A district judge finally admits that the LAPD meets the legal definition of a racketeering organization and can be sued as such.

Speaking of cults, officers of the Salvation Army, for the first time, will be allowed to marry people who are not also officers of the Sally Army.

And speaking of cults and marriage therein, here is the first sentence of an AP story: "The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church, has been charged with catching too many fish during a visit to Alaska."

More signs of the former colonies getting uppity: Tartarstan (which actually is a current colony) is dropping the Cyrillic alphabet, forced on them by decree by Stalin in 1939. And Estonia just ordered too Russian diplomats out for being spies.

Putin said that that giant tv tower burning down was a symbol, in some way or other, of the failed policies of the past. Actually, as it turns out, the way the fire was handled was a symbol of the failed policies of the present, in this case Putin's obsessive centralization. The fire would have been smaller and less dangerous to the firefighters, had they turned off the electricity to the building, which seems like an obvious decision, but one no one was willing to risk their careers by taking. So someone called his boss, who called his boss, etc, until Putin himself gave permission, three hours later.

The Anti-Defamation League asks Joe Lieberman to stop being so damned religious. Joe the Jew increasingly reminds me of a job my great-uncle once had, to sit in an office and look Jewish. Not do any actual work, just look Jewish. I'm not sure if he had to sound Jewish too, but in his later film extra days he was always ordered not to speak on camera, although I've never been sure how they got him to shut up, which god knows no one else could ever do, but I digress.
4/2/05: hello to all who Googled to this spot looking for information about Joe Lieberman's nudism. Click here for that. Don't say I never did anything for you.

In Nigeria, President Clinton is presented with a ceremonial hoe. How disappointed he must have been to find out that it was an agricultural implement.

In Zimbabwe, Chenjorai "Hitler" Hunzvi is deposed as head of the veterans' organization that has been occupying land. He has been accused of running the organization "like a dictator." Fancy that! Actually, Hunzvi is not himself even a veteran. I think he was in Oxford, or the Texas Air National Guard or something during the civil war.

The UN still has 4,000 victims of the Srebrenica massacre stacked up in a warehouse, that noone is providing the funds to identify.

A Tennessee car dealer is offering a free rifle with every car purchased.

Portugal re-legalizes killing animals in public so that it can take away the tourists who want to see non-wimpy bullfights against Spain, which has finally begun to realize how icky they are (Catalonia banned them last year).

If you think that global warming is bad, you aren't thinking like an entrepreneur and you may possibly avoid going to hell. The fashionable drink in Beverly Hills is now melted Arctic iceberg ($10 a bottle).

5A correction from the NY Times: "In an article yesterday about a visit by VP Al Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman to a Jewish community center in Florida misattributed a Yiddish greeting. It was Mr. Lieberman, not Mr. Gore, who said "Shalom aleichem"; Mr. Gore said, "Mazel tov."

Alert readers will be anticipating a correction of the correction.

I believe I forgot to follow something up. For a couple of weeks after the Philadelphia police beat up that guy, I was asking whether or not he had a gun as they initially claimed, the sole inadequate explanation they offered for their behaviour. As it turned out, the cop who had been shot was shot by another cop accidentally.

A story this week has Shrub intervening to pull an RNC ad before it is aired, attacking Gore with out of context quotes. Keep in mind that this ad was produced by the party and not by his election committee and that previously when such soft-money ads were used against his opponents he claimed that he couldn't control them, or it would be a violation of the 1st amendment. Now he wants credit for doing what he said he couldn't do.

If you are a Christian surfer, you will want to attend Jesus Surf Classics 2000. But then again, you probably aren't a Christian surfer.

This week the British high court ordered the surgical separation of Siamese twins who are, I believe, 3 weeks old. Separation would mean the death of one, but save the other. The parents, who are Christian surfers, no, that can't be right can it, well, they're idiots of some variety, think that God wants the two to stay together. Anyway, the pope has offered them sanctuary.

Watching the convention tonight, I was able to see my Congresscritter Ellen Tauscher. Like UCSC chancellor Sinsheimer (who by the way was evidently important in launching the human genome project, confirming what the Daily Show said about it: In case you're wondering, yes it will be used for evil), who would have preferred to be running a different sort of school, Tauscher practically claimed to represent Silicon Valley.

Gore is leaning awfully heavily on his wife and daughters to try to make him seem human. His son, exploited so effectively in the past, was virtually nowhere to be seen. Today we saw a bunch of photographs allegedly taken by Tipper. Some amateur photographers consistently cut off people's heads, Tipper consistently cut off Bill Clinton, who I don't think appeared in a single one of hundreds of shots.

Also speaking tonight, Louisiana Senator John Breaux, who last week said of Joe Lieberman, "I don't think American voters care where you go to church on Sunday." And a happy shalom to you too, senator.

I've heard at least 6 times during the convention that Gore volunteered to go to Vietnam in order that no one else from Carthage would be drafted in his place. Given that he was given a safe job in Vietnam, and a bodyguard, I don't see how that follows.

Pat Buchanan has his gall bladder removed. Well I could have told you the man had too much gall. They should have removed his spleen as well.

Farewell to Edward Craven Walker, the inventor of the lava lamp. And a nudist. In case you were wondering, he invented the thing in 1963.

One more country which seized bank accounts and such of Jews killed in the Holocaust: Israel.

The British police are trying to create a national DNA database but are finding some serious resistance from...the British police, who really of all people need to be typed so that they can be eliminated as possible contaminants of crime scenes, but the coppers are afraid their saliva will be tested for drugs or that the results might be turned over to the Child Support Agency.

Speaking of DNA, Bush sets another execution date for the guy he gave a stay so that he could have his DNA tested. So we now know that Texas has great safeguards and never executes innocent people. I still say the whole thing was a set-up.

Caught most of Jesse Jackson's speech yesterday. He referred to Lieberman as "one of the good hymies." All right, he didn't, but it would have been less creepy than his introduction of the slogan "Stay Out the Bushes."

Caroline Kennedy (Insert name of lesser mortal she married here) invoked her father, and informed us that her daughter slept with a teddy bear which she called Uncle Teddy. Only a Kennedy would fail to realize how utterly creepy that was.

Today Joe Lieberman gave a rousing speech. Well, it didn't rouse me: I woke up after it had started, but I fell back asleep. He didn't invoke God five million times in this speech, but he did attack Hollywood, saying something about how parents shouldn't have to compete with the culture in raising their children.

I suppose it would be a really cheap shot to insert at this juncture that Israeli Orthodox Jews, continuing a program of arson against sex shops and such in Tel Aviv, burned down a brothel today, killing four people.

I was awake for Tommy Lee Jones's speech, which I actually enjoyed. What is it in this election about good ol' boys in the Ivy League? Tommy Lee talked about huntin' with coon dogs (fortunately, Jesse Jackson was not speaking afterwards. Sorry.) in the context of trying to humanize his old Harvard roomie. Al Gore was also a Star Trek fan, but then so was Alan Keyes. And George "W" used chewing tobaccy while attending Yale Business School.

The Democrats have a trans-gendered delegate, from Minnesota. And no, not the governor.

The Russian Orthodox Church has canonized Tsar Nicholas II and all his awful family. Not, of course, their servants who were also executed--they were just doing their duty, according to the church.

Headline in NY Times: "West Nile Found in Brooklyn". Now that's lost.

Clinton gave another of his Alzheimer's-inducing speeches: four hours later and I can't remember a word of it.

I do like the theme, Are you better off now than you were 8 years ago. Personally, I'm not, but it's still a pretty good theme. With all the sound-bite theft of these two conventions, I can't wait to see who gets to use "There you go again" first.

Hillary said something, and I believe I'm paraphrasing here, about Gore being able not just to talk the stiff robotic talk, but walk the stiff robotic walk.

As I write, it is ladies' night at the Democratic convention. Barbara Mikulsi has said that such women are changing the face of the US Senate. A national tv audience of 3 looked at Mikulski's face on their screens and shuddered.

Don't blame me, she's the one that brought it up.

Fun fact of the day: it is illegal to get a vasectomy in France.

Japan has been influencing small nations to vote to allow Japan to kill endangered whale species by threatening to withhold foreign aid.

Some Japanese want to go to Australia for the Olympics, but being Japanese don't want to take more than one day off work. The result: "banzai tours."

Barbara Boxer spoke a little while ago. Who knew she was still alive, much less one of my Senators?

Shrub wants Gore to distance himself still further from Clinton's sex life, because I don't think any of us have heard nearly enough about what everyone thinks about that. "If he's got a problem with what on in the past, he ought to explain what it is." Shrub has a problem with what on in the past: twenty years of his past is just a blur in his memory. This is the Bush who executed one retarded guy this week, of whom the prosecutor said that he should be executed because he was retarded, and therefore more dangerous, and another guy from whose jury all minorities had been systematically excluded, in accordance with the handbook prosecutors used in Houston until they were caught at it.

Pat Buchanan managed to find a black woman who supports the Confederate flag. Buy that woman and put her on the ticket!

A Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania had Back to School Sale signs over its ammo.

An article in the New Statesman on the British obsession with class, from a South African Oxford don who used to be at Magdalen College, Oxford, which is pronounced just as it is spelled, if it were spelled Maudley. Magdalen was the place that turned down Laura Spence, who had to settle for Harvard, as I mentioned once before. The article talks about the college's old master, Sir Herbert Warren, a great snob. He liked to greet every incoming freshman. One year one of those was the Imperial Prince of Japan. Warren asked him what his name, Prince Chichibou, actually meant. "The Son of God," Chichi said. Warren replied, "Of course you'll find we have the sons of many famous men here at Magdalen." But there was also the labor historian R H Tawney, who once pulled out a chair for a visitor, a guest called Sir Arthur Cholmondley-Withers, saying "Have a seat Mr. Withers." Sir A C-W insisted, "Cholmondley-Withers, if you please!" Tawney pulled up another chair: "Have two seats then."

Dick Cheney, who does not plan to sell off his company's stocks until after he is elected, just as Leiberman plans to run for his Senate seat, was allowed by his oil company to retire 3 years early and still keep all his benefits. This is in essence a $10 million favor, which some might call a bribe, but not me, so sirree bob.

Last year, one Michael Forbes, Congresscritter for NY, switched from the R's to the D's. Yeah, I don't remember it either. This means that the R's, who would really like to defeat the turn-coat, have in their possession outtakes from campaign commercials he shot when he was with them, in which he made farting sounds with his armpits. They are considering whether they might wish to make some use of that footage in this election.

Iran may raise its minimum marriage age for females from 9.

Texas now has more prisoners than California, despite having a population not two-thirds the size (although Walker is doing his best to kill them off, one retarded guy at a time. Didja read the story about the retarded guy who was so eager to please that after confessing to a Texas Ranger, he climbed into his lap? Heartwarming.) 163,000 prisoners each. But Texas has a lot more people than that with concealed weapon permits. Including all those priests. Don't mess with Texas.

Britain has been having one of its little panics over paedophilia, thank to the News of the World publishing the names and addresses of registered sex offenders. Today the 3-year old child of one of the leaders of the vigilantes was found in the street 3 blocks away from home and naked, while his mother was off giving a tv interview.

Two favorite headlines of the day: "Firemen Act as Anteater's Gynaecologist" and "State Outlaws Farmyard Noises."

The rabbi leader of the Shas Party in Israel says that all the Jews killed in the Holocaust were reincarnated sinners. Well, that's ok then. To quote Arnold Schwarzenegger when asked in True Lies if he'd killed people, "Ya, but they were all bad." I've said it before and I'll said it again, that Shas is one bad mother...

In his speech at the Convention, Bush made fun of Gore's use of the word "risky," painting him as a man too timid to take a spin of the wheel and "risk" wrecking Social Security, the big weenie. Now Gore has returned the favor by picking Lieberman, pulling the teeth of Junior's Christian rhetoric.

I'm curious about why this was announced when it was, very early in the morning, one day before it was scheduled, and not one day after Gore said that he still hadn't made up his mind. It doesn't say a lot for his conviction that the prig from Connecticut is the best man for the job.

Nothing I've heard of Lieberman's record today suggests that he is anything other than a Republican, but with a sense of humor. And to answer my first question about a sabbath observant Jew, yes he can push the button and annihilate the world on the sabbath, but he might have to walk five miles through the snow first to do it.

Last comments on the Republican Convention, really

Molly Ivins suggests to Bush's speechwriters that the comment on restoring civility to Washington should have come at least two paragraphs away from his last attempt to shiv the Dems.

And she reminds me that whoever spoke for Utah began "Utah, the only state that begins with U". And ends with "tah". Personally, I preferred Wyoming, "the land of high altitudes, low multitudes and good attitudes."

Dennis Miller points out that the "Leave No Child Behind" night was capped by a speech by Laura Bush, who gave up a teaching job to help her husband's political career.

Miller also says that Al Gore couldn't be more phony if he were a professional Al Gore impersonator.

The Washington Post finally breaks the news that Mary Cheney is gay. Remember, you heard it here first. Incessantly.

The Queen Mum is 100 years old today, and doesn't look a day over dead.

The Republican Convention has inspired me. Later in this month I will have my opportunity to participate in the sacred duty of every citizen to weasel their way out of jury duty.

Convention

In the big news of the day, the skull of anti-Pope Benedict XIII (14th century) has been stolen in Spain and is being held hostage. It has magical powers.

The Republican Convention continues to put all of its blacks (none of whom besides Julius Caesar Watts have been nominated by the party for elective office, you'll notice) right up there on the podium, so that the delegates can feel secure that their wallets won't be lifted.

The Post comments that having it in historic Philadelphia just reminds everyone how far leadership in this country has fallen in 200 years. And Gerald Ford (whose presidency almost looks good in comparison, huh? I mean, he did restore the nation's self-respect with the Mayaguez incident) nearly fulfilled the W. C. Fields nightmare of dying in Philadelphia.

No, Mary Cheney's girlfriend did not show up.

In the primaries, McCain referred to Bush's soft-money-financed machine as the Death Star. At the convention, he was brought on to the tune of John Williams's theme from Star Wars.

Colin Powell said that there was no room in the Republican Party for racists. Evidently all those slots are already filled. (Will Durst joke)

George Bush Senior threatened that if Clinton kept attacking his boy, he would say what he really thinks about him. Am I the only one reminded of the episode of The Simpsons where the Bushes moved in across the street?

Cheney delivered the attack speech. Who would have thought? I especially liked the bit when he said that Clinton, the man from Hope, would be going home to (and here he gave a little shake of his head, evidently hopelessly confused by the thought of someone moving) New York. "It's time for them to go", he reiterated, reminding us that Gore gave the same line 8 years ago in a far more dynamic speech.

Cheney is finally going around defending his Congressional voting record, repeatedly saying that we must remember the context of the times, an excuse last trotted out at the Nuremberg trials, if I'm not mistaken. Next he'll be saying it was peer pressure. Just say no!

He explained the vote against releasing Nelson Mandela by saying that back then we thought that all those black people were communists. He then explained his vote against Head Start by saying that back in the '80s we thought that all children were communists. "My bad!" he added. He defended voting against cop-killer bullets by saying that it was his job to represent the views of the people of Wyoming, and that there were more people in Wyoming who wanted to shoot cops than there were cops. And they vote!

Al Franken points out that while Cheney attacked the Clintons for moving to NY, Cheney himself changed his voter registration from Texas to Wyoming just a few weeks ago.

I was pleased to see Bush claim that he could turn part of Social Security into a stock market lotto without reducing benefits, the equivalent of the Laffer curve but more to the point also the equivalent of the Read My Lips speech, since sooner or later he has to produce this proposal with the blanks actually filled in.

convention

I was distracted earlier by watching tv and writing at the same time and by the heat. Like my refrigerator, my brain simply does not operate well over 100. So sorry about saying Cheney was speaking today. Also, I started to compare Junior's distancing of himself from his own party and especially its Congressional members with Clinton's. And we all know how well that worked. When Shrub arrives in the White House, he will be in for the same rude awakening that Clinton did at the hands of old Washington hands who consider him a carpetbagger.

What I missed realizing during the Gerald Ford video tribute was the number of times it said that he "restored the nation's confidence." Evidently, 25 years on, Clinton = Nixon. Which means that even the R's are now tacitly agreeing that Nixon was evil personified, just as Newt Gingrich, who 2 and 4 years ago was the guy against whom all the D's defined themselves, now performs the same role for R's, who are otherwise trying to airbrush him out of all the old photos, like Trotsky [line lifted from Jacob Weisberg of Slate].

Clinton keeps making comments about Bush and it's driving the Gore folks, and Bush the Elder, bugfuck. George Stephanopalous, the little man with the big name and no particular sense of loyalty, thinks that Clinton is seriously off the reservation, but if Gore isn't willing to slap Shrub down, someone has to. When you consider what it would be like putting Clinton and Boy George in a room together, it becomes crystal clear how unready for prime time the latter is. Clinton would eat him alive. By the way, my prediction: Gore will lose the debates. Badly.

So Cheney will show up tomorrow. There is a lot of comment already about how crappy a campaigner he's turning out to be. But the real question will be whether Mary Cheney's live-in lover will be on the podium.

Haven't seen it yet, but there's supposed to be something in the Wed. NY Times about Bush's really big donors and why their donations haven't been reported. I think reporters should start staking out these high-ticket fundraising events like papparazi, or Michael Moore, and taking pictures of everyone who goes in.

Convention

"We almost lost him" -- the start of a video tribute to the sainted Ronald Reagan. To quote from that period, gag me with a spoon.

This followed a tribute to Gerald Ford which didn't mention Nixon even once, but did make the Mayaguez incident into some sort of triumph. Whip Inflation Now!

I didn't recognize the music introducing Jim Kolbe. Dole, however, was brought on to the tune of When the Caissons Come Rolling Along. Caissons were last used, what, in World War I? This is defence night, leading up to the speech by draft dodger Dick Cheney.

This isn't especially original, but this is Bush's convention, not the Republican Party's. Newt is locked in the basement until it's over, the Clinton impeachment is well in the past, with no one even essaying a defence of it.

Speaking of convenient memory loss [the wonderfully caring Nancy Reagan, someone just said], did you know the German Catholic church, monasteries etc requisitioned slave labor during WW II?