Evil chemistry and evil biology

Holy cow, indeed: “A diamond trader in India's western state of Gujarat has been feeding a cow for three weeks to retrieve the 1,722 gemstones it swallowed after he dropped his bag in the street. Mohabbatsinh Gohil has been sifting daily through the cow's dung. He has recovered 555 stones so far and has vowed to collect them all.”

Kerry defends his vote for war as a vote only to threaten war. He says he believed Bush would only use force as a last resort.

I’m sorry, I had to type that out to see if I could do it without laughing. No, no I couldn’t.

Anyway, he says Bush misled him. Outwitted by a half-wit, what a recommendation.

The story about R Senate Judiciary Committee staffers spying on Ds and leaking to Robert Novak has yet to appear in the WaPo, and nothing in the NYT in 3 days either. It’s always interesting to see which potentially major scandals go nowhere in the press (although if the blogs weren’t so distracted by the horse-race now being won by horse-face Kerry, they might be able to force the story on the mainstream media, like Trent Lott and the Strom Thurmond thing). Nor is anyone mainstream taking the opportunity of Peter Jenning’s stern but ignorant dressing down of Wesley Clark/Michael Moore to reopen the issue of Bush’s National Guard service, although I’ve heard that Jamie Rubin, asked a question about it by Wolf Blitzer on CNN, responded that he hadn’t looked into it, have you, Wolf? at which point Wolf went rapidly to commercial.

A last comment on the State of the Union address, swear to Jebus: he mentioned his little aircraft carrier stunt but he failed to acknowledge in any way the more than 500 US soldiers killed since his previous SOTU speech.

Also, how much of the $1.5b to help people with their marriages will go to help his brother Neil--who is planning to marry his mistress once both their divorces go through--stay away from the hookers, even if they are free?

John Ashcroft: “Weapons of mass destruction including evil chemistry and evil biology are all matters of great concern.” Ashcroft also thinks dancing is evil, which may or may not be relevant, but I always like to remind you of it whenever Ashcroft’s name comes up. Also: lost an election to a dead guy (now, THAT’S evil biology!).

Got my supplementary voter’s pamphlet--not the main guide yet, of course, that would make sense. More than ever you have to ask how they choose the people who write the arguments, which in the case of Der Arnold’s pet initiatives, are entirely an intramural Republican affair. Both are attacked from Arnie’s right: the argument against the $15b bond initiative (the Economic Recovery Bond Act, it’s called; evidently they circumvented the usual rule against biased titles and summaries) is written by Tom McClintock, the one against the balanced budget initiative by Howard Jarvis-type loons who think it has too many loopholes and doesn’t strangle the last bureaucrat with the guts of the last public school teacher. The range of argument in these guides bears less and less resemblance to the range in which the views of most Californians actually fall.

With Iran’s “Guardian Council” refusing to back off from disqualifying most reformers from election, the government is talking about refusing to organize any election, which seems to me the right response.

1971 Doonesbury about John Kerry.

Daily Telegraph: “A white teenager who moved from South Africa to America six years ago was suspended from school after nominating himself for a "Distinguished African-American Student of the Year" prize. Trevor Richards, 16, was accused of "showing disrespect" to black pupils at Westside High School in Omaha, Nebraska. It is thought he is the only pupil to have lived in Africa.”

Israeli rabbinical authorities give permission for bigamy to the husband of a woman who has been declared brain dead.

Remember how in the 1980s we first heard about the Medellin cartel? And then in the 1990s the Cali cartel? Or possibly the other way around. Well, evidently it is now the Northern Valley cartel responsible for 60% of the cocaine and heroin in the US. Why have you never heard of it? Because for years it has been manipulating the US & Colombian governments into attacking its rivals. Some of its leaders are former narco-cops decorated by the DEA for their services in the war on drugs.