Click to Buy My Book
If you're interested in e-publishing, this is the book that tells you how to go about it:
everything from html to web sites to e-publishers and marketing, all discussed in simple,
non-technical language. Find out how easily you can become a part of what many have said
is the most revolutionary advance in publishing since Gutenberg. A Writer's Digest Book Club Main
Selection!
Editor -- Supervisor Chris Daly suggested that San Francisco may want to consider implementing a "maximum wage" law that would limit the amount a person can earn ("Move to set S.F. minimum wage," Feb. 28). Ironically, your story on this appeared one page in front of a two-page ad for the 16th annual Chronicle Season of Sharing Fund. It was noted that $4.1 million had been donated to the fund since Thanksgiving. Imagine how much less funding the charities would receive if everyone in San Francisco had a maximum wage and had less income to donate to this and other charities. What is going to be the next silly idea to spew from Daly's mouth? "Adopt a homeless person, pay no taxes"? TONY PATELLA San Francisco
There are two very San Francisco strains of insanity at work here: First, that one of the City's rulers can propose legislating limits on the salaries of private citizens; second, that the only objection to this Tony Patella can come up with is that such a tyrannical edict might impact charitable donations unfavorably.
Renaissance man, Nobel-level thinker, and blinding genius Bono had lunch with Condi Rice, and was amazed to find the National Security Advisor could walk and chew gum at the same time:
"She spoke very passionately herself about the subjects and knows an extraordinary amount about them for somebody so busy with the war against terrorism, and oddly enough, she sees the linkage," he said.
Oddly enough, I see the over-the-hill rocker as a pestiverous moron.
In this discussion of Daniel Pearl's murder, Mark Steyn almost off-handedly unearths an important truth:
Let's assume that all the chips fell the jihadis' way, that they recruited enough volunteers to be able to kidnap and decapitate every single Jew in Palestine. Then what? Muslims would still be, as General Musharraf told a conference the other day, "the poorest, the most illiterate, the most backward, the most unhealthy, the most unenlightened, the most deprived, and the weakest of all the human race." Who would "the victim of the world" blame next? The evidence of the Sudan, Nigeria, and other parts of Africa suggests that, when there are no Jews to hand, the Islamofascists happily make do with killing Christians. In Kashmir, it's the Hindus' fault. There's always someone.
In part, this also references the elephant in that death chamber with Daniel Pearl: he wasn't killed because he was a westerner, or a reporter, or a caucasian. He was killed because he was a Jew, a member of Islam's primary scapegoat class. They don't call it Islamofascism for nothing.
Of all those innocents whose lives were ruined by the continuous scandals of the Big He, this woman was one of the most cruelly damaged - and all because a President thought he could get away with telling lies under oath.
If you asked most people, they'd tell you that as far as they know, Enron doesn't even exist any more. That is not quite true, as this interesting, poignant WaPo analysis points out.
They've had some recent problems at the California Patriot, a conservative newspaper at UCal Berkeley:
Between the afternoon of Monday, February 25th and the morning of Tuesday the 26th, approximately $1600 worth of our publication, The California Patriot, was stolen from the office.
I kicked in ten bucks to help out. If you'd like, you can contribute as well, by clicking here.
Could be, but again it doesn't really challenge the thesis that the media bias does not provide a net benefit to liberal politicians.
Okay, how about this? Over the past fifty years, modern electronic mass media (television in particular) have become the great fulcrum upon which elections turn. But it costs vast amounts of money to purchase this media for political use. Traditionally, Republicans ("conservatives") have enjoyed an insurmountable advantage over Democrats ("liberals") in the ability to raise and deploy money for political purposes. Therefore, Republican conservatives should have been the dominant political force in America over the same period. That they have not is directly attributable to the fact that liberals get an enormous amount of "free" media exposure from sympathetically biased liberal members of the media, which counterbalances the huge advantage in ability to buy paid advertising enjoyed by the Republicans ("conservatives").
Over to you, Douglas.
UPDATE: This is what campaign finance form is really all about, by the way - a way to make that inherent liberal bias "freebie" even more effective by shrinking further the conservative ability to buy exposure.
In The Axis of Petulance , Charles Krauthammer speaks truth to power, as my lefty compatriots like to put it:
The Europeans hate preemption all the more because it means America acting on its own. And it is our unilateralism above all that sticks in their craw. Tough luck. A policy of waiting to be attacked with nuclear (and other genocidal) weapons is suicidal. Moreover, self-defense is the self-evident justification for unilateralism. When under attack, no country is obligated to collect permission slips from allies to strike back. And there is no clearer case of a war of self-defense than America's war on terrorists and allied states for whom "death to America" is not just a slogan but a policy.
...The Europeans sit and pout. What else can they do? The ostensible complaint is American primitivism. The real problem is their irrelevance.
Being subordinate they can tolerate. Irrelevant they cannot.
Krauthammer also points out the reasons why the United States can get away with a unilateralist policy in critical areas:
We maintain the stability of international commerce, the freedom of the seas, the flow of oil, regional balances of power (in the Pacific Rim, South Asia, the Middle East) and, ultimately, we provide protection against potentially rising hostile superpowers.
The last nation to achieve the sort of world-spanning power the U.S. now enjoys was Great Britain, whose navies performed a function similar to our carrier battle-groups and globe-girdling Air Force. One of the principal tasks Britain laid upon her fleets was to guarantee stability and safety to the roads, trading routes, sea lanes, and other components of the world economic system of the time. Empires may be built on force, but they are maintained by trade. Ours will be no different, except we will not seek to occupy nor govern our economic vassals and tributaries, which actually is something new under the sun. (No, the trading empires of the Italian city-states, for instance, are much different in scope and power).
One thing all true empires have done - which Krauthammer fully understands - it to reserve to themselves decisions concerning their own safety and defense. When Britain's Royal Navy was the most powerful military force on the planet, England did not consult Austria on how her battleships should be deployed in her own defense. America will not change this approach, nor should she.
This is Peggy Noonan's take on Aaron Sorkin's big mouth, and I love it. It's everything I think commentary and punditry should be. First, Noonan admits right up front her own connection with Sorkin's show, The West Wing. She's either an "adviser" or a "contributor" to the show - she can't remember which - and there might even be elements of Ainsley Hayes, the lone Republican on the show, based on Noonan herself, which she admits she loves.
Noonan explains why she also loves the show itself, despite that it is, as she puts it,
a left-wing nocturnal emission--undriven by facts, based on dreams, its impulses as passionate as they are involuntary and as unreflective as they are genuine
And then, with all this said, she defends Sorkin's right to speak his mind freely in a free country, as she should.
But it isn't bad that Aaron was frank, and it isn't bad that he put his political heart on his sleeve. He writes what is arguably the most important political show in America. He shouldn't have to hide where he stands. His New Yorker comments reminded me of the flap following the disclosure that my old boss Dan Rather had hosted a Democratic fund-raiser in Texas. He's a liberal, why shouldn't he go to a Democratic fund-raiser? And why shouldn't we know it, and factor it in as he reports the news?
This is exactly right. As I've said many times before, my gripe with the claque blatting over and over, "Ain't no bias here, no sir, no sirree bob," is their basic dishonesty. It's not the bias I mind, it's the lying about the existence of bias in the first place.
We are a vast and varied country, with a bazillion differing opinions on everything under the sun. Aaron Sorkin and I wouldn't agree on much politically, except, probably, our mutual right to disagree with each other, in public and at the top our our lungs if so desired. Sorkin thinks President Bush is a bubblehead getting a free ride. I think Sorkin is a knee-jerk lefty nitwit who happens to be a hell of a screenwriter. Sorkin would probably think I am a lackey of the fascist ruling class. And nobody is going to haul either of us off to some star chamber for expressing any of these views.
One reason why I like Donald Rumsfeld's attitude toward America's enemies:
China's Vice Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing got the cold shoulder from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld earlier this month. Mr. Li, a noted hard-line communist who once served as ambassador to the United States, had asked specifically to meet with Mr. Rumsfeld at the Pentagon on Feb. 4. The answer from Mr. Rumsfeld: "I'm too busy." Mr. Li did meet with Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and White House National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. The defense secretary, however, is said to have little interest in schmoozing with any Chinese officials after the manner in which Beijing handled the April 1 incident over the South China Sea. We are told he is still angry over the incarceration of 23 U.S. military personnel after the incident. A Chinese interceptor jet cut off a U.S. EP-3 surveillance plane and nearly killed its crew in a midair collision. The crew made an emergency landing on Hainan island, where instead of getting help, they were imprisoned for 11 days. Mr. Rumsfeld cut off all formal U.S. military exchanges with China as a result and, despite pressure from pro-China officials in the Pentagon, is resisting calls to restart the exchanges. Critics dismiss the contacts as one-sided in favor of bolstering Chinese war-fighting capabilities through access to sensitive U.S. military facilities.
Unlike President Clinton other officials we could mention.
Editor -- Susan King is correct. We voters have noticed that Gov. Gray Davis "has dropped the ball" on many of his promises. Davis should be aware that there are other choices voters can and will exercise next Tuesday. Even Democrats will do it. Davis is not untouchable. RUTH VUREK Orinda
So is this letter an outlier, or a leading indicator? Beats me, but seeing any anti-democrat sentiment in the Chron's lettercol during election season is certainly something of a rarity.
About the fresh release warpic We Were Soldiers, John Cole of Balloon Juice says:
I am, however, a little nervous that it will be another case of Hollywood taking one of my favorite books and ruining it.
He can stop worrying. Steven Hunter, the WaPo reviewer I consider the best in the business - especially with films like this - says, "It may be something like the worst great war movie ever made." Believe it or not, in the context of the review, this is a high compliment. Hunter finishes his review with this:
What Wallace gets best is the terrible intensity of men fighting to the death in a very small space with very powerful weapons. We're in an abattoir ankle deep in blood and anguish, and the guns won't stop firing and the enemy won't stop coming. Not even Spielberg's great "Saving Private Ryan," again a far more graceful cinema artifice, ever quite reaches the level of hellish desperation that Wallace brings to the long hard fight at Landing Zone X-Ray. You don't really watch the film; you survive it.
This WaPo article, Nixon Defended Envoy's Groping, is plainly intended to make Nixon out to be some sort of sexist monster.
When President Richard M. Nixon's ambassador to France got roaring drunk and began groping the flight attendants on a trip home from Paris, Nixon didn't see that much to get excited about.
For those readers of the Post whose knowledge of history extends as far back as, oh, last Tuesday, the charges may appear to make sense. But in fact, they make no more sense than would holding the Founding Fathers to book for violating the tenets of the National Organization for Women.
1972 was a different time than now. It was when the leading edge of the boomers - those born in the first post-war years - were nearing the end of the first wave of trying to remake the world. For guys, your girlfriend wasn't a "girlfriend," or even a "significant other." She was your "old lady," or your "mama." The feminist movement as a formal social artifact was barely out of its infancy - N.O.W. was six years old then. The battle cries - even for the troops in Vietnam - were sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Men - especially older men - still weren't paying a hell of a lot of attention to where they were putting their hands, and the women who were paying attention hadn't yet banded together to tell them to keep their hands to themselves. The fact that Democrats made a major issue out of the incident had far more to do with hard-nosed partisanship than it did with any real concern for women's rights. Two years later, high-ranking Democrat Wilbur Mills, one of Nixon's tormentors, destroyed his own career by hijinks with a stripper called "The Argentine Firecracker."
Things changed, and once the changes got rolling, they rolled pretty fast. But in 1972, that ball hadn't even hit the court. Nixon was a dangerous man, but "condoning sexual harassment" was not among his many crimes. That law hadn't been written yet.
Andreas at More Than Zero offers an explanation of the economic implications of tax cuts that is so clear even an innumerate moron like me can follow it. It will probably fly right over the heads of the coven of Krugman-worshippers at The New Republic, though.
Sharp reductions in the number of U.S. troops in Bosnia could shrink the total to about 10 percent of the 20,000 Americans who were sent to the Balkans country six years ago to help enforce a peace accord, Gen. Joseph W. Ralston told Congress on Thursday.
Six years ago, 20,000 American troops were stationed in Bosnia as part of an overall NATO force of 60,000.
Ralston said the U.S. total is reviewed every six months, and last year it was down to 4,400 Americans. At present, Ralston said, there are a little more than 3,000 Americans in the country.
The issue is politically delicate for Clinton. When he first committed troops late last year, he pledged that they would be home by the end of 1996, although from the start aides said the deadline was merely an approximation. In recent months the administration has acknowledged that a few thousand troops would remain until March to oversee a gradual withdrawal.
Republicans in Congress have charged the president with deceiving the public about the longer-term commitment, even as administration officials have insisted that decisions about future troops in Bosnia have not been made.
Damn those filthy Republicans! How could they even think of accusing President Clinton of (gasp) deception?
Tim Blair links to this story by Helen Hughes that exposes the anti-globalist dick-ninnie demonstrators for what they really are: crypto-nazis. The "radical progressive" movements have always had a strong whiff of fascism to them. This article makes clear just how overpowering that stench can sometimes become.
At some point, stories like this one are going to fuel a lemming-like march directly into the realm of unintended consequences:
A CBS News undercover investigation tested airport security using a $150 fake driver's license to purchase tickets on three major airlines.
The tickets were used at five different airports in California and Nevada. We found that ticket and security agents paid little attention to the counterfeit driver's license, which contained a made-up name and address. Not one of them even asked for a second look or for it to be removed from the wallet...
With each media expose of yet another "hole" in airport security - and the resulting frenzy to "fix" said hole with ever more stringent inspections - at some point the efforts to encourage airline travel by increasing security will be negated by the vast numbers of people who will no longer fly because of the inconvenience caused by increased airline security.
If you stop and think about this, it really is a testament to the power of the blogosphere. Andrew Sullivan's crusade against Paul Krugman in his blog has been so successful it's even drawn the top-drawer opinion mags like The New Republic into the fray. Or do you think TNR Senior Editor Jonathan Chait would be writing thousand word rebuttals of Sullivan's charges if he were making them in the Fayettville Weekly Shopper and Light?
Some might counter that it's Sullivan's use of his lofty position as a well-known commentator, writer, talking head, and fellow editor with Chait at TNR that Chait finds so bothersome, but Chait makes no mention of all that. No, he bangs on about Sullivan's blog, even to the point of tallying up the number of times Sullivan mentions Krugman's name.
It's as a bloggista that Chait finds Sullivan worrisome, and you know what? He's right. He should worry. It's finally sunk in to people at Marty Peretz's level that Sullivan, on a financial shoestring, has assembled a readership as large - and very possibly as influential - as TNR's own. Not bad for a guy Marty once canned as TNR's editor.
Sorry, I had to blog this just for the damned hed alone. Who cares what the rest of it says? No way it can be anything but hilarious. Go ahead, make up your own punch lines.
UPDATE: I read it, and it's worse than I thought. Does anybody ever think about these after-dinner groaners? Listen to this:
"There are 40 million AIDS cases a day and if we don't do something about it, there will be 100 million AIDS cases a day."
Forty million cases of AIDS each day? Okay, hum, mm, ah, world population of 6,208,000,000, um, divide by 40 mill, hmm, hm, okay. Everybody in the world gets aids within 155 days. That's at forty million. At the dreaded upcoming hundred million, it only takes sixty-two days.
Whoops. We're all doomed. Especially if we pay any attention to idiotic blather like this.
WaPo columnist Richard Cohen, while discussing Joe "Primary Colors" Klein's new book on President Clinton, reveals his iron-willed sense of objectivity about the former president:
I wanted that very much because, as anyone who reads my column must know by now, I like Bill Clinton and hate his enemies.
Actually, I applaud this, and I'd love to see more of it. I have absolutely nothing against totally biased journalism, as long as the journos practicing it admit that's what they're doing. Tell me you love Clinton and hate the VRWC up front, and I read you cheerfully, knowing just how many grains of salt I need to pour on your tail in order to make you a tasty dish.
I wish more commentators had the balls to come out of the closet like this. The world would be a better place if they did.
Eighty year old Senator Fritz Hollings boots another one:
"In comes the administration with whom? Larry Lindsey. Larry Lindsey was the $50,000-a-year consultant for Enron who was running around saying that it was unconstitutional to try to close down these things. And so they immediately, this time last year, closed down the Larry Summers effort and you had 9/11," [ital mine -ed.] he said. However, the Treasury Department, which has been tracking financial accounts of terrorists, said that it has been tracing the Al Qaeda accounts and they did not go through offshore tax havens. It was only one of several misstatements Hollings has made over the course of the Enron investigation, in which he incorrectly identified Bush budget director Mitch Daniels, Security and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham as former employees of Enron. On top of that, aides say Hollings, 80, misspoke when he botched a line referring to Attorney General John Ashcroft as the energy secretary. "When the president comes in and he appoints the secretary of energy (sic) who's had to recuse himself on account of his conflict of interest ..."
While I'm not terribly enamored of term limits, I'd be willing to consider an age limit on government service.
The news that a third of the prisoners at Gitmo have started a hunger strike boggles the mind.
This article doesn't say whether the prisoners are making demands and using the strike as leverage, or whether this is a concerted attempt at mass suicide.
If the first, it shows that the prisoners, at least, believe their jailers care enough about their well-being to be affected by threats to it, even if the threats come from the prisoners themselves.
If the second, what is the ethical position here? Should we protect them against their will? Or should we let them achieve their wish for a chance at those 72 virgins?
Interesting news from the Communist Caribbean paradise:
More than a dozen asylum-seekers stole a bus and used it to smash their way into the Mexican Embassy in Havana Wednesday night after rumors swept the capital that Mexico was offering to take in Cubans wanting to leave the communist-run island, Reuters witnesses said.
In a rare outbreak of public violence, police reacted aggressively, chasing, beating and detaining people in the street and attacking two Reuters journalists with batons.
Cool. Speed meets The Bearded Cigar. Bet those Reuters journalists wish they were in Gitmo right about now, rather than enjoying the People's hospitality. Bet most of Cuba wishes the same thing.
Has Amnesty International sent in a crack inspection team yet?
Editor -- Regarding the article by Lyssa Friedman, "The cure for voter apathy" (Open Forum, Feb. 26): The cure is as easy as 1-2-3. Make voting compulsory: You must vote, and be able to prove it, to enjoy benefits of citizenship. Make it easy. Get rid of the ridiculous notion of the election on a certain day, especially a workday. Give us a week, at least, and a variety of ways to vote. Make it honest. Make it a misdemeanor to reveal how you have voted (especially to the news media) until after the official results are announced - - eliminating exit polls, forecasting results, etc. Set reasonable limits on the form and manner of political advertising. And then make sure the process is absolutely bullet-proof. Know what you'd get? A truly democratic election that actually reflects, as well as possible, the will of the people. PHIL DeGUERE San Francisco
Bulletproof? An apt analogy, Phil DeGuere. Where did this idea come from? The Fascists for Democracy handbook?
I've just about come to the conclusion that the nearly-legendary "Stephanie," who's taken over AintNoBadDude in Brian Linse's absense, is really the BadDude himself in digital drag, having everybody on - especially the Samizdorks.
The only thing that throws a slight hitch in my thesis is that "Stephanie" seems to be a far funnier writer than Linse ever dreamed of being.
UPDATE: AintNoBadDude lists Kinky Friedman, musician and writer, as one of his friends. Mr. Friedman is the author of several novels, some of which feature the character Stephanie DuPont. Odd coincidence, eh? (Thanks to Ray Eckhart and Ken Goldstein for the tips).
Dr. Frank linked to this article, which describes how a pistolsmith named Jack Weigand had his order for a Dell notebook cancelled without notification because the name of his business was Weigand Combat Handguns, Inc.
My first reaction was to say, as Dr. Frank does, "to hell with these assholes, boycott'em." However, the SierraTimes, in which the original article appeared, contacted Dell for a follow-up and received this in reply, from Michael Dell himself.
I'm still not sure how I feel about this. For one thing, I can't see how Dell could have legitimate concerns about exports when shipping to an address inside the United States. Sure, one might say it is possible that the receiver intended to reship the computer, but really, can't that be said about any customer Dell might ship to?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but to my knowledge neither Dell Corporation nor Michael Dell himself have been notably or publicly anti-gun. Yet something sure smells funky about this deal. If anybody knows the real story, please let me know.
While I am cognizant of - and highly sympathetic to - the emotional stress and upheaval suffered by the families of those who died in the 9/11 attacks, I can't agree that this is a good idea.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating the sort of wall-to-wall, 24/7 replay of the attacks we saw in the days immediately following. But even after so short a time - not yet six months - the events themselves seem faded, as if they happened on...well, on television. Somehow they've lost their stark, horrifying reality.
Yes, of course, part of that is the natural human healing process. We pack emotional scar tissue over our psychic wounds and eventually close them. But I think that, as long as we are at war, an occasional graphic reminder of why we are fighting cannot be that bad an idea. More than three thousand Americans died on that terrible day. Let's make damned sure we don't forget how horribly they died, and how horrible their killers were.
If we do let time soothe us into forgetfulness, the terrorists won't have won. But in some almost tangible way, those thousands of Americans will have died in vain. I don't want to see that happen.
With all due respect to Andrew Sullivan, you can't win running as a Democrat in a Republican primary:
With one week left before Election Day, the political novice and multimillionaire has leapfrogged ahead of former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan by six percentage points, 37 percent to 31 percent among likely voters. Secretary of State Bill Jones trailed with 9 percent.
If this holds, Simon will win the primary, just as I predicted. And I still think he's fifty-fifty to take Gray Davis out in the fall.
Yes, this is piling on, but Paul Greenberg can pile on with the best of them. And in the course of pummeling Peanut Jimmeh Catarrh back into the mush from which he sprang, he also exposes the bankruptcy of Democratic foreign policy. Not a bad two-fer at all.
John C. Dvorak thinks blogs are cult manifestations:
Try to find a blog that is ever critical of another blog. I've never seen it.
Aside from the determined wrong-headedness of such thinking - he seems to believe blogs are some sort of Usenet extension, compete with flame wars - what is truly hilarious about this screed is Dvorak's contention that the obvious mark of a cult is the constantly proffered explanation to non-believers, "You just don't get it."
I wonder I Dvorak "gets" that, to finish off his column, he performed a classic blogospherean takedown of the Cluetrain Manifesto, perfect even to form and rhythm? The non-bloggers at NRO's non-blog, The Corner couldn't have done it better.
What is it with these guys? Do they think that if they call masturbation "sniffing the roses" long enough, somebody is going to believe them? Anyway, here you go, John, you unconscious bloggista, you: I was just critical of your blog. Do you get it yet? (Link courtesy Gary Farber).
One of the complaints about the blogosphere is that it is essentially parasitic: It feeds off the reporting done by "real" reporters in order to provide its own punditry.
This is certainly true in most cases (though not all) but I don't believe it will necessarily be so in the future. In fact, one of the hallmarks of the future will be that almost everything will be recorded in a database somewhere.
Reporting tends to fall into two main areas: the "you are there" variety, which involves reports from the scene of the crime, the battlefront, the orbiting trip into space. But really, all this involves is a camera - the soundovers, with enough bandwidth, could be done by anybody, from anywhere. And eventually they will be.
The second is the investigative variety, with a reporter or teams of reporters working to dig out information about things that have already occurred. This might be tougher for the blogosphere to duplicate, but not, I think, impossible. Eventually, it will become impractical for any conspiracy to function without its networking, databases, hard drives, email and instant messaging. And eventually, a reporter, in order to deal with this, will assume many of the qualities and capabilities we associate with hackers (and code-crackers) today.
Imagine what might happen even now if a collective of international bloggers were to hook up with a squad of super-talented hackers, something along the lines of the old LoPhT crew, in order to hack for information that the blogosphere would then process and distribute.
This may sound like science fiction now, (doesn't everything these days?) but in the not too distant future, it's going to sound like the way news reporting gets done.
The United States today proposed a "global and comprehensive ban" on human cloning and all experimentation involving human embryos. The announcement marked an expansion in the Bush administration's campaign to restrict the uses of human embryos for scientific and medical purposes.
This isn't going to fly. For one thing, it goes against the best interests of nations who don't share US minority religious concerns with cloning procedures. And it's doubtful that this unilateralist initiative will receive any more acceptance than other attempts by the U.S. to get out in front of the crowd by itself. George Bush may hold honest convictions about cloning, but in the end, this is just grandstanding for the base.
WHY THE BLOGOSPHERE DOES AS GOOD A JOB AS JOURNO-PUNDITS - AT LEAST: Man Bites Blog links to this Anna Quindlen story wherein she says:
Bush the elder argued that economic conditions did not meet the strict definition of recession and made a disastrous appearance at a grocers’ convention that suggested he had never made the acquaintance of a supermarket scanner.
Either Quindlen has been living under a rock the past several years, or she's cluelessly out of touch with Democratic propaganda, which would be odd since she's such a fount of the stuff herself. In short, the tale of President Bush 41 being stunned at the unfamiliar sight of a grocery checkout scanner is simply not true, as the excellent site snopes.com points out:
Claim: During a photo opportunity at a 1988 grocers' convention, President George Bush was "amazed" at encountering supermarket scanners for the first time. Status: False.
Quindlen should know better. I suspect she does know better. But for mainstream journos with a particular agenda, this hoary old chestnut is just too delicious not be be used again, and again, and again. And again.
The talented Iain Murray sends me scurrying to read an article quoting him at the ABC web site, where I find:
He also says upcoming elections in France and Germany may be pushing politicians there to show they are not merely towing the American line.
It's "toe the line," of course. I'm sure Iain, being demonstrably literate, knows the difference. Too bad the interviewer didn't let him copy-edit the piece before it was published.
Other uses of the technology on the horizon, from an added device that would allow satellite tracking of an individual's every movement to the storage of sensitive data like medical records, are already attracting interest across the globe for tasks like foiling kidnappings or assisting paramedics.
Or instituting the most smothering tyrannies ever devised by mankind.
"If either party is not going to speak for them, then those of us in positions of moral leadership must stand up."
The thought of Al Sharpton campaigning in Iowa makes my head hurt. The only moral leadership Big Al ever demonstrated was in the race to the buffet table.
Clinton studied the interests of other leaders, became close friends with some and put great thought into gifts.
"He liked to know more than what was in the briefing books," Hanlin said. "He looked for the leaders' passions. ... It really raised the level of the meaning of the state gifts."
I don't know about you, but I want to visit the Hall of Condoms wing of his library.
Here's the new law, same as the old law: stand still, go to jail.
"Congress shall make no law...abridging...the right of the people peaceably to assemble."
I wonder if these people have heard of the 14th Amendment? It extended the provisions in the Constitution and Bill of Rights to the people of the individual states. Of course, that only happened in 1868, so maybe word hasn't filtered out to Chicago yet.
The city has designated about 90 so-called "hot spots," areas deemed troubled by gangs, drugs and violence. The list, which is complied by police and community leaders, is kept secret by the city. It is reviewed quarterly.
"The only time under this ordinance that anyone can be arrested is if they disobey the officer's order to move on," Rosenthal said.
"The uniformed police officer is enormously handicapped, because when he drives by the scene of a gang hot spot, the gang members simply pretend to be innocently loitering and other laws can't be used" without endangering the lives of witnesses, he said.
Hmm. Secret lists of "hot spots." Disobey a cop's "order to move on." "Innocently loitering."
You know what you call a state where people loitering on secretly listed corners can be arrested by police for failing to move on? I'll tell you what you don't call it: a state governed by free citizens.
Here you have the best of both worlds: Illinois, whose major city, Chicago, is a byword in corruption, embroiled in a messy caper with the casino boys, another shining star of ethical probity.
As my grandmother used to say, "You're known by the company you keep." She also said, "Nothing good's going to come of this."
David Broder ventures out of the Beltway and discovers that most Americans don't give a rat's patootie about his most cherished causes. Campaign finance reform? The Bush/Kennedy educrat support bill? What all dat stuff?
He blames the war. I salute the country's good sense. And actually, I understand Broder's worries. If voters are vastly more worried about prosecuting a war against terrorists who've already murdered thousands, and bid fair to at least try to murder more, then they aren't paying any attention to the oh-so-complex issues the Democrats think they can run on. Broder is discovering the mid-term elections are going to turn on George Bush and the war, not new Donkey proposals for highway funding pork.
Mr. Broder, a solidly liberal, pro-Democrat pundit, doesn't like that at all.
You just gotta love that wacky libertarian sense of humor:
The ad shows a huge blowup of the face of Drug Czar John Walters, and states: "This week, I had lunch with the President, testified before Congress, and helped funnel $40 million in illegal drug money to groups like the Taliban."
Or how about something like this? "Legalize drugs and cut the incomes of thousands of corrupt cops and judges by 25%." Not a grabber for you? Okay, how about: "Hi, I'm John Ashcroft, and I'd like to tell you about our new price support program for illegal drugs. It will guarantee Colombian drug cartels 13 billion dollars in income this year."
I've got a million of them. (Link courtesy Heretical Ideas).
SHAIDAN, Afghanistan -- In this village that no longer exists, the dead outnumber the living.
A mound of gray earth beside the gutted village school covers 42 corpses. Across the road is a smaller grave with six corpses. Up a donkey path, toward the silver-peaked Baba Mountains, villagers say they have found more mass graves.
All of the dead were Hazaras executed by the Taliban, said Abdul Rahman Shaidani, head of the village shura, or council of elders. The Taliban burned and sacked Shaidan not once but twice during the last three years, he said.
Across the soaring mountains and plunging gorges of central Afghanistan, local residents say, the Taliban conducted a reign of terror against the Hazara ethnic group.
For nearly five years, Hazara leaders say, the Taliban jailed, tortured and executed thousands of Hazaras.
And some have questioned using the term "Islamofascists." Mark my words, before this is done, investigators will turn up the burial pits and the mass graves.
Reader Randall Parker sends me this poll. I suppose I should be upset about the results, but to tell the truth, I really don't care whether they like us - as long as they are terrified by even the notion of attacking us.
Remember how many weird and contradictory reports we got out of Afghanistan prior to the initiation of formal hostilities? Maybe that's why this sounds so familiar.
You have to be fast on the draw in the blogosphere, but sometimes you get a misfire anyway.
It would help if some of these advocacy groups had somebody - anybody - who had some passing acquaintance with honest statistics. Or just with honesty itself.
A French criminal court said Tuesday it would try Internet giant Yahoo Inc. and its former president for allegedly condoning war crimes by allowing the sale of Nazi memorabilia on Yahoo sites.
Former Yahoo President Timothy Koogle faces a maximum sentence of five years and a $39,800 fine if found guilty -- a verdict that could have broad implications for international free-speech rights in the Internet age. France ordered the California-based company in November 2000 to stop people in France from accessing the sites, but a U.S. federal judge ruled last November that Yahoo was not bound to comply with French laws governing Internet content on U.S.-based sites.
This can only widen the gulf between Europe and the United States. What some might think a minor dispute is in fact a direct confrontation between the European legal system and the U.S. Constitution.
If Yahoo loses (and it probably will) it doesn't mean that French law has any effect in the United States. However, it would allow penalties to be applied if Yahoo executives were to find themselves within French areas of authority, or in regions that have reciprocity agreements with the French government. (read: European Union). It would also permit French authorities to move against Yahoo assets in France if fines are imposed.
If France prevails, Yahoo will no doubt knuckle under, and allow Yahoo policies worldwide to be determined by French courts. After all, Yahoo has not demonstrated any great amount of bravery in defending freedom - even when it's their own - elsewhere. It's a slippery slope, though. Just as bad money drives out good, we run the risk of having content on the global internet regulated by the lowest common denominator.
This story is getting minor play, but not nearly enough. One of the reasons is that it doesn't fit into the conventional wisdom as promulgated by the wise men of the loyal opposition.
Pakistan said Tuesday it would seek the death penalty for those involved in the kidnapping and slaying of American journalist Daniel Pearl.
I have no doubt they will certainly try. If, as has been reported elsewhere, Omar Sheikh, a primary suspect, has ties to elements of the Pakistani secret service, then this approach makes a lot of sense to everybody involved - at least from the Pakistani point of view.
Of course the U.S. would like to get their hands on Sheikh, because if ISI did have something to do with Pearl's death, we'd like to know about it. For exactly the same reason, all Pakistani elements would not like this outcome. It would embarass the Musharraf government no end, and it would threaten the fundamentalist elements of ISI even more. From both Pakistani viewpoints, then, a dead Sheikh is the best Sheikh.
They can have their cake an eat it too, if they can keep control of the suspects and the trial. The suspects can be properly convicted and then properly hanged or shot. That would satisfy the American "street's" thirst for vengeance, and it would permanently silence a potentially embarassing or dangerous series of revelations from the suspects themselves.
The key to understanding this story is simple, and very old: Dead men tell no tales.
Now the Animal "Liberation" [Yes, those are sneer quotes -ed.] Front morons can add hypocricy to their resume, along with stupidity, viciousness, self-hatred, and cruelty to animals:
One of the beagle dogs taken in the December raid was found wandering the streets in West Palm Beach, Florida in the beginning of February, according to police. The dog was reported to be in in a starved, emaciated condition and was turned into the local dog shelter. The animal was treated by a vet and with a locator chip on the dog, traced back to Marshall Farms. “Seems strange that the people who claim they are out to save the animals would let that happen,” said State Police Investigator, Frank DiRisio.
No, it doesn't seem strange at all, not if you understand that these idiotic thugs are, first and foremost, liars.
Canada's intelligence service said yesterday there is evidence Iraq, Iran and North Korea were aggressively trying to develop nuclear weapons, bolstering George W. Bush's controversial claim that those nations form an "axis of evil."
The reason that most of the American public supported President Bush's use of the now-notorious phrase is that they believed it to be true. Now Canada releases indications that it may actually be so.
Look for the abashed shuffling away from Euro denunciations of Bush to continue.
![[Powered by
Blogger]](http://buttons.blogger.com/bloggerbutton1.gif){kind=small}
