Wednesday, May 22, 2002

The Washington Post headline of a study reported in the Journal of the Bleeding Obvious: “Uninsured Don’t Get Needed Health Care.”

In today’s NY Times, an unnamed spokesman, questioned about the failure to raise the Tom Ridge Color of the Day from yellow to orange, says “There is a certain art to this.” Let me help you out, chuckles: you add red to the yellow to make orange.

The FBI agent who wrote the Phoenix memo is the guy who was instrumental in breaking the Oklahoma city bombing.

Let me correct the NY Times, which says that Ariel Sharon threw the Shas Party out of government because he plans to reduce subsidies to families with more than two children (the paper helpfully adds that devout Jews have many many children) (I added the second “many”). Actually, he planned to reduce subsidies to families with many many children who duck military service, like many devout Jews do. Also, interestingly enough, Sharon plans to cut subsidies to settlers.

I said the US should apologize to East Timor. It seems what it’s actually been doing since Bush got into office is trying to screw Timor. Should have known: it’s got oil. Now the UN administration that’s been overseeing the place for the last 3 years has been re-negotiating the sweetheart energy contracts the Indonesians had. Which means the UN was negotiating with one of its members, Australia, which is a bit odd; also, they really should have left this, which more than anything determines the future of the country, to the post-independence government. One of the oil companies is Phillips Petroleum. Anyway, some Aussies met Dick Cheney, who started putting pressure on the Timorese. Also, Colin Powell put further pressure on them to sign a document refusing to accuse any Americans in the new international tribunal, presumably UN peacekeepers--except there are none from the US--so possibly protecting Henry Kissinger and, remind me again, who was the Director of Central Intelligence at the time?

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