whose debut book "Prozac Nation" is being made into a movie starring Christina Ricci, while her follow-up, "Bitch," flopped - also declares that when her mother called to tell her a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers, "My main thought was: What a pain in the ass."
I hadn't read Prozac Nation and now, sadly, I never will. And I wonder if it's possible for a movie to open with only two viewers nationwide. (Presuming, of course, that la Wurtzel has a mother).
Wurtzel says she "cried for all the animals left there in the neighborhood" after the attack, but as for the 3,000 human victims, "I think I have some kind of emotional block. I think I should join some support group for people who were there."
I think you should join some group that involves wet-sheet restraints and allosaurus-sized doses of your favorite drug. (Allosaurus, by the way, means "strange lizard").
Wurtzel acknowledges she'd never dare say such things in the U.S., noting, "You can't tell people this. I'm talking to you because you're Canadian."
And you're even dumber, if you can believe that, than the stereotypical Canadian, eh?
This is all obvious fish-barrelling, of course, but this is one fish that needs to be skull-whipped with a number two billy until she understands that the universe extracts a price for stupidity. Don't worry about brain damage: as far as that goes, there's no there there.
Editor -- When I heard Gov. Gray Davis say shortly after his inauguration that the Legislature exists only to implement his vision, I thought I had heard the most bizarre statement a governor could make. But then, at the state Democratic convention in Los Angeles last week, he actually topped it. Following his speech, he told a reporter: "No one in America had to go through what I had to last year." Hello, Governor. What about the thousands who lost loved ones or the thousands who lost their jobs and life savings? This incident clearly reveals the true man, and it's not pretty. WARREN HEIMAN San Anselmo
You don't understand, Warren. Those folks you're talking about are just the little people. Grayout Davis is our maximum leader.
Many thanks to MediaMinded for this link to the Arcata Police Blotter, which is published in the local newspaper of Arcata, CA . This thing reads like an unintended blog of the human condition. Here's a sample:
Wednesday, January 23 12:11 a.m. A woman complained of getting prank calls on her cell phone by someone known only as "Raven."
4:08 a.m. The sound of someone sitting. That's what a South G Street resident reported emanating from his porch. Police checked the area, and saw and heard nothing.
5:08 a.m. An hour later, same sit-uation.
10:30 a.m. Tires were reported slashed at a high-density residential inn on Union Street.
11:21 a.m. A motel employee reported someone with a four-inch knife threatening to "F" him up, destroy his car and follow him to his home.
12:20 p.m. Who needs a road? Parking lots are perfectly suitable rage-o-ramas. When someone speeds, spirited verbal exchanges follow, right when, in this case, a cop is passing by.
2:06 p.m. Back to Motel Hell, where police presence was requested as an employee was fired. He wasn't there, so his check and termination notice were to be mailed.
5:02 p.m. There was something dopey about that package, as Maggie, the happy little drug dog, verified at the Post Office. Narcotics investigation initiated.
7:46 p.m. Accounts differed so vastly – one claimed the other had tried to whap him with a crutch, while the other said the first one had tried to handcuff him – that nothing could really be done, and everyone just wanted to drop it.
9:40 p.m. A telephone tip led to capture of one of "Humboldt's Most Wanted" at a Janes Road sports bar. Robert Irwin Hardman, 26, of McKinleyville was arrested on a felony warrant alleging that he had threatened a crime with intent to terrorize. Hardman was booked and lodged in the Humboldt County Correctional Facility.
There's an endless amount more. A guy named Kevin Hoover writes it up. Do yourself a favor and check it out. You'll be curiously happy you did.
The erudite Robert Musil of Man Without Qualities writes a brilliant essay that makes clear not only why the current emphasis on the notion of "following the money" is doomed to failure, but also why campaign finance "reform" of any kind will likely meet a similar fate.
It disturbs most people to tell them that economic laws and incentives existed and applied before there was money, exist and apply independently of money, and will continue to exist and apply if money ever ceases to exist.
Anton Sherwood's blog, Sightseeing in Plato's Cave, is hellaciously good, (and not just because I know the guy, or because he mentions me). He's as strong and clear a libertarian thinker as anybody I know. On top of that, he's both scientifically literate, and well informed. Well worth a visit.
A remarkably clear-eyed view of the middle east, Israel, and Arafat, from a junior at Columbia who is emphatically not majoring in journalism. Thanks to Dr. Frank for the link.
A South African parliamentary committee Tuesday pressed Nelson Mandela's former wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, to explain how she lived such a lavish lifestyle on her parliamentarian's salary.
Could any serious person ask such a question? Could anybody with an intelligence level warmer than my grandma's socks think the question is a serious one in the first place?
In my post on my biases, I said that I don't believe life is too complicated for anybody but experts or government agencies to understand. This is a perfect example. The question being asked here by a government committee is idiotic on its face. And the answer is apparent to anybody who possesses a face and a skull to wear it on: Winnie Mandela was corrupt to the bone, and she lived high on the hog with money she stole, extorted, and embezzled from any and every source she could get her claws into.
Could there possibly be any connection between this:
Chief Deborah Brown with Southwestern University has been teaching self-defense courses for years. She says attackers look for women who seem weak and distracted while walking out of their home or a business. The Chief says to always pay attention to our surroundings and to always be prepared from the moment we step out of our home and especially while walking to our car. She doesn’t endorse using guns or even mace [itals mine-ed.] because she says those can be taken away and used against us. Instead, she says use what you have, like your keys to hit your attacker in the face.
And this?
In 2001 there were about 861 sexual assaults reported to the Austin Police Department....
In the motion, al-Saud's attorneys argued that the princess understood the seriousness of the situation and would return to [the United States] face the charge in court.
Would it be unduly cynical of me to suggest that any judge who buys this argument is either bought, or brain-dead?
Remember when this was the huge issue that was going to badly injure the Bush presidency? Now it seems like a whispering echo from someplace long ago and far away. The "protect everything at any cost" mentality that has characterized the extremist wing of the ecology movement is being seen more and more as counterproductive (national forests "protected" from natural fires until they are destroyed in massive blazes fed by decades of uncontrolled underbrush growth) or actively harmful to the body politic (we import sixty percent of our oil, in large part because, thanks to environmental lobbies, it has become too expensive to produce energy domestically).
If McCain responds to this Sierra Club campaign in any way, it will only be because of his uncontrollable antipathy to the notion of George Bush in the White House instead of himself. On the merits of the case, he should be voting with his fellow Arizona Senator, Jon Kyl, to support opening ANWR to development.
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